Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business intelligence services. Our products include highly specialized information-driven software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals, combined with the world`s most global intelligence service – Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters, see tr.com and the latest global news reuters.com. Key insights into how modern legal is using technology to protect and serve the business «Eighty-seven percent of the legal departments we surveyed in 2020 expected their total number of full-time internal employees to stay the same or decrease,» says Hutto. «Traditionally, larger workloads could only be managed through increased internal productivity or expensive external advice. Advances in natural language processing and machine learning (ML) technologies offer a third way to address these critical challenges. VAC and Exterro, the leading provider of legal CRM software, are pleased to present our 2021 Legal Technology Report for Inhouse Counsel. In today`s in-house legal department, technology is no longer just an asset to be had. With increasing amounts of data that need to be reviewed, a variety of third parties (law firms, service providers, in-house business units, etc.) to work with, and an evolving array of eDiscovery, compliance, incident response, information governance, and privacy requirements, business consultants must leverage technology to adequately protect and serve their business. Information security is being looked at in a whole new light as the European Union`s new General Data Protection Regulation pushes businesses around the world to raise the bar on compliance. To help in-house legal teams address data security challenges, legal technologies such as App4Legal provide best-in-class solutions that improve mobile data management and provide better risk management for moving data from corporate files to a secure cloud environment. The ultimate solution to improve corporate information governance.
Gartner experts expect legal departments to triple their spending on legal technology by 2025. Legal technology that facilitates the creation of contracts, for example, can help streamline the in-house legal department in several ways when creating regularly used contracts. This relieves an already overburdened in-house legal team. Document management technology makes this possible by allowing everyone in the organization to create a complete contract that meets the organization`s specifications and methods. Over the next few years, leading in-house legal functions will focus more aggressively on continuously balancing resource decisions for specific areas of work, whether they rely on in-house counsel, in-house non-lawyers, law firms or lay service providers. In addition, they will enhance legal technology and innovation skills within their teams by upsetting existing staff. expertise in other internal functions (e.g. through rotation programs) or external parties (e.g., through secondment); or hiring new talent pools. The coronavirus pandemic has created new pressures that have led more legal functions to pursue or consider automation, even though they have long resisted changes in this area.
The trend of increasing workloads and fixed budgets puts efficiency at the forefront. This means that legal departments need to improve their processes, legal technology implementation, analytics and other digitization strategies to cope with this increased workload. No matter how good the technology is, it will fail if no one uses it. For this reason, user adoption is one of the most critical tasks in your project plan. User adoption is your process to ensure that the technology is presented and works in a way that people use it, as well as the training program on how to use the tool. The index data consists of an actual analysis of legal spending from the Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker and more than 1,500 corporate legal departments, as well as a Thomson Reuters survey conducted in August and September 2022, in which 107 legal departments participated. One of the essential tasks for any in-house general counsel is to free up time and save time for the in-house legal team so that they can perform the most important tasks required by the organization, while ensuring that routine and low-value tasks are handled properly. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI)-based legal technology are also speeding up the process of reviewing and negotiating contracts. Technological innovations in corporate law enable legal departments to ensure compliance with internal playbooks and regulatory requirements. By taking advantage of these innovations, corporate legal departments have accelerated negotiations and allowed lawyers to focus on higher value-added tasks. The advent of AI digital playbooks marks a significant advance in contract negotiation playbooks by eliminating the shortcomings of static or analog playbooks. Because AI digital textbooks ensure strict adherence to playbook policies, AI digital playbooks protect teams from unnecessary errors and risks, institutionalize best practices, and free lawyers and legal staff from document review.
In addition, new legal technology tools can provide legal-grade automated redlining with smart advice based on playbook standards to return an entirely discounted contract. Legal technology innovations apply business tools and methodologies to improve processes, accelerate deployment, and extend cloud collaboration for enterprise legal departments and law firms. Increasingly, forward-thinking corporate legal departments are using legal analysis to conduct research and develop effective contract strategies. App4Legal is a simple yet powerful software solution for legal departments that integrates seamlessly with your current workflows, integrates seamlessly with your Microsoft Office tools, and delivers value from day one. How you track, organize, and collaborate on issues, cases, contracts, tasks, etc. TORONTO (October 13, 2022) – According to the seventh Legal Department Operations Index (LDO), released today by the Thomson Reuters Institute, 65% of respondents said the volume of legal work handled by their team has increased over the past year. Despite the increase in workload, lawyers did not see a corresponding increase in their budget, with nearly 60% of respondents saying their budget for legal services remained the same or decreased. «The new pressures of the coronavirus pandemic have certainly acted as a catalyst for this change,» said Zack Hutto, consulting director at Gartner. «Legal and compliance teams have rarely been at the forefront of modernization, digitization and automation.
The pandemic has flattened staffing budgets and increased legal workload. Technology is the most obvious solution for many legal departments. «The COVID-19 pandemic has put even more pressure on already overburdened in-house legal teams, with staffing levels unchanged,» Hutto said.