Legal technology is considered a 'must-have' for legal departments
The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) has released the results of its legal technology survey for in-house counsel and legal professionals.
The survey is entitled 2023 Legal Technology Report for In-House Legal Professionals, highlighting key insights on legal technology usage trends, purchasing behaviour, and ongoing challenges for legal professionals. ACC released the report in collaboration with Exterro, a software for legal governance, risk management and compliance.
The report is based on the responses from 252 in-house counsel and legal operations professionals from 22 countries. The survey results demonstrated that legal processes are slowly becoming more sophisticated, and a more significant number of software tools are used. However, departments are also experiencing more significant challenges as more technology becomes implemented.
The report revealed that 78 percent of respondents considered legal technology a “must-have” for legal departments. This result represents an increase of 15 percent compared with two years ago. Notably, one hundred percent of legal departments who said their processes were optimized thought legal technology is a “must have.”
Contract management is the most used legal technology, with 65 percent of respondents using contract management technology. The respondents consider contract management technology the most effective technology, but there are differences across job roles. The report further showed that the most significant increases in the use of technology have occurred in contract management, legal hold, matter management, and data collection and processing. Nevertheless, legal departments are still looking to leverage software more effectively in contracts, privacy or compliance, litigation, and cybersecurity or data breach response.
Sixty-two percent of the respondents find the lack of interconnectivity across their various software applications the most challenging when using legal technology. Forty-three percent of respondents thought a comprehensive technology platform could help reduce the challenge of using multiple, disparate technology solutions.
Thirty-eight percent of all respondents said their organization would purchase or upgrade legal software over the next year. Contract management, matter management, and document repository software are the top three technology categories organizations currently assess for purchase.
The report stated that “in today’s in-house legal department, technology is no longer just a nice-to-have” due to the growing amounts of data to review and an evolving set of e-discovery, compliance, incident response, information governance, and data privacy requirements. The report encouraged legal staff to leverage technology to protect and serve their organizations adequately.
