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Sixty-three percent of in-house counsel feel like they are under greater pressure now than 12 months ago, according to a report released this week by alternative legal services provider Konexo.

The report says the pressures in-house counsel face are mounting. Thirty-eight percent of respondents cited cost pressures, 43% see team culture as a key challenge, and 41% cited a lack of resources as an issue.

Caroline Brown, head of legal operations at Aviva, said the increasing volume of work may not be good for in-house teams.

"This has led to increasing workloads as in-house lawyers are not only now seen as 'the lawyers' but also as problem solvers in the business," Brown said in the report.

She said in-house teams have not brought on solutions that embrace their new role as business partners.

Because of the work increase, 51% of the respondents indicated that their legal teams are larger than they were a year ago.

"This blend of challenges lends itself to a more streamlined world in which legal professionals are operating with more efficient processes," the report says. "But it appears that increases in operational efficiency are not keeping pace with the increased workloads in-house teams are experiencing, with over half of respondents stating their legal team to be larger than it was a year ago."

Legal technology is finding its place in more legal departments because of the challenges of doing more with less. Sixty-three percent of respondents indicated that legal technology can help create efficiencies. However, the same number of respondents indicated that without consultative expertise, the technology will fail. In-house counsel are not seeking a "commoditized technological solution," according to the report, "[but] rather, a holistic approach which combines an understanding of both the technological solutions and the legal context to which those solutions can be applied."

In addition to a growing presence of technology within legal departments, legal operations is taking the forefront in finding efficiencies. Brown said the in-house team at Aviva is now using data to assess risk and spending.

"Within our in-house team, we are good at using data to assess spend, risk and governance," Brown said in the report. "But we have a relatively manual process for producing reports and the KPIs needed to review these on a regular basis with senior stakeholders."

The report's author, Graham Richardson, a partner at Eversheds Sutherland and head of Konexo, was not immediately available for additional comment on Thursday. In September, Konexo conducted an online survey of 100 senior personnel who work in-house and conducted interviews with five senior legal professionals in the U.K., Germany and the U.S.