Christina Speakman, director of legal operations of JDA Software Inc.

About 68% of legal operations departments in a recent survey said they were still in the early stages of development, with a majority saying they expect their technology spend to increase over the next year.

Christina Speakman, director of legal operations at JDA Software Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona, said she took part in the “Spring 2019 Corporate Legal Operations” survey and considers herself part of the “early stage” group.

“I'd say we are at the front of the bell curve of those moving into using artificial intelligence,” Speakman told Corporate Counsel.

“Legal departments are often resistant to change,” she said, “and to accepting how automation can bring value to their position and team.”

The survey was developed in connection with two of Consero Group's legal operations events in the first four months of 2019. Consero polled 77 executives on the legal technology they were using and about their current needs and future priorities.

Paul Mandell, Consero's co-founder and CEO, said evaluating the data from 2018 to 2019 showed continued growth of legal ops functions.

“However, we also saw a slight uptick in frustration of legal operations executives, who are slightly more dissatisfied in 2019 with their existing legal technology infrastructure,” he said.

Their impatience may not be a bad thing, he noted. “It could help accelerate the evolution of legal operations and the broader in-house legal department toward greater efficiency,” Mandell suggested.

Speakman attended one of the Consero events this year and moderated a panel on knowledge management. “I learned a lot,” Speakman said, “especially on how other folks manage their intellectual property patent process from application through to the award.”

She said she also learned about using internal intranet sites to share continuing education, templates and training with nearly 40 legal team members located in two U.S. cities plus Brazil, Mexico, the U.K., Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.

Speakman agreed with 63% of those surveyed that their top priorities in the next 12 months are legal technology management and cost control. She said she was surprised that only 12% cited cybersecurity and data privacy as priorities.

“It is at the top of our list,” she explained. “The number may be low because many other companies have cybersecurity teams that are separate from the legal ops department.”

About 51%, including Speakman, said they use billing metrics to track savings and guide their relationships with outside counsel. “I was also surprised this number was not higher,” she said. “When you are standing up a new legal ops function, an e-billing system is one of the foundations.” But it probably points to how early stage most operations are, she said.

About 87% of participants said they have no formal reporting program that measures legal operations value. Speakman does.

“One of first things I did was formalize baseline reporting requirements,” she said. “So I was surprised that 87% said no. Again that closely relates to their not having a strong department yet. Their foundation is not built.”

When asked which metrics that legal ops executives deem most critical, the largest group, at 25%, said “spend to budget,” followed by “average spend by law firm” at 18% and “invoice savings” at 15%.

Speakman said her most important metrics are legal spend to budget, staff workload metrics and any item that tracks legal value to the business—how many contracts processed, how quickly they were processed, how many patents filed, and such. She said she also breaks down work product and volume by regions of the globe, so that the legal department can make adjustments as it needs to.

Speakman said she was excited to see departments like hers “on the crest of building legal ops teams. It's helpful to understand that others are feeling the same growing pains I am, and to hear from those with mature departments and the lessons they've learned.”

She said this year she is focused on streamlining and automating contracting with a more rigid process around vendor procurement. Artificial intelligence will be part of the contracting process, she said.

Her next move, she added, will be to build a road map for technology needs. “We will build as we go,” she explained. “We need to assess and quantify the need first.”