External firms

Pressure to embrace change is also reflected in the relationships between in-house departments and external firms. As can be seen with the breakdown in the responses to this question, a majority (92%) believed either it was very important or somewhat important that external firms were up to date with technology. This result is not unexpected – what is unexpected, however, were the answers given by the 8% that did not believe this was important at all.

A common response within the 8% cohort was that external firms must provide sound advice first, and GCs seem not to be concerned with the methodologies by which the advice is delivered, regardless of tech or more traditional practices. Here we see some crossover in the attitudes of corporate towards in-house legal teams: to an outsider, legal teams remain a black box, even to other legal teams. What matters is only the result, and the belief that the result was arrived by a trustworthy method. So this thinking goes, why bother with any new tools that could increase efficiency for an external firm when the efficiencies are not obviously passed on to those requiring external support?