“Metrics” has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the legal industry—especially over the past year. But despite an increased focus on adoption and usage of metrics, initial results from Bloomberg Law’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey (currently taking responses!) show no increase in the percentage of respondents reporting formal ways to measure the value of legal operations when compared to last year’s 2020 Legal Operations Survey results.
On the surface, the legal industry has embraced the adoption and use of metrics, as evidenced by an abundance of metrics-focused webinars, blog posts, and guidance on developing useful metrics to track and manage legal projects, practices, and departments. Metrics can help monitor progress, efficiency, and productivity, and allow leadership to identify areas in need of improvement. As laser-focused as firms and in-house legal departments have been on cutting costs and streamlining processes amid the pandemic and recession, adopting metrics to monitor operations seems like an easy first step for organizations.
However, initial results from our survey show no change in the percentage of respondents measuring the value of legal operations with formal metrics when compared to last year; it continues to hover around 60%. This lack of upward movement is surprising, given organizations’ focus on curbing costs, particularly in response to pandemic-initiated challenges.
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The Legal Operations survey is open until this Friday, March 19, and we need to hear from you! Take our Legal Operations Survey now.
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