Do Canadian Legal Teams Know Where Their Data Is? Data Control and Auditability With Outside Counsel

If a legal department had to switch firms tomorrow, could it quickly identify where their data is and what was sent out recently? Is there a centralized source of truth?

For many large organizations in Canada, those questions are harder to answer than they should. Legal teams sometimes lack a way to track who they’re working with and what is taking place at any given time.

It’s normal and reasonable for these organizations to use outside counsel. However, they should provide access while retaining ownership. Lacking control and auditability exposes organizations to unnecessary risk.

Outside Counsel Can Make Legal Data Harder To Track and Control

Most legal teams rely on third parties. According to the 2026 Canadian In-House Counsel Report from CBA In-House Lawyers and Mondaq, 37% of Canadian organizations expect to grow their spend with outside counsel (up from 34% a year ago), compared to 20% that expect to spend less (down from 22%). That 17-point gap is the highest margin in the history of the survey.

The same report shows why this can quickly turn into a data management problem. Canadian legal departments rely on outside counsel for expert advice in new areas (70%), litigation support (60%), and legal assurance or opinions (60%). Capacity is also playing a larger role, with 60% saying they outsource when internal resources are insufficient, up from 55% a year ago. As work moves outside the department for both specialized expertise and simple bandwidth, the burden of tracking shared information grows. Meanwhile, data privacy is becoming harder to ignore: 53% of respondents described it as a technology challenge, up from 38% in 2025.

The U.S.-based 2026 Annual Litigation Trends Survey from Norton Rose Fulbright shows how quickly this can extend beyond operations. Cybersecurity and data privacy was the leading area of increased exposure in 2025, with 38% of respondents saying exposure deepened over the past 12 months. The report noted how cybercriminals are increasingly targeting third-party service providers and businesses, prompting regulators to focus on third-party compliance.

A Better Model for Outside Counsel: Give Access While Keeping Control

In light of the way Canadian organizations use outside counsel, limiting third-party access isn’t the solution to the data risks involved. Rather, a better model for working with outside counsel is necessary. Instead of fragmented handoffs and a lack of visibility for data shared with third parties, legal teams can move toward a model that centralizes data and improves auditability.

Some simple questions can determine if the model is working.

• Can you identify every outside firm that currently has access to matter data?

• Can you see what information each firm has received for a given matter?

• Is that data housed in a centralized environment, or spread across separate systems and handoffs?

• Can your team change or revoke access quickly when a matter changes?

• Can you tell, without a manual reconstruction effort, where a matter stands and what has already been done?

• If you needed to move work to a different firm tomorrow, could you do it without starting from scratch?

• Do you have a clear audit trail showing who accessed what and when?

Legal departments should give outside counsel access but make that access easier to manage. True data ownership is the key. When that happens, visibility and auditability improve, and data is shared in an environment they control, allowing adjustments to happen quickly as matters change. It’s a more practical, visible, and auditable model for working with outside counsel.

And this is where a centralized platform can make a difference. Casepoint brings legal hold, eDiscovery, data management, and more into a centralized data discovery platform to help you take control of your data, unifying legal and compliance workflows. It’s all in a secure environment that benefits from FedRAMP® High and DOD Impact Level 5 (IL5) and IL6 — no other legal platform has any of those security standards.