We explain how those numbers are built, what they represent, and how they reflect the real efficiency and business impact legal tech delivers.
In-house legal leaders are under constant pressure to do more with less, deliver faster support to the business, and prove their team’s value. Legal technology is a powerful way to create that value – by saving time, reducing costs, and enabling the business to move faster. But to secure investment (or protect it at renewal time), legal leaders need to go beyond anecdotes and speak the language of ROI.
At LawVu, we work closely with customers to capture how our platform creates measurable value – using a mix of customer-reported outcomes, industry benchmarks, and conservative calculations. This article explains how those numbers are built, what they represent, and how they reflect the real efficiency and business impact legal tech delivers. While the examples are specific to LawVu, the approach can also help legal leaders frame ROI more clearly when making the case for investment in any legal technology.
Legal time is valuable – an in-house legal team is staffed with highly paid professionals whose expertise should be focused on complex legal and strategic work – not wasted on repetitive admin. Yet research shows the opposite is happening.
According to IDC’s Legal Friction Report, 83 percent of in-house legal leaders say manual admin prevents them from focusing on strategic work, and 53 percent of business leaders say their own teams waste too much time managing legal requests. On average, low-value tasks consume at least one day per week for members of in-house legal teams.
This is the foundation of our ROI calculations:
For example, across hundreds of customers, LawVu typically saves in-house teams the equivalent of 1,644 lawyer hours per year through efficiencies like:
That time savings adds up to around $223,000 of value annually for a five-person team – before considering additional benefits like reduced outside counsel spend or faster deal cycles.
"We’ve seen about a 25 percent reduction in email traffic since rolling LawVu out to the wider business. This has resulted in a saving of approximately 750 mins (12.6 hours) of time spent reaching emails across the team in one month – time that is now free to spend on the work that our team came in-house to do – the strategic work that impacts business outcomes."
At LawVu, our ROI numbers aren’t hypothetical. They’re built on three key inputs:
Here’s our standard breakdown:
Total value for a five-person team: ~$213,720/year in reclaimed time.
These savings represent real capacity unlocked – not just cost avoidance. That’s hundreds of hours each year that can be reinvested in higher-value legal and strategic work.
Try the calculator for yourself below.
The real power of ROI is in the comparison. When you stack the value created against the cost of the platform, the return becomes clear.
For example, a mid-sized legal team might generate $213,720 in time savings each year through LawVu’s workflows, automation, and reporting. Compare that to the cost of the platform, and in many cases the savings alone more than cover the investment.
And that’s just the beginning. When you add additional impacts – from reducing outside counsel spend to accelerating contract turnaround – the return compounds.
This is why our customers consistently see ROI not just in theory, but in practice: the efficiency gains and total business value from LawVu outweigh the investment, often many times over.
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While efficiency gains form the foundation of LawVu’s ROI, they’re only part of the story. Customers also see measurable value in other critical areas:
These outcomes aren’t just operational wins. They tie directly to the metrics the business cares most about: revenue, cost, and risk.
Not all value can be captured in a dollar amount – and that’s okay. Some of the most important impacts of legal technology show up in culture, relationships, and reputation.
With LawVu, customers often highlight:
These may be harder to quantify in dollars, but they’re vital to legal’s reputation as a trusted, strategic partner in the business.
“LawVu is almost like another team member that helps us achieve the goals that we need to and align with the strategy of the business.”
One challenge many legal teams face is the lack of hard “before and after” baselines. If you don’t know how long a contract used to take, how do you prove improvement? That’s where representative ROI becomes especially valuable.
At LawVu, our ROI calculations are designed to be:
This matters because legal leaders are often asked to justify technology decisions in financial terms, whether making the initial case or proving continued value. With LawVu, you don’t have to start from scratch – we provide credible, conservative benchmarks that can be tailored to your team.
Every legal team defines value differently. For some, it’s reducing outside counsel spend; for others, it’s faster contract turnaround, better reporting, or improved stakeholder satisfaction.
That’s why at LawVu we partner with customers from implementation onward to set clear success metrics and track progress over time. Whether measured in dollars, hours, or outcomes, we’re committed to helping teams achieve and demonstrate the value they set out to deliver.
ROI shouldn’t be a mystery. By combining customer-reported outcomes, industry benchmarks, and conservative calculations, LawVu makes it simple to see and show the value of legal technology.
From time savings worth hundreds of thousands each year, to reduced outside counsel spend, faster revenue recognition, and stronger stakeholder satisfaction, LawVu delivers measurable impact. And we’ll work with you to define what success looks like for your team, then help you achieve it.
Want to see what that looks like for your own legal team? Try our Legal Efficiency Savings Calculator or talk to our team to map out your ROI.
