Imagine that you are a general counsel with a long list of law firm partners and a limited budget to spend. The pandemic-imposed shutdowns that were a reality for many organizations last year may have been a perfect opportunity to cut that list down, either by insourcing more functions like e-discovery or concentrating on a more targeted network of preferred providers. 

In some cases, that may be exactly what happened last year, according to Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions’s LegalView report, released earlier this week. The report found that 90% of the corporate legal departments represented had reduced their total number of active provider relationships “at least somewhat” last year. Furthermore, the average number of providers utilized by legal departments dipped from 211 in 2019 to 186 in 2020.