One on One with Huron Consulting Group's Bob Rowe

Bob Rowe, the new lead of Huron Legal, says companies are taking a closer look at legal department spending these days, an area that until recently was mostly insulated from company-wide belt tightening measures. One particular area rife with cost-cutting opportunities is the document discovery process. Rowe estimated that the old way, discovery alone could represent 70 percent of the costs associated with a big legal case. Rowe says new technologies are allowing lawyers to focus on being lawyers, and save bundles of cash in the process.

Consulting: What are some of the challenges facing legal departments today?

Rowe: If you're a general counsel you're facing some severe cost control issues. As most people who have been in the industry over the last decade have seen, it used to be the legal department was considered somewhat separate from other cost centers, but now you see procurement stepping in and treating the legal department like any other cost center, making demands in terms of cost control and those types of constraints. At the same time you're seeing risk rise, so we've been trying to address those both from a cost containment and risk reduction aspect. The economic downturn simply accelerated those issues. They were always present, but now you're seeing general counsels being held responsible not only for the outcome of the case or investigation but doing it in a cost-effective manner.