Potential Projects: Benchmarks
In recent posts, I focused on a strategic planning framework, data gathering and creating a potential projects inventory. This will yield a portfolio of potential projects. To arrive at your final 3 focus projects for the year, you will need to conduct an analysis of the information you’ve gathered. I also recommend surveying the department to benefit from the team’s collective thoughts on prioritization.
Benchmarks help identify areas for attention, directing data gathering, formulating questions, determining the potential solution set, and prioritizing projects. Company-specific nuances matter, but when a company deviates significantly from peers, the gap is worth understanding and, if needed, remediated. Relevant case studies and KPIs round out this analysis.
A few good benchmark and KPI resources are shown in the graphic. For live links visit the blog at [Link].
Here are a few good resources:
Benchmarks
- ACC Law Department Management Benchmarking Report 2026
- CLOC State of the Industry Report 2026
- 18th Annual Law Department Operations Survey Report, Blickstein Group, 2025
- Gartner Legal Score Planning Tool
- Thomson Reuters’ Legal Operations Department Index 2025
KPIs
How does a benchmark study help with common challenges? Let’s take an example:
Resource Challenges: One example is legal team size. At times, due to organic business growth, legal headcount grows quickly with hiring focused on immediate need and then the needs evolve. Other times, you just can’t get additional headcount and need to find a way to recalibrate workload to avoid burnout.
A longstanding metric in the Association for Corporate Counsel Law Department Management Benchmarking Report is lawyers per $1B revenue. You can match your ratio to the relevant respondent size in the report to see where you fall. If the top level summary suggests an imbalance, you can explore further by looking at:
- Lawyer count supporting each revenue stream and corporate functions to see if there is an imbalance.
- Purchase an industry sector data cut for a closer demographic fit.
- In the report explore additional metrics that resonate from exploratory conversations (see Plan and Land).
Start with the story you are telling and think about which data points support the narrative. For example, if you are trying to advance in a functional area, and a maturity model shows you are lagging competition in that area, showing how you stack up can bolster the business case.
Do you have a favorite resource? Let us know in the comments.
For more on this topic, see PLI Legal Ops Institute 2025 - Panel 3💡 Turning Legal Data into Business Insight (December 2025).
