New Report Shows Majority of Work Moving In-House for Legal Departments of All Sizes

The 2018 In-House Legal Benchmarking Report conducted by ACEDS & Exterro shows a 19% jump in organizations conducting work in-house compared to last year.

PORTLAND, Ore., November 7, 2018 – Exterro® Inc., the preferred provider of software specifically designed for in-house legal and IT teams at Global 2000 and AmLaw 200 organizations, along with the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), announced the release of the 3rd Annual In-House Legal Benchmarking Report, based on a survey of 110 respondents including attorneys, paralegals, general counsel, legal directors, and IT professionals.

Key findings in the report:

Legal team size doesn’t affect the amount of work done in-house:

• 57% of survey respondents have fewer than 50 new legal matters per year.
• 78% of respondents work in legal departments with 50 or fewer staff.
• 69% of legal teams conduct more than half of their organization’s litigation services (such as legal holds, matter intake, document review, depositions, etc.) internally, compared to 50% in 2017.
• 84% are very or somewhat satisfied with their in-house legal team’s performance.

Legal departments are embracing Legal Project Management (LPM):

• 65% of legal departments consider themselves structured, managed, or optimized in terms of LPM maturity.
• 34% of respondents rely on attorneys to manage e-discovery activities, down 8% from last year, with project management responsibilities increasingly handled by dedicated project managers or paralegals.

Legal teams are leveraging technology to increase efficiency:

• In-house legal departments use an average of 3.5 dedicated legal software tools.
• According to survey respondents, the most effective technologies for reducing costs and improving efficiency are:
  • E-Billing
  • Matter Management
  • E-Discovery Data Collection and Processing

Legal teams are still taking a traditional approach to preservation:

• 86% of legal teams feel some level of confidence that employees will preserve Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in response to a legal hold.
• However, 43% still collect data as a method of preservation.
• Only 29% of legal teams collect mobile data most or all of the time.
• Only 14% collect social media data.

“As we conducted the research for the In-House Legal Benchmarking Report, it is promising to see that most legal departments are maturing in their use of technology and legal project management principles. At the same time, there remain many opportunities for organizations to further optimize their legal processes,” said Bill Piwonka, CMO at Exterro.

“ACEDS is excited to partner with Exterro on this survey of in-house legal professionals. The message from respondents is clear: you don’t need a large team to provide litigation services effectively. With the combination of technology and legal project management principles, legal teams are demonstrating they can operate efficiently regardless of size,” said Mary Mack, CEDS, CISSP, Executive Director of ACEDS.

The In-House Legal Benchmarking Report is based on a survey conducted in September 2018 with 110 respondents.

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