Acritas PEER model

Helping legal departments demonstrate the value they deliver.

Acritas discovered 25% of organizations have no metrics in place to measure their legal departments. Analysis of the 75% using metrics revealed an over-emphasis on cost (33%) as opposed to proactive risk management, effective legal support and creating value through efficiency – a clear mismatch with legal department goals.

The Acritas PEER model^TM was developed by Lisa Hart Shepherd (CEO) to provide a credible scientific solution to advancing legal department management.

Based on real-world case-studies and best practice measurements, from Sharplegal interviews with over 1,000 legal departments globally, the Acritas PEER model^TMwill enable legal departments to confidently develop and benchmark performance metrics and better demonstrate the true value delivered to their organizations, not just the cost.

To download the Acritas PEER model^TM please complete the form at the top right of this page.

To access available benchmark data on internal and external legal spend, no. of lawyers and remuneration you can request to take part in Sharplegal by contacting Kayleigh Lowes on klowes@acritas.com or by calling Acritas' head office on +44 808 178 3020.
A member of our research interviewing team will then check your eligibility and schedule your 20 min interview at a time that is convenient.

Acritas research shows that in-house legal teams have three clear key goals: A metrics-based framework to measure value

1. Proactive risk management through preventative measures
2. Provision of effective legal support
3. Driving more value from legal spend through efficiency

The Acritas PEER model™ incorporates these three goals and adds an extra review phase to evaluate practices and develop a virtuous circle of improvement. More importantly, this creates a structure for measuring improvement.

Next stage

The model will evolve in the future to include forecasting and to look at the early impact of new technologies including artificial intelligence, for those utilizing those types of technologies.

In the next iteration, we also plan to develop two versions of this model, an entry level model and an advanced model, through gaining feedback from some of the legal departments who are trialing the model.

We already have, in our Legal Benchmarks Tool (login required please contact Kayleigh Lowes), online calculators to enable you to benchmark some of the core metrics in the model. It is our intention to develop an interactive dashboard of all the metrics, to enable you to store and benchmark your performance and produce a report.

We also plan to cascade these metrics down to the supply chain, the law firms and other external providers, to enable you to incentivize suppliers to perform better on measures which align with your own areas of focus, rather than cost alone.