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Workload is up for 76.7 percent of corporate legal departments, according to Altman Weil’s
But that won’t necessarily correspond with additional work for law firms.
Indeed, despite an increase in work, from 2019 to 2020, 70.2 percent of legal departments did not increase their law firm spending; 38.4 percent decreased it. Nearly 13 percent of those who trimmed their outside counsel budgets did so by more than 10 percent.
Specifically, when asked how they planned to cover their overall workload, 54.8 percent of legal departments – more than half – said they would shift work to their in-house workforce.
The budget trends support this: 40.4 percent of legal departments increased their internal budgets, while 36 percent report plans to hire more in-house lawyers and 10.6 percent plan to hire contract lawyers.