As legal departments evolve, the process can create a ripple effect throughout the entire legal market. Dentons global chief innovation officer John Fernandez, for instance, sees a new environment of evolving in-house expectations that firms can no longer avoid.

Specifically, he noted that law firms can’t rely solely on their attorneys’ legal prowess to distinguish themselves from competition. Instead, law firms will increasingly need to hire technologists and data scientists to provide additional expertise to clients.