Though legal departments have larger spending budgets in 2015, chief counsel are under increased pressure to manage department funds more efficiently.
Global Legal Post reports that roughly half of chief legal officers expect outside counsel expenditures to increase over the next year, at a time when in-house team growth is also on the rise. Indeed, legal officers “are growing their inhouse teams with 58 per cent saying internal legal expenditure would increase in the next year and 34 per cent reporting that inhouse teams were increasing.” At the same time, departments are under the gun to streamline their operations for cost-effectiveness.
The survey, conducted by Maryland-based Consero, also “predicted greater use of international law firms with one in three Chief Litigation Officers believing the number of global law firms they will use over the next year will increase.” Interestingly, the survey noted that legal markets are relying increasingly on non-AmLaw 200 firms for their outside work. “More than half (51 per cent) of surveyed Chief Litigation Officers saying they have moved some work from an AmLaw 200 firm to a smaller firm in the past year.”
