In the 50 law departments of companies with the most revenue that have responded to the 2011 General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey, 36 of them report a matter management system. It dismays me that 14 of them (28%) did not report a system, but that may be because the person who completed the survey did not know it, did not care enough to find out, rushed by the question, or did not want to disclose something they consider a proprietary advantage.
Of the same group of 50, the smallest being $4.7 billion of revenue last year, three reported that they have a customized system developed in-house. I am surprised that those legacy efforts survive from back in the day when internal IT shops said they could write a better system and keep it up.
This early sample may not be representative of the universe of large law departments. Stay tuned for findings from hundreds more law departments. Even so, this modest finding does make one wonder about a market where perhaps a third of the potential licensees of matter management software have not done so (or not reported they have done so).