Webinar Recap: Outside Counsel Spend in 2025 - What Legal Teams Are Really Struggling With
Outside counsel rates continue to rise, internal teams are being asked to do more with less, and legal departments are under increasing pressure to show measurable savings. That was the backdrop for a recent webinar hosted by LegalBillReview.com on “Outside Counsel Spend in 2025: Aligning Strategy, Guidelines & Internal Bandwidth.”
The session brought together four perspectives across legal operations, in-house leadership, technology, and law firm experience:
Oyango Snell, Executive Director, CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium)
Alexander Schultz, Global Accounts, Thomson Reuters
Brian Arbetter, General Counsel & VP of Law Firm Relations, LegalBillReview.com
Steve Bell, Head of Sales, LegalBillReview.com
Using recent survey data from LegalBillReview.com, CLOC, and Thomson Reuters, the panel explored how mature legal departments are addressing outside counsel spend and where most teams are still stuck.
This recap highlights the core themes the panel discussed. For the full context and practical detail, the recording is worth a watch.
1. Guidelines Exist, Yet May Not be Enforced
One of the clearest findings from the LegalBillReview.com survey:
Nearly 60% of respondents do not have formal outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) in place.
Of those who do, 87% report inconsistent enforcement.
The panel’s view was that this is less about awareness and more about operational and cultural friction. Reasons included:
Concern about damaging law firm relationships
Reliance on informal review through spreadsheets or ad hoc checks
Lack of alignment on who owns enforcement—legal ops, in-house counsel, or finance
The result is a gap between what leadership expects (disciplined control of outside counsel spend) and what happens day to day: guidelines written but not operationalized, or not written at all.
The panel repeatedly returned to a straightforward point: having guidelines is only the starting point. Without consistent interpretation and application across the legal department, law firms will experience inconsistent signals—and the business will not see the intended impact.
2. Overbilling Is Widely Suspected, but Rarely Addressed
The survey data confirmed what many departments already sense:
Around 50% of respondents believe they have been overbilled by outside counsel.
Yet, the main barriers to investigating and acting on those issues are:
Lack of time (about 30%)
Lack of expertise (about 31%)
Unclear internal ownership of review and escalation
At the same time, additional survey and market data referenced in the discussion showed:
55% of legal departments still review all bills in-house.
Even teams with technology support described their processes as fragmented, reactive, and non-systematic.
79% of legal departments report pressure to reduce outside counsel spend—yet 57% acknowledge they do not track or quantify the data or any savings they may achieve.
This combination: high suspicion of overbilling, high internal effort, and low follow-through—was a recurring theme. The panel emphasized that bill review is a specialized discipline, and expecting already-stretched in-house counsel to perform it accurately and consistently, on top of their substantive matters, is unrealistic.
3. Bandwidth and Strategic Alignment Are Now Core Legal Ops Issues
Bandwidth is more than an operational complaint - it is now a strategic constraint. Legal operations leaders are being pushed to move beyond reactive cost control into proactive business leadership.
Key practices discussed included:
Centralized intake and clear matter scoping, so work is triaged consistently and expectations are set up front.
Treating each matter and invoice as a data point, not a one-off event.
Using data and dashboards for pre-matter budgeting, variance tracking, and firm performance monitoring.
Framing outside counsel management as part of the company’s overall strategy, rather than a narrow legal administration task.
Legal ops maturity, as the panel framed it, is increasingly defined by the ability to translate business strategy into process: using guidelines, tools, and governance to support the company’s financial and risk objectives—not just to “keep the lights on.”
4. Guidelines as a Business Tool—Not a Punitive Device
One area where the panel brought a particularly nuanced view was law firm relationships.
On one hand, survey responses showed many in-house teams are hesitant to push back on billing because they fear damaging relationships with key firms. On the other, several panelists emphasized that:
Law firms have already built client work into their economic model and do not want to lose the relationship.
The idea that firm performance will deteriorate simply because a client enforces guidelines is not supported by how firms actually operate.
The suggested shift was to treat OCGs as a business tool that benefits both sides:
Clear, agreed guidelines allow law firms to bill correctly the first time, reducing friction and rework.
Consistent enforcement helps firms understand expectations and design their internal processes accordingly.
Conversations about invoices are easier when they are grounded in pre-agreed rules, not subjective preferences.
The panel also stressed the importance of internal consistency. If the same type of entry is accepted one month and rejected the next—with no change in guidelines—law firms will experience confusion and frustration. Before expecting consistent compliance from firms, in-house stakeholders need to align on how guidelines are interpreted and applied.
5. Implementation: Getting Guidelines Out of the Drawer
Finally, the discussion turned to implementation—how to move from static documents to active practice.
Key points included:
Avoid “silent” rollouts. Simply emailing guidelines or updates is not enough.
Schedule dedicated sessions with firms to walk through expectations, ensure they’ve read the guidelines, and answer questions.
Confirm that all timekeepers working on the company’s matters understand how their time will be reviewed.
Establish regular check-ins or reconciliations (even at a light-touch level) to keep billing aligned with expectations and address issues before they compound.
The panel also underscored that technology and external partners can help operationalize this work at scale—especially where internal bandwidth and expertise are limited—without replacing the internal need for governance and leadership.
Watch the Full Discussion
This recap focuses on the high-level themes that emerged from the survey data and panel dialogue. The full webinar dives deeper into:
Specific survey questions and responses
How different departments structure ownership of bill review
Concrete examples of guideline rollout, enforcement, and law firm collaboration
How large organizations are managing rate increases, AI adoption, and resource trade-offs
If you’re responsible for outside counsel spend, guideline design, or legal ops strategy, the recording offers a candid, data-backed view into what leading teams are doing—and where most organizations still have work to do.
To get the full picture, we recommend watching the webinar recording alongside this recap.
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