Law firms and legal services suppliers have yet to up their innovation game — and law departments are waiting.  At least that's what new data from legal research firm Acritas indicates.

Some 69 percent of U.S. legal departments told Acritas they haven't seen their outside law firms and service providers innovate over the last 12 months. This seems to support the notion that calls from in-house counsel for their outside partners to think outside the box are all too often going unheard.

“Our research clearly shows legal departments and their external legal service providers are at different stages of evolution,”  said Lizzy Duffy, a vice president at Acritas U.S. in the announcement of the new data.

The data was taken from a study by Acritas' Sharplegal research program, which analyzed interviews with respondents from more than 600 U.S. companies, who talked about how their legal functions operate. All respondents were from organizations with a revenue of more than $50 million.

According to Duffy, it's not just that some firms haven't gotten on board with the latest legal tech gadgetry. It's about a way of thinking.

“Innovation isn't always about technology,” said Duffy. “It's about having an entrepreneurial mindset and looking for ways to do things differently. It demands people with that drive and a supportive culture that allows people to try things and accommodates the failure that always attends invention.”

As for law departments, the data said that some 41 percent of those based in the U.S. had worked on innovation internally.

There have been plenty of recent examples of legal departments that are on the cutting edge of innovation. Notable examples include DXC Technology's top to bottom revamp of its legal function and the GC Thought Leaders Experiment, which seeks to understand through research what makes for better relationships between in-house counsel and law firms.