As General Counsels and legal department leaders, you're already managing four critical responsibilities: delivering effective legal advice, operating efficiently, protecting your organization from risk, and enabling business strategy. You know the value your department creates across all these dimensions. Yet, in many organizations, legal is seen as a cost center and not a growth enabler.
The Value Disconnect
The reason for this lies in a fundamental disconnect. While legal departments pursue strategic goals across all four areas, most measure and report only spend and time metrics. This narrow focus undermines the broader value story, leaving executive leadership and the business with an incomplete picture of legal's true contribution. When the only metrics you share are about cost reduction and hours logged, this inadvertently reinforces the very narrative you're trying to change.
The Thomson Reuters Institute's Value Alignment Strategic Toolkit provides the resources you need to bridge this gap. Built on proprietary benchmark data from hundreds of legal departments, proven strategic frameworks, and practical guidance from industry leaders, this comprehensive toolkit helps you elevate how you define, measure, and communicate the full value your legal department delivers.
What the Toolkit Enables You to Do
The Value Alignment Strategic Toolkit empowers you to move beyond traditional cost-focused metrics to tell your complete value story. You'll learn how to:
- Set clear ambitions for your legal department that resonate with business leaders
- Establish goals that directly align with enterprise strategy
- Develop metrics that demonstrate value creation rather than just cost reduction
The toolkit provides practical resources to assess your department's current metrics maturity, enhance your data collection methods, and develop compelling reporting that showcases success across all dimensions of value. You'll discover how to bring the voice of your stakeholders into strategic planning, benchmark your performance against relevant peer data, and adopt a proactive approach to positioning legal as a strategic business partner.
Why Now?
In 2025, the pressure to demonstrate value has never been greater. Our research shows that GCs are mentioning "value" three times more frequently in their strategic priorities than in previous years. Business transformation is accelerating, regulatory complexity is increasing, and technology is reshaping how legal services are delivered. In this environment, continuing to rely on cost and time metrics alone isn't just insufficient – it's actively harmful to your department's strategic position.
Next Steps
The Value Alignment Strategic Toolkit provides the framework, tools, and confidence you need to transform how your legal department is perceived and valued. It's time to move from defending your budget to demonstrating your impact, from reporting costs to revealing value, and from being seen as a necessary expense to being recognized as an essential strategic partner.
Your legal department creates value every day across multiple dimensions. This toolkit ensures that value is finally visible, measurable, and undeniable.
Ready to transform how your legal department is valued? Explore the Value Alignment Strategic Toolkit and start telling your complete value story.
