Corporate legal teams know the drill: juggling external counsel feels like herding cats while your budget spirals and your inbox overflows. You’re putting out fires instead of preventing them, and somehow you’re expected to do more with less every quarter. Delta Air Lines found themselves in exactly this situation—until they discovered a solution that actually worked.
Jump to ↓
When managing external counsel becomes impossible
Enter CoCounsel Legal
Delta’s journey with CoCounsel Legal
The results speak for themselves
Beyond the numbers
Your next move
When managing external counsel becomes impossible
Picture this: You’re coordinating with law firms across different time zones, each using their own systems and billing practices. Email threads stretch for miles. Spreadsheets multiply like rabbits. And somewhere in that chaos, important deadlines slip through the cracks while legal costs climb higher each month.
That’s where Delta Air Lines found themselves. Their legal team was drowning in administrative work, spending more time managing processes than practicing law. They needed visibility into their legal spend, better coordination with external partners, and most importantly, a way to prove their department’s value to the business.
The old way of doing things—cobbling together email chains, Excel files, and hope—wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Enter CoCounsel Legal
CoCounsel Legal isn’t just another software platform promising to fix everything. It’s a comprehensive legal operations solution from Thomson Reuters that actually addresses the real problems corporate legal teams face every day. Think matter management, e-billing, and analytics that make sense—all in one place that plays nicely with the other Thomson Reuters tools you’re already using.
What makes it different? It works the way legal professionals actually work, not the way software engineers think they should work. No more forcing your team to adapt to clunky interfaces or workflows that make no sense in the real world.
The platform gives you robust spend tracking without the complexity, streamlined invoice management without the headaches, and powerful analytics that you can actually understand and use.
Delta’s journey with CoCounsel Legal
Delta didn’t just flip a switch and hope for the best. They approached their CoCounsel Legal implementation with specific goals: get control of external counsel relationships, see where their money was going, and free up their lawyers to do actual legal work instead of administrative busywork.
The real game-changer was how smoothly CoCounsel Legal worked with Delta’s existing Thomson Reuters setup. By connecting it with Westlaw and Practical Law, they created a unified workspace where legal research, matter management, and spend tracking all lived together. No more jumping between systems or wondering if everyone was working with the same information.
The implementation team didn’t just install software and walk away. They worked closely with Delta’s legal operations team to make sure the platform fit their actual workflows, not some theoretical ideal of how legal work should happen.
The results speak for themselves
Here’s where things get interesting. Delta didn’t just save money—they saved over a million dollars through better spend tracking and smarter negotiations with external counsel. But the real story isn’t just about cutting costs; it’s about finally having the visibility to make smart decisions about legal spend.
The administrative burden that was crushing their lawyers? Cut by at least 30%. That time went straight back into strategic legal work that actually moved the business forward. The platform’s automated workflows eliminated the mundane tasks that used to eat up attorney hours.
Delta also brought more than $200,000 worth of legal work back in-house annually. With better visibility into what external counsel was actually doing, they could identify work that their internal team could handle more efficiently.
The data insights from Legal Tracker changed how Delta’s legal team operates. Instead of reacting to budget surprises, they could see problems coming and fix them before they became expensive mistakes. They could track progress against goals, handle reconciliations without the usual drama, and actually collaborate effectively with both external counsel and other departments like finance.
The integration with Microsoft’s Power BI turned their legal data into visual dashboards that executives could actually understand. No more struggling to explain why legal costs fluctuate or what the legal department actually does for the business.
Streamline and save with GenAI-powered spend management software
Legal Tracker AI
Beyond the numbers
Delta’s success shows what happens when you implement technology that actually fits how legal work gets done. The platform didn’t just solve their immediate problems—it created new capabilities that made their entire legal operation more strategic.
External counsel relationships improved because communication became clearer and billing became transparent. Internal stakeholders gained confidence in the legal department’s ability to manage costs and deliver results. Most importantly, Delta’s legal team could finally be proactive instead of constantly playing catch-up.
Your next move
Delta Air Lines proved that the right legal management platform can change everything. When you implement a comprehensive solution that handles matter management, spend tracking, and external counsel coordination without creating new headaches, the results are clear: significant cost savings, better efficiency, and strategic insights that benefit your entire organization.
The secret isn’t finding technology that does everything—it’s finding technology that integrates seamlessly with how you already work. When legal operations actually support legal work instead of getting in the way, everyone wins.
Ready to see how CoCounsel Legal can change your legal operations? Download the complete Delta Air Lines case study to learn exactly how they achieved these results and how your organization can do the same.
