Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions Experts Discuss Legal Spend Volatility in New Podcast

Inaugural episode explores the recent findings from the company’s second LegalVIEW Insights report

Detailed analysis from Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions’ most recent LegalVIEW Insights report unveiled wild swings in legal spend for many of its clients during the last five years. However, basic best practices can help these businesses plan accordingly, including avoiding significant overspending on legal services in a continued volatile climate. Listeners can now learn about these valuable insights and hear additional advice for corporate legal departments (CLDs) in ELM Solutions’ newly launched podcast series, Legal Leaders Exchange.

The first episode – “Volatility in Outside Counsel Spend - Containing the Chaos” – takes a deep dive into LegalVIEW Insights, Volume 2, which revealed almost a third of companies in the data set saw a 90 percent variation between their highest and lowest annual spend since 2016. Hosted by ELM Solutions experts Nathan Cemenska (Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights) and Matt Kivlin (Senior Director of Product Management for Core Solutions), the inaugural 30-minute episode explores this point and a range of other findings from the LegalVIEW Insights report, including:

• Outside-counsel forces affecting spend and the methods companies can use to control costs
• Making the case for investment in technologies that help keep legal spend down
• Budgeting and planning strategies that account for “unknown unknowns” and resulting swings in spend
• The industry which has the most success in keeping legal spend flat (and how they do it).

“Our research explores the idea that legal spend can be reliably predicted one to two years down the line,” said Cemenska. “Legal spend two or three years ago probably doesn’t look much like what it does today, and what it is now is likely not what it will look like in a couple of years. Nevertheless, our research also shows that, as a group, CLDs with mature e-billing and legal ops have been remarkably effective at preventing growing legal costs. They do this despite the high degree of volatility going on in individual corporate law departments in any given year.”

Legal Leaders Exchange was created to deliver insights on optimizing legal operations for corporate legal and insurance claims professionals. Listeners can subscribe to Legal Leaders Exchange episodes from the leading podcast platforms, including Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Amazon / Audible.com and iHeart Radio. The podcast is the latest in a series of 2021 thought leadership pieces, including blogs, webinars and other content leveraging information from ELM Solutions’ LegalVIEW^® Data Warehouse – the most comprehensive legal spend database in the world with more than $140 billion in invoices.

Cemenska, who joined Wolters Kluwer in 2018 and is the author of the LegalVIEW Insights thought leadership series, is responsible for developing research and thought leadership out of ELM Solutions’ LegalVIEW^® Data warehouse. He also publishes other articles for the company and participates in podcasts focused on legal operations insights. Kivlin, who joined ELM Solutions in 2014, has held several leadership positions with the company. In his current role, he leads a global team of product managers for market-leading electronic billing and collaboration software.

ELM Solutions, part of Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance division, is the market-leading global provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management, contract lifecycle management and legal analytics solutions. The company provides a comprehensive suite of tools that address the growing needs of corporate legal operations departments to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. Corporate legal and insurance claims departments trust its innovative technology and end-to-end customer experience to drive world-class business outcomes. The other legal solutions business of Wolters Kluwer GRC is CT Corporation.

Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions was named a leader in both the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Legal Spend Management 2020 Vendor Assessment and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Matter Management 2020 Vendor Assessment. The company’s award-winning products include Passport^®, one of the highest rated ELM solutions in the latest Hyperion MarketView™ Legal Market Intelligence Report and TyMetrix^® 360°, the industry’s leading SaaS-based e-billing and matter management solution. CLM Matrix, meanwhile, was named a “strong performer” in The Forrester Wave™: Contract Lifecycle Management For All Contracts, Q1 2021 report. ELM Solutions’ LegalVIEW^® portfolio of legal analytics solutions is based upon the industry’s largest and most comprehensive legal spend database, with more than $140 billion in invoices.

About Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk & Compliance

Governance, Risk & Compliance is a division of Wolters Kluwer, which provides legal and banking professionals with solutions to help ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory and legal obligations, manage risk, increase efficiency, and produce better business outcomes. GRC offers a portfolio of technology-enabled expert services and solutions focused on legal entity compliance, legal operations management, banking product compliance, and banking regulatory compliance.

Wolters Kluwer (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of €4.6 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,200 people worldwide.

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