Legal Department Resolutions and Strategic Priorities for 2024

Priori Legal asked legal department professionals across the industry to share their 2024 legal resolutions and strategic priorities. The resolutions encompassed a spectrum of objectives, including integrating AI to enhance the socialization of the legal operations team’s responsibilities, improving outside counsel management programs, and fostering a culture of efficiency by sharing resources for better cost controls, according to a Priori Legal blog post.

Here is a compendium of the resolutions in-house legal departments are prioritizing. There is a shift towards a holistic consideration of spend optimization and resource utilization. Efficiency is seen as a key driver of business goals, reflecting the ongoing trend from the previous year. Approaches to enhance efficiency include simplifying internal workflows, implementing legal technology solutions, and leveraging generative AI to scale capabilities. 

Technology plays a pivotal role, as legal professionals are implementing contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems, integrating workflows with key performance indicators (KPIs), and maximizing the potential of their existing platforms. Reflecting a broader industry trend, the use of AI is gaining traction, including solutions such as ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.

Legal professionals are focusing on proactive engagement with other business teams to drive changes in legal operations and compliance with new laws. Additionally, there is a concerted effort to reduce outside counsel spend, establish preferred provider lists, and build templates and checklists for frequently used processes and agreements. 

Overall, the resolutions reflect a dynamic and evolving landscape in which legal departments are adapting to the opportunities and challenges presented by innovation in the legal industry.