Research briefings

The billable hour has survived every predicted obituary written against it. Since the American Bar Association formally endorsed time-based billing in 1958, reformers have periodically announced its imminent collapse — and been wrong. But the current pressure on the model is structurally different from previous...

The legal operations profession has matured dramatically over the past decade, evolving from a niche cost-management function into a strategic discipline that commands serious compensation packages and genuine career architecture. The 2025 CLOC State of the Industry Survey—the most comprehensive annual benchmark for the field—recorded...

The global e-discovery market crossed $17.3 billion in 2025 and is tracking toward $21 billion by 2027, according to projections from Grand View Research and corroborating estimates from MarketsandMarkets. That growth rate — roughly 11% CAGR — has held remarkably steady despite macroeconomic volatility, primarily...

The gap between how organisations believe they manage contracts and how they actually manage contracts is one of the most consequential blind spots in legal operations. According to the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM), poor contract management costs organisations an average of...

The promise of legal technology has always carried an implicit assumption: that efficiency gains would flow equally across the profession, democratizing access to sophisticated tools regardless of firm size. That assumption has not held. While Am Law 100 firms have deployed AI-assisted contract review platforms,...

Law firms occupy a uniquely dangerous position in the cybersecurity ecosystem. They hold confidential communications protected by attorney-client privilege, transaction data from pending mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property files, and personal identifying information for thousands of clients — all under one roof, often with security...