New research conducted with nearly 500 in-house lawyers and legal operations professionals works to understand how in-house teams are using technology and how it’s impacting their day-to-day workflow efficiencies, the effectiveness of the legal team, and wider business objectives.

In-house legal want to engage more with the wider business

At the crux of the report, it finds that legal professionals want to spend more time on the wider business, yet are struggling to find the time. 

92 percent of those surveyed feel that time spent on manual daily tasks takes time and effort away from larger business goals and the ability for them to deliver services in a timely manner. Of those, 67 percent consider their ability to influence major business goals was the factor most affected.

Switching between solutions takes up valuable time

Overall, 77 percent of in-house legal teams are spending over one hour a day jumping between different software solutions in order to gain a complete view of their work and determine priorities. Of those, 39 percent are spending three or more hours switching between different applications. 

40-45 percent of legal professionals are also spending more than three hours per day on:

• team management tasks such as determining workload capacity, the status of individual tasks, and managing internal processes, reported;
• searching through emails or other systems to determine matter history or advice from outside counsel; and
• back and forth with the wider business to gather complete information or update them on the status of legal work.

Multiple platforms are causing headaches

The most common pain points affecting legal professionals are those causing a burden on time and a lack of coordination across the legal team and the wider department. The top three pain points are:

• inefficiencies due to multiple platforms;
• a lack of integration between platforms; and
• concerns about data and information security. 

The causes of the above pain points are revealed where the findings show that most legal teams rely on multiple systems, many of which aren’t designed for in-house legal teams.

When the time spent on daily manual tasks is evaluated together with the impact on the wider business, the benefits of having a comprehensive and integrated legal technology solution become clear. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those surveyed indicated that, if given the opportunity, they would migrate to a consolidated platform to manage their legal work.

Download the full report to:

• Understand more deeply how your peers are using different tools for their day-to-day work
• See the average time spent per day doing manual tasks like jumping between systems to gain a complete overview of work and determine priorities, collaborating with team members, going back and forth with the wider business, and more
• Compare how empowered you are by your tools to focus on larger business goals and manage your team’s workload
• Compare ways of working with companies of similar size
• Check what others are seeking in their desired legal tech solutions

(Research conducted by Perceptive and LawVu from March 7th to April 4th 2022, of in-house lawyers and legal operators across the US and UK markets and various company sizes. The following is the base size collected per country: UK: n=241 US: n=239.)