The 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey contains some fascinating findings after surveying 772 participants across 20 industries and 48 countries. There is room for optimism, but a number of apparent inconsistencies and perhaps overall pointers to many legal teams repeating the same mistakes and getting similar outcomes for 2025.

Some of the key findings and my comments on them are set out below.

1  The Volume, Cost and Complexity of Disputes and Investigations Are Increasing for Many CLOs

Forty-two percent of CLOs report an uptick in litigation volume, while 44 percent have seen a rise in internal investigations. External investigations have also increased for 24 percent of CLOs. This increased legal activity comes with growing complexity. Thirty-eight percent of CLOs find litigation to be increasingly complex, followed by internal investigations (31 percent) and external investigations (21 percent). More complexity results in higher costs, with 60 percent of CLOs experiencing increased litigation expenses.

This is no surprise. Contracts are becoming longer and more complex, as is the regulatory environment. With AI, business is speeding up and creating even more significant challenges.

Yet many organisations are continuing to store their most important information in individual Outlook accounts, shared drives, and Excel spreadsheets, where they are likely to be lost (or very difficult to find). More information is being created at increasing speed, with no improvements in managing it. No wonder it’s hard to find anything at all, let alone quickly and accurately.

Lawyers may not even know that a contract is not being complied with, that a renewal date that would allow cancellation is looming, or that regulatory disclosures are not being made – until it is too late.

AI is not the only answer. Simple tools that can move and structure data into SharePoint libraries can greatly enhance your ability to find and make sense of important information more quickly. You can see some examples of what is possible in Matter Management here https://blog.lawhawk.nz/blog/legal-matter-management-options-for-the-use-of-microsoft-365-and-sharepoint and Contract Management here: https://blog.lawhawk.nz/blog/practical-contract-management-unlocking-the-potential-of-m365-and-sharepoint. Microsoft’s AI is being built throughout these solutions, which will help further.

It's not just about managing information. If you use these types of solutions to build compliance directly into business processes, as suggested here https://blog.lawhawk.nz/blog/the-value-of-building-compliance-into-the-business-process-compliance-by-design, you can reduce the risks of mistakes being made, and identify and remediate them more quickly if required.

Being able to actively manage contracts to foresee issues and deal with them before they become problems is the best way to not only avoid disputes but also get the value that was initially expected when entering into the contract. Building the sending of required disclosures into the business process is the best way to ensure it happens, and to be able to prove it is required.

2  CLOs Rank Operational Efficiency As Their Top Strategic Initiative

Thirty-five percent of CLOs globally identified operational efficiency as their department’s top strategic initiative for the next year. Technology implementation is the second most frequently cited initiative (14 percent). This emphasis on efficiency and cost-cutting may be linked to the fact that 41 percent of law departments received a cost-cutting mandate from their organization in the past year.

This is interesting, as I haven’t really seen this coming through strongly in practice.

Hopefully, it’s not only because of cost-cutting mandates. There are opportunities to not only reduce costs but to do more and for legal to create much more value for the business at the same time as becoming more efficient. The volume, cost and complexity of disputes and investigations are also no doubt a factor in looking for greater efficiency and cost savings.

By focusing on the broader business objectives and outcomes, you can often achieve far more impact than just saving some time and cost within the legal team.

I think most organisation leaders don’t actually care that much about saving the legal team a few hours of drafting time. But they will care about saving the business weeks in signing up new customers or suppliers. This may change the conversation from one about minimising costs to maximising value.

Digitising processes – and all the data digitising creates - will also help to demonstrate just how much value the legal team is adding and to identify the areas where automation and efficiency will be most viable.

If this is truly now the top strategic initiative, it’s also crucial to get things done. If it’s the number one priority, you’d expect that teams will find a way to make it happen in the same way that they will always find a way to help their clients. Yet we regularly see legal teams with great ideas fail to make any progress over the year as the realities of day-to-day legal work overwhelm them. It doesn’t have to be as hard as some make it, but to get results, you have to think harder about what you need, the outcomes you want, and why they are important. This will help you to prioritise it when things get harder and you have to make choices about what you’re going to do and what you are going to let slide.

You will likely need external help to get quickly to the best outcome without boiling the ocean, analysing every option, and the lengthy trial and error of DIY implementation.

The value comes from what you get done and ensuring it works as well as it needs to!

3  Four in Ten Law Departments Will Implement New Legal Technology in 2025

Forty-four percent of CLOs say they plan to adopt new legal technology in their departments to improve efficiency in the next year. CLOs in larger companies are significantly more likely to implement new technology, while there is more uncertainty among those in smaller companies. Contract management (62 percent), document management (32 percent), and workflow tools (26 percent) are the most frequently cited technology categories that CLOs plan on implementing.

44% is ok, but not really consistent with the top strategic priority of becoming more efficient. With so much technology available across the business and the massive developments in AI, why is this number not much higher?

My comments above reflect how hard legal teams often find getting approval to adopt new technology and then actually implementing it. Maybe that’s why it’s only 44%. There could be more teams planning to get new technology but knowing they won’t implement it.

It’s also not just about implementing NEW technology but making more use of the technology you already have and also the new functionality that is constantly emerging in the technology you already have. Have you seen how much new functionality Microsoft has added to the M365 suite over the past year? Are you making the most of it? The blogs above show how much can be done in the top areas of contract management, document management and workflow.

You don’t have to only use “legal” technology. Aside from a suspicion that anything with “legal tech” in the name will cost more than it otherwise would, you can get some great functionality from solutions others in the business might use, such as OnePlace Solutions and Cognito Forms, to give two examples that we regularly use when creating solutions for legal teams.

We are also working with experts in SharePoint (The SharePoint Agency) and business process automation/low code software development (Optimation) to deliver solutions beyond what we can do with only legal technology tools. It pays to think more broadly and draw on expertise from outside law.

If I were the CEO or CFO of the organisation of one of the 56% that aren’t planning to implement new technology in today’s environment, I’d be wondering why not.

4  Being Understaffed is the Biggest Barrier Legal Departments Face

When asked about the biggest barriers facing their legal departments, respondents identified understaffing as the primary challenge. Thirty percent of CLOs plan on increasing the number of lawyers they hire this year and nearly half plan to do so in larger companies. Other barriers include regulatory uncertainty (23 percent), lack of strong processes in place (18 percent), and lack of budget (14 percent).

Perhaps this points to the reality of where many legal teams are at.

While at the beginning of the year, they set strategic goals for transformation, the reality of day-to-day workloads quickly hits and the important but not urgent falls victim to the urgent but not important. They also remember how hard it can be to get new technology for the legal team and to get lawyers to change, so they default to what they know – hiring more people. This is, at least in theory, easier than getting and adopting new technology.

It is not consistent with the number 1 strategic goals however of becoming more efficient and implementing technology. It won’t make you more efficient! More likely, the amount of work you do will expand to match the new capacity.

Before rushing to hire, I suggest investigating objectively whether you need to hire a person, or could use technology – including new AI capability - which may avoid the need to hire a person, change the type of person you need to hire, or change the role that you need to hire for. Perhaps you can push the requirement out to the wider business – for them to hire or manage on a self-service basis - rather than something the legal team needs to do.

Lean on technology suppliers for help on how to navigate the process. They see these challenges all the time and can help you foresee and avoid challenges to achieving your goals.

It’s not easy to recruit and retain the best talent either, particularly when international markets are so attractive. Technology may help you avoid the need to hire a more expensive and less common senior lawyer and get what you need from a lower cost and easier-to-hire a junior-mid level employee.

I’d also suggest considering flexible talent (such as is provided by Juno Legal and Shift Advisory in New Zealand). You can get some highly qualified people, with deep expertise, with much more flexibility than if you hire someone permanently without that depth of skill. They also cost a lot less than law firm rates (see below). For similar reasons, ALSPs like Radiant Law are also growing strongly because they also offer better ways to achieve outcomes instead of hiring permanent staff.

5  CLOs Anticipate Sending More Work to Law Firms in 2025

A significant increase in the use of outside counsel is expected in 2025, with 43 percent of CLOs planning to increase the volume of work outsourced to law firms. This represents a substantial 17-percentage point jump compared to the previous year. Furthermore, 43 percent of CLOs attribute this increased reliance on external counsel to the evolving global regulatory landscape, highlighting the growing complexity and risk associated with navigating these changes.

This seems more like a predictable last resort if the challenges above can’t be overcome.

Instructing out may be the only option if you don't have a choice. But as the chart below from Brightflag research shows, US law firms' rates are really up there and showing no signs of slowing. The trend will be the same in other jurisdictions.

Legal teams can do many things, as outlined above, that could avoid the need for external counsel, reduce how much they need to do, and make the work simpler so it doesn’t need as much expensive input.

As law firms start using technology more themselves – something they are also struggling with – hourly rates will stop making sense as the main way to charge. But will their total costs come down for the benefit of clients?

Perhaps these ever-increasing costs will be part of the impetus to make some of the other initiatives stick this year.

There’s no doubt that 2025 is going to be a challenging year – across the board – but there are more options for legal teams than ever that can quickly make a difference to achieve their strategic priorities.

Many teams are going to fall victim to setting ambitious goals to become more efficient by adopting technology. When it becomes hard, they’ll try and hire people instead. When they can’t get the best people, they’ll either hire whoever happens to be available at the time or instruct more out to increasingly expensive law firms who are stuck in a similar cycle of their own.

You can avoid this! Before defaulting to hiring more people, or outsourcing more work to firms, look at what you can do with the technology you already have and can easily get – you may be surprised.

If you’d like any help to understand what options you may have, get in touch for a no-obligation chat.