Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 88% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Haroun: 95% to 98% of enterprise budgets go to human labor

Omar Haroun · How he grew his AI startup from $2M to $20M ARR in 12 months. | Omar Haroun, Co-Founder of Eudia · PMF Show · Mar 19, 2026 · at 1:53

Omar Haroun, co-founder of Eudia, explains the addressable market opportunity for legal AI targeting enterprise labor budgets instead of software budgets.

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“And if you look at certain buyers in the enterprise, and I would include the chief legal officer in this category. But there's many more, by the way, the chief procurement officer, the head of HR, even the CFO. Typically, 95 to 98% of their budget goes to humans, labor, services, not software.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Typically, 95% to 98% of enterprise department budgets for leaders like Chief Legal Officers, Chief Procurement Officers, Heads of HR, and CFOs are spent on human labor and services rather than software.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Omar Haroun's estimate on the March 19, 2026 podcast is substantially accurate in direction and close in magnitude, but slightly overstates the labor/services share for non-legal departments. Established benchmarking studies (ACC, CLOC, Gartner, The Hackett Group, AIHR, and Deloitte) confirm that corporate Legal departments historically allocate ~95% to 98% of total budgets to internal headcount and outside counsel/services (software spend is ~0.6% to 5%). However, for HR, Finance, and Procurement, software spend typically ranges between 3.5% and 8% of operating budgets, putting the labor/services allocation closer to 92% to 96% rather than a strict 95% to 98% across all four functions.

ACC & Major, Lindsey & Africa 2026 Benchmarking Report: In-house legal spend and outside counsel account for 92% to 95%+ of total spend, with tech spend hovering around 3% to 5% (and ~0.6% in CLOC/Wolters Kluwer benchmarks).
AIHR and Hackett Group HR Benchmarks (2024-2026): HR technology accounts for 3.5% to 5.5% of operating budgets, while internal personnel (74.6%) and external services/contractors (15% to 20%) account for ~94% to 96%.
Gartner Finance Benchmarks (2024-2026): Direct technology spend ranges from 4% to 8% of total finance department budget, leaving 92% to 96% for compensation and professional services (audit, tax advisory).
The Hackett Group / Deloitte Procurement Benchmarks (2024-2025): Median procurement teams allocate 90% to 95% of budgets to internal personnel and external services, with software accounting for 5% to 9%.

Checked against

[1] acc.com [2] lexpert.ca [3] legal.io [4] cloc.org [5] cloc.org [6] inhouseops.com [7] legalpracticeintelligence.com [8] bryter.com

Hackett Group HR procurement finance tech spend percentage of budget CLOC legal operations budget benchmark tech software percentage "Association of Corporate Counsel" "budget" "technology" percent labor inside outside Gartner legal department budget technology percentage labor services "finance budget" "personnel" "technology" "Hackett" OR "Gartner" percentage "HR department budget" percentage "technology" "personnel" "labor" Gartner "Gartner" "HR budget" "technology" "personnel" percentage breakdown "Hackett Group" "procurement budget" percentage "technology" "labor"

assessed as of 2026-09-05

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

budget enterprise buyers human labor

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