How to create a business case for legal tech in 2027

BD and marketing leaders often face multi-step approval processes when making the case for a new tool, including creating a business case. Whether your approval process relies on the managing partners, executive committee, or finance team, you need a business case with evidence and a clear plan. A strong business case is also the best way to get budget for legal software, whether you're replacing an outdated legal CRM or investing in a law firm CRM for the first time.

This guide walks through how to build a legal tech business case section by section, using Nexl as the worked example. Each step matches a slide in our free business case template, so you can follow along and fill it in as you go.

What is a legal tech business case?

A legal tech business case is a short document or presentation that explains why your firm should invest in a new tool, what it will cost, and what return the firm can expect. It gives decision makers the evidence they need to approve a purchase with confidence.

Strong business cases tend to cover:

• Timing and market trends
• How the firm operates
• What the status quo costs (including incumbent platform costs, and the opportunity costs)
• Firm's requirements
• Recommended solutions
• ROI and success metrics
• Implementation

Many firms present the case as a short slide deck, since that format suits a leadership meeting and is easy to circulate afterward.

Why law firms need a stronger business case for legal software in 2027

AI is freeing up lawyer capacity faster than firms can fill it. At the same time, clients expect to spend less on outside counsel. That means firms will need to win more work to fill existing rosters, requiring a systematic approach to relationships and business development.

According to Wolters Kluwer's Future Ready Lawyer 2026 report, 92% of lawyers use at least one AI tool daily. As legal drafting and research get faster, capacity stops being the main limit on a firm's growth, and the pressure shifts to winning enough work to fill that capacity.

Winning work is also getting harder. Research from the ACC and Everlaw found that 64% of in-house counsel expect AI to reduce their reliance on outside counsel, and Deloitte reports that senior legal leaders expect external legal spend to fall by 20 to 40% over the next three years.

When more firms compete for a smaller pool of work, client relationships become the clearest differentiator. We explore this shift in detail in our whitepaper on how AI moves the constraint on law firm growth from capacity to demand, which is a useful source to cite in the "why now" section of your case.

Step 1: Explain how your firm wins work today

Start your business case by describing how new work comes into your firm, who holds the key relationships, and where information is stored.  

For most firms, the main channels for growth are referrals, direct client relationships held by partners, and cross-selling to existing clients. For each channel, note how much work it brings in and how it is tracked today, even if the answer is "in a spreadsheet" or "nowhere."

If a large share of origination sits with a handful of partners, and some of those partners are within a few years of retirement, put a dollar figure on the revenue they hold. This figure is your concentration risk. Leadership teams often underestimate how exposed the firm is until they see how key personnel risk translates to revenue.

You can strengthen this section by completing our BD Maturity Assessment, which shows where your firm sits on the scale from rainmaker-dependent to systematic. Linking your results in your business case will give decision makers a benchmark alongside your own figures.

Step 2: Quantify the cost of the status quo

Use benchmark research to estimate what your firm loses each year by staying with its current approach. Quantifying the status quo makes an investment easier to approve because leadership can compare the cost of the tool against the cost of inaction.

Rethinking Rainmakers, a Nexl-commissioned benchmark study of 235 BD leaders across 202 professional services firms produced with Camojee, gives you three figures that you can use to create firm-specific numbers.

As an illustration, a firm with $80 million in annual revenue that closed the growth gap would add close to $3 million in revenue a year, and that difference compounds over time. Present these figures as estimates, show your working, and keep your assumptions conservative.

Step 3: Set legal software requirements for IT, risk, and finance to sign off on

List the requirements the new tool must meet and explain why each one matters to the firm. Include the concerns of IT, risk, and finance from the start, since those teams can slow or stop a purchase late in the process.

Speak with IT and risk before you finalize this list. If they help shape the requirements, they are much more likely to support the recommendation when it reaches leadership.

Step 4: Show how the tool fits your firm's AI strategy

Explain how the tool's AI features support your firm's wider AI plans and governance rules. Leadership will want to see that a new purchase will strengthen the firm's AI strategy without adding risk.

Most firms already use AI to speed up drafting, review, and research. A growth system uses AI to prepare meeting briefs, suggest who to follow up with and when, summarize meetings, and turn voice notes into CRM records.

Review these features against your firm's AI governance requirements. Decision makers will want to know where the AI runs, what data it uses, and whether the vendor trains models on firm data. Nexl, never uses firm data to train AI models, and its AI features work inside Outlook and the mobile app, so lawyers don't have to change the way they work.

Step 5: Calculate the ROI of your legal tech investment

Estimate ROI across a few clear value levers, such as tool consolidation, staff time saved, and additional revenue from partner BD. Show each formula so decision makers can test the numbers for themselves.

To show how the time-back formula works, a BD team of four that saves five hours each a week, on an average salary of $90,000, recovers the equivalent of $45,000 a year in staff time. Most vendors can run a custom calculation for your firm.

Include the qualitative benefits alongside the numbers. Relationship data that stays with the firm when a partner retires, faster answers on who knows whom at a target client, and better service for clients are all hard to price but still have value for the firm.

Step 6: Agree on success metrics

Agree on how the firm will measure success before the contract is signed and set a date for the first review. Group your metrics into three areas: adoption, efficiency, and growth.

Adoption covers how many partners are using the platform each month and how many mailboxes are connected. Efficiency covers time saved on data entry and list building, including how quickly the team can find who knows whom, and how many tools the firm has retired. Growth covers pipeline tracked across practice groups, new matters from participating partners, origination spread, and client churn.

Step 7: Create an implementation plan for your law firm CRM

Create a dated implementation plan with clear milestones from kickoff to a firmwide rollout. Many firms roll out in phases, starting with the BD and marketing team, then moving to a group of partners, and finally the wider firm.

A typical plan covers kickoff and project planning, data connection and migration, go-live for the BD team, email marketing setup, partner training, and a 30-day adoption review.

Ask your vendor who will run the implementation and who your point of contact will be. Nexl handles implementation in-house, so firms have one point of accountability from kickoff to go-live.

Once the rest of the case is complete, write an executive summary. It should state the problem, proposal, and expected return in a few short paragraphs.

Download the free business case template

Our legal tech business case template gives you a ready-made structure for every step in this guide, with speaker notes, suggested sources, and ROI formulas on each slide. Nexl is used as the worked example throughout, but you can swap in any tool your firm is evaluating.

If you'd like help with pricing, a custom ROI calculation, or a closer look at how Nexl fits your firm's workflows, book a demo with our team.

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