What are in-house legal departments trying to achieve in 2024?
With so much innovation happening in the legal industry, it has never been more important for corporate legal departments to act thoughtfully with their resources. And choosing what your legal team should do to accomplish strategic priorities is just as impactful as deciding what not to spend your time working on.
Looking ahead to 2024 with this in mind, we asked legal department professionals across the industry to share their 2024 Legal Resolutions with us to get an idea of what they’re trying to accomplish and to see how it compares with the resolutions we collected in 2023.
Trends in Legal Department Resolutions
Comparing this year’s resolutions to last year’s shows a running theme: Efficiency as a primary driver of business goals. However, legal teams are approaching efficiency in markedly different ways, from simpler efforts such as improving and documenting internal workflows to legaltech implementations like contract lifecycle management tools to cutting-edge considerations like leveraging generative AI to scale capabilities without adding resources.
Although it’s certainly still an undercurrent, fewer companies directly referenced reducing legal spend compared to 2023. Of course, increasing efficiency is a goal that directly relates to legal spend and this tracks with the conversations we’ve been having with our legal department clients. Instead of planning around specific budget goals, many legal teams are thinking more holistically about spend and how they can optimize the resources they have.
Read what the legal teams across the industry are resolving to do in 2024 below.
Legal Department Resolutions for 2024
“Integrate AI in spaces that will improve the socialization of the Legal Operations team's responsibilities. Enhance our outside counsel management program to provide more regular meetings with outside counsel who are key to our business. Continue our culture of efficiency by sharing resources, internal and external, for better cost controls around budgets.”
– Janine Dixon, Legal Operations Manager, Meta
“Streamline legal efficiencies.”
– Rosie Suzich, Senior Corporate Counsel, ID.me
“In 2023 I was able to get the CLM downselect done and am now in implementation. I have multiple tech implementations going on and my goal for 2024 is to get my NDA workflow fully integrated with all of the KPIs! Also I'm doing my NALA CP Skills Exam and am incredibly excited to get my NALA CP fully done.”
– Kristin Follis, Corporate Paralegal, Joby Aviation, Inc.
“Proactively reach out to other teams in the business about making changes to legal operations and compliance with new laws.”
– Dave Sclar, Healthcare Compliance and Privacy Officer, WeightWatchers
“Leverage existing platforms to full potential to maximize investment.”
Teresa Steen, Head of Legal Operations, Brex Inc.
“We're in a world where folks are finally discovering the magic of AI, whether it's through ChatGPT or the amazing generative AI solutions that folks are looking at. … So I'm excited about the big interest and the tremendous array of solutions we're seeing as well as the strong affinity for lawyers to start boosting their practices, learning more and delivering more for their clients, their business partners and their organizations.”
Jerry Levine, Chief Evangelist & General Counsel, ContractPodAi
“Implement CLM, expedite resolutions and improve repositories.”
– Nishtha Sharma, Associate General Counsel, Builder.ai
“Reduce outside counsel spend and establish a preferred provider OC list.”
– Daniela Dwyer, Head of Legal Operations, Bill.com
“Build templates and checklists for our most frequently used processes and agreements. AI doesn't help me if I don't have a reference to check it against to make sure it gave me what I needed.”
– Dallin Glenn, General Counsel, BTL Industries, Inc.
“Know better the role of the Legal Ops manager and optimize team workload and budget.”
– Marlene Hutt, Legal & Compliance Coordinator, Wella Company
“The one thing I want my team to focus on in 2024 is taking action faster. If they see a problem or have a project that is idling, what can they do to improve it immediately (with a concrete KPI in mind)? In short, don’t wait to execute. Try out new strategies, fail fast, and learn.”
– John Crawshaw, Legal Operations Manager, PNC
“I am resolved to continue doing what I did last year, which was learning and inspiring others. I am resolved to be more and more data literate. I know data, I love data, but I want to be more technical with data. And then lastly, I want to continue to grow my network, building more relationships and building the legal tech community.”
Colin Levy, Director of Legal and Evangelist, Malbek
