Let's face it—transparency has never been the strong suit of the law firm world. Just ask corporate law departments. Yet, if you asked some law firms, the same can be said of those legal departments as well.

In recent months, a small movement has started to grow around the idea of opening the doors to information sharing between the two parties. And from the perspective of leaders on both sides of the aisle, much can be gleaned from the metrics collected by law firms and the nascent corporate legal department group known as legal operations.

Yet while many see the benefits in terms of time and efficiency realizable by such transparency, reality often plays out much differently. For while each side collects troves of information beneficial to the other, rarely is it shared.