Crunching The Numbers: Law Departments Consolidating Outside Legal Work, And A Big Spend On M&A

LexisNexis has released its Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report (ELM), which details legal department spending trends. Among the findings: More than half of corporate legal departments have consolidated at least 80 percent of their corporate legal work with 10 or fewer firms, and during 2013 there was a big spike in billings for M&A work, much of it going to law firms in the “second-largest” category, defined as law firms with between 501 and 750 attorneys. The report was based on analysis of more than three million law firm invoices processed through the LexisNexis CounselLink system.