Making the Most of Outside Counsel Spend with Lexis+ AI

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Corporate legal departments are under increasing pressure to do more with less. A key area of opportunity lies in how organizations manage their outside counsel spend. With outside counsel hourly rates continuing to rise and external legal work accounting for a significant portion of department budgets, legal leaders are rethinking how to maximize the value of these costs.

One powerful enabler in this shift is generative AI.

According to a new Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact^™ (TEI) study commissioned by LexisNexis and published in June 2025, corporate legal departments that adopted Lexis+ AI saw a measurable return on their investment.

This reduction was possible because in-house lawyers were able to more efficiently handle some of this work themselves or get the “lay of the land” before calling in external resources. This is a win-win because corporate legal departments can be more efficient with their budgets and their outside counsel can focus on the highest-value work for their clients. 

In addition, the Forrester study found that Lexis+ AI enabled corporate legal departments to deploy AI while meeting their requirements of zero tolerance for AI-driven errors, as well as enterprise-wide standards regarding data privacy and security.

Bringing More Legal Work In-House

The TEI study found that Lexis+ AI enabled legal departments to handle more matters internally. This shift translated into more than $600K in reduced or avoided external legal fees for a composite organization modeled in the study.

“[If our attorneys are able to] get to understanding faster, with internal counsel alone, or even with fewer back and forth emails with outside counsel—which are billed—then, we are saving on fees.” – Counsel, Environmental

How? Interviewed leaders of corporate legal departments said that with Lexis+ AI, in-house lawyers and paralegals take on a greater workload. The Forrester study found that lawyers save 25% of the time they typically spend on addressing a legal inquiry, which includes conducting research and drafting a memo or summarizing the findings. They can shift those time savings towards addressing a greater volume of inquiries or focusing on higher-value work—without working longer hours.

In parallel, paralegals using Lexis+ AI reduced time spent on tasks like document summarization by 50%, freeing up capacity to accelerate timelines and support the increased capacity of the legal department.

It’s important to note that the work done in-house is more likely to be transactional in nature, rather than related to litigation.

The AVP of Staff Counsel Operations indicated that they did not find this increase to be a burden on staff, stating:

“Our hypothesis was that we [can give] the attorneys [more cases] if we give them [Lexis+ AI] and a handful of other productivity tools, and we would not be effectively increasing their workload. In fact, their workload might even decrease.”

As a result, Lexis+ AI is a strategic investment in employee experience and productivity, rather than a cost-cutting measure.

Enhance Your Strategic Use of Outside Counsel

The goal is not to eliminate the need for outside counsel, but to use the resource in a cost-effective way. With Lexis+ AI allowing in-house staff to do more internally, legal departments are better positioned to engage external firms for critical matters.

While some legal work may have been handled with outside counsel due to lack of internal bandwidth, most of the work outside counsel must conduct requires their expertise.

“Every question we ask Lexis+ AI would have otherwise gone to outside counsel…” – VP of Legal Operations and Compliance, Real Estate

Interviewed leaders of corporate legal departments told Forrester that when matters are handled with outside counsel, in-house lawyers can conduct a first pass on the question and confirm their conclusion with outside counsel. This reduces the overall cost of handling a given piece of work.

Considering the use of AI at large law firms, outside counsel can add more value to their clients. Forrester also conducted a Total Economic Impact^™ study of Lexis+ AI for large law firms, and found that in addition to internal efficiencies, AI-enabled large law firms could better meet quality and delivery timeline expectations and improve overall client satisfaction with the firm.  

“Some interviewees went as far as to link that higher client satisfaction to better firm performance, such as through more cases won, more share of wallet at existing clients, and more customer acquisition.” – The Total Economic Impact^™ of Lexis+ AI for Large Law Firms, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of LexisNexis, May 2025

This is a win-win for both parties. Clients are more satisfied with their investment and the quality of work they are receiving, while law firms can focus on the high-value work that helps them win more business.

Achieving Legal Efficiency, Securely

While AI adoption is accelerating across enterprises, legal departments face barriers to adoption around data privacy and information governance. Lexis+ AI was designed with these sensitivities in mind. It operates within the secure LexisNexis ecosystem, ensuring that private legal information remains protected. Furthermore, due to the nature of the work, legal departments have a zero tolerance of mistakes that other departments can tolerate. Lexis+ AI mitigates these issues by grounding the responses in LexisNexis content databases.

Rethinking Legal Operations in the Age of AI

As corporate legal departments explore how AI can enhance their operations, the conclusion is clear: AI’s impact goes beyond cost savings. AI is a strategic investment that can increase the efficiency of how legal departments handle the critical matters they are entrusted with—both internally and with the support of outside counsel.

With Lexis+ AI, corporate legal departments can make the most of their outside counsel and elevate the quality of their legal service.

Explore the full findings in the Forrester study to see how Lexis+ AI can unlock value in your legal department: lexisnexis.com/corporate-ai-roi

To see how Lexis+ AI impacts large law firms, explore the previous Forrester study here: lexisnexis.com/firm-ai-roi