Across an unprecedented year, corporate legal departments were tested as they weathered many storms related to COVID-19. Resource and budget constraints, along with lack of technical capabilities were cited as the most significant challenges facing legal departments over the last year as many companies remained largely work from home environments.
The pandemic forced corporations to mitigate risks that occurred with the disruption of business, quickly address the gamut of legal requests that arose, as well as adapt to new work arrangements. After more than a year of demonstrating resilience, findings reveal that managing, doing and tracking the work can be challenging but are major drivers on the path towards modernization. As one survey participant stated, “The strategic initiative for the company is to work faster, smarter, and bolder.”
Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey—comprised of legal executives representing 81 companies across five industries—indicates that legal executives continue to struggle right-sizing and right-sourcing work, with attorneys taking on too much administrative work up 11% from last year. Almost every responding legal executive (91%) agrees the time to modernize how legal services are delivered has arrived, up 10% from last year.
As legal executives strive to become strategic business partners, which issues are top-of-mind as they embark on or further their modernization journey?
Several key areas emerged such as smarter management of contracted firms and vendors, addressing the hurdles around implementing and retiring technologies, and a mindset of innovation around the people, tools, and processes necessary to align with the business strategy. In fact, 71% of survey participants agreed that establishing better processes would help solve current technology challenges, up 11% from last year. And while access to metrics is improving over last year, automation is lagging in legal operations as only 32% of respondents indicated current tools can provide actionable KPIs and reporting without significant manual effort. There has been little to no change in the use of automation over the last year, with nearly 20% indicating they leveraged tools to automate routine tasks.
