Legal operations professionals are the cornerstone in any corporate legal department with wide ranging impact across an organization. They are the process visionaries who make sure the legal work gets done on-time and on-budget, that the right stakeholders are included, risk is identified and mitigated, and that the best technology and service partners are tapped to make everything run smoothly. 

When it comes to working with outsourced service providers from managed services or alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), there is both a science and art to managing the vendor relationship to extract maximum value.  Done right, the outsourced relationship can bring tremendous support and expertise to the legal operations function as well as other departments and external law firms.  Handled poorly, the outsourcing effort can fail, creating unnecessary risk, reflecting negatively on the legal operations team and other teams within the organization. 

So how can legal operations pivot to extract maximum value from its outsourced service providers and ensure success?  By focusing on five key areas including Building Trust, Communication, Metrics and Reporting, Active Engagement, and Honesty. 

Building Trust

If trust cannot be established between legal operations and the outsourcing provider, the relationship is doomed; trust is a two-way street.  The outsourcer must consistently and predictably provide excellent communication, quality work, and accountability with proper metrics and reporting to back it up.  All of this instills confidence in their services.  However, the legal operations person also has to become an internal advocate for the outsourcer, someone within the company who is committed to their success. Change can be frustrating so legal operations must ensure that all of the internal stakeholders remain informed and involved as the relationship grows. 

Whether it’s a one-off project or a long-term managed services contract, the legal operations professional has the power to be a champion of the outsourcing effort.  Legal operations often has to make the case for outsourcing, to show proof of concept, anticipated value, and a vision for how it can work best.  There may be some initial resistance and objections at the company, and a preference to use in-house resources.  Legal operations needs to be vocal about the reasons and benefits for outsourcing in order to overcome and address concerns. Service providers need to be very aware that their champion will also be the person taking the brunt of criticism when partners are not performing up to expectations, so their goals must include supporting that champion proactively and substantively wherever possible.

At the outset of the relationship, the provider needs to get connected to the right people and necessary information.  Their client contact within legal operations must help get them what they need to get them off to a flying start.  When both the client and the outsourcing company trust each other and have one another’s backs, the relationship really takes off. 

Legal operations people working at large organizations often face a long process to get an outsourced vendor approved for a Master Services Agreement.  Therefore, it behooves them to support the services provider so that they are able to leverage that resource to the hilt once they finally have the agreement in place.  The company doesn’t need multiple vendors if it makes the most of the ones it has vetted.  Once vendors are approved, give them the training, information, and access they need to succeed.  Document the process with playbooks, briefing documents and workflow maps to establish clarity and uniformity.  Ensure that the company’s legal operations team and in-house lawyers are on hand to provide quality control at key junctures.  Any changes in process, even slight modifications, need to be checked and approved.

Communication

Communication with outsourced providers is more than emails, conference and phone calls – it’s a mindset and modus operandi.  The communication flow must be immediate and mutual between legal operations and the external resource regardless of the information being shared.  This includes sharing good news, relaying bad news, or discussing a process change.

From a troubleshooting standpoint, if an issue or problem arises, the outsourcing company should notify the client immediately and vice versa.  By definition, the outsourcing company has one degree of separation from the company itself, so delayed notification can cause the issue to get exacerbated and potentially more out-of-control.  Communicating the problem promptly and clearly allows for a solution to be devised so resolution comes more swiftly.  Quick issue notification, communication, and resolution are primary factors in building trust in the relationship and being a true partner.

Communication is also crucial from a billing standpoint, and the onus is on the outsourcing company to keep legal operations contacts informed of the financial status of ongoing projects.  Perhaps the work is clicking along fine but the bills are totaling up much higher than the budget allows – that’s a problem.  Or maybe there is not enough work being supplied by the client and the budget is not being used to its full extent; the outsourcer needs to communicate that, too. 

As a legal services provider, there is value in establishing a client’s preferred method of communication. Important emails can be lost in a busy mailbox and phone calls can go unanswered during a hectic day.  Understanding when a short conversation would be more effective than a flurry of email messages should not be underestimated.

Metrics and Reporting

Any discussion about communication these days inevitably leads to accountability through metrics and reporting.  The outsourcing company must track and provide status updates and reporting to the satisfaction of legal operations and its stakeholders.  At any time, legal operations should be able to ask the provider for status on team size, productivity, bottlenecks, and delivery dates and get a quick, thorough response.  Where physically is the work being done, and is the location secure?  Where are the work assignments coming from within the company, and are they in line with the outsourcing agreement?  Weekly check-ins may be necessary at the beginning of an engagement and then less frequent as the relationship becomes more established.  The more granular tracking and details the outsourcer can provide, the more prepared and forthcoming legal operations can be when reporting on progress to the GC and company executives.   

Tracking and reporting on metrics can provide more than updates and status reports. They can deliver valuable insights into a client’s processes, resourcing, data and help frame conversations around methodology or delivery improvements. One of the first operational tasks in a project should be the mutual agreement of the key metrics required to manage the process and risk. Both teams will obviously have different perspectives, but the core metrics needed by both teams will be very similar.

Metrics and reporting can be enormously helpful from a diagnostic point of view if something goes wrong.  Outsourcing companies have human beings on their delivery teams, and they are going to make mistakes, despite their best efforts.  Discovering these errors and mitigating or eliminating them as soon as possible helps to keep risk low and iron out kinks for a smoother, more flawless process.

Active Engagement

Outsourcing companies cannot work in a vacuum – they need frequent interaction to operate as a seamless extension of the corporation’s own team.  The outsourcing resources must be actively engaged with the client via email but also on calls, especially now that in-person meetings are uncommon and most are done virtually. 

The legal operations/outsourcing partner relationship is ever-changing and it can grow over time to serve the client organization more adeptly.  The more the outsourcer becomes familiar with the company’s priorities, protocols and deadlines, the more successfully it can support the client.  Both sides are equally invested in a quality result, both sides are careful not to waste time and money going down the wrong road.  Ideally, both legal operations and outsourcer are empowered to call an audible if a project is going astray. 

One of the secrets of successful outsourcing companies is the personalities of the people they employ.  Client-facing outsourcing team members must be able to speak up, push back, and earn the client’s confidence.  More passive individuals who are less forthcoming may be highly intelligent or knowledgeable but they are not always well suited to client-facing positions.  The best outsourcing providers have client-facing team members who have terrier-like perseverance and who develop the confidence to speak up at the right time.  These inherent tendencies are improved by empowerment and guidance provided by experienced managers.

Honesty and Transparency

The pandemic has brought about a new level of humanity and honesty in the working world.  How many times has a dog barking or child bringing in a school paper appeared in business meetings over the past two years?  Many of the formalities of business have fallen away, giving people the opportunity to be more “real” and connect on a more level playing field.

Honesty and transparency are essential elements to building strong legal operations/outsourced provider foundations.  This involves the culmination of all the principles mentioned above including communication, metrics and reporting, building trust and active engagement.  Over time, the outsourced provider earns trust through being honest and transparent with legal operations and vice versa. 

An honest outsourcing company will admit when a project is out of its wheelhouse and will not overstate its capabilities. While legal operations may be disappointed at an initial no, this is much preferable to the outsourcing company saying it’s capable and then the project fails.  An honest answer paves the way to a possible solution, and the companies may be able to work together to co-create a solution that benefits both.  Both legal operations and the outsourcing resource must be equally transparent about what each is providing and how they meet in the middle to get the job done right.

Conclusion

Legal operations are in a central position to leverage outsourced providers to bring about successful outcomes.  By combining key principles like establishment of trust, communication, measurement and accountability, active engagement and honest transparency, they ensure that outsourcing relationships pay off and deliver on their promise.  Over time, the relationship will shift from being client and outsourcing vendor to an equal partnership.  When legal operations cultivates outsourced teams which are true extensions of their internal resources, that’s a win-win.

 

 

About the Authors:

Clare Chalkley, Robert Daniel and Randi Salzberg are all subject matter experts (SMEs) in their respective fields at Integreon, a global ALSP and managed services provider. 

• Clare Chalkley, Vice President – Legal Services, is based in London and runs managed document review and litigation services projects for Integreon, having previously been a litigation support manager at Clifford Chance law firm and other roles in the field for 25+ years. 
• Robert Daniel, Senior Director and Financial Services SME, is based in the U.S., having previously worked for Bank of America in legal discovery and related positions for 25+ years.
• Randi Salzberg is Vice President, Marketing and Creative Services in Integreon’s Business Enablement Services division. Before Integreon, she was a Managing Director in Marketing at investment firm Alliance Bernstein for 25+ years.

The legal field’s talent shortage is expected to intensify as law firms and legal departments pivot from adjusting to challenges brought on by the pandemic and changing the way they operate and deliver legal services to planning for long-term growth, including team expansion. 

With hiring returning to or even exceeding pre-pandemic levels, it’s important that legal leaders re-examine their recruiting and retention strategies, including benefits and compensation packages and remote work arrangements, to remain competitive. According to recent Robert Half research:

• 34% of employees currently working remotely said they won’t stay with companies that don’t allow remote work
• 75% of workers want to work remotely at least part of the time
• 66% of companies will offer flexible scheduling after pandemic restrictions are universally lifted
• 78% of hiring managers said they are open to recruiting outside their geographical area

What other factors should managers take into consideration when planning to hire? Here are several key insights into current trends:  

Pandemic realities boost demand for practice area, legal operations expertise

One of the greatest challenges is the lack of available talent as law firms and legal departments directly compete for skilled legal professionals. Midlevel lawyers and paralegals with three-plus years’ experience are especially in strong demand. 

As companies adopt measures to minimize risk and ensure business continuity, they seek advice from in-house legal teams regarding contractual agreements, corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and compliance. The need for legal services is increasing in labor and employment law, insurance defense, healthcare, eDiscovery, and data privacy and security.

The pandemic spurred a critical and expanded partnership between general counsel and legal operations managers. Tasked with optimizing legal resources to increase productivity and revenues while mitigating risks and lowering costs, legal operations professionals play an important role in helping in-house legal teams strategically focus on the business of law. Legal operations managers, typically non-lawyers, with specialized knowledge (e.g., expertise with project management, information governance and financial management practices) are sought by hiring managers and the need for skilled legal professionals should remain acute in the months ahead.

Competitive salaries and perks: Essential to attracting top talent

In today’s candidate-driven market, it’s not surprising that salaries continue to rise for most positions. Job seekers with sought-after skill sets and practice area expertise know what salaries they can command – and aren’t afraid to ask or negotiate for them. Many are receiving signing bonuses and counteroffers. Hiring managers can ensure they are offering competitive compensation by consulting industry resources.

Here are average starting salaries at the national level for several in-house roles. The salaries are from the 2022 Salary Guide from Robert Half, which contains average starting salaries for nearly 50 positions in the legal field.

The salaries are listed by percentile: 50^th percentile for candidates with average experience and most of the necessary skills; 75^th percentile for candidates with above-average experience and all the needed skills. Bonuses, benefits and other forms of compensation as well as practice area expertise, special skills and certifications are not taken into account. Hiring managers can use the Robert Half 2022 Salary Calculator to benchmark average salaries locally.   

In addition to competitive salaries, job seekers evaluate the perks an organization offers as a way of gauging company culture. Increasingly, benefits such as flextime, remote work, health insurance, retirement savings plans, paid parental leave, and wellness programs can significantly impact a company’s ability to attract and retain top talent.

Other important trends to know in today’s hiring environment

1. Digital skills are essential

The pandemic transformed the legal landscape, with depositions and hearings continuing to be held virtually. However, the need for legal professionals to be tech savvy long predates the pandemic, and job candidates should demonstrate proficiency in the latest digital tools and industry software, such as litigation and practice management. The most sought-after legal professionals will also have ideas on how to leverage technology to improve client services.

Digital expertise is a priority as legal leaders focus on freeing up lawyers to concentrate on legal work. Strategic deployment of tech solutions is a fundamental and integral factor in effective legal operations practices. 

2. Legal teams expand in-house skills with contract professionals 

To meet rising workloads, legal departments may need to hire on a contract basis – legal professionals who can fill gaps and make immediate contributions and specialists who can offer expertise unavailable in-house. 

3. Tech savvy legal support staff in demand

Midlevel paralegals and legal assistants who can conduct case research, manage online calendars, draft legal documents and assist multiple attorneys are highly marketable. These professionals also are needed to assist with video meetings and virtual depositions and court hearings.

4. Growing emphasis on strong interpersonal competencies

Beyond legal experience and knowledge, interpersonal skills are more important than ever. Legal hiring managers are seeking candidates who possess critical capabilities, including:

Increasingly, a key attribute for professionals in any legal role is adaptability. The legal field has gone through profound changes over the past two years, and 2022 could be just as unpredictable. Prepare for hiring by understanding the trends that will significantly impact the legal job market. Doing so now will allow you to fortify your in-house teams and ensure the success of your organization.

 

 

Jamy Sullivan is executive director of the legal practice at Robert Half, a premier provider of talent and consulting solutions for a wide range of initiatives in the legal field, including compliance, contract management, data privacy, litigation support and more. Visit RobertHalf.com.

The role of the modern Legal Operations professional is evolving rapidly. Not that long ago, agreements were stored in shared folders or worse, in physical filing cabinets, and signatures were inked with actual pens further delaying the process. Today, however, the demands placed on Legal Ops have necessitated change. Because Legal Ops touches every department, from Procurement to Sales, these professionals look to technology as a way to keep up with the growing expectation placed on them to do more with less. Where once Legal was more cautious to embrace technology, today they are embracing it with ever-increasing enthusiasm to bridge the gap across their organization and reduce repetitive, time-consuming tasks that are better suited for automation.

Jumping into the Deep End of the Pool

It can be tempting to jump in to a new technology solution straight away when you want to introduce automation. However, you should start by thoroughly understanding the current processes you want to automate and what you want your future processes to look like. Just as you wouldn’t put on a bathing suit and jump into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim, in the same way, you need to begin by identifying what you need to streamline and automate before you can actually do so.

Where to Begin

Here are some practical points to consider when building out your technology requirements.

• Ask yourself where things can be streamlined and improved.
• Identify what entities and departments truly need to be involved in these processes.
• Determine if a new system is needed or an existing one can help.
• Consider what integrations you want with your existing business systems. Keeping users connected to the technology they already love will help ease change management strain and increase user adoption rates.

Templates, Templates Everywhere

A significant area of automation focus for many Legal teams right now is contract management. The number and type of agreements within your organization is likely increasing, and it’s common for business teams within your company to struggle knowing which template they should be using when requesting a contract. A CLM solution can help. Auto-template selection can streamline the contract request experience using a few key data fields that are linked to the correct contract template, and then route it to the appropriate approvers. This type of contract automation can relieve the burden placed on Legal to get involved in every single agreement and free up their time to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Speeding the Signature Process

Signature is another area that can get slow things down. Even with e-signature, the process doesn’t always go smoothly. Especially in a large organization depending on factors like region, entity, department, or contract value, agreements require different signatories. Routing agreements to the right individuals can be time-consuming and potentially fraught with error. By automating the signatory hierarchy in your contract management solution, you can ensure that the correct person is signing each agreement every time, building efficiency into the process and providing compliance peace of mind.

One CLM to Rule Them All

As you consider which CLM solution will help to streamline your contract processes, it may seem impossible that you can find one to work for every part of your organization. However, there are ways to find one solution.

• Involve stakeholders early and often, even bordering on overcommunication when choosing a solution. Solicit feedback using surveys to make sure the product is meeting user needs.
• Keep all   requirements in mind. Be sure to identify what stakeholders need, such as who needs to be notified and when. This will help you navigate involving each party in agreement workflows and not bothering them when unnecessary.
• Select a solution that is flexible enough to be configured to meet the needs of various use cases. Ultimately, the more flexible the solution is, the easier it will be to keep your stakeholders happy.
• Provide plenty of training as it will help in overcoming resistance to change. People learn in different ways, so give them a variety of outlets to help them get accustomed to the new solution (e.g. user guides, training videos, and office hours).

Looking Ahead – Metrics Rule!

Once you have contract automation in place,  you’re ready to measure  success and see where additional efficiencies might be needed. Helpful metrics include:

• How often you are using your own paper versus third-party paper?
• How many people route signatures through your CLM?
• How long is your average cycle time?
• How many contracts need Legal involvement and how many do not?
• How many times are you using standard language instead of non-standard?
• Is your contract volume changing month-to-month?

Automatic reporting on these key performance indicators (KPIs) can help determine where improvements are needed. And let’s not forget that having these KPIs often helps you justify additional spend or resources as you grow.

About Malbek

Malbek is today’s most modern, cutting-edge, and AI-infused CLM solution that empowers Legal Ops professionals to do more with less. By supporting the growing contracting demands of your entire enterprise, including Sales, Finance, Procurement and other critical business units, Malbek’s CLM solution delights every user. Malbek provides end-to-end contract management with out-of-the-box integration to popular business applications, like Salesforce, Coupa, Workday, Slack and others, allowing your contract data to flow seamlessly while dramatically reducing cycle times. That’s contracts reimagined! To learn more visit www.malbek.io.

Recently, I had an opportunity to sit down with Eric Ortman, the senior director of legal operations at BeiGene.  

If you’re not familiar with BeiGene, their work is pretty inspiring: in pursuit of the next generation of cancer treatments, they are taking a truly global approach to their research. They have trials running across five continents, with major operations in Australia, China, and the U.S. Their company motto says it all: “Cancer has no borders. Neither do we.” 

This cross-border work doesn’t begin and end with research. BeiGene’s legal department is constantly looking for ways it, too, can work seamlessly across borders so they can support the company’s mission—an effort that Eric and the legal ops team must support through better systems and processes. 

In my conversation with Eric at the 2021 CLOC Global Summit entitled “Contracting without Borders”, Eric noted, for example, the compliance requirements around contracting that the legal department must comply with across the many jurisdictions BeiGene operates in. 

“There are some ways of doing business and also legal issues that vary between the U.S., China, Australia, Europe, and so we needed to make sure that certain contract workflows were designed to support business processes in each jurisdiction,” Eric said. 

Leveraging CLOC Competencies to Work Globally 

Historically, a company may approach this challenge by setting up small legal teams in each country that operate independently, with little effort put toward comparing performance or best practices across geographies. 

However, by leveraging one core CLOC competency—Technology—Eric and his team have been able to leverage another—Business Intelligence. 

CLOC notes that Business Intelligence allows Legal Ops to “Uncover hidden trends, find new efficiencies, and focus your team on clear and measurable outcomes that make a difference to the business.”  

Contracts define what a company buys, what it sells, and how it runs. When managed correctly, contract data can provide high-value insights to the business—call it “contract intelligence.” These insights range from the fairly straightforward (e.g., how long does it take for a contract to get approved) to the highly complex (e.g., which clauses are associated with better business outcomes post-execution).  

From a compliance standpoint, Eric noted the importance of being able to pool data in order to quickly report out on what contracts fall under various regulations due to their component parts. 

“When we have someone from a regulatory agency, say the FDA comes in, and they want to see a list of the contracts that are related to a specific study, you’ve to be able to quickly run that report, and prepare that, and share that list,” Eric says. 

Given the global nature of BeiGene’s operations and the local considerations of its contracts, creating a single source of truth for this business intelligence required legal ops to take a different approach to managing its agreements. 

This is where leveraging the CLOC Core Competency, Technology, came into play. 

How Contract Management Software Helped BeiGene Realize Its Vision  

CLOC recommends legal ops departments use technology to “automate manual processes, digitize physical tasks, and improve speed and quality through the strategic deployment of technology solutions.” 

Eric shared with me that, when he arrived at BeiGene, the fast-growing company did not have a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system in place. Eric immediately identified CLM as a critical asset for BeiGene to unify its global contracting operations due to its ability to harmonize processes across geographies and create a system of intelligence for all of a company’s entitlements and commitments.  

Advanced CLM pushes beyond contract management and ensures that all agreements are in compliance and commitments are upheld, that changing conditions dynamically trigger the appropriate actions, that high-value insights are available in real time, and that new information makes the whole system increasingly smarter and faster. 

Deploying Technology Solutions to Last 

Importantly, one piece of guidance CLOC provides on technology is to “create and implement a long-term technology roadmap.” 

Too often, companies embarking on a CLM journey choose a rudimentary solution that can be stood up fast, avoiding a comprehensive solution they perceive will take years to implement. 

BeiGene’s story demonstrates why this is a short-sighted choice. When it set out to choose a contract management platform, it did not just look at what it needed in the immediate term but took the time to scope out what it ultimately wanted from the solution in the years to come. It crafted this ambitious plan by bringing together a diverse set of stakeholders: What did the clinical trials team need from a CLM? What about compliance? What about the marketing team that engaged doctors to speak on behalf of their therapies? 

“There is nothing more important for us than making sure those clinical trial agreements are operating smoothly. And so I brought in people from the clin-ops team who are working on those clinical trial agreements to work very closely with us on the design to help us to develop the requirements,” Eric said. A recent study conducted by Forrester Research validated the benefits of this approach, finding “that firms who involve coalitions of C-suite stakeholders in CLM decision-making and have more fully integrated solutions are better prepared and more confident in managing rapid change.” 

Notwithstanding this benefit, managing a large coalition of stakeholders can sound daunting and unwieldy, raising the specter of project scope spinning out of control. Yet Eric and the legal ops team were systematic in their approach, knowing that while a solution should be able to address needs across multiple functions, deployment of solutions would be incremental, with firm priorities and milestones. They broke the deployment into stage gates that have enabled them to iterate and create champions as they expand to more departments and agreement types—with learning and feedback occurring throughout. 

Of course, there is always more work to be done. Eric notes that as BeiGene’s adoption matures, he looks forward to trading best practices with other like-minded LDOs within pharma and life sciences. This type of networking will only improve CLM processes and practices for the industry. 

Today, thanks to the efforts of legal ops, BeiGene has a global approach to contracts that matches its global fight against cancer. 

 

About Icertis: With unmatched technology and category-defining innovation, Icertis pushes the boundaries of what’s possible with contract lifecycle management (CLM). The AI-powered, analyst-validated Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform turns contracts from static documents into strategic advantage by structuring and connecting the critical contract information that defines how an organization runs. Today, the world’s most iconic brands and disruptive innovators trust Icertis to govern the rights and commitments in their 7.5 million+ contracts worth more than $1 trillion, in 40+ languages and 90+ countries. Find out more at https://www.icertis.com  

By Brian McGovern

It used to be that there were good – though not existential – business reasons to create a technology roadmap for the legal department. When developing such a roadmap, one criterion upon which legal operations evaluated legal tech products, in addition to their ROI performance, was their ability to deliver value for an extended duration. Still, developing a technology roadmap hardly seemed like a life-or-death concern. That was pre-COVID-19.  

Today, organizations find themselves with urgent, immediate reasons to put that roadmap in place. 

Why? Because technology is, of course, one of the three pillars of operational success, alongside people and process.  And people and processes have been disrupted during this pandemic. How the legal department/organization’s technology behaves in this new normal will either sustain or pose a risk to business continuity. Therefore, the legal tech stack’s ability to help support business continuity during periods of profound disruption is required. The legal ops team must build a legal tech stack that enables the legal department and the organization to adjust to predictable and unanticipated disruptions. 

When building a legal tech stack capable of delivering both bottom-line business value and resilience over the long term, keep these best practices in mind.

Avoid being reactive

It’s not easy: At a time like this, it’s very tempting to make technology decisions based on the immediate demands placed upon your department and organization. 

Last year, a study by Hyperion Global Partners found that 39% of tech investment decisions were strategic, with an eye on long-term value, and guided by understanding the need to integrate technology with operational requirements.  However, 35% of tech investment decisions were reactive, spurred by the arrival of new versions of legacy software, shiny new technologies, or other “perfunctory factors” like changes in the technology market. 

I’d suggest that 2020 legal tech stack purchase decisions run the risk of being very reactive due to the pandemic’s challenges, including most if not all employees working from home.  Rather than merely adopting “quick fixes,” though, you need to consider whether or not a solution has the flexibility and scalability to deliver value beyond the immediate circumstances.   

Put a data strategy in place first

According to bestselling author Bernard Marr, 

“Data is revolutionizing the way we all do business. Every business is now a data business and needs a robust Data Strategy. However, less than 0.5% of all data is ever analyzed and used, offering huge potential for organizations when trying to leverage this key strategic asset.” 

Legal departments possess a staggering amount of data. Still, it may be silo’ed or located in disparate locations – from emails to matter files to personal databases – so putting it to use can be difficult.  It’s crucial to develop a comprehensive data strategy that aligns with business objectives, resulting in meaningful legal metrics to drive better decision-making, better outcomes, and maximum business value.

Your legal tech stack should support that strategy and be built around collecting, managing, analyzing, and reporting the correct data to execute it. Don’t make a technology investment unless it supports that strategy.  The tail shouldn’t wag the dog, but that’s what’s happening if the technologies you’ve deployed are dictating your data strategy.  A lousy tech investment decision made because there was no data strategy in place can hang over your head – and drag on your KPIs – for a long time to come.

Accelerate your power to pivot

No matter how sophisticated a company’s tech stack may seem, it has to support efficient and agile processes to sustain business continuity during “normal” times and crises.  

Therefore, process automation must be a cornerstone technology for a legal tech stack.  It empowers legal ops teams to quickly and easily design, build, and deploy processes that are incredibly cost-effective and error-free, which are essential benefits even during “normalcy.” When disruptions strike, its ability to help you pivot immediately to implement new processes to cope with sudden impacts can be critical.   

For example: Some of the processes that were developed and deployed by providers and users during the early weeks of COVID-19 included workflows for vetting legal vendor continuity, tracking health checks, obtaining onsite visit request approvals, even for remote work management.

This ability to quickly react to a global pandemic’s challenges illustrates the day-to-day value of process automation to a legal tech stack.  Starting, you can address high-volume, immediate-need tasks. Your success in streamlining them builds your case for automating more and more processes, even outside of the legal department, which means “Legal” can lead the way toward organization-wide agility and resilience.  Another benefit?  To your internal reputation.  As Jeff Marple, Innovation Director for Liberty Mutual Insurance told us:

“Legal wasn’t originally a process or tech-forward organization within Liberty Mutual. Now we have developed several internal client-facing workflows that our clients just love, and that has changed the reputation.  Legal now leads the organization with process automation deployments.”

Drive legal staff adoption

A key measure of long term success for any legal tech stack?  Immediate and ongoing legal staff adoption.  So find ways to get users excited about the business value these new tools offer: 

• Improve client service by decreasing response times and client frustration
• Improve legal department efficiency and performance
• Reduce menial and mundane work, and increase time for substantive work 

What’s also important?  Who you involve in your initial adoption efforts.  Focus on people who will be impacted by new technology who represent different functional areas; target people who are always coming up with new ideas and are passionate about operational improvement.

To convert those who may be reluctant, here’s a tactic suggested by George Grawe, SVP and Deputy Chief Counsel at Allstate and a longtime pioneer in driving legal process innovation:

“(People) will say they have a more efficient way to do things…you need to get in the trenches with folks to see how they do their job. If you can find a way to have the technology complement the way they do their work, they become your change champions.”

By co-opting adopters who are enthusiastic about the technology, you’ll be able to manage early adoption issues better and make steady progress in improving the stack over time.  By enlisting them, you’re building a core of legal tech evangelists who’ll help you drive even broader adoption and make your tech stack “future-proof” in a very fundamental way: By making it invaluable to the entire organization.

—-

Brian McGovern is General Manager, Workflow Solutions at Mitratech, and led one of the largest global enterprise legal management software implementations ever at a global insurance provider. At Mitratech, he’s obsessed with helping clients navigate selecting and implementing legal technology so they can drive meaningful value that positively impacts their business.

 

Before remote work became encouraged or enforced due to COVID-19, General Counsel (GC) conducted their work with virtual systems and processes. Many legal departments were already comfortable with Cloud-based file storage, collaboration, and matter management systems. Think of the virtual legal teams working in multiple jurisdictions. They are experts in ‘following the sun’ and offering legal guidance to the business in various time zones. 

If you’re a GC reading this, you probably have your remote working conditions well established in your legal department, and things are ticking along nicely. But as we begin to move beyond the current circumstances, these four tips will help your legal department look forward to more strategic and better ways of doing business.

1. Protect client and vendor data 

The threat of an internal or external data breach is a liability for all organizations. Remote working conditions exacerbate the danger by introducing more variables into the work environment. Legal departments managing trade secrets and confidential client information have an ethical duty to secure this information from unauthorized and inadvertent exposure. The Director of Aon’s Cyber Solutions Group, Chris McLaughlin, spoke to Thomson Reuters recently, alerting GCs to virtual workplace risks. 

“We know that threat actors are actively targeting individuals at home. They target virtual private networks to try and get access to corporate systems, and some organizations have had their physical premises broken into,” said Chris. 

With sophisticated global cyber-attacks occurring regularly, here are two measures you’ll want to revisit, should a policy or operational process need updating: 

• Safe and secure file sharing: Basic email attachments are risky when sharing files and spreadsheets with sensitive or confidential information. Cloud-based collaboration platforms can help your organization implement best-practices and a more connected culture as they enable users, internal and external, to quickly and securely share vast amounts of information.
• Data breach response preparedness: Do you have a response plan if your legal team or someone in your organization reports a data breach? GCs must establish policies and procedures for their legal department to manage the situation as soon as a breach occurs and to mitigate additional data breaches in the aftermath. Be mindful of the organization’s legal responsibilities in your jurisdiction when a data breach occurs. For example, all 50 states have adopted data breach notification statutes, many with sector-specific provisions. Requirements vary widely, and there is no federal-level statute.

2. Generate advanced matter and spend analytics

COVID-19 has had an impact on legal spending in some regions more than others. The 2020 edition of the Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index from Thomson Reuters found a slight trend towards increasing budgets in the US, with 22% of respondents seeing a budget decrease and 32% reporting a budget increase in the last twelve months.

Legal departments are often seen as cost centers rather than strategic partners and are always under pressure to demonstrate their value to the broader organization, usually by focusing on efficiency. Suppose you’re looking to be more strategic on your legal spend for the business. In that case, the ability to report back to your stakeholders with advanced spend and matter management analytics is a must. 

If you don’t have a dedicated matter management platform, it may be time to build a business case for one. An effective matter management platform provides you with the transparency you need to control your department’s outside counsel legal spend and the clarity your executive team requires. Matter management analytics can drive better decisions and reduce your department’s overall costs.

3. Streamline contract creation and management 

Automating legal contracts and documents is a game-changer to those familiar with the innovative practice. A contract management system customized to your needs can connect your legal team with the rest of the business. This strategic technology can reduce the burden on your lawyers for guidance on minor matters so that they can spend more time on higher-level work. 

Platform solutions provide the building blocks to deliver multiple legal and business solutions in a unified user experience. They enable you to automate contract creation and approval, identify and manage risk, and monitor obligations and compliance through one central hub. And as the business grows and evolves, it’s easy to adapt and scale a platform to accommodate new processes.

4. Champion internal and external communication

As a strategic legal adviser to your organization, responsive communication is essential. Suppose you are a leader of your legal team, such as the GC or Legal Operations Director. In this case, a strategic move could foster an internal culture of knowledge-sharing and thought leadership. You can achieve this through platform solutions that offer a complete digital workplace for your organization, giving users a better way to collaborate, communicate, and connect with their team.

Championing innovative communication with your law firm advisers is beneficial, too. For example, if you have an urgent legal matter and need to call in external counsel for expert advice, you want to submit the brief to them effectively and fast. 

Seamless collaboration and communication are inherent in platform solutions. You can work on shared files and act fast on legal matters that require you and your adviser’s urgent attention. Look for an adviser that is just as innovative as you, so you can work together to handle complex legal issues that arise when needed. 

Features like these help gain stakeholder buy-in for legal technology because cloud-based platforms have dozens of use-cases not only for your legal team but also for marketing departments and human resources.

With these four strategic, in-house tips now on your radar, which one resonates with you? Find out more about how you can build your virtual workplace through a connected legal hub with Thomson Reuters.

A recent report from Forrester Research,  called contracts the “beating heart” of a business. “Contracts,” the report noted, “define the relationships that companies have with their customers, suppliers, partners, and employees.”

For lawyers and the legal operations professionals that support them, this insight should get hearts pounding. Trained in law school 1L Contracts classrooms and finely honed in corporate boardrooms, corporate counsel pride themselves on being masters of business negotiation chess. As legal counsel, they know what they should fight for, what they can let slide, and what they can ignore; that’s why most legal departments (“Legal” manage a company’s large volume of contracts in-house and rarely outsource this work to outside counsel. It’s also why Legal Department Operations professionals (LDOs) spend considerable time thinking about how to leverage a new generation of business technology to streamline contract management across the organization—and get these critical documents out of people’s inboxes and into the Cloud. (One recent survey put LDO adoption of contract lifecycle management (CLM) technology at about 80%).

Finally, the humble paper contract, and the process to negotiate it, is getting the recognition and upgrade that it deserves.

Is Legal Living Up to the Task?

Even though Legal is one of many “touches” in a contract’s life cycle, its failure to be strategic and act as a valued partner to the business is a frequent criticism. Given Legal’s heavy involvement in the “beating heart” of an organization, it must evaluate if it is doing as much as it can to support the business through its negotiation of these documents.  

• Does it understand what the business needs from its contracts?
• Is it negotiating contracts that truly maximize the value of the business’s relationships?
• Is it negotiating contracts that are fully aligned with the business?

Data Suggests It Might Not Be.

In its recent “Most Negotiated Terms” report, World Commerce and Contracting (WCC)[1] found that legal professionals, when negotiating a contract, focus on clauses that protect the business from a potential failure than on facilitating success. The survey suggests that the contract language Legal spends the most time negotiating is not the language that will significantly impact the commercial outcomes.

Does this mean lawyers have been focusing on the wrong thing?

No, risk management remains critical. But it does suggest opportunities for Legal to expand its consideration of what makes a good contract a great one. With the help of LDOs, here are some recommendations for corporate counsel to transform themselves from being perceived as mere legal counselors to becoming strategic and valued partners to the business:

1. Consider adding “relational terms” to your templates and playbooks.

First, let’s define a better contract. There is a growing recognition in contracting circles that “relational terms” should receive more attention when drafting agreements. WCC defines “relational terms” as terms that “help us adapt and adjust.”

WCC notes:

“They may include a more formal approach to the frequency and method of communications, or clearer definitions of data exchange, or greater rigor in defining the procedures for change management.”

These relational clauses are:

 “… essential to sustaining relationships, managing uncertainty, and securing improved performance.”

Relational clauses look beyond how a contract relationship might end and focuses on sustaining the relationship and creating optionality for the business when there’s less certainty during the relationship.

The Forrester report cited above corroborates this. Among firms Forrester surveyed, 76% of firms with “mature” contract management programs focus on contracts as not only risk management tools but instruments with which their companies can create value.

• Improve Cross-Functional Alignment by Prioritizing Information Flows and Sharing

Now you might be thinking, “Easier said than done.” How can Legal fully know what the business agreed to or what its delivery teams need to keep its relationships on track?  If an organization’s workflows exist in silos, the answer is, it can’t.

Negotiating more valuable contracts requires Cross-Functional Alignment—one of the CORE 12 from CLOC. CLOC defines Cross-Functional Alignment as  the ability to “create and drive relationships with other key company functions, such as HR, IT, Finance and Workplace Resources.”

To facilitate complete alignment with the business, Legal must gain full visibility upstream and downstream. LDOs should consider working across functions to get corporate counsel involved early in deals and fine-tune the information Legal collects in its intake procedure, such as:

• What is the business trying to achieve with this agreement?
• How should this contract work?
• What are the signals that something is going awry?
• If something goes awry, what additional safety valves should Legal add to protect the business?
• Once a contract is executed, what type of information should Legal share with the business stakeholders managing the contract? 

• Get A Little Help from Organization-Wide Technology and Contract Data Pools

Some highly seasoned negotiators might already use relational terms or have relationships with the business that provide a deep understanding of a transaction or deal. But to scale it and bake it into the process for the benefit of the entire organization, the business needs a shared contracting platform that the cross-functional departments will adopt and use. (i.e., a platform not exclusively built for Legal!).

Organization-wide contract lifecycle management (CLM) creates a single source of truth that all contract stakeholders can trust, to improve contract performance. For Legal, this might mean aggregating conversations and information exchanged between the contracting parties and sharing it with Legal before any drafting and negotiations are conducted. Following execution of the contract, it might mean using obligation management tools to monitor performance and create pools of data about contract risk and performance.  

In the aggregate, Legal can pool data that will improve the entire contracting process by:

• Identifying the most frequent deviations from standard clauses.
• Facilitating template or playbook modifications to address these deviations.
• Identifying repeated sticking points that continuously slow down negotiations (potentially getting business relationships off on the wrong foot)?

Post-execution, Legal can surface insights on contract performance to make data-driven decisions on which clauses and templates are delivering the most value and which are leading to disputes or under-performance. Given the WCC data above, clauses leading to disputes should get a hard look to determine if more accommodating, mutually beneficial language can improve the template.

The Rise of Contract Intelligence

Ultimately, companies can arrive at a place where Contract Intelligence becomes Business Intelligence (another CLOC Core 12 Competency). With full visibility and continuous real-time data, Legal and Legal Ops increase their business impact on the organization – and better yet, have the metrics to prove it.

Legal can experience efficiencies by streamlining contracting processes across the organization. But more valuable will be the data pools and business intelligence created from these more efficient workflows. Contract intelligence goes well beyond contract management. It can empower organizations to continuously improve outcomes by focusing on the “heart” of their business.

---

[1] Formerly International Association of Commerce and Contract Management). The “Most Negotiated Terms” report relied on a broad survey of legal and contracting professionals.

---

Bernadette Bulacan serves as Vice President and Lead Global Evangelist, at Icertis, the recognized leader for enterprise contract management. She shares contract management best practices and innovations with corporate counsel and contracting professionals.

 

Minimizing the cost of change—such that we derive value from the technology we invest in at low costs of adoption is an essential goal for just about every department in every organization. It’s also a substantial challenge. And in no department is this more true than legal—and, more specifically,Legal Operations.

Here, unique challenges exist. For a good reason, lawyers focus on risk: reducing it, safeguarding their organizations against it, and combating it when it manifests into a real threat. As a result, lawyers can be wary of process-level innovations, such as those requiring change because innovation introduces new risk variables.

This wariness makes sense and is ultimately a good thing. The legal department serves as a crucial business partner within their organizations, connecting to and impacting every part of the business. Systems for completing NDAs, for example, impact how quickly business conversations can start. Ensuring contracts are quickly signed affects sales velocity. Employee agreements can influence hiring processes.

Keeping the above in mind, legal’s comparatively conservative ethos for the tech sector serves as an essential counterbalance to predominantly innovation-focused mindsets. But as the rest of the business world moves forward, embracing increasingly powerful means of innovation that differentiate companies competitively, this same counterbalance can be an obstacle to embracing innovation and adapting to the change innovation requires, threatening to hold companies back.

For Legal Operations teams to be highly strategic partners within their organizations, they should push the organization forward. But how do you overcome the pushback? And once you do that, how do you ensure the new systems create real, tangible, appreciable value without requiring change?

Here are a few strategies.

Strategy #1: Reduce app-dependency.

A primary impediment to implementing more innovative and efficient processes and technological solutions in Legal Operations is the thinking that attempting to do so requires forcing employees to learn how to use yet another app.

Or, at least we think it does.

In truth, what innovative processes do is reduce the number of applications and software tools employees use. That new processes succeed in doing this is particularly crucial in the legal ops context, seeing how the employees we serve are uniquely allergic to new tech. Our goal should be to enable our people to focus purposefully on the right work. The more the legal department relies on disparate, static, siloed apps, the harder it is for our people to do that.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, the functional limitations of the applications we employ today — Asana, Onit, TeamConnect, Slack, Jira, and email — constrict us. Worse – the more applications we introduce into a process, the more those apps lose their power. Rather than enabling us, they burden us and limit our productivity because of what they can’t do, necessitating manual workarounds and fostering bottlenecks.

To create operations that truly increase our people’s power and capacity—without annoying them—we need to make our internal processes dependent on as few apps as possible, so that these manual workarounds and bottlenecks are removed.

Strategy #2: Reduce developer & IT dependency.

Just as depending on another app to address every process challenge is impractical, it’s similarly impractical to rely on your developers and IT department to minimize the pain of change.

Look, developers are influential, but relying on them to build custom solutions all the time inevitably delays your ability to problem-solve or adapt quickly—customization in this context bogs down your developers, IT, and your Legal Ops teams.

Custom-built solutions for the legal department increase your Legal Ops team’s workload. Custom-building solutions require legal ops teams to play a product manager’s role, working directly with developers to define the department’s business requirements. As the solution moves through development, developers look to the Legal Ops team to quality engineer the app. Once the app is ready to be launched, the Legal Ops team will be responsible for training everyone to use it.

This strategy is directly counterproductive to reducing developer and design dependency. We are introducing a custom-built solution that frustrates impacted employees just as much as introducing another “off-the-shelf” app—and relying on IT to get it done.

Remember, one goal here is to empower Legal Operations to react and function as needed, without a heavy reliance on your IT department. Introducing custom-built apps won’t accomplish that.

Strategy #3: Minimize user interfaces.

Perhaps the chief problem with attempting to innovate for efficiency in the legal ops context by buying or building new apps is that both strategies require employees to learn new interfaces. That this is inherently challenging is something Legal Operations teams have to understand. And this is true not only for complicated pieces of tech but for seemingly simple applications, too.

It’s crucial that instead of continuously increasing the number of interfaces, employees learn to use and derive value from those that currently exist.

Our organizations are at an inflection point. We have a decision to make regarding how we want to work in the future. In one direction: the end is adopting new apps (and in the process, increasing risk and exposure), or remaining stagnant and falling behind as an organization.

In the other direction is a kinder, happier, more empathetic future that lends credence to people’s needs, preferences, and unique abilities. The processes and systems with which they power organizations prove flexible, dynamic, and adaptive.

We must choose the latter path, especially in the context of Legal Operations. To do so is both prudent and moral. Legal Operations can be a practical and strategic business partner, capable of introducing new processes and optimizing existing ones without pushback. In this sense, it can also be a catalyst for adopting systems that improve employees’ lives.

If you’re interested in learning more about either Tonkean or Adaptive Business Operations, visit Tonkean.com. And check out our Legal Operations ebook here!

October 2020 | Raj Sethurama, Chief Technology Officer, Wolters Kluwer

Organizations and adapt, but now they must do so at a faster clip than ever. The rate of change happening today is significantly greater than it was two decades ago, making change management an ever-present challenge in every industry. Generally speaking, change is driven by both external and internal factors.

Grand technology shifts, like the release of the iPhone in 2007, are one example of the former category. No one imagined how the small, handheld device wcould transform the way customers across industries work and live.

Internal factors, on the other hand, refer to the people and processes within an organization. Some companies pride themselves on being agile. For others, the way they operate is part of their DNA, making change much harder.

No matter what your starting line looks like, the reality is that all organizations must learn to manage change to stay competitive. Because good change management means the ability to adapt, there’s no magic formula for it. Yet over the years, I’ve been able to identify some steps that consistently put business leaders on the right path.

1. Assess the current state of your organization. Before your organization can move toward its goals, you must have a good understanding of where you’re coming from. Assess your organization’s current state via the balanced scorecard approach, which offers four different measures of the status quo. Next, be sure you can make a clear business case for disrupting the current state and what that disruption should look like for various stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, and so on. These early steps can lay an essential foundation for long-term change.
2. Clearly define your end goal. Defining a clear end goal before you start is crucial because it allows you to outline a timeline. Everything should be time-boxed and rolled out in phases. Apply the change to a small group first and see how it goes before you iterate. It’s OK if you fail the first time. However, having a time limit on that failure is crucial to ensuring success by the established deadline.
3. Understand that it’s not a one-person job. Business leaders can’t have a savior complex when it comes to implementing change. You don’t need to make all the changes yourself, even if you have all the skills to do so. One previous employer of mine tried to drive change by assigning the task to executives. I saw this fail firsthand. Instead, identify a team of change agents with the right skill sets, mindsets, and passions regardless of their organizational level. It’s their job to inspire and support people on the ground. Sometimes, to ensure widespread buy-in, it could be useful to rotate change agents and have them recruit their own.
4. Communicate constantly. Having change agents means having an avenue to communicate with your employees on an ongoing basis about progress. Be honest and transparent — even about failures. When things don’t go as planned, say so. This shows that your organization is willing to recognize failure and quickly adapt to move in the direction of success.
5. Benchmark against best-in-class. External factors shouldn’t just be a catalyst for change; you should keep them in mind throughout the journey. It’s important to keep a pulse on the market throughout any transformation. In a previous organization, I remember one project my team had worked diligently on. We kept our head down and focused on all the steps outlined here. However, by the time we launched, others had already developed the mobile technology we were working on. The landscape had changed. To avoid such a situation, have your change agents benchmark against competitors and visit other companies for ideas on methodology and process.
6. Be prepared for resistance. Some employees will inevitably be resistant to change. In these cases, try to understand their hesitation or motivation. Ask honestly why the change is a challenge and what’s causing panic. Maybe they’re worried their job is at risk or they lack the right skill set. If you take the time to talk to employees, you can understand their mindsets and explain how the change fits into their career goals. Of course, some people will be unable to articulate their resistance and won’t want to be part of the journey. In that case, you must be prepared to make tough decisions. If you can’t get someone to buy in, they may not be the right person for the job at the time.
7. Realize that success requires failure. As already mentioned, change management is not a one-step process. You will have to iterate and learn many times over. However, with those iterations, you’ll begin to see success. People will start to see the impact of change — whether that means more quickly delivering value to customers or simply not falling behind as competition gets stiffer. When that happens, change will become a movement. Your team can organize around it, and people should buy in even more.

The reality is that change is non-negotiable, even in seemingly slower-paced industries. Technologies are changing the way employees and customers alike go about their business. If you don’t adapt, you’ll be left behind. The good news is that adapting isn’t as much of an uphill battle as many think. By engaging change agents across the organization, accepting failure, and clearly defining your goals and competition, you can help change management become a movement that breeds success.