Is your legal department spending more than what is accounted for? With legal matter and spend management, you’ll never have to rummage around loose files and boxes, trying to figure out where those extra dollars go. A Gartner report predicts that legal technology budgets will rise to approximately 12% of in-house legal spend budgets by 2025, which is a 300% increase from levels in 2020!
Above The Law says that “the best matter and spend management tech allows you to easily account for all of your department’s internal and external work.” Matter and spend management softwares streamline processes such as reporting, auditing, record-keeping, and contract management functions. These softwares utilize machine learning, as well, to completely transform bill-review processes.
Benefits of Using Legal Spend Management Tech
- Deliver significant cost savings
- Streamline attorney and legal staff work processes
- Gain visibility into legal spend to facilitate better informed business decisions about vendors
- Offer collaboration with in-house and outside counsel
Legal Matter Management
Legal Matter Management allows legal departments and corporate counsel to monitor their in-house spend in an organized and efficient manner. Why is this important to legal departments? Matters and details related to legal work, or cases – which can include a roster of attorneys, expenditure on cases, and billable hours – are tracked, collected, and accounted for across the entire lifecycle of the matter.
In the long run, an extra dollar here or there can eventually lead to hundreds or thousands of dollars that could have been managed better. Every dollar matters when you’re in law. You can control legal matter & spend management by utilizing specialized technology.
Legal Matter Management
On the other hand, Legal Spend Management is the managed control of outside counsel spend. Many corporate counsel depend on, and rely upon, the work of outside counsel or law firms (the vendors) to augment or deliver complete legal solutions. These legal services can range from document review to legal research and writing.
By managing spending on outside counsel spend, legal departments get transparency into their expenditures with clear vendor tracking lists. Legal departments can identify and make better informed business decisions for their future legal spends on outsourced projects.
In a corporate law department, it is imperative that you identify, manage, and control your outside counsel spend. With the right tools, such as legal matter and spend management tech, legal departments can achieve goals of efficiency and cost management.
