2017 State of the Industry Survey
by Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC)
If you have not yet heard about CLOC, it's time for you to check it out. Among other things, its mission is to bring leadership, knowledge and experience necessary for corporate legal operations officers to drive peak in-house legal department performance, including implementing policies, processes, and technologies to increase value to the company while driving down costs and fostering a globally connected culture. Yikes!
There's some fascinating information in this report, in which 156 companies in 32 industries participated. Here are a few of the highlights that caught our attention:
- The legal spend for outside counsel averages $607K per in-house lawyer.
- For every dollar spent on overall legal costs, 62 cents is spent on outside services.
- Legal spend as a percentage of total company revenue varies considerably by industry. "Biotech/Pharma" tops the list, by far, at 2.4%. Next is "Entertainment/Media" at 1.4%, followed closely by "Technology," "Non-Profits" and "Financial Services" at approximately 1.3%.
- 83% of survey participants use e-billing systems, with Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker leading the way. Yet, nearly half (46%) do not have contract management systems in place.
- Despite the recent proliferation of Alternative Service Providers (ASPs), nearly 2/3s (65%) say they don’t use them. Of those who do, Elevate Services and Axiom top the list.
- Surprisingly, 1/3 of in-house legal departments do not have any mechanisms in place to measure the performance of outside counsel. "Matter outcome" and "Responsiveness" are high on the list among in-house legal departments that do evaluate the performance of law firms with which they work.
We keep hearing more and more about CLOC, and we think there's much more to come.
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