Neel Chatterjee of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe was recently asked what he thinks is missing in legal tech. His response was, “Budgeting tools that transcend Excel.”

He later went on to discuss how it seems like lawyers are still “sticking a finger in the air” to get budgets and need help finding the right number and adhering to it. “We need tools that mine the firm for analytics” and can tell you things like, “how much does a motion cost?”

Neel’s comments highlight the need for better budgeting by legal vendors because lawyers get blamed for vendors’ cost overruns. It seems clear there remains plenty of room for innovation — and for tech adoption –in the legal budgeting space.

In addition to being a great trial lawyer, Neel is a straight-shooter and one of the first people I approached when I started doing “proof-of-concept” market research. His insights taught me that it was important to create a system that includes costs-per-task because these metrics can help law firms manage their teams to budget and reward efficient lawyers.