Lexion, an AI-powered contract management system geared to in-house lawyers and legal professionals, recently announced the results of a survey of some 450 in-house legal professionals. The Survey sought information on the state of legal technology, the potential economic slowdown, and the potential impact of any slowdown on their work. The results were published in The State of Legal Technology: Improving Efficiency with Existing Staff and New Technology as Hiring Slows. Respondents include in-house counsel, legal operations professionals, and contract managers across various industries.
Much of what the Survey found was not surprising. Close to 90% of the respondents are worried about the economy. Most of the respondents (almost 70%) believe their companies will likely soon slow down or freeze hiring. Most think they will also need to reduce outside counsel spend and even conduct layoffs.
So no surprises there. And on the surface, it would seem that a cut in legal spending would also portend reduced spending on legal technology. But not so fast, says Gaurav Oberoi, co-founder and CEO of Lexion, who I talked to at length about the Survey and what the results mean.
Oberoi highlighted a couple of other important Survey findings. First, most respondents (70%) believe that technology can increase efficiencies and help them do more with less. Second, the respondents identified having to spend too much time on low value tasks as one of the most significant barriers to doing their jobs well. Over one-third of respondents, for example, specifically identified activities such as finding, tracking, and versioning documents, as a big time sink.
Oberoi says that while headcount will no doubt be reduced, finding and using legal tech to cut out the time in-house legal professionals spend doing tasks they don’t need to do will be critical. In-house