It might not be the first thing people remember about the Great Recession, but the effects of the last big economic downturn changed the way companies view and measure their legal departments—probably, forever.
Gone are the days when an in-house counsel’s success (or failure) was measured simply by reducing legal spend year over year. Legal departments are no longer considered pure cost centers—with the C-suite now focused on metrics that demonstrate its legal department’s effectiveness in new ways, including an ever-increasing drive for data-driven intelligence and the ability to benchmark performance against the legal departments of other, similar, companies.
