While the convergence of legal management and enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) is not new, more recent efforts to manage this development through integrated technology are fast becoming a strategic imperative. This still relatively young area of focus is already showing significant potential to help corporations better manage the risk exposure and compliance concerns that have drained so much time and finances in the past. For the intersection of legal and GRC to be fully realized, these functions must work collaboratively to define how these areas interact in holistic terms, ensuring that the overlap between the legal function and GRC tasks (e.g., assessing and prioritizing risk, creating policies in response to a new regulation, or handling a compliance incident) can be tackled effectively and efficiently to the benefit of the enterprise.
Pressures on legal organizations to reduce costs, keep up with regulatory complexity, and serve a global client base have steadily increased in recent years. Between 2012 and 2014, a growing need to control legal costs led corporate legal departments to nearly double the percentage of their budgets allocated to outsourcing work to nonlaw firm vendors, according to a 2014 survey of chief legal officers from Altman Weil. By 2020, according to some estimates, the share of U.S .and UK corporates expected to be using legal process outsourcing could reach as high as 75 percent. At the same time, in-house counsel regard regulatory issues as the number-one litigation threat, according to a 2013 study by Grant Thornton. The complexity of these efforts is compounded by the need for large organizations to operate on a global scale, managing processes, spend, compliance, and risk across international borders.
