Download: How GCs are using legal tech | The Lawyer

In January, Wolters Kluwer and The Lawyer launched a survey to determine how in-house legal teams use legal technology.

The opinions of 130 general counsel from leading organizations across the UK were collected and the analysis was complemented by interviews with legal officers from organizations such as Bupa, BT and the City Football Group.

This research was part of a larger project carried out in collaboration between Wolters Kluwer and The Lawyer, which aimed to provide a platform for internal departments that want to leverage technology and increase efficiency in the new normal.

The project included a successful roundtable and webinar session that included insights from Maurits Annegarn from Wolters Kluwer and Matt Byrne from The Lawyer, Emma Tregenza, General Counsel at Emerald Group, Sara Mackie, Group General Counsel at French Connection, and many others more leading internal contributors.

The project was underpinned by the results of the survey, which are now available in a free report available here.

Main results

A key data point emerging from the survey is that all GCs expect their legal department to use some level of legal technology every day for five years. Currently, seven percent of legal departments do not use legal technology on a daily basis.

Even so, only 40 percent of GCs do not have a digital strategy to support the implementation of technology in their department.

The effects of the pandemic cannot be ignored here. The move to working from home required rapid changes in work practices, including the introduction of technologies that may previously have been temporary, such as: B. electronic signatures and shared document storage.

The report describes how implementing a sophisticated digital strategy using technology can help legal departments demonstrate their value to the company while driving the entire organization forward.

To this end, respondents were asked what changes they are making to improve efficiency over the next three years. Almost half of the respondents said they would “give the company more autonomy”.

This is inextricably linked with value. To give the company more autonomy, for example through self-service contracts, lawyers need to be freed from the low-complexity, high-volume tasks that can take up a large part of the working day.

By giving a legal department more time to focus on highly complex tasks and strategies, it can help add value to itself and the value of the business as a whole.

With legal technology adoption increasing, it is important to understand the barriers and challenges in adopting solutions. More than half of the respondents identified the acquisition of stakeholders / users as a central challenge. One respondent to the survey simply stated, “Successful adoption can be the biggest hurdle for new technologies.”

The report describes how these obstacles can be overcome. One technique promoted by leading GCs is using an “influencer” or internal champion of a new solution. One GC said, “I think it can make a difference to have someone dedicated to influencing change and getting everyone to make an effort [the implementation of technology] rewarding.”

These results as well as other findings and analyzes are contained in our report, which is now available for download.

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