The State of In-House Legal Teams in 2025

The State of In-House Legal Teams in 2025

What our global survey reveals about the future of legal work

In-house legal teams are facing more demand, tighter budgets, and growing pressure to prove their value. The days of managing legal work through email threads and spreadsheets are over. Legal departments are now expected to operate like any other business function — measurable, efficient, and accountable.

To understand how teams are adapting, we surveyed legal professionals around the world — General Counsel, Legal Operations leaders, and in-house lawyers — to uncover how they’re adopting technology and preparing for what’s next.

1. From Email Chaos to Daily Reliance

In 2025, 88% of legal professionals use legal tech every day. Just a few years ago, nearly half were still running on email and spreadsheets.

That shift signals something bigger: legal tech has moved from “nice to have” to the backbone of modern legal operations. Teams report major gains in organization, visibility, and speed — 79% said they can now clearly show the business what legal is working on.

When technology becomes embedded in daily workflows, it stops being software and starts being infrastructure.

2. The Core Tools Powering Legal Teams

Once adopted, legal tech spreads fast across multiple functions. The most used features:

• Matter management (94%) – the foundation of every legal team.

• Reporting & dashboards (81%) – proving legal’s workload and value.

• Integrations (65%) – connecting Outlook, SharePoint, iManage, and DMS tools.

• Legal intake (59%) – the front door between the business and legal.

• Spend management (36%) – bringing financial visibility into focus.

These results reflect a key truth: adoption accelerates when legal tech serves the whole business, not just the legal team.

3. What Legal Teams Want Next

When asked what they want more of, the answers were clear:

• Automation features to reduce manual work

• More integrations across existing systems

• Pre-configured workflows that don’t require starting from scratch

• Simpler interfaces that anyone can use

• AI — still more curiosity than priority

Legal professionals aren’t chasing flashy new tools. They’re demanding software that saves time, connects systems, and simply works.

4. AI: Hype Meets Reality

AI adoption in legal is growing steadily:

• 41% exploring

• 37% already adopting

• 21% not yet engaging

But expectations remain grounded. Legal teams want AI to review contracts, summarize documents, spot trends, and automate intake routing — not to “replace lawyers.” The focus is on practical automation that creates measurable efficiency gains.

5. The Legal Ops Maturity Curve

Across all responses, one maturity curve emerged:

Most teams are climbing this curve gradually — one improvement at a time. Xakia’s platform supports this progression by letting teams start small, automate where it hurts most, and scale from there.

6. Recommendations for Legal Leaders

1. Automate where it hurts most. Focus first on intake routing, invoice review, and repetitive updates.

2. Start small, measure big. Intake and reporting are quick wins that build credibility and buy-in.

3. Experiment with automation before AI. Incremental efficiency beats overhyped transformation.

The New Legal Standard

In-house legal teams are no longer defined by firefighting. They’re using data, automation, and AI to deliver foresight — and prove their value to the business in real time.

This shift isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.

The only question left is: where is your team on the curve?

👉 Book a demo with Xakia to see how modern in-house teams are building visibility, efficiency, and intelligence into their work.