Please enjoy this blog authored by @Rodolfo Christophersen.
A Region with Potential, Yet Lagging Behind
In a global context where digital transformation is reshaping legal practice, Latin America faces a critical challenge: the low adoption of legal technologies in corporate legal departments and law firms, with the notable exception of Brazil.
The Innovator-Lawyer Paradox
Numerous studies conducted by specialized legal consulting firms agree that legal professionals recognize the importance of implementing innovation initiatives. These actions are seen as essential to increasing the productivity and efficiency of legal teams, enabling the reduction of manual, repetitive, low-value tasks. For example, a report by Thomson Reuters Mexico highlights that the digitization and automation of processes, such as contract and document management, are transforming corporate legal operations in Latin America. According to the same study, many respondents plan to incorporate technology into these areas during 2024.
However, in the region, the effective implementation of these initiatives faces significant challenges. Although legal teams recognize the benefits of innovation, in practice, adoption remains limited. This is largely because innovation initiatives usually fall on in-house lawyers, associates, or even law firm partners who must balance their daily responsibilities with innovation tasks. Often, they are forced to prioritize urgent work over strategic initiatives.
Let's consider a concrete example: an in-house lawyer leading the implementation of a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system who is also responsible for drafting, negotiating, and closing commercial contracts. Under pressure from the commercial team to finalize agreements quickly, it is likely that the lawyer will postpone the CLM project, even if a formal implementation plan and significant investment already exist. Ultimately, their main responsibility is ensuring contracts are executed promptly.
This situation illustrates a concerning phenomenon. It not only delays the execution of the few innovation initiatives that do exist, creating frustration among legal and financial leadership who expected concrete results in shorter timelines, but also discourages future investments. Thus, the ecosystem falls into a vicious cycle: the greater the disillusionment, the lesser the interest in innovating.
What Is Needed to Break the Cycle
To break this cycle, leaders of legal departments and law firms in Latin America must adopt a strategic vision if they wish to achieve sustainable results in terms of efficiency, productivity, and optimization. Such results will not be achieved without concrete investment in human resources: it is essential to allocate specific budget (headcount) to build diverse, multidisciplinary teams exclusively dedicated to identifying, planning, and implementing innovation projects. These teams must operate with clear objectives, impact metrics, vertical organizational structures, and prioritization criteria that allow results to scale in an orderly and effective manner.
A key step is to increase the number of professionals working full-time in innovation and legal operations practice. In this regard, Latin America still lags significantly behind other regions. According to a Bloomberg Law survey published in January 2024, over 50% of in-house lawyers surveyed at U.S. companies work full-time in innovation and legal operations tasks. For law firms, the figure reached 45%. These levels of dedication are far from what is commonly observed in our region, where these functions—if they exist—are often handled by professionals juggling multiple operational responsibilities
Unfortunately, we still lack region-specific studies that accurately measure how many legal professionals in Latin America are fully dedicated to innovation and legal operations practice areas. However, I have no doubt that we are well below U.S. percentages. I would venture to say that if a similar survey were conducted in our region, the predominant response would be 'No one does it,' closely followed by 'Someone does it, but as part of other duties.'
From my personal experience as Head of Legal Operations at Mercado Libre, I can affirm that having a team 100% focused on innovation projects makes a huge difference. It not only accelerates implementation plans—delivering expected time and cost savings—but also uncovers a much larger number of improvement opportunities.
Beyond Technology: Process Innovation
It is important to highlight that innovation should not be understood solely as the adoption of new technologies—although these certainly generate exponential benefits. True transformation also involves redesigning processes, documenting policies and playbooks, optimizing the management of external vendors and budgets, and rethinking traditional operational models. These improvements require little to no technological investment but can deliver equally powerful results.
Call to Action
According to a study by Grand View Research, the legal tech market in Latin America is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.8% between 2024 and 2030. This figure surpasses that of the United States (7.8%) and slightly exceeds that of Europe (8.9%).
This shows that digital transformation in the legal sector of Latin America is not optional: it is an urgent necessity. The region has the talent and potential to lead in legal innovation, but it requires the conviction and commitment of those leading legal departments and law firms. Only then will it be possible to capitalize on the opportunities that will continue to arise, turn ideas into concrete actions, and finally reap the benefits that the Latin American legal ecosystem so badly needs—and deserves.
#Just-in-Time
#Automation#Innovation#GlobalPerspective#100Level