Chief legal officers are taking an optimistic view of the marketplace as nearly half of of them (46 per cent) expect outside counsel expenditures to increase over the next year. At the same time they are growing their inhouse teams with 58 per cent saying internal legal expenditure would increase in the next year and 34 per cent reporting that inhouse teams were increasing. But they are under more pressure to demonstrate efficiencies with 72 per cent saying there was increased corporate demands for better legal spend management.

International law firms to get more work

The survey also predicted greater use of international law firms  with one in three Chief Litigation Officers believing the number of global law firms they will use over the next year will increase. Furthermore, there is increased work given to non-AmLaw 200 firms with more than half (51 per cent) of surveyed Chief Litigation Officers saying they  have moved some work from an AmLaw 200 firm to a smaller firm in the past year. Meanwhile, more than half (59 per cent) of respondents do not provide performance/evaluation feedback to their outside counsel. The research was carried out by Consero.