Legal teams can’t work in the back office anymore ensuring compliance and managing risks only. They are expected to become business enablers who would also take responsibility for resource allocation, costs spendings and critical deadlines. With increasing volumes of legislation, demanding clients and massive cost deduction in the post-pandemic world it’s no longer possible to do legal function in the way it used to be.
For legal teams to be able to do a legal function according to the businesses’ expectations, technology and automation are not just nice-to-have it’s a must by the end of 2020.
We’ve reviewed some of the most recent legal tech trends and updates to share these 10 legaltech statistics.
Cost deduction
- The most common approaches to managing increased legal work are still focused on using internal resources as an initial recourse before engaging outside counsel:
👉 Check out these 5 ways to make your legal team cost-effective in 2020.
2. 70% of businesses indicated that “using tech to simplify workflow and manual processes” to cut costs was a top priority going forward.
3. The IACCM evaluates the average cost of a standard contract as $6,900, taking into account the average salaries of the parties involved. A more complex agreement would cost a business $49,000 with all the rounds of drafting, negotiating and reviews.
Client collaboration
4. 24% of small and 23% of midsize law firms reported more pressure from corporate clients. Large law firms also experienced more client pressure: 39% say the pressure is increasing in comparison to 18% legal professionals who reported the existence of pressure two years ago.
5. Law firms using client portals witnessed up to 11% more casework per lawyer than other firms did in 2019 (average of 9% difference for the year). In 2020, firms using online portals achieved 17% more new casework per lawyer during the lockdown period in spring. Using client portals gives law firms the possibility to spend more time on billable work and to ensure positive client experiences that leads to more positive reviews and referrals.
👉 Learn more options on how to collaborate with clients and improve legal service delivery.
Contract management
6. 55% of companies implemented contract management systems, and 29% of companies plan to implement contract management systems.
7. By using contract management systems it’s possible to draft 100 NDA-s based on the automated templates within 50 minutes instead of 50 hours of lawyer’s time.
Workflow automation
8. Lawyers spend on average 60% of their time doing management and administrative tasks instead of practising law.
9. Organisational spending on external risk management technologies to support due diligence and overviewing will increase by 50% by 2023.
10. 33% of corporate legal teams will have a dedicated legal technology expert to support the increasing automation of critical in-house workflows by 2023.
👉 Read more about automated document workflow and its benefits for any type of company.
Balancing between cost deduction, clients’ pressure and businesses’ expectations is getting tougher by the end of 2020. To keep up with this pace legal teams have already started to cut costs with the use of technology and automate core workflows. In 2021, the pace will speed up even more so it’s the right time now to digitise your basic legal workflows now.
Ready to create your first document and automate a workflow for it? Get started for free now.
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