U.S. Law Firms Not Fully Prepared for GDPR Compliance, Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions Survey Shows

Global News

11
Jun
2018

Editor

A majority (90%) of U.S. law firms surveyed by Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions say data privacy and security are among their highest priorities. However, less than half (47%) feel fully prepared to address the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements that went into effect on May 25.

Another 16% of respondents said they were somewhat prepared and more than a third (37%) had made no specific preparations.

“Law firms, along with their corporate legal and legal operations counterparts, have made progress in readying themselves for GDPR, but there is still significant work to do,” said Barry Ader, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions. “Given the substantial financial penalties imposed by the European Union for noncompliance, law firms and their corporate clients must work together to harmonize their data privacy and security policies and processes.” 

Fewer than half of respondents (43%) had assigned a Data Protection Officer, a requirement of many organizations under GDPR. However, nearly 60% had assigned an individual, team or outside consultant to lead GDPR compliance efforts. Approximately 72% of those surveyed were also investing in cybersecurity solutions due to the new regulation. And 67% said they host annual data security training with employees or had performed training in the past 3 years. Seventy-four mid-to large-sized U.S. law firms responded to the May survey.

Ader noted ELM Solutions has identified seven steps organizations and law firms should be taking to ensure they are in full compliance with GDPR to avoid the hefty financial and reputational penalties that will accompany violations. For more information on GDPR and compliance best practices, please visit ELM Solutions’ GDPR Resource Hub.

Earlier this year Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions announced it has added comprehensive spend management capabilities to its award-winning Passport Office Companion solution. ELM Solutions introduced Office Companion with matter management to legal and insurance claims professionals in 2017 to help enhance their user experience.

Its unique modular architecture and state of the art web technologies allow Passport’s spend and matter management capabilities to be extended within the Microsoft® Office Suite to support a wide range of legal workflows. Approximately sixty percent of legal professionals’ daily work is performed within the Microsoft Office Suite according to research by IDC and McKinsey. 

Passport Office Companion’s new spend management capabilities include invoice review, adjustment, approval, and rejection as well as the ability to drill down into details of an invoice at the line item. In addition, other key features, including invoice summary information and adjustment history are included to easily provide visibility and management of invoices.

Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions describes itself as “the market-leading provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management and legal analytics solutions” and its clients include corporate legal, insurance claims departments and major law firms worldwide.

Passport was the highest rated ELM solution in the 2017 Hyperion Marketview™ Legal Market Intelligence Report. Other offerings from the company include the LegalVIEW® portfolio of legal analytics solutions. This is based upon the industry’s largest and most comprehensive legal spend database, with more than $100 billion in invoices. 

Wolters Kluwer announced global revenues for 2017 of more than Euros 4.4 billion for 2017.