More legal departments are looking to outside talents to bolster their ranks and grow their business. Wolters Kluwer’s new survey of 100 legal executives shows that 93% of legal or compliance departments have outsourced work in the last three years.
And these are more than just smaller companies: The respondents came from entities making more than $500 million in revenue, with the increase most prevalent among institutions with $1 billion-$4 billion in annual revenue.
Why are even institution-sized firms pulling in external experts? And what duties are those hires performing?
Why Now?
As the survey responses show, outsourcing legal solutions solves multiple problems for legal departments.
One: It eases workflow, allowing companies to redistribute workload to dedicated experts, thereby freeing their in-house counsel to manage and tackle larger, more complex aspects of their project.
Two: On-demand in-house counsel keep the budget down without sacrificing quality. As Wolters Kluwer found, GCs anticipate a 25% increase in workflow, but 88% anticipate needing to trim their budgets. On-demand solutions let them do both.
Third, hiring on-demand counsel for bespoke solutions allows companies to grow their business without burning out their staff. Plus, it lets legal departments test new methods that keep