June 18, 2025

How To Use Due Diligence In Outside Counsel Selection

Summary Selecting the right outside counsel requires a systematic due diligence approach beyond cost comparison and referrals. Organizations implementing comprehensive evaluation processes—including defining clear requirements, weighted scoring criteria, thorough reference checks, and cultural fit assessments can achieve cost reductions while securing better legal outcomes. The key is balancing technical expertise...

June 11, 2025

What Is ELM Software?

Summary The landscape of enterprise legal management software is rapidly evolving, driven by the increasing complexity of legal operations and the demand for greater efficiency, transparency and strategic value. In 2025 and beyond, technology for ELM software is embracing artificial intelligence, including generative, agentic and predictive applications, workflow automation and unified platforms to help legal departments...

June 04, 2025

10 Battle-tested Tips To Tame Your Legal Spend

Summary Legal spend continues to rise, but industry experts have identified proven strategies to maintain control without compromising quality. This article presents actionable tactics from seasoned legal operations professionals at GEICO and OGE Energy Corp., based on real-world experience managing multi-million-dollar budgets. Key Highlights Data-driven cost management - Use audits, benchmarking, and robust...

May 28, 2025

LexisNexis Protege In CounselLink+; Legal Operations with AI Tools

Summary of Content This article covers: The latest enhancements coming to LexisNexis® CounselLink+™ highlighted at the 2025 CLOC Global Institute. The focus is on the upcoming integration of LexisNexis Protégé™ in CounselLink+, a cutting-edge AI assistant. It covers new data visualization tools that promise to transform matter and financial management for corporate legal departments...

May 20, 2025

How To Measure Partner Performance With 15 Metrics

Summary Evaluating law firm partner performance goes beyond traditional analytics to include crucial subjective metrics that measure relationship quality and service delivery. This comprehensive guide outlines 15 human-centered performance indicators that in-house legal teams, general counsel, and chief legal officers can use to assess their external counsel relationships. From trust-building and responsiveness to expertise...

May 15, 2025

Legal Metrics In The Law Department

In the law department, legal metrics provide the foundation for measuring value, success, performance, and a range of other criteria. As quantitative measurements, legal metrics evaluate the effectiveness of legal operations across various indicators. What Are Legal Metrics Legal metrics are measurement standards that help legal operations professionals uncover data. Legal departments function more efficiently when...

May 13, 2025

Running Legal Like A Business

Companies support their executives in various ways, and many are intentionally focused on improving business acumen, which elevates corporate functionality and performance. If a company is running legal like a business, then the law department must also undergo programs to improve executive performance. On April 18, 2025, in the Corporate Counsel Business Journal , editor Kristen Calve wrote this (extracted exactly...

May 08, 2025

LexisNexis Announces CounselLink+ With Protege AI Assistant

On May 6, 2025, from the CLOC Global Institute tradeshow in Las Vegas, LexisNexis® Legal & Professional unveiled the commercial preview of Protégé in CounselLink+™ with Lex Machina integration and intelligent reporting. LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of legal information and analytics, redefining how corporate legal departments manage legal work. CounselLink...

May 06, 2025

Why A Contract Playbook Is A Good CLM Tool

Before we dive into the what and why of contract playbooks in the legal department, it’s important to explore contract lifecycle management , what that is, and why it is important to the legal team in a corporate enterprise environment. What Is Contract Lifecycle Management In the legal department, contract lifecycle management software integrates with enterprise legal management software . A legal team can...

May 01, 2025

Using Legal Playbooks To Streamline Law Departments

The hybrid workforce continues, yet back-to-work policies are more prevalent in the law department and other places of work. The role of the legal operations professional to ensure cohesive style guidelines among all employees, staff, vendors, and other services providers is more complicated. A way to unify the various remote locations, in-office schedules and those with 100% remote work is the use of legal playbooks...

April 29, 2025

Legal Tracker Software Maximizes Efficiency

Effective resource management with legal tracker software is vital for the success of a law department. It provides a streamlined approach to maximizing efficiency, enhancing productivity and empowering collaboration among the in-house legal team and their outside counsel. Managing legal operations requires optimization. With legal tracker software, legal departments can optimize spending and ensure compliance with...

April 24, 2025

Defining The Best Corporate Legal Department

How does a company define the best corporate legal department? Good, better and best are subjective unless there are defined metrics across various criteria to define best. The criteria to determine high-performing legal departments typically include qualitative and quantitative factors. For the former, qualitative factors, a key criterion is maturity in decision-making with data-driven insights. Insights that drive actionable...

April 22, 2025

LexisNexis CounselLink Releases 2025 Trends Report

LexisNexis® CounselLink® just released its 2025 Trends Report, now in its 12th year. It shows that average law firm partner rates continued to rise in 2024 at a rate of 5.1%. This increase is the second highest since CounselLink launched its annual Trends Report in 2013. It is slightly below the rate increase documented the year before, 5.4% in 2023, which was the highest on record, indicating a huge spike due...

April 17, 2025

Legal EBilling Software For Corporate Law Departments

Legal ebilling software is a necessary application for law departments, especially in this era of technology advancements that streamline, clarify and simplify workflow and bill review software . Other benefits of e-billing systems include increased accuracy in the invoice against agreed-upon budget, billing guidelines and compliance from outside counsel, and time savings. Lawyers can focus more on the practice of law...

April 15, 2025

When Should In-House Counsel Hire Outside Counsel

Outside lawyers are also known as outside counsel, working in law firms and hired by in-house counsel who work in corporate legal departments. The in-house legal team is directed by the general counsel, who indirectly manages external counsels. These external counsel work on strategy in partnership with the in-house counsel team and conduct the day-to-day work associated with case management and matter management . ...

April 10, 2025

Can A Human Resources Lawyer Use Extractive AI

A human resources lawyer typically specializes in employment law and provides legal guidance related to workplace issues. Their role can vary depending on the company's structure and needs, but generally, they are responsible for: Advising on Employment Law Compliance. Companies must comply with labor laws and regulations, including those related to hiring, firing, discrimination, harassment, and workplace safety...

April 08, 2025

Bring More Clarity To Hiring Outside Counsel

Hiring outside counsel requires understanding of various factors, expertise and credibility of the lawyer against the litigation needs of the in-house counsel team. Often, hiring outside counsel and retaining them aligns with relationships. How long has a law firm been engaged with a legal department? Did a law firm partner get business because a new in-house lawyer worked with them in the past? Hiring outside counsel...

April 03, 2025

Legal Counseling Trends In The Law Department

Legal counseling evolves rapidly due to economic shifts, mergers and acquisitions, talent recruitment, and technological advancements. Other factors contribute to how legal counseling matures, including changes in client expectations and the evolution of AI. These trends indicate a shift towards more accessible, efficient, and client-focused legal services, driven by technological innovation and changing expectations...

April 01, 2025

Essential Contract Management Tools For Law Departments

Contract management tools are essential for corporate legal departments to streamline the contract lifecycle management (CLM) process. Before addressing the types of contract management tools that work best for lawyers, let’s look at the evolution of contract lifecycle management. One of the key emerging trends in contract lifecycle management is blockchain . More organizations are using blockchain to manage,...

March 27, 2025

Buying Tips For Legal Contract Lifecycle Management Software

Legal operations professionals keep tabs on software needs in the law department, often running audits to determine which software is obsolete and which needs to be purchased. In this article, we look at buying tips for legal contract lifecycle management software, define legal contract lifecycle management (CLM), and pose several tips on purchasing legal contract lifecycle management software for the legal and legal...

March 25, 2025

What Is Work Intake In Legal Departments

In the corporate legal department, work intake , similar to legal intake, is how work enters the legal team’s queue. Lawyers in a law department work on active matters and are not looking for legal issues to join their purview until a stakeholder raises a red flag. That red flag can be a simple legal question, or it may be an issue that requires legal team attention. Regardless, the process remains the same: stakeholders...

March 20, 2025

How LexisNexis CounselLink+ Reimagines The Redline

This article first appeared on Above the Law on February 5, 2025. Contracts are now integrated into an end-to-end system, and efficiencies abound. With its recent launch of CounselLink+™, LexisNexis has provided a highly comprehensive tool to streamline your law department’s entire workflow. The “+” in “CounselLink+” refers to integration — users of the system now have access...

March 18, 2025

Outside Counsel Guidelines Bolster Vendor Relationships

To establish a robust partnership between your internal legal team and external legal counsel, a back-of-the-napkin understanding won't suffice. Clear outside counsel guidelines are essential to improve vendor performance and prevent misalignment on assigned work or critical matters. Essentially, outside counsel guidelines help allocate resources and billable work while reducing inefficiencies and expenses. This...

March 13, 2025

Best Contract Management System Includes Extractive AI

A contract management system is a digital solution designed to streamline and automate the management of contracts. A contract lifecycle can take months to negotiate if the legal team executes a contract manually. A legal team can shorten the contract lifecycle with robust software incorporating extractive AI. An enterprise legal management platform provides the best contract management system because they are integrated...

March 11, 2025

What Is Legal Case Management?

Legal case management is a comprehensive approach to handling legal cases efficiently and effectively. It involves the use of a legal case management system, the specialized case management software for lawyers. Various methodologies exist within the legal case management system to organize, track, and manage legal cases from inception to resolution. This system is designed to streamline the workflow of attorney case...