Gut feel and professional judgment have long been the currency of decision-making in legal departments. But the growing pressure on legal teams to be more accountable, measurable and aligned with broader business objectives has urged in-house counsel to shift from instinct to data-driven insights.
Legal teams across industries are embracing a different posture: one that welcomes performance metrics as an important tool. This is a structural shift. General Counsels (GCs) are increasingly evolving from reactive advisors to strategic business partners. And just like finance, HR or marketing, they are now expected to quantify their impact and justify investment.
Why performance metrics matter for legal teams
Legal is no longer immune to the performance and efficiency expectations placed on other departments. Business leaders want answers: turnaround times, workload volume, risk trends, bottlenecks.
According to PwC’s NewLaw report, Legal Department Metrics: Understanding and Expanding Your Impact, there are several reasons legal teams may have been slower to use numbers to track performance. Smaller teams that pack a weighty punch, in-house counsel have previously been under less pressure to justify their resources. This, and the belief that legal work is incapable of being expressed in numbers, or the effort involved in capturing the data doesn’t justify the results, has led to the general rule that legal teams have been historically reluctant to quantify performance. But as the report notes, “if it matters at all, it will be observable”. And if it’s observable, it can be measured.
By implementing metrics, legal teams can reduce the uncertainty about decisions.
Why now?
Over the past decade, legal operations has matured into a discipline of its own. Organisations like CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) and ACC (Association of Corporate Counsel) have codified best practices for everything from vendor management to technology adoption. At the same time, legal tech–once clunky and unconvincing–has come of age.
Legal matter management software, contract lifecycle tools, legal artificial intelligence and spend analytics platforms now offer in-house counsel a chance to surface insight from the noise. And perhaps most critically, organisation leaders and boardrooms are asking more pointed questions: ‘What are we getting for this spend? Where’s the risk coming from? How do we know?’
Metrics, once viewed as the domain of finance, have become a shared language.
What to measure (and how to start)
Gut feel has its place. But in the case of decisions about budget allocation, resource planning, risk management and compliance, meaningful and actionable data has the upper hand. Legal metrics can function as key performance indicators (KPIs), serving as a compass that guides strategy and points to areas that could benefit from review or improvement. A few key, low-barrier metrics legal teams can begin tracking:
- Matter volume by category or business unit.
- Average time to complete contracts or resolve issues.
- Workload distribution across the team.
- Time spent on strategic vs. reactive work.
Start small and make it stick. Pick a few key metrics that matter to your team, like turnaround time or matter volume. Build tracking into your everyday workflows so it becomes part of the process, not an extra task.
The challenges of gathering legal metrics
Collecting and implementing legal metrics is not straightforward. For many legal professionals, the move from intuition to insight is delayed by practical, cultural and technological hurdles.
Law and numbers don’t always mix
Lawyers are often characterised as masters of words. They are skilled at crafting arguments, interpreting statutes and mitigating risks. As PwC observes, lawyers sometimes feel out of their comfort zone when it comes to metrics. This can lead to a reluctance to engage with data-driven approaches, especially if metrics are perceived as reductive or irrelevant to the nuanced nature of legal work.
Fragmented and incomplete data
Many legal teams often lack structured systems to track performance. Relying on email, spreadsheets or siloed tools may result in data storage in disparate systems, or worse, not collected at all. Even when data exists, it may lack the necessary context to become an actionable insight.
Cultural hurdle
Introducing metrics can trigger resistance. Risk mitigation and precedent-following are built into the traditional legal mindset. For metrics to be embraced, legal leaders must carefully frame them not as judgment tools, but as enablers of better decision-making, resource allocation and client service.
Time pressure
Time is one of the biggest challenges in-house counsels face–and legal professionals know better than anyone how quickly the day can fill up with urgent demands. With back-to-back meetings and shifting priorities, there’s little room to pause. Tracking metrics can feel like another thing they don’t have time for. For many legal teams, it’s not a lack of willingness. It’s the pace of legal work that leaves no space to stop and measure.
How legal tech makes it easier
Legal metrics are only as good as the systems behind them. With the right legal tech tools, collecting and using metrics becomes faster, easier and far more accurate.
Automates data capture
Legal tech takes the manual labour out of metrics. Instead of chasing spreadsheets or relying on memory, matter management platforms log details as you work. Know who’s involved, what the matter type is, how long it took and how much it cost within a few clicks. They ensure your data is accurate, up-to-date and collected in real time, without adding extra admin to lawyers’ plates.
Centralises disparate information
No more hunting through inboxes or folders. Matter management software pulls all your legal work–internal, external, ongoing and closed–into one organised system. This single source of truth makes it far easier to spot trends, compare performance and run reports that actually reflect what’s happening on the ground.
Data becomes ready insights
Metrics must be dynamic and digestible. That’s where data dashboards come in. A well-designed dashboard is a strategic tool that tells a story, highlighting trends, flagging concerns and framing choices. These insights can help legal professionals act quickly and confidently.
Demonstrate value and support continuous improvement
GCs are under real pressure to show how legal is helping the business run smarter and faster. The 2025 Thomas Reuters State of the Corporate Law Department Report makes it clear: it’s no longer enough to quietly manage risk–legal teams need to show up with numbers. With legal analytics platforms, in-house counsel can track what matters and tie their work to business outcomes. It is easy to capture, quantify and communicate the legal team’s impact.
Why tracking performance is the new legal power move
Legal teams are stepping out of the shadows, proving their worth with hard data and sharper insights. Performance metrics give in-house counsel the power to drive smarter decisions, optimise resources and show real value to the business.
But metrics only work if you capture them correctly. Dazychain’s legal matter management software turns scattered information into a clear, live picture of the entire department. On top of that, AI-powered features are increasingly helping legal teams automate routine tasks and uncover efficiencies that were once invisible. Make every matter manageable, measurable and meaningful with Dazychain.
