Based on insights from BarkerGilmore’s October 2025 webinar. Measuring legal department performance requires looking beyond costs and activity to the business outcomes legal leadership helps achieve.
Contributors: Marla Persky | Audrey Rubin | Tim Fraser
General Counsel have long faced the challenge of demonstrating the legal department’s value to CEOs, boards, and other business leaders. Traditional measures, including outside counsel spending, budget adherence, and matter volume, provide important operational information but rarely capture the full contribution of an effective legal function.
As expectations of legal leadership evolve, the question is no longer simply whether the department is managing legal matters efficiently. It is whether the legal function is helping the organization operate more effectively, reduce enterprise risk, and achieve strategic objectives.
Demonstrating legal department value requires connecting legal work to measurable business outcomes, including cost savings, operational efficiency, risk reduction, revenue enablement, and strategic execution. For General Counsel, the ability to quantify and communicate those contributions is becoming an essential executive leadership capability.
From Business Partner to Value Creator
The evolution of the legal function reflects a fundamental shift in how organizations define effective legal leadership. Historically, legal departments were primarily viewed as protectors of the enterprise, responsible for managing disputes, ensuring compliance, and preventing legal exposure. Over time, the role expanded to include closer collaboration with business leaders and participation in strategic decision-making.
Today, leading General Counsel are taking the next step: positioning the legal department as a measurable contributor to enterprise value.
Marla Persky, BarkerGilmore Strategic Advisor and Executive Coach, distinguished between the two roles during a discussion with senior legal executives: “Being a value creator is what you achieve.”
The distinction is important. Serving as a business partner describes how the legal department engages with the organization. Creating value describes the results of that engagement.
Tim Fraser, Chief Legal Officer of Toshiba North America, described how value creation became the organizing principle for transforming the company’s legal function. Rather than approaching each matter exclusively through a legal or compliance lens, Tim encouraged the team to consider a broader question: “What creates the most business value?”
Applying that question consistently can change how legal departments allocate resources, evaluate technology investments, manage outside counsel, and prioritize strategic initiatives. Legal protection remains essential, but the department’s contribution extends to helping the business achieve better outcomes.
Measuring Legal Department Value Through Business Outcomes
One of the most common challenges for General Counsel is selecting performance measures that resonate with executive leadership. Traditional legal metrics often emphasize workload, departmental spending, or internal productivity. While useful for managing operations, such measures may not explain how legal work affects enterprise performance.
Audrey Rubin, former Chief Operating Officer of Aon’s international law department and former Chief Legal Officer, advocated measuring results in terms business leaders recognize: “What saves money, or saves time, or gets the job done better, brings the revenue in.”
Audrey shared an example involving an organization’s mergers and acquisitions process. By mapping the workflow across legal and business teams, the company identified unnecessary delays, duplicated activities, and inefficient handoffs. Addressing those issues accelerated transaction completion by eight days while reducing outside counsel expenses.
The improvement was not simply a legal department efficiency gain. Faster transaction execution created measurable business value.
Similar opportunities exist across contract management, regulatory compliance, litigation prevention, and business operations. A streamlined contract approval process may accelerate revenue recognition. Better coordination with compliance teams may reduce recurring claims. More effective outside counsel management can lower expenses without compromising the quality of legal representation.
The most useful legal department KPIs connect operational improvements to financial or strategic outcomes.
| Area of Value | Potential Performance Measures |
|---|---|
| Financial efficiency | Outside counsel savings, reduced legal expenses, budget performance |
| Operational effectiveness | Contract cycle times, transaction completion times, process improvements |
| Risk reduction | Avoided or reduced claims, litigation trends, regulatory exposure |
| Revenue enablement | Faster contract execution, reduced delays in commercial transactions |
| Strategic contribution | Support for acquisitions, market expansion, and business transformation |
Not every contribution can be translated into an exact dollar amount. Nevertheless, establishing a clear connection between legal activity and business outcomes provides a more meaningful assessment of departmental performance.
Creating Value Requires Rethinking How Legal Work Gets Done
Measuring performance is only part of the equation. General Counsel must also identify opportunities to improve how legal services are delivered.
Operational inefficiencies often develop gradually as organizations expand, responsibilities become fragmented, and processes grow more complicated. Legal departments may inherit workflows that were designed for a different business environment or continue performing activities without evaluating their current value.
Audrey emphasized the importance of examining processes from the perspective of both legal professionals and internal business partners. Understanding where delays occur, why work is duplicated, and how responsibilities are transferred can reveal opportunities for improvement.
The approach also requires distinguishing between work that demands senior legal expertise and activities that can be standardized, automated, or delegated. When highly experienced attorneys spend substantial time on routine administrative processes, organizations may be underutilizing valuable resources.
Technology, including contract lifecycle management systems and artificial intelligence, can support greater efficiency. However, successful transformation begins with understanding the business problem rather than adopting technology for its own sake.
For General Counsel, the objective should be to create a legal operating model that directs resources toward the activities with the greatest impact on enterprise performance.
Communicating Legal Value to the CEO and Board
Even when a legal department delivers meaningful improvements, executive leadership may not fully recognize the contribution unless results are communicated effectively.
A report showing the number of contracts reviewed or legal matters resolved provides limited insight into business impact. By contrast, demonstrating that contract cycle times declined, transaction execution accelerated, or recurring litigation decreased offers a clearer connection to organizational performance.
The most effective General Counsel communicate legal department performance in the language of the business, emphasizing financial outcomes, operational improvements, strategic contributions, and risk management.
Such communication also strengthens the legal function’s credibility. When CEOs and boards understand how legal leadership contributes to enterprise objectives, the department becomes more closely associated with business performance rather than exclusively with cost and compliance.
The shift requires more than improved reporting. General Counsel must establish meaningful performance measures, develop a culture of continuous improvement, and ensure legal priorities remain aligned with organizational strategy.
The Strategic Value of Legal Leadership
The most effective legal departments are not defined solely by the absence of legal problems or the ability to operate within budget. Legal leadership creates value by helping organizations make better decisions, execute more efficiently, manage risk, and pursue strategic opportunities.
For General Counsel, demonstrating that contribution requires a deliberate approach to measurement, operational improvement, and executive communication. The goal is not to quantify every activity, but to identify the outcomes that matter most to the business and demonstrate how the legal function helps achieve them.
As expectations continue to evolve, the ability to connect legal expertise with measurable enterprise value will increasingly distinguish strategic General Counsel from traditional legal advisors.
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