Introduction

How is your legal team preparing to take on 2025? With the new year comes new challenges and responsibilities, especially for in-house lawyers. Legal experts are no longer expected to focus solely on their legal knowledge; today, they are expected to do much more. Companies are turning to in-house legal teams to be strategic business partners, providing advice on how to solve problems facing the organization or helping improve processes that slow operations down.

With these extra expectations, the role of in-house legal teams has never been more heavily relied upon. Still, with all these responsibilities, legal teams are operating with constrained resources. According to a recent report from Law.com, 63% of legal professionals surveyed said they felt physically and mentally overwhelmed at work. An astonishing number of legal teams are becoming expected to do more with less. This can feel like a struggle to keep your head above water, a position no one would want to be in.

In addition to these responsibilities, legal professionals must stay vigilant of the constantly changing regulatory environment. Ensuring the organization is staying compliant with new and altered laws, juggling a company's evolving artificial intelligence (AI) policy, ensuring teams achieve their goals, and every other minor responsibility that adds up—it is easy to see why so many legal professionals are feeling worn out.

The question is, how do legal teams plan to adapt to their changing roles and work toward easing their workload headed into 2025? LinkSquares recently set out to find those answers. 

We conducted a survey of over 150 legal professionals to discover their top priorities, key challenges, and other topics top of mind headed into 2025. The majority of respondents (54.3%) fell under the general counsels (GC) or assistant general counsels (AGC) segment, with legal operations (27.2%) following closely behind as the second most prevalent role among those surveyed.

In this forecast review, we uncover our key survey findings and examine the issues that will impact legal teams like yours in 2025. We also dive deep into the priorities, challenges, and new approaches legal and other industry professionals are taking to stay ahead of the curve.

Key Takeaways

1. Legal teams’ top priorities for 2025 ranged from speeding up the contract management process, aligning the legal department with leadership and other departments across the business, purchasing new legal technology to assist in the day-to-day, and hiring new team members to assist with the growing workload. The common trends that emerged were increasing efficiency and improving collaboration to help address these priorities.
2. Around one in three legal professionals indicated that being able to do more with less was a concern they had headed into the new year. Being able to keep up with the growing demand placed on legal, with the same amount of resources –or sometimes less – is a major concern. Legal professionals are seeking ways to lighten their workload or improve workflows, in order to avoid jeopardizing their businesses' legal standing.
3. Legal professionals are beginning to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. 78% of legal professionals surveyed indicated they love AI. Of that same surveyed group, 78%, more than 60% use it occasionally, and 17.2% use it daily. Many are integrating the technology into their daily workflows to help automate their daily tasks and free up time to focus on other business-critical items.

Legal Landscape

Improving Efficiency

A paralegal at an environmental sustainability company put it best when asked if there were any other challenges their team is facing, stating: “It feels like we are constantly trying to do more with less (we are a very lean team).”

This was a constant theme throughout the responses: Small legal teams were consistently asked to do more with less and step into an evolving role to help their businesses achieve positive outcomes.

Achieving those positive business outcomes has become a significant focus for legal teams of all sizes as they adapt to their roles from legal experts to strategic business partners. When asked what the most important positive business outcome was for their company, the two identified as most important were efficiency gains and deal acceleration, each garnering 41% of responses, respectively. This is a clear sign that when it comes to the day-to-day, legal teams do not have time to be bogged down by manual processes and tasks.

Legal teams should focus on aligning with other departments to enhance workflows and expedite deals that lead to positive business outcomes.

As the head of legal at a retail media technology company put it when asked what other challenges they face, “Primarily simplifying the contracting process for our sales teams while still being able to lock down agreements and ensure legal oversight.” Aligning with other departments is essential to enhance the contract management process while maintaining legal direction, regardless of the industry. A general counsel at a cloud computing company emphasized this by stating their top priority was finding ways to improve “speed/efficiency with administrative items.”

Legal departments in industries ranging from healthcare to SaaS, to manufacturing and beyond, all face the similar struggle; how can I help improve workflows in my business without getting in the way of other teams?

Legal tech that can lighten the load

The first thing legal departments should consider when contemplating how to improve their teams' workflows is what tasks in their day-to-day can become automated. Start small with simple administrative tasks and move your way up. Let’s face it: not every action item on your docket can become automated; some require strategic manual review. However, by taking this first step, you can open yourself up to focusing on more business-critical action items.

For example, if your day is spent searching for and reviewing documents between disconnected systems, it could be time to consider integrating legal technology solutions to help. You’re already being asked to do more with less, without the right tools or processes in place this can become an unattainable goal.

Implementing technology that easily integrates with legal departments' day-to-day work can dramatically improve workflows without having to sacrifice the quality of the work produced. Having to switch between multiple platforms or force a one-size-fits-all platform that isn’t calibrated to team-specific needs to get the job done wastes valuable time and can endanger the quality of the project you are working on. 2025 should be the year to assess team needs and find a legal technology solution that can flexibly address them.

Finding technology that is purpose-built for legal teams and easily integrates into daily tasks is extremely important. Having that extra support system in place can help get tasks done quicker, free up time to focus on other important assignments, replace manual workflows with automated ones, and avoid the headache of trying to get a general-purpose tool to fit specific needs. Not only should the technology be beneficial to your legal department, but it should be easily integrated across other areas of the business.

Gone are the days where the legal department stands alone. With the right legal technology in place, other business functions, like sales or procurement, can benefit from greater insight into the contract management process and help speed along the process. For improved collaboration and workflows with increased efficiency, invest in a tech stack that offers this kind of cohesion.

Improving contract management

Improving the contract management process and discovering new efficiencies were common themes identified when legal teams discussed their additional challenges.

Respondents to the survey discussed that some of the biggest challenges they faced were wasting time with manual workflows, searching for unorganized agreements, slow contract execution, and poor internal contract management processes. Many legal teams are searching for new ways to improve their internal processes. One assistant general counsel explained how their team currently is facing the challenge of “trying to develop new processes to create efficiencies in the legal department.” This need to develop new processes was not just contained to the legal department, with one chief legal officer stating how their team is focused on “aligning with sales & booking process.” By opening this channel of communication between departments, legal can not only improve their contract management but also help the entire organization achieve this goal.

Contract workflows made easy

Having one internal contract management process that all departments across your organization can get behind is crucial for 2025. This was made clear in our survey findings. When asked what the most important business outcome is for their business, survey respondents indicated that the two most important outcomes were 1.) deal acceleration (41.1%) and 2.) efficiency gains (41.1%). Your contract management process doesn’t need to be overly complicated or consume any more unnecessary time. Your workflow should be easy from contract creation to review and to the ultimate final signature. This means fewer headaches for you and more positive outcomes for your business. 

Without effective workflows that serve all departments or a centralized location for storing executed agreements, processes can become cumbersome, leading to obstacles. If your contract creations and negotiations are not in sync, visibility into contracts out for review disappear, and your deal cycle length grows. This can be a dangerous problem for companies of all sizes – from startups to the largest corporations. Not to mention, visibility into the process from start to finish becomes clouded.

For example, say one of your vendors fails to deliver on a time-sensitive agreement–you can’t spend hours or days searching for your key contract information, you need to be able to access the information almost instantly.

An efficient legal team isn’t one that simply masters its own workflow process, it’s one that spans across the organization to ensure every other department is on the same page and invested into the organization's overall process. By doing so, they’re able to put all the necessary contract data at their fingertips, leading to those shortened deal cycles and efficiency gains that are vital to the success of the business. Instead of manually searching aimlessly for important information, they feel empowered to work quickly, knowing that the organization is working as one, and confident that no essential information is falling through the cracks.

Transforming data in your CLM into positive business outcomes

The first step toward improving your contract management process is to analyze your contract lifecycle management (CLM) data points. Any legal team that wishes to ask for an increase in budget, headcount, or resources in 2025 will need to provide justification for that extra spend. Having the data at your fingertips will help showcase how that spend will help to make a positive impact on your business.

Without a centralized contract management process or tool, you could be spending precious hours scouring across multiple software platforms or internal channels. However, with a CLM solution that houses all of your critical data in one place, you can avoid the aimless and frenzied search. Having all the necessary information needed in one central repository can help with reporting on and improving the work you do. You’ll also be able to quantify your impact on the business –– a vital tool.

More importantly, these data points can speed up workflows and boost overall efficiency. By identifying bottleneck areas, teams can allocate additional resources or advocate for more to alleviate the issues.

Legal teams that utilize these key data points in 2025 to improve their performance and overall performance of their businesses, will have a competitive advantage and can become a more strategic business partner to the rest of the organization.

2025 Roadmap | The year ahead

Speed up your current contract process

The ability to be the contract facilitator rather than the roadblock will be important for in-house legal teams in 2025. Of the legal professionals surveyed, nearly 40% indicated that speeding up their current contract process in 2025 was the top priority. It’s clear why this is top of mind for in-house legal teams – the business depends on them, and their heavy workloads show it. Being able to achieve shorter contract cycles oftentimes means more capital flowing into the business and the freeing up of time to achieve other business-critical tasks.

Improve productivity through proactivity

With 2025 set to be a pivotal year, it’s important to understand what in-house legal teams can gain from improving their current contract process. In a report from Bloomberg Law, by implementing an automated contract management process, in-house legal teams will see the following benefits:

1. Increased negotiation speed by up to 50%
2. Reduction in payment errors by up to 75 to 90%
3. Reduced cost of contract management by 10 to 50%

Become a strategic business partner

Proactive in-house legal teams that take a step back to review their current processes to better understand where they can make improvements can take advantage of some of the efficiency gains previously mentioned. When asked what it means to be a strategic business partner, one VP of legal operations said, “playing a pivotal role in aligning legal functions with the firm’s business objectives to drive efficiency using data-driven insights.” By keeping the overall business objectives of the firm in mind, in-house legal teams can alter their course of action to help collaborate to achieve these in a timely manner. This is consistent in other responses. A contract specialist at a motor vehicle company said “It means to work collaboratively to close deal[s] with the most efficient processes in mind.” By aligning with the organization's overall business goals, in-house legal teams can enhance efficiency, expedite contract lifecycle times, and foster greater collaboration across the organization.

2025 Roadmap | Embracing AI

Unsurprisingly, AI was a hot topic among those surveyed. It was surprising to see how readily in-house legal teams have embraced it. As mentioned in the opening stages of this forecast, 78% of legal professionals surveyed indicated they love AI. Of that same surveyed group, more than 60% use AI occasionally, and 17.2% use it daily. With legal teams looking to lighten their workloads and speed up their workflows, integrating AI technology into their day-to-day workflow seems like a no-brainer. The same Bloomberg Law report noted that by integrating AI and contract analytics solutions into workflows, in-house legal teams can benefit from:

1. Reduction of manual effort needed for contract review by 50% with AI-based contract analytics solutions
2. 60% reduction in contract management costs by using intelligent contract analytics

The demand for AI technology to help teams with their workloads was apparent, especially from one legal director, who mentioned that “AI assistance with email” is one of the challenges they want legal tech software to help them with. Another general counsel emphasized the need for “better AI with respect to generating drafts.” The demand doesn’t stop at assisting in the creation of drafts. There is a need for AI to assist with strategy. A VP of contract management and procurement stated that it would be helpful to have “AI to inform similar sales targets among existing portfolio to reduce iterations and cycle times to contract completion.” Embracing AI in a more strategic sense, can assist in-house legal teams become better business partners and promote a sense of collaboration between departments.

In-house legal teams are increasingly embracing and demanding AI technological assistance opportunities. These tools can significantly ease their workload and contribute to achieving the business’s overall goals. It is evident that many are keen to explore how AI can simplify their lives, particularly in the workplace.

Conclusion

With increasing demands, your legal team is set for a busy 2025. Time is becoming a luxury, and you cannot afford to waste it handling workflows that make your life more difficult and bottlenecks that require extra attention to resolve.

Top legal teams will constantly evaluate their processes to decide what areas they can improve. By doing this, your legal team will become a more effective strategic business partner, enabling your organization to achieve its goals more efficiently and promptly. You need to constantly evaluate the data your team has and be open to new technology that can help improve your workflows – not to mention make your life a whole lot easier. 

As the legal expert and strategic business partner in your organization, you need technology that lets you work faster and make on-the-spot data-driven decisions. Harnessing legal technology leveraging AI built to your specific needs to deliver visibility and crucial information that can help shape your business has never been more valuable. Take your time to assess your options and think about what truly will help move your business further.

Why LinkSquares

If your team is working to drive efficiency, optimize contract management processes, streamline compliance, or harness AI in 2025, LinkSquares could be the game changer you need. With AI-powered technology that’s purpose-built for legal, LinkSquares can help you ditch manual processes and make time for more strategic legal work.

End-to-end CLM and legal project management enable you to perform, manage, and quantify all your work in one place. This connects every corner of your business and frees you to be the strategic business partner your company needs.

Instead of operating across a patchwork of tools, you can seamlessly execute contracts, manage your workload, and report on your impact. AI-powered insights give you the data you need to make strategic decisions, and it’s easy to maintain language that keeps you compliant.

But don’t just take our word for it - schedule a demo today to see firsthand how LinkSquares can level up your legal work.