Law Departments See Regulation as Biggest Challenge

More than half of law departments find that regulatory requirements are their biggest challenge, according to The Consilio Law Department Benchmarking Report. The Consilio report uses data from 119 companies to assess the practices and concerns of law departments.

Many regulatory requirements faced by law departments deal with data privacy and cybersecurity. This relatively new concern affects resource allocation, strategic planning and to some extent hiring practices. Fifty-eight percent of law departments have an internal data-privacy program (and the data suggests that many more will have one soon), but data also reveals a lack of programs designed to secure information that companies share with vendors. Just 21 percent take these kinds of precautions with information shared externally.

More than 75 percent of companies with over $10 billion in revenue reported using alternative service providers for document review and data processing/hosting. For companies with between $2 billion and $10 billion in revenue, the figure was 44 percent.

Law department spending continued to increase, but at a lower rate than in the previous survey year, and a majority of respondents reported having preferred provider programs for outside counsel.

Among companies with over $10 billion in revenue, 89 percent reported employing a law department operations manager. This finding supports anecdotal evidence of a trend to manage legal departments as a business unit. Many larger companies are employing a dedicated law department operations manager who guides operational, financial, technical and process support.