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The data and jurisdictional challenges facing legal teams
New research reveals the challenges pertaining to the growth and complexity of data and the navigation of multijurisdictional work that are most concerning to corporate lawyers at present.
Jerome Doraisamy
New research from Consilio, an e-discovery, document review, flexible legal talent, and legal advisory and transformation consulting services provider, shows the myriad data and jurisdictional challenges facing corporate law departments in the current climate.
The provider’s fifth annual survey – Beyond the Gridlock: Overcoming the Challenges of Modern Legal Work, which surveyed 212 legal, risk, and compliance professionals in corporate law departments and law firms from Asia and the Middle East, Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe, and the United States – found that the growth and complexity of data “continues to drive intensity” for both e-discovery and broader information governance efforts.
One in three (32 per cent) of those surveyed, Consilio outlined, pointed to document review quality and efficiency as their biggest data challenge, while just over a quarter (28 per cent) cited management of privacy/personal Identifiable Information (PII) as a concern.
Reflecting on this, Consilio mused in a statement that “balancing speed, accuracy, cost, visibility, and security in data management and analysis procedures will continue to be a challenge for legal professionals as the volume and variety of data expands exponentially”.
On the question of globalisation, law firms and in-house law departments alike, the provider continued, have been forced to become adept at navigating multijurisdictional work, which presents another set of challenges.
Such challenges include compliance and legal regulations (which 43 per cent of respondents selected as a challenge), working across different time zones (27 per cent), managing cross-border data privacy and security (22 per cent), and variation of operational procedures (18 per cent).
The survey also found that nearly one in two (48 per cent) legal, risk and compliance professionals rank overwhelming work volume as the biggest challenge they face and that three in five (60 per cent) professionals are prioritising smaller, operational reinventions to bring about process improvements that combat their ever-escalating workload.
Moreover, it identified that almost half (46 per cent) of respondents acknowledge that AI will shape the future of the legal profession, but only one in five (20 per cent) in-house teams are actively piloting, planning to deploy, or currently deploying AI solutions.
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. In June 2024, he also assumed the editorship of HR Leader. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
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