From reviewing legal service providers to scouting internal services ripe for automation, some corporate legal departments are collecting and analyzing metrics to make data-driven decisions. But during their review, the quality of legal work typically isn’t their top metric measured.

According to Thomson Reuters Institute’s “2022 State of Corporate Law Departments” report, the most important decision-making metric cited by corporate law departments was spend at 48%, compared with 33% in 2015. Efficiency and quality were tied for second place at 27%. Notably, in 2015, 31% of respondents cited quality as their most important metric.