Opinion Column

How do you make your legal management more efficient?

Nov 26, 2019
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One of the greatest challenges facing legal departments today lies in how to be more efficient. Factors such as the increase in work that was traditionally carried out by external legal firms, limited resources, pressure for reduction in costs and costs, requirements of specialties that not many lawyers have, efficient budget management and predictability, more complex regulatory environment and a desired digital transformation, are all elements with which these areas must live.

According to Thomson Reutersin its 2019 Legal Tracker LDO Index Benchmarking and Trends Report, a 68% of the legal departments face increasing demand for legal work and it is a trend that has been marked in recent years.

In addition, according to the same report, 90% of the legal departments qualify as high priority the control of the costs incurred in their areaaspects that make the path to efficiency difficult.

Therefore, the functions of the legal department are increased while staff and resources generally remain unchanged....

So... How to increase efficiency and productivity?

An alternative, which some legal departments have already adopted, has to do with the figure of Legal Operations, which as we have already mentioned in previous articles, is a role that mainly revolves around people, processes and technology, allowing:

  • Mefficiency and productivitysince it focuses on non-legal issues, allowing lawyers to focus on activities that bring legal value to the company.
  • Implement new technologies to automate processes and improve productivity, such as documentary management and knowledge management. Tools that lead to greater department efficiency as they reduce the time to search for information, knowledge, templates and forms.
  • Count one multidisciplinary vision strategic planning, finance management and project management.
  • Define business processes, activities and professionals which allow legal departments to serve their customers more effectively by applying business practices and techniques for the delivery of legal services.

An investigation carried out by Thomson Reuters in 2017 he threw that:

  • More than 40% of small legal departments (those with up to U$D4 million external costs) had at least one person at Legal Operations.
  • This was increasing to 48% in middle legal departments (those with up to U$D 15 million external expenditure).
  • 93% for large legal departments. This concludes that not only the large legal departments have a team of Legal Operations.

In fact, according to a survey by Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), 50% of the domestic legal departments that participated had at least one person assigned to the role of Legal Operations, which results in a significant increase from 20% in the previous year.

This is why Alster We have specialized in developing and even outsourcing this role and functions, but we have also been able to internalize the best practices that, organisations such as Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC)they promote at the global level.

Moreover, CLOC has been an active participant in defining the role of "Legal Ops," creating a framework of work and establishing 12 key competencies to achieve a level of maturity that allows the internal legal department to be more efficient and generate added value for the company.

  1. Financial Management
  2. Vendor Management
  3. Cross-Functional Alignment
  4. Technology & Process Support
  5. Service Delivery & Alternative Support Models
  6. Organizational Design, Support & Management
  7. Communications
  8. Data Analytics
  9. Litigation Support & IP Management
  10. Knowledge Management
  11. Information Governance & Records Management
  12. Strategic Planning

 In turn, ACC (Association of Corporate Counsel) has defined 14 central competences, in model of operations::

  1. Change Management
  2. Compliance
  3. Contract Management
  4. eDiscovery & Litigation Management
  5. External Resources Management
  6. Financial Management
  7. Information Governance (Record Management)
  8. Internal Resources Management
  9. Intellectual Property Management
  10. Knowledge Management
  11. Metrics and Analytics
  12. Project and Process Management
  13. Strategic Planning and Legal Operations Leadership
  14. Technology Management

In examining these resources and competencies, it is clear that in both models the objective is to build an efficient internal legal department.

The purpose of these central competences is to think differently about ways to generate commercial impact. Each company prioritizes investment to advance maturity in specific skills depending on the objectives, timeliness and resources of the company.

Our recommendation...

Working on the process towards efficiency requires determining the degree of maturity in which your legal department is located.

Therefore, in Alster We have created a Madurez Index Test which will allow you:

  • Know the level of your team in terms of the evaluation dimensions created by CLOC and ACC Legal Ops.
  • Get a reference point to compare the maturity in the management of your legal department with others in industry.
  • To know the breakdown of the skills measured at three levels: foundational, advanced and mature.
  • Get a road map to identify opportunities for improvement.

The effective implementation of such functions produces benefits that improve the productivity and profitability of the internal legal department allowing the team to demonstrate its value for the business:

  • The introduction of and KPis allow to make measurements and benchmarking of processes for continuous improvement.
  • Standardization and automation of administrative or repetitive tasks so that the team can focus on the work that brings the most value.
  • Consistent use of technology and processes.
  • More robust, transparent and data and information with external suppliers and advisers to maximize the value of these links.

Only by having quantifiable clarity of the place where your legal department is located will it give way to think about the strategies and actions to be carried out to achieve efficiency and quality service.

We invite you to perform our Madurez Index Test so you can know how prepared your legal management is to meet the challenges of the future.

By Guillermo Teibo, CIO in Alster.