b'Local Government Lawyer 9seems to have almost stalled completely.So if shared services, inter-authority Just 3% of participants in this years survey are actively pursuing an ABS comparedtrading and ABSs have fallen victim to the with 21% when the Legal Department oftime pressures that legal departments the Future survey was last conducted in 2015 (FIG 13). It is a time consuming andare under, can technology plug the costly exercise and we have very little spare capacity, said one head of legal.productivity gap?Figure 13: Are you considering applying forFigure 15: Which of the following technologies are you currently or planning to use?ABS status?Not being considered 75% 10%May look at it in the medium term 18% Legal Research 2%Under serious consideraon 3% 88%About to apply/in process of applying 0% 20%Already have ABS status 3% Document Management 23%The technology gap 57%So if shared services, inter-authority tradingTo get greater producvity from39%exisng staand ABSs have fallen victim to the timeWorkow mapping 27%pressures that legal departments are under,An opportunity to update working34%can technology plug the productivity gap?pracces and systemsTo enable maers to be resourced There seems little evidence of significantby more junior sta 46%expansion in this area. While a third ofDocument Automaon 26%Enable us to retain more work in-house 28%respondents expect to moderately increaseOpportunity to introduce more self-service their IT budgets, only 2% expect to increasefor client departments 64%their legal technology spending by theGreater opportunity teBillingo collaborat11%e with margin required for such spending to beclient departments 25%transformative in the foreseeable future (FIGTo improve work-life balance14). The majority of legal departments dontContract ManagTo reduce theementnumber of s11%ta 78%expect significant change at all and 8% plan11%to reduce their legal technology spending. OtherFigure 14: In the foreseeable future, is yourTo enable us to sell more legal91%eDiscserovvierces ey xternally9%budget for legal technology likely to grow or0%contract? As a recruitment tool91%0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%Grow substanally (+ 20% or more) 2% Proofreading 6% Second FirstGrow moderately (+ 6% to +19%) 33% 3%Not change signicantly (+/- 5%) 57%Decrease moderately ( -6% to -19%) 8% 91%Decrease substanally (> -20%) 0% Contract Review 3%6%Where specialist technology is currentlyNot aware of plans to introducebeing utilised (FIG 15), it is most commonlyPlanning on introducing in next 12 monthsto be found being deployed for legalAlready Usingresearch (88% of departments) and to a lesser extent document management (57%), workflow mapping (34%) and document automation (28%). All three of the latter are set for some growth as around a quarter of legal departments expect to implement some or all of these technologies in the foreseeable future.'