With legal budgets under scrutiny and AI on the rise, corporate legal departments are rethinking how they measure value, manage outside counsel and position themselves as business drivers—not just cost centers.
That shift is increasingly urgent as in-house teams face mounting pressure to cut spending, deliver faster results and justify every invoice. Chris Ochs, vice president of legal operations at UnitedLex, has seen this transformation firsthand—working with Fortune 500 legal departments to uncover legal waste, optimize law firm engagement and build more accountable operations.