The report is intended for legal department leaders, who can now quantify the maturity of their department relative to their peers
WASHINGTON (April 28, 2020) — The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), in partnership with Wolters Kluwer, has released its 2020 Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report. One of the most comprehensive reports of its kind, it offers some of the first numerical data to support several key findings, which include:
- Despite increasing focus on legal operations, most organizations, on average, still do not have a mature legal department.
- A legal operations professional on staff makes a measurable improvement to a legal department’s maturity rate across all 15 functions tested.
- Although legal operations functions have shown to reduce costs and increase efficiency, many legal departments continue to face a diversity of challenges in the maturation process.
“Building on the success of the ACC Legal Operations Maturity Model, this report provides unprecedented detail and granularity to the in-house legal operations landscape,” said Veta T. Richardson, ACC president and CEO. “It allows legal department leaders to quickly assess how they rate on a variety of metrics and informs the development of a roadmap to improve critical functions. ACC is committed to developing best-in class research for our in-house counsel members, and we thank Wolters Kluwer for supporting this project.”
“The study findings indicate that a legal operations function within a legal department significantly increases efficiencies and drives maturity forward,” said Ken Crutchfield, Vice President & General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. “We are pleased to partner with ACC on this study, which I believe will play a critical role in helping professionals drive innovation within legal departments as the industry continues to evolve.”
The study analyzed data for 316 legal departments, ranging in size from one employee to hundreds of employees, across 29 countries and 24 industries. The report identifies and assesses 15 legal operations functions and 92 subfunctions in each department and cross-indexes them by sector, size, country, and other categories. The report is intended for legal department leaders, who can now quantify the maturity of their department relative to their peers. It also helps in-house leaders identify which practices, processes, or tools are available or advisable to implement.
A company’s score in each of the legal operations functions and subfunctions tallies to a final overall maturity score, on a scale of one to 100, to give in-house teams an overall sense of their department’s maturity status. Closing the report is the “best in class” index, which profiles the most mature departments and the areas of legal operations in which they excel.
The report is available here.
About ACC: The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is a global legal association that promotes the common professional and business interests of in-house counsel who work for corporations, associations and other organizations through information, education, networking, and advocacy. With more than 45,000 members in 85 countries employed by over 10,000 organizations, ACC connects its members to the people and resources necessary for both personal and professional growth. By in-house counsel, for in-house counsel.® For more information, visit www.acc.com and follow ACC on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
About Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.: Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. Wolters Kluwer helps its customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.
Wolters Kluwer reported 2019 annual revenues of €4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. For more information about Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., visit www.WoltersKluwerLR.com, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.