Extract from Trudy Knockless’s article “Legal Departments That Master Their Data Bring More Leverage to Law Firm Negotiations”
With legal budgets under scrutiny and AI on the rise, corporate legal departments are rethinking how they measure value, manage outside counsel and position themselves as business drivers—not just cost centers.
That shift is increasingly urgent as in-house teams face mounting pressure to cut spending, deliver faster results and justify every invoice. Chris Ochs, vice president of legal operations at UnitedLex, has seen this transformation firsthand—working with Fortune 500 legal departments to uncover legal waste, optimize law firm engagement and build more accountable operations.
“There’s always pressure on outside counsel management,” Ochs said. “But I think the conversation is changing with the introduction of tools and the availability of data.”
For Ochs, the turning point often begins with visibility. In a recent engagement following a major acquisition, he worked with a global financial institution to analyze billing data from the top 25 matters transitioning from one entity to another. Using AI and line-by-line invoice analysis, the legal team uncovered inefficiencies that had previously gone unnoticed.
“We looked at the spend through a few different lenses—staffing, workflow, billing hygiene and fee arrangements,” Ochs said. The findings helped restructure staffing models, bring certain matters in-house, shift work to ALSPs and renegotiate fee agreements. “It was all very intentional and almost surgical,” he said.
That kind of precision doesn’t come from guesswork. It starts with data—specifically, deep analysis of historical spending and matter-level performance.
