To increase efficiency, it's been suggested that the legal profession is in need of a common vocabulary to describe legal work.

One group, Standards for the Legal Industry (SALI), is behind an initiative to create “matter standards” that in-house legal departments, law firms and business partners would be able to use to describe matters, which for in-house counsel could improve everything from procuring to executing legal work.

“Fundamentally, we don't have a common way or standardized way to communicate what is being bought and sold in this marketplace,” said Justin Ergler, director of alternative fee intelligence and analytics at GlaxoSmithKline and co-chair of the matter standards committee at SALI, the independent agency behind this initiative.