Legal departments want more value from their law firms and are not seeing it happen. To address this, in-house legal teams tend to evaluate mostly financial and operational performance through their matter management tools. But this leaves a lot of key information for decision-making still on the table. As a stand-alone product, matter management tools cannot drive lasting, effective change because they do not truly measure quality or value.

According to the “2018 State of Corporate Law Departments” white paper found on Legal Executive Institute, 66 percent of legal departments consider it a priority to allocate more work to firms that proactively show their value. Since “value” is fundamental to the distribution of corporate legal expenditures to law firms, legal departments need a next-level approach to managing their law firms. Measuring the subjective areas of law firm value will provide the foundation for long-term, effective change in overall performance.