Corporate legal practitioners may find themselves continuing to gravitate toward technology that can lessen their reliance upon outside counsel. However, those initiatives could be hampered by the general lack of understanding surrounding both technology and ongoing innovation efforts inside departments.

Released last week, the 2020 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey collected responses from 700 legal professionals working in the U.S. and Europe, with 51% indicating that they expected their corporate legal departments to increase spending on technology over the next three years. Dean Sonderegger, senior vice president and general manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory US, believes that some of that spend will continue to go to “hygiene activities” like matter management or tools designed to track, negotiate or draft contracts.