Quick bite about HBR Consulting’s latest survey:

“Legal services are blooming,” declares HBR Consulting, based on its 2015 law department survey that found “76  percent of companies forecast increased legal demand.”

HBR’s key findings found that law departments are “turning to technology to take on increased demand.” Among the results:

• “Increasing the use of technology is the top ranked method in handling the demand. Fifty three percent of respondents regard technology as being high in importance and 44 percent of companies reported an increase in their systems and technology budgets.”
• “E-billing, matter management and document management are the top three technologies implemented this year. Within the next two years, more than 85 percent of law departments plan to adopt all of these tools.”
• “There’s still a heavy reliance on external providers for e-discovery technology. While the majority of respondents have implemented in-house tools for collection (61 percent) and processing (52 percent), in-house e-discovery isn’t common across the board yet.”

More info here.

Monica Bay is a CodeX Fellow and a freelance journalist with Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business. Twitter: @MonicaBay Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu