Operational transformation driven by technology adoption and structured outsourcing
- 42% of legal departments now use contract lifecycle management (CLM) software
- 56% of legal teams are leveraging generative AI
- Two-thirds of legal departments have a dedicated legal tech budget
- 10% of legal work is outsourced to law firms or alternative legal service providers (ALSPs)
Alphen aan/den Rijn, Netherlands – June 5, 2025 – Wolters Kluwer Legal Software today released the findings of its third annual Legisway Benchmark, conducted between March and April 2025 with over 700 corporate legal professionals across Europe and the United States.
The 2025 benchmark report examines how in-house legal teams are evolving their operations to meet the challenges associated with an increasingly strategic role within the company. This third edition places greater emphasis on how legal departments are managing their growing workloads, integrating technology, and relying on outsourcing to support their strategic evolution.
Sergio Liscia, Vice President of the Legal Software Business Unit at Wolters Kluwer, said, “The Legisway Benchmark highlights how legal departments are structuring around their core responsibilities like contract and entity management, while also taking responsibility in areas like ESG and Annual General Meeting management. This underlines the growing scope of their responsibilities and the fact that corporate legal functions are evolving and leveraging innovative tools and modern approaches to redefine their role within the broader business landscape.”
Accelerating Digitalization: CLM and AI at the Forefront
The 2025 benchmark confirms a continued shift toward digital maturity in legal operations. Legal teams are increasingly investing in purpose-built tools, particularly for contract and entity management.
- CLM adoption rose to 42%, up from 33% in 2024
- Use of general-purpose tools like Google Drive or SharePoint for contract management dropped from 46% to 33%
- 7% of legal departments still rely on paper archives - in line with last year
A digital divide is emerging: legal departments that have begun their transformation are accelerating, while others remain static.
Artificial intelligence is also playing a pivotal role in transforming legal operations:
- 60% of legal professionals report using AI
- 56% use generative AI
- 14% use AI tools specifically designed for legal contract management, such as Legisway or other market solutions
In entity management, 34% of legal departments use dedicated technology. This applies regardless of the number of entities managed - 25% of respondents with fewer than 50 entities already use a dedicated tool.
Legal Tech Budgets: Growth Among the Digitally Mature
Budgets allocated to legal technology continue to grow:
- 16% of legal departments now have a tech budget exceeding €50,000, up from 11% in 2024 and 8% in 2023.
- However, more than one-third (34%) of respondents still report having no dedicated digital transformation budget.
This indicates a potential divide in technology adoption: departments that are already investing in legal tech are scaling up, while those that aren’t investing remain in the same position.
A Broad Scope of Responsibilities Requires Structured Operations and Outsourcing
Legal teams continue to take the lead in areas such as contract (81%) and entity management (71%) (already highly digitalized), legal spend management (71%), compliance (73%) and legal advisory services (84%).
- 62% of legal teams are responsible for Annual General Meeting management.
- ESG topics are handled by legal teams in 35% of cases; in 50% of cases, another internal department takes the lead.
When it comes to outsourcing practices, traditional law firms are the first recourse:
- 86% of legal departments engaged traditional law firms in the past year, with these partnerships accounting for an average of 37% of the legal budget.
- Litigation and intellectual property are the most outsourced areas, driven by the need for specialized expertise (70%), external perspective, or internal capacity constraints.
- Alternative Legal Service Providers remain underutilized: only 32% of legal departments report using them in 2025, with an average budget share of 21%
The full results of the benchmark are available at the following link: https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en-gb/know/legisway-benchmark-for-legal-departments
About Wolters Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer (EURONEXT: WKL) is a global leader in information, software solutions and services for professionals in healthcare; tax and accounting; financial and corporate compliance; legal and regulatory; corporate performance and ESG. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with technology and services.
Wolters Kluwer reported 2024 annual revenues of €5.9 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 21,600 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.
For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTubeand Instagram.
