Filling the Legal Resource Gap: A Path to Improve Legal Function
Corporate legal departments are under strain. With ‘the great resignation’, global labour shortages, post-COVID impacting workloads and work patterns, and new challenges presented by global sanctions and rising inflation, teams are being stretched more than ever before – while also looking at tightening belts with new waves of uncertainty on the rise.
To thrive – rather than just cope – legal departments need to find suitable solutions to fill the significant resource gaps hampering them, as they try to deliver to their customers and stakeholders.
A recent survey by EY indicates general counsels (GCs) expect:
- Workloads to increase by 25% over the next three years, yet
- Headcount to only increase by 3%
- Over 75% are anticipating workloads to outpace budgets,
- 87% believe they spend too much time on routine, low-value tasks
- 47% believed that too much low-value work has impacted morale.1
The data is telling a story – that resourcing models of most legal departments are not sustainable if the trajectory of current trends continues.
Other common challenges and needs identified by legal teams and their leaders are:
- Freeing capacity to focus time on strategic work that facilitate the organisation’s commercial goals
- Ability to call on specialist expertise on an ‘as needed’ basis
- Team members being asked to do work not commensurate with their expertise level
- Repetitive workstreams that are not always handled by the same person
- Ready access to interim support or managed solutions to manage fluctuating work loads
- Limited flexibility for additional headcount
- Pressure on fixed costs
- The escalating war for talent and ‘the great resignation’
- Anticipated static or reducing budget
Upcoming Trends of Legal Outsourcing
In recent years, the practice of legal process outsourcing has become a trend in the legal field. This trend has been spurred by the rising costs and fees associated with obtaining legal services. People outsource legal work for five main reasons.
- Cost Efficiency
Outsourcing legal work allows businesses to access specialised expertise without the overhead costs associated with hiring full-time legal staff.
- Flexibility
Businesses outsourcing legal processes can have high flexibility in terms of resource allocation. Businesses can scale up or down their legal needs without the constraints of hiring of firing employees.
- Access to Expertise
Legal process outsourcing firms often have specialised knowledge and experience. By outsourcing legal processes, businesses can tap into this expertise immediately.
- Focus on Core Business Activities
By outsourcing legal work, businesses can focus their internal resources on core activities that directly contribute to their KPIs and strategic initiatives rather than spending time and effort on volume based legal matters, or low value matters.
- Decreased Processing Time
Legal process outsourcing firms can provide you with access to a higher level of talent and niche expertise that doesn’t exist within your firm, further speeding up the legal process.
Explore the Benefits of Legal Outsourcing
The legal sector is undergoing significant changes and there are now more legal service provider options than ever, but legal outsourcing is underutilised, and the hurdles are dated perceptions and historical reluctance.
To find out more about how legal outsourcing could benefit you and enhance your legal function, get your hands on our latest white paper! In this white paper, we explore what outsourcing is, its benefits and how you can get started. We also encourage you to rethink how to better resource your legal function to meet today’s corporate challenges.
Get your hands on our latest white paper
For further information, please contact:
Natasha Norton, Korum Legal
Natasha.Norton@korumlegal.com
