The writing is on the wall: Legal departments are no longer a sacrosanct, insulated part of the organization. Not only are they coming under pressure to reduce their costs, but like other departments, they are also being tasked with quantifying their value within the organization, a task that is anathema to many seasoned legal department professionals.

“We are enabled in legal departments to say, ‘We’re different, we can’t be measured,’” said Kevin Backus, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Thyssen­Krupp North America. “And I do agree that there are challenges to being measured in a business context by the same metrics that someone might measure a purchasing department, sales department or something along those lines. However, the legal department can be measured in lot of meaningful ways.”