IDC White Paper: 'Legal friction' is costing businesses tens of millions in revenue
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NEW IDC FINDINGS

Legal friction: the real cost to your business

Corporate legal leaders strive to accelerate business outcomes through operational excellence and exceptional service delivery. Yet new IDC research* found that inefficient, fragmented workflows create legal friction, reducing productivity, inflating costs, and undermining business performance.

With 67% of enterprise business leaders reporting that legal inefficiency is having a negative impact on business outcomes, overcoming legal friction is urgent.

In the coming year legal friction could cost your business:

$ M

In delayed or lost revenue

$ K

in unnecessary  external spend

$ K

in legal team time that can be redirected to more valuable tasks
*Based on White Paper from International Data Corporation (IDC) surveying 358 business leaders across the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom between January and March 2025
Keep reading

Here's how value is eroded and costs add up

Businesses are suffering lost and delayed revenue due to lengthy legal processes
2/3
of business leaders
reported revenue was lost or delayed due to inefficient legal process in the last 12 months

%

of business revenue
representing $141M USD per organization, has been lost or delayed in the last 12 months due to inefficient legal processes
Legal friction increases outside counsel spend

%

of legal
teams
say legal work is outsourced due to legal team bandwidth

$ K

per
year
could be saved by bringing legal work in-house, with 1/6th of work outsourced due to inefficiency
Everyone is wasting valuable time

%

of legal
teams
say inefficient processes or technology negatively impacts their ability to deliver services in a timely manner

$ K

per
year
is lost due to inefficient workflows that could be automated

Legal friction is not just a financial problem.
It also erodes internal trust, customer satisfaction, and overall organisational performance.

Business leaders from Sales, Marketing, Research & Development, IT, HR, and the executive office report these problems due to legal friction

%

have received customer complaints due to delays in legal process, eroding brand perception and customer satisfaction 

%

Only 21% of business leaders say that legal is "very effective" at supporting their department in achieving business objectives

%

report circumventing legal, leading to increased organizational risk

%

say they are unable to hire talent they need, limiting ability to compete

%

agree systems and technology purchases or deployments that can improve business processes have been delayed due to legal

Accelerating business outcomes and being a strategic partner, at scale, requires ongoing investment in people and process, with legal technology at the core

%
Only 37% of legal teams believe they have adequate resource to keep up with the demands of the business
%
83 percent of in-house legal report that manual administrative tasks prevent them from focusing on strategic work
%
Fewer than 30% of respondents have dedicated legal tech
%
65% of legal teams say increased breadth and complexity of workload is a challenge 
Source: IDC White Paper, sponsored by LawVu,
Legal Friction: The Real Cost to Your Business, #AP15041X, April 2025
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