Legal intelligence: Transforming data into strategic advantage

The legal transformation framework

The transformation progression

Level 1: Information

Powered by Legal Tracker

• Matter cataloguing and classification
• Spend capture and categorisation
• Document repository management
• Contract digitisation and organisation
• Outcome: 30% reduction in outside counsel spend

Level 2: Knowledge

Enhanced by Practical Law and CoCounsel

• Expert legal content across jurisdictions
• Ready-to-use templates for immediate implementation
• AI-powered document analysis and insights
• Intelligent legal research with verified sources
• Outcome — Reduced external counsel dependence

Level 3: Insight

Enabled by Legal Tracker and HighQ Integration

• Comparative spend evaluation
• Performance metrics benchmarking
• Process flow optimisation
• Resource deployment analysis
• Outcome — 60% faster contract cycle times

Level 4: Impact

Delivered through HighQ

• Resource alignment with business priorities
• Predictive risk identification
• Business process acceleration
• Quantifiable value demonstration
• Outcome — 33% of matters handled through self-service portals

Legal Intelligence follows a structured progression that transforms departmental capability and influence. Each stage creates the foundation for the next — converting raw information into actionable insights that ultimately deliver measurable business impact.

Thomson Reuters has engineered a complete intelligence ecosystem where Legal Tracker excels at information management and initial insights, while HighQ transforms those insights into tangible business impact. Together, they create a continuous improvement cycle where intelligence actively shapes strategy, fundamentally transforming legal operations from cost-focused administration to value-generating business partnerships.

The transformation gap: The challenge

Key challenges faced by legal departments

Increasing volumes, static resources | Fragmented visibility | Manual process burden | Strategic value perception | Technology integration

Legal departments today possess unprecedented access to information yet frequently struggle to convert this data into strategic advantage. This implementation divide — the gap between information collection and value creation — presents the central challenge for modern legal operations.

The barrier isn't information scarcity but rather the absence of systems that transform raw data into actionable intelligence. Without this capability, legal teams remain confined to reactive operational cycles rather than driving strategic business initiatives.

Market realities:

• Legal departments managing increasing matter volumes — 65%
• Operating with static or reduced budgets — 59%
• Seeking technology to streamline complex workflows — 75%
• General counsels identifying AI as transformative to legal practice — 42%

The implementation divide in practice

On one side, legal departments have access to vast amounts of data — invoices, matter records, contracts, and communications — yet this information often remains fragmented and underutilised. The essential insights remain locked in disconnected systems or require manual effort to extract.

On the other side lies the potential for strategic impact — data-informed resource allocation, proactive risk management, and measurable business value creation. Yet without the right intelligence systems to bridge this divide, legal departments struggle to translate their information into the strategic outcomes that business leadership increasingly demands.

This divide explains why many legal departments — despite significant investments in information systems — continue to be perceived as cost centres rather than strategic assets. Bridging this gap requires more than just additional data collection; it demands an integrated intelligence approach that systematically transforms information into impact.

The transformation gap: the opportunity

Bridging the implementation divide

With Thomson Reuters:

• Unified information architecture
• Automated analytical processes
• Forward-looking strategic planning
• Enterprise-wide transparency 
• Result — Legal recognised as strategic partner

Without Thomson Reuters:

• Disconnected information systems
• Manual analysis requirements
• Retrospective decision processes
• Compartmentalised visibility 
• Result — Legal viewed as cost centre

• Up to 15% reduction in outside counsel spend in first year 
• Reported 372% ROI over three years 
• Less than 6-month payback period
  - Forrester Total Economic Impact Study 2023

Closing the implementation divide fundamentally transforms legal operations. When departments deploy Thomson Reuters integrated solutions, they establish a seamless progression from information to insight to impact, evolving from tactical responders to strategic business advisors.

Leading legal departments now leverage Thomson Reuters integrated legal intelligence suite to anticipate business needs, optimise resource allocation, and deliver measurable impact — while simultaneously maintaining disciplined cost management. This unified approach eliminates the inefficiencies of disparate systems, combining spend management, workflow automation, document creation, legal know-how, and AI-powered analysis into a comprehensive intelligence capability that scales with your department's needs. 

The HARTMANN Group intelligence journey

START → PHASE 1 (2017) → PHASE 2 (2022) → PHASE 3 (2023) → PHASE 4 (2024) → RESULTS

Fragmented team across 36 countries, nine locations → Legal Tracker implementation - 30% reduction in outside legal spend → HighQ and Contract Express adoption - 4,023 requests processed in 2024, up from 1,700 → Practical Law integration - Enhanced quality and consistency across jurisdictions → CoCounsel AI implementation - Accelerated document analysis and contract review → 33% of matters handled without lawyer involvement, 571% increase in self-service ratio

HARTMANN Group's digital transformation journey began with rigorous analysis rather than assumptions. Head of Commercial Law, Markus Warmholz, first benchmarked his department against industry standards in 2014-2015, revealing both challenges and opportunities.

With legal operations spanning 36 countries and team members across nine locations in six countries, HARTMANN Group's initial discovery was surprising. "We had lawyers in other countries, but we didn't know." This fragmentation created significant challenges, as their enterprise system couldn't provide essential visibility. "We couldn't get any of this out of the previous vendor. We needed something more global to get an overview here in headquarters."

"We couldn't get any of this out of the previous vendor. We needed something more global to get an overview here in headquarters."

Strategic implementation:

HARTMANN Group pursued a sequenced intelligence strategy:

1. Legal Tracker. Selected specifically because most law firms already use it, creating immediate value with minimal onboarding. Implementation took just 4 to 6 weeks with weekly guided calls.
2. HighQ. Implemented for document automation and matter intake, creating a single place where business users could access legal services through a single interface
3. Contract Express. Deployed for standardised document creation, initially for NDAs and expanding to other agreements
4. Practical Law. Added to gain unparalleled know-how and a better starting point, enhancing the quality and consistency of their work across jurisdictions, allowing them to keep more work in-house.
5. CoCounsel. Implemented to leverage AI capabilities for faster research, drafting, and document analysis directly into their Microsoft Teams environment, boosting productivity and ability to handle more complex matters

Business impact

Beyond metrics, the intelligence ecosystem has transformed how the legal team operates. "We can focus more on heavy-duty tasks in-house," explains Warmholz. The team calculated that a one-minute distraction costs a lawyer approximately 10 minutes of lost productivity. By eliminating these interruptions through self-service capabilities, the team has redirected significant resources to strategic work.

Having a centralised suite from one vendor has provided HARTMANN Group with significant operational advantages, from simplified support to seamless integration between products.

The intelligence provided by these systems has also elevated legal's relationship with business leadership. "It is easier to convey and discuss business cases when it comes to insourcing and outsourcing. There's a different awareness when it comes to costs."

Quantified outcomes:

The intelligence ecosystem has delivered remarkable results:

• Up to 30% reduction in outside legal spend for general legal consultancy
• Self-service capability handling 33% of all matters without lawyer involvement
• Reported 571% increase in self-service ratio from 2023 to 2024
• A total of 4,023 requests processed in 2024, compared to 1,700 in the first year
• Automatically generated 450 nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) through Contract Express 450

Looking to the future, HARTMANN Group continues to develop new use cases with their Thomson Reuters suite, particularly focusing on CoCounsel's AI capabilities integrated within their Microsoft Teams environment. "When I can use CoCounsel to search in my Legal Tracker, in Practical Law, and in my HighQ environment with just one chat bot that I can talk to — this is for me the future for legal departments in terms of efficiency.”

Building your transformation ecosystem

Architecting your intelligence infrastructure

Creating an effective legal intelligence ecosystem requires solutions that seamlessly integrate across the information-insight-impact spectrum. Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker, HighQ, Practical Law, and CoCounsel provide the only fully unified architecture in the market that spans this complete progression.

Legal Tracker: Information to insight transformation

Trusted by over 1,800 legal departments globally, Legal Tracker delivers unmatched financial intelligence:

• AI-enhanced e-billing automation eliminating manual review
• Comparative benchmarking against more than £230 billion in legal spend
• Strategic rate optimisation identifying savings opportunities
• Matter tracking that connects spend to outcomes
• Up to 15% reduction in outside counsel spend in year one

HighQ: Insight to impact acceleration

HighQ transforms operational insights into tangible business impact:

• Intuitive one-stop interface for all legal service requests
• Intelligent document creation, reducing contract cycle time by 60%
• Guided self-service workflows for routine legal matters
• Automated triage ensuring requests reach the right resource
• End-to-end visibility from request to completion

Practical Law: Expert knowledge foundation

Maintained by over 650 expert lawyer-editors, Practical Law delivers authoritative, up-to-date legal know-how:

• Legal developments reflected within 48 hours across all major practice areas
• Jurisdiction-specific, market-standard templates reducing research time
• Practical guidance connecting black-letter law to real-world application
• Consistent legal positions across borders and business units

CoCounsel: Intelligent legal analysis

The Thomson Reuters advantage:

Unlike point solutions that address only fragments of the intelligence lifecycle, Thomson Reuters provides a comprehensive ecosystem that:

• Eliminates integration challenges between disparate systems
• Provides enterprise-grade security and compliance capabilities
• Delivers proven implementation methodologies that accelerate ROI
• Offers continuous innovation through substantial R&D investment

Combining advanced GenAI with Thomson Reuters trustworthy content for unmatched legal work:

• Contract review, identifying critical provisions with lawyer-like precision
• Legal research delivering comprehensive answers with cited, verified sources
• Memo drafting that incorporates relevant precedent and legal standards
• Due diligence acceleration without sacrificing accuracy or completeness
• Confidential analysis that never trains on your sensitive legal documents

Thomson Reuters solutions deliver quantifiable business advantage while fundamentally transforming legal operations. By enabling the seamless progression from information to insight to impact, the integrated suite of Thomson Reuters legal solutions elevates legal departments from cost centres to strategic business partners, creating measurable ROI through both cost reduction and value creation.

Begin your legal transformation journey

Thomson Reuters provides a proven methodology for transforming your legal department through intelligence capabilities

Phase 1: capability assessment, weeks 1-4 

• Custom assessment of your current legal operations maturity 
• Gap analysis across information, insight, and impact dimensions 
• Prioritisation matrix based on ROI potential and implementation ease 
• Opportunity identification workshop with Thomson Reuters experts

Phase 2: strategic roadmap, weeks 5-8

• Tailored solution architecture based on prioritised objectives
• Integration planning with existing enterprise systems
• Business case development with clear ROI metrics
• Change management and stakeholder alignment strategy

Phase 3: accelerated implementation, weeks 9-16

• Thomson Reuters proven Fast Start implementation methodology
• Pre-configured templates based on legal department best practices
• Seamless integration starting with Legal Tracker and HighQ, expandable to the full Thomson Reuters suite
• Phased capability release ensuring early wins
• ROI measurement from day one

Your transformation journey

Thomson Reuters has helped thousands of legal departments worldwide transform their operations through intelligence capabilities. Our experts provide comprehensive support throughout your journey:

• Tailored assessment of your current maturity and opportunities
• Strategic roadmap development with clear ROI expectations
• Accelerated implementation with rapid time-to-value
• Continuous innovation, ensuring your capabilities evolve with your needs

Contact us today to begin your legal intelligence transformation journey.

Statistics from Thomson Reuters research (State of Corporate Law Department 2023-2024, Future of Professionals 2024, Legal Department Operations Index, Forrester Total Economic Impact Study 2023) and HARTMANN Group client interviews (2024/25). Results may vary. For informational purposes only. © 2025 Thomson Reuters