In-house lawyers are getting busier and working harder—with the volume of legal work only increasing. While there is clearly more demand, growth in resources largely remains stagnant. It’s clear that we are in the midst of an in-house resource crunch.

GCs are responding in different ways. Cost-efficiency is critical, so large corporate legal teams are increasing budget internally to handle more work in house and meet the growing demand. This enables legal teams to respond to the greater workload and also save money on external counsel costs. However, not all legal departments have the ability to absorb the work—which is why small and medium-sized legal teams may be increasing external counsel spend.