In-House Legal Teams: Do you know your legal spend in real time?

Somewhere, in the depths of a law firm (virtual) office, a partner is cranking up the hours on your next legal bill. He or she will draft the invoice and it will be sent to you for approval. Once approved, it will make its way to your Accounts Department for payment. Eventually, all such invoices will be collated into a single line item of "Legal Fees" and you will be presented with a report and a request to explain your Legal Department spend for the month / quarter / year.

At that point, you either know - or hope - that the final line item is within budget. 

If you are on the side of "hope" then you are not alone.

In a survey of the Canadian Counselwell in-house community, only 3% of in-house legal teams know their budget in real-time. This means they are not in a position to control costs when they need to.

Less than half know legal spend in real time

What gets measured, gets managed. In-house legal spend is no different, and having an immediate feedback loop on your budget is essential to controlling spend. The enormous number of in-house legal teams who do not have this visibility has a direct correlation to legal overspend. This group is squarely within the "I hope our spend is within budget" category, but by the time they receive legal spend information, they will have little ability to understand why, what or who was responsible for any overrun. 

In-house teams with OK legal spend visibility

Better, but still not great: A little over half of survey respondents can obtain visibility over their spend within a few weeks of month-end. While this improves the responsiveness of in-house lawyers to their external counsel, controlling matter budgets even one month after an invoice has been received will make it very difficult to control the hours spent on a law firm engagement.

Only 3% of in-house legal teams have real time visibility over their legal spend

In-House Legal Departments with their finger on the pulse of spend will have an immediate ability to control individual matter budgets and external law firm engagements to match their expectations and overall budget performance. This savvy approach to budget management is best-in-class and fosters a culture of financial oversight.

Do YOU know your legal spend in real time?

It's not as hard as it might seem! In-House legal spend software is easy to procure, adopt and use. If you would like to know more about Xakia matter and spend management, register for a demo webinar or book a 1:1 demo today.