Legal operations professionals have a big job ahead this year. Not only are they are being asked to support existing in-house legal functions, they are also expected to transform and modernize the legal department by improving efficiency and cost effectiveness thru the implementation of technology and supporting processes. Technology modernization transformation continues to lag within many legal organizations, and legal operations professionals are under extreme pressure to enable their departments to continually do more with less.

Implementing new technology solutions and automating legal processes sit at the top of the priority list for more than 70% of legal departments, according to CLOC’s State of the Industry survey. Right-sourcing legal work and reviewing or revising information governance were also ranked high by many of the survey’s respondents. Additional data from FTI Consulting’s 2021 Resilience Barometer survey of large, global organizations reinforces these trends, with 81% saying they have accelerated digitization over the last year and more than one-third saying they plan to continue to invest in digitization.