By Krys Chmielewski, Associate Director, Program Success
When most people hear “legal spend management,” their minds jump straight to the usual suspects: slashing line items, negotiating lower rates, or tightening billing guidelines. It’s understandable—those tactics feel immediate and tangible. But after years in managed bill review, I’ve seen firsthand that these surface-level fixes often miss the bigger picture.
The truth is, you can’t optimize what you don’t understand. And understanding starts with structured, clean, and context-rich data. It’s the foundation that allows legal ops teams to move from reactive cost-cutting to proactive value creation. Without it, even the most sophisticated AI tools are flying blind, producing outputs that are only as reliable as the inputs they receive.
Structured billing data enables predictive insights, performance benchmarking, and strategic decision-making. It also supports the critical partnership between AI and human oversight, because while technology can surface patterns and anomalies, it takes expert interpretation to turn those insights into action.
In my whitepaper, I break down how structured data can transform your legal spend strategy. Check it out: Why structured data is the key to smarter legal spend
