Only 23% of those in small to midsize legal departments said they believed their legal departments would benefit by hiring a legal operations professional, which shows lingering uncertainty about legal operations, according to a report by Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory and Priori published this week.

The respondents included 176 members of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Eighty-eight percent of respondents were based in the United States.

"The general theme overall is uncertainty," Brian Kudowitz, a portfolio director at Wolters Kluwer, said Friday.

Kudowitz said the beginning of a legal operations function should be with data that will show business leaders where efficiencies can be achieved.

"You have to make a case, at the end of the day, of what the priority is," Kudowitz explained. "Most of the resistance in getting this started comes from looking like you're trying to bite off too much."

He said legal departments hoping to implement legal operations should focus on one thing first and show the business where it is going to get a return on the investment in legal operations or legal technology.

However, one of the issues for smaller and midsize legal departments, said Basha Rubin, CEO and co-founder of Priori, is they do not know which data they have or how to utilize it.

"I think that many smaller legal departments are operating in the dark about what their data is," Rubin said.

Legal departments can often get caught up in the allure of new technology without fully understanding it. Kudowitz said those attorneys who may be buying legal technology should do due diligence and make sure it is the right fit for their goals.

"I think you have to take the tough customer approach to make sure your vendors understand your needs and to make sure [the technology] is being implemented the right way," Kudowitz said.

Rubin said she knew of someone who spent the majority of the day undoing an artificial intelligence contract because that person could not use it.

"The boss had met the company's founders at a conference and they hadn't done a deep dive on the product," Rubin said. "They put this tool in place during a legal operations push and that caused a lot of blowback."

The report shows that 59% of respondents have some kind of legal operations function within their legal department. Rubin and Kudowitz said this is a good sign for the future of legal operations in small to midsize legal departments.

"I think [there will be] more smaller legal departments who are bringing on legal operations functions," Rubin said.

"In the next couple of years, some of these [legal operations] people will move around which will create a cross-pollination effect," Kudowitz said.