We all know how much pressure legal departments are under, their budgets constantly scrutinized and in-house lawyers continually being asked to do more with less, across all their diverse areas of activity – from contracts, to regulatory and compliance, to litigation, to legal operations and M&A. Coupled with this, in-house lawyers are also increasingly expected to have a seat at the table when making decisions on the business’ wider strategy. It’s no longer a role devoted to just assessing day-to-day legal risks. So, what’s the solution? Data is clearly key to helping GCs decide where best to focus energy and resources. But notoriously, lawyers are not known for making data-driven decisions. For example, lawyers will often focus on the liability cap which in fact, will rarely land a company in court and data would reveal where the risks really lie.
However, the importance of data is clearly being recognized, with Hyperion Research benchmarking data showing that 63% of corporate legal departments have formal Metrics & Analytics programs. However, what else is becoming increasingly clear is that the vast majority of these departments may have the data but they don’t know how to utilize it properly. In the same survey, only 9% strongly agree that their metrics are well-defined, curated, and are easily accessible, with audience-specific dashboards.
