This article first ran in the May edition of The American Lawyer as “Clients Bring Firms Along For Tech Transformation.”

The dynamic between corporate legal departments and their outside counsel is changing—and like so many other things from this past year, the COVID-19 pandemic may be at least partly to blame. Now more than a year into the public health crisis, corporate legal department spending has rebounded to normal levels and in-house teams are turning to their law firms for help with adopting sophisticated technologies.