Here’s the important threshold question too many companies overlook.
In a 2026 Thomson Reuters’s survey, nearly half of general counsel reported mounting pressures to increase productivity while simultaneously being tasked with reducing costs.
Merely lowering costs on unnecesary spend, is just like getting a discount on waste but it is still wasted costs.
When a legal department is tasked with reducing costs, the knee-jerk reaction is usually to ask who—or what—could do the work for less. Legal teams often start with the same old questions:
- Should more work go to outside counsel?
- Could an internal team handle tasks less expensively?
- Are there reliable AI solutions that can help?
But those questions all make a rather problematic assumption: that the work needs to be done in the first place.
And that’s the blind spot that plagues most cost cutting efforts – failing to recognize the threshold question that should be asked first: Is this work still needed at all?
Before deciding how to do legal work more efficiently, it’s worth asking whether it even needs to happen anymore. Long-established processes are often just accepted as required, so the focus too often immediately goes to negotiating lower costs or finding cheaper vendors.
But systems, technologies, people and processes change over time, often making old tasks and processes outdated or entirely obsolete. To truly cut costs and increase efficiencies, teams should reject such assumptions and examine the necessity first.
And that is not an invitation to cut corners. It is a starting point for understanding what the organization is paying for—and why.
Scrutinize Every Task – Especially Long-Established Ones
Organizations are rapidly and frequently changing how work gets done every day. So now more than ever, those long-established workflows, processes, and tasks that were once considered bedrock requirements should be the first to be examined.
Consider a special data preservation effort created in response to one matter that somehow became a requirement for every matter that followed. Or a temporary workaround that became the standard process. The original decision may have been entirely reasonable and appropriate at the time, but is that still the case today?
And to be clear, this is not a criticism of the people doing the work either. Capable teams can inherit processes they did not design and have had little time – or even the authority – to reconsider.
People often feel discouraged or have difficulty questioning the status quo. To truly recognize where these zombie processes exist, department leaders need to empower their people to do just that.
AI does not settle the question
That same Thomson Reuters survey also found legal departments are increasingly and rapidly embracing technologies, often AI solutions, to address those budget constraints and staffing challenges.
And while AI might be able to help reduce costs, increase speed, and even improve results, again the question of necessity should come first. And let’s not forget, those AI solutions always have a cost of their own.
“Can we automate this?” should not displace “Why are we doing this?”
Yes, a good AI solution should reduce the time it takes to do a task to a fraction of the prior efforts. And to be clear, we agree that’s a good thing. But if you could eliminate the task entirely, shouldn’t that question come first?
Less unnecessary work. Not less protection.
Of course, legal work cannot be evaluated by cost alone. Some of its greatest value lies in controlling risk and preventing negative outcomes.
Established processes should be questioned, yes, but nothing should be eliminated without making sure the purposes are thoroughly examined and fully understood.
A safeguard does not become unnecessary simply because nothing has gone wrong yet. And something that looks redundant at first glance may serve a legitimate and necessary purpose. Conversely, what looked prudent in the past may no longer serve the purpose or provide the protection it once did.
Any cost cutting review requires informed judgment and serious examination. It must distinguish between work that fulfills an obligation or protects the business and activity that simply no longer serves its intended purpose.
The same caution applies to staffing. A smaller department does not necessarily mean a less expensive legal function overall. If outside counsel costs increase, or critical work goes uncovered, the organization may have just shifted the cost—or increased the risk—rather than realized the savings sought.
As public GenAI systems become smarter and more accurate, the applications built to leverage their core strengths will in turn also become better. At LexMateria.ai we are always working to improve our AI models and to deliver better, more accurate results based on our customer’s private data.
Start with a clean slate & reject past assumptions
Don’t assume that the only way to reduce costs is to cut staff, outsource tasks, or implement new software and process automations. Instead, start from the ground up as if you were approaching the task for the first time. And don’t assume that yesterday’s answer is still correct today.
At LexMateria, we’ve spent decades helping legal teams understand what is driving their costs and risks—and helping implement practical improvements. And often, that required rejecting industry norms, re-examining long-held beliefs, and questioning once-thought sacred practices.
For example, early on, we revolutionized how data was identified, collected, and preserved, saving clients untold millions, while actually increasing defensibility and reducing risks. To accomplish that, we first had to throw out the industry norms and assumptions.
And what’s more, those new solutions we created became the industry standard. But that’s a story for a future blog… stay tuned!
Just remember, the first step does not require you to have already diagnosed the problem. It can begin with a simple question: Are we trying to get better at work we should first be questioning?
And if you need assistance answering that question, we’re here to help!