Hi

I hope you are keeping well.

If this is the first time getting the newsletter - welcome! You can expect to find snackable information on innovation, transformation, and knowledge management each week. 

If you have any feedback, topic suggestions, or want to say 👋 'hi' - you can find me on LinkedIn. 

CLOC 2021 state of industry report - insights

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) released the results of its annual survey, which includes responses from two hundred organizations across 22 industries and 21 countries. Here are some things that stood out to me:

Legal spend: size matters. Large organizations ($10B+) spend $1.66 externally for ever $1 in-house. However, they spend less ($1.5M) on legal tech vs. medium-size firms ($1.7M).

Legal operations continue to be important: the average size of the legal ops team increased overall and across sectors. There was also a significant increase in legal ops professionals compared to last year (2 ➡ 7) across medium-sized organizations ($1-$10B).

Legal tech: eSignatures, eBilling, Contract Comasngement, and DMS were the top 4 technologies by penetration. eSignatures has been adopted by a significant number of organizations, with penetration at 87%. This was just 56% two years ago. Here I suspect that a focus on digital transformation and COVID-19 had an influence.

Surprisingly KM solutions are poorly represented, with 29% penetration.

Law firm evaluation (i.e., how many teams conduct a review of their law firms): only 27% have a formal review process; another 47% want to (let's see where this number jumps to in the survey next year!). 

Quality (76%) and Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) (50%) were the top topics to be brought up during review.

2021 priorities: D&I is a high priority, which might correlate well with the firm evaluation point (above). Identify the problem, do something about it 😄.

Automation and implementing new tech are also priorities (they seem interrelated).

You can find the full report here

Taylor Swift, Copyright and M&A

If you're a Taylor Swift fan, then you may have noticed that when searching for her music that some songs now have the text "(Taylor's version)." Why is that? 

An ex-techi, and now law student provides the answer with a fantastic analysis covering copyright law, acquisition valuations, and how sometimes things don't work out as intended.

Read the full thread here

Focus on increasing the number of shots on goal

During a chat with a friend yesterday, we discussed the importance of trying many different things. In speaking with legal teams, founders, change agents, marketers - too often, people spend a disproportionate amount of time to figure out the "silver bullet." As Ben Horowitz wrote in The Hard Things About Hard Things:

There are no silver bullets, only many lead bullets 

In most instances, there is no one thing that you'll do that will give profound results. Instead, trying many things will compound the likelihood of success over time.

Put another way, focus on increasing the number of shots on goal 🎯, instead of trying to control the odds of getting that one perfect shot. 

Have a great week. Until next time.

Ab