Legal teams are often seen as necessary, but not strategic; busy, but not influential; helpful, but hard to quantify. That perception isn't a reflection of the work legal teams are doing. It is a reflection of how that work is measured and communicated.
Two recent LinkSquares webinars, Tracking and Presenting Data That Compels and Measuring and Communicating the Organizational Value of Your Legal Team, focused on a simple idea: legal data already contains powerful insights; the challenge is turning those insights into stories leadership actually cares about.
Here is how high-performing legal and contracting teams use their data to drive business impact while getting get full credit for their business value.
Many legal teams track what they do. Fewer track what their work enables.
For example, a legal team might report that it reviewed 1,200 contracts last quarter. That number sounds impressive, but it leaves leadership guessing. Was that good? Was it bad? Did it help the business?
A stronger approach is tying contract volume to outcomes. For example, rather than simply reporting that contract turnaround time decreased by 10 business days, show how that speed reduced average sales cycle length by two weeks, helping revenue close sooner. Same data, different framing, better understanding of legal's value to the business.
Alternately, you can show how legal identified specific clauses in a standard agreement that were consistently redlined, updated those terms to be more acceptable to customers, thereby reducing turnaround time without increasing risk. This story demonstrates how legal is improving its own processes to help everyone (notably sales and finance) hit critical KPIs.
Centralized contract data makes this possible by allowing teams to consistently track cycle time, approvals, and execution dates without manual spreadsheets.
Volume metrics describe the past. Predictive metrics shape decisions. Being able to accelerate business outcomes is how legal demonstrates its value.
For example, don't just show how long deals take to close based on contract type (NDAs should always be faster than sales deals; showing that data isn't insightful unless the reverse is true). Instead, for example, show which customer personas accepted standard contract terms versus the profiles that negotiated specific language -- and how much that slowed down deal closing.
This insight helps sales leaders rethink when to push standard terms and when to plan for extended negotiations, and even how to score leads in the sales pipeline. It stops legal from being asked why deals were slow and starts showing how legal can help speed them up.
You can also feed contract status into a sales forecast. Deals marked as “legal review complete” should have a much higher close rate than those still in negotiation. That signal can help leadership spot at-risk pipeline earlier, provided you can integrate legal data into your CRM.
Tools that automatically tag contract types and negotiation stages make it easier to surface these patterns early, before deals stall. Legal should always be working to prevent problems. How you present data can ensure your team gets credit for the pitfalls they helped the business avoid.
Not everyone needs the same metrics, and trying to show everything to everyone usually means nothing lands.
Detailed operational dashboards, showing request volume and workload distribution, should only be for internal legal use to identify bottlenecks and process improvements. For executives, present a single slide showing contract cycle time trends and their impact on revenue timing. For finance, highlight outside counsel spend distribution and cost savings.
It's all the same data, but it can be used to tell many different concise, targeted stories.
Contract dashboards that can be filtered and tailored by the audience make this approach sustainable instead of time-consuming.
Data without interpretation creates confusion. Data with context builds trust.
For instance, if contract turnaround time increases quarter over quarter, leadership might assume legal performance is slipping. Trend analysis might reveal a different cause: a spike in complex enterprise deals with nonstandard terms that require longer negotiations.
By correlating turnaround time to the shift in deal mix, legal can redirect the conversation from performance concerns to resource planning and prioritization. If we're chasing more up-market deals, we need more legal headcount to keep these complex agreements moving.
When legal metrics update automatically (as in, don't need manual Excel sheet inputs), teams can spend more time explaining what changed and less time defending the numbers.
Legal teams earn influence when they consistently show how their work accelerates revenue, reduces friction, and manages risk.
That means choosing metrics that reflect business outcomes, explaining them clearly, and sharing them proactively. When legal talks about impact instead of activity, leadership listens.
If you want to hear legal experts discuss these best practices in detail, tune in to the webinars below:
If you want a personalized demo to see how LinkSquares enables these tactics and helps legal teams turn contract data into executive-ready insights that benefit the business and underline legal's impact, contact LinkSquares today!