Sanaa Siddiqui

69 per cent of in-house counsel feel buried under low-value work

Scaling legal
August 20, 2021
  • In-house legal’s top concerns include being “buried under low-value work”.
  • Since 2020 legal has adopted more tech, hired more lawyers, and increased legal budget - but can’t escape low-value work.

Download the 2021 Tech GC report here. 

LONDON, AUGUST 2021  - In-house legal teams still feel buried under low-value work, despite a year of increased tech adoption, growth within the legal function, and rising legal budgets. 

According to Juro’s survey of 80 lawyers at high-growth companies, the top two challenges for legal teams are ‘being buried in low-value work’ and ‘aligning with the wider business’, with 69 per cent of respondents feeling the pain. 

The picture has hardly changed since last year, despite wholesale changes to ways of working across every industry, brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite this, legal counsel are satisfied with their roles and have no desire to join a law firm - 99 per cent of respondents would choose to stay in-house or move to a non-legal role over returning to private practice. 

And 51 per cent would consider going freelance, or exploring a career at an alternative legal services provider (ALSP). 

The Tech GC report, in partnership with Wilson Sonsini, explores the findings from a survey with GCs, CLOs, senior legal leaders and legal operations professionals at high-growth tech companies across Europe and the US.

It also features analysis from Wilson Sonsini’s Chief Innovation Officer, David Wang, as well as on-the-record insights from tech GCs at some of the world’s fastest-growing companies, including Wise, Omnipresent, Attest, and more. 

Download the 2021 Tech GC report now.

Daniel Glazer, managing partner of Wilson Sonsini’s London office, said: “Wilson Sonsini is thrilled to support technology companies and their in-house lawyers as they compete and win on the global stage, and to partner with Juro to help provide insight as to the current state of that journey.”

Richard Mabey, Juro CEO and co-founder, said: "In-house lawyers have so much strategic and commercial acumen to contribute to their businesses - so it's disheartening to see that so many are still waylaid by low-value tasks that could be mitigated through process improvements or automation. However, the stellar performance of European scaleups in 2021 suggests that change is coming - albeit slower than some would like."

Join the visionary legal teams scaling in-house legal - apply to Juro's private community of in-house lawyers and legal ops teams.

About Juro

Juro is an all-in-one contract automation platform that helps visionary legal counsel and the teams they enable to agree and manage contracts in one unified workspace. We work with fast-scaling businesses like Deliveroo, Trustpilot and Cazoo to streamline contract workflow and gain better insight into contract data. Juro is backed by Union Square Ventures, Point Nine Capital, Seedcamp and founders of TransferWise, Gumtree and Indeed.

About Wilson Sonsini

Wilson Sonsini is the premier legal advisor to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide, as well as the venture firms, private equity firms, and investment banks that finance them. Wilson Sonsini London provides US access and support for the UK/European tech & life sciences communities.

Sanaa Siddiqui is the Content Editor at Juro

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