In this episode of CLOC Talk, Jenn sits down with the fabulous Carl Morrison, Chief of Staff at ModCounsel, and legal operations extraordinaire to discuss his experience implementing information governance (InfoGov) within corporate legal departments.
Carl shares insightful anecdotes about the importance of preparation, communication, and collaboration within cross-functional teams to handle unforeseen obstacles effectively.
As always with Carl, the conversation includes humorous and relatable moments and practical advice for legal operations professionals navigating complex InfoGov landscapes.
A very special thank you to our sponsor for this episode Sirion.
Modern legal entity management has finally transcended its traditional confines in the general counsel’s office, and not a moment too soon. In fact, we see this happening more frequently, with legal departments increasingly involving compliance (48%), governance (38%), finance (35%) and tax (25%) business units in entity management activities.
By no longer limiting itself to a small team of legal colleagues, the corporate record can finally be used for strategic decision-making. However, even with more business units participating in entity management, is there room to make this an even more powerful partnership? The answer lies with your colleagues in Finance & Tax.
Finance: Follow the money
Formally engaging the finance department can help more senior executives beyond the general counsel’s office understand entity management as an important business priority. Finance departments are often profit centers (as opposed to the legal department, which is often viewed as a cost center).
And for finance teams, entity data is increasingly important to their strategic planning processes. This year, the volatile markets and increased financing costs have pushed companies and funds to act more cautiously than in years past, with a higher priority on entity restructuring (and spinoffs), smaller M&A deals, and looking at past opportunities with fresh eyes. However, these short-term activities are only setting up for a bigger potential play in 2023; with high rates of undeployed capital — or dry powder — in the capital markets, 80% of Deloitte’s survey respondents believed that may be an opportunity to catch the wave and invest their cash as targets rise in value.
These opportunities, both short and long term, require a comprehensive understanding of entity data and a strong compliance track record to be competitive. Yet, 49% of companies still report using Excel to manage their entity data and a quarter reported at least one entity out of good standing in the last 24 months.
It is in the finance department’s best interest to find and invest in solutions that ensure the meticulous execution of entity management processes and empowers them to stay competitive for whatever opportunity arises.
In a world where collaboration reigns supreme, technology’s importance in connecting disparate business units cannot be underestimated. By creating a single source of truth for your entity data stored in a self-service database, tax, finance and legal teams can finally strategize from a collective playbook. This playbook can unlock the potential for growth, risk mitigation, and efficient decision-making. The era of entity management as a cross-functional responsibility has arrived, transforming it from an individual effort into the team sport it was always meant to be.
Diligent
Diligent Entities is the world’s leading purpose-driven entity management technology solution. With solutions across governance, risk, compliance, audit and ESG, Diligent empowers more than 1 million users and 700,000 board members and leaders to make better decisions, faster. No matter the challenge.
Now that you know the value of partnering with tax and finance teams, take a closer look at how entity management technology can help you solidify that partnership and practice more efficient entity management.
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.
Organizations credit digital transformation with reducing costs, increasing agility, and delivering enhanced and new services. A possible unforeseen outcome of digital transformation is a rising volume of digital documents and information generated by business systems.
Digitally managing this increasing volume of documents presents a particular challenge for the legal industry. Law firms and legal departments require easy document accessibility and specific needs around workflow and collaboration. There is no time in history when these needs have been more acute than in 2020 when remote working is the norm rather than the exception.
Traditional document management systems focused on helping enterprises organize and manage their documents. As these systems’ use increased, users found that they could not meet modern law departments and legal professionals’ needs.
Defining Modern Document Management
Modern document management is the next stage in the evolution of productivity solutions for corporate legal departments and users. These systems deliver an intuitive, consumer-like experience that empowers professionals to work more productively and collaboratively. At the same time, they enable corporate legal departments to be more efficient, agile, and responsive to the changing business environment.
1. Value to the User: The central tenet of modern document management is to empower the user by delivering a dramatically better experience. Its platform mirrors consumer applications like Amazon and Google, with intuitive features that work the way users want to work and requires minimal training. Modern document management starts with a clean, modern interface, accessible on any device, including personal computers, phones, or tablets. These systems store documents and emails with their associated project or matter, so users see the complete picture without bouncing between information silos. And it is seamlessly integrated with the authoring applications that people use every day, including Microsoft Word, Outlook, Gmail, and others.
2. Value to the information: Modern document management adds smart features and capabilities to enhance the value of information stored in documents and emails. For example, it displays document history and other metrics in intuitive visual dashboards and timelines. It anticipates user actions with smart document previews, suggested filing locations, and personalized search. And it integrates seamlessly with the tools legal professionals use, including matter management, contract management, and workflow software.
3. Value to the organization: Improving the individual user experience while enhancing the value of information delivers profound benefits at the organizational level. Modern document management helps legal organizations become more efficient and productive and deliver better outcomes for the business. Increased user experience drives user adoption and increases the amount of content stored in an organized and secure environment. The system reduces the time spent – across the department – searching for the correct document. More importantly, it retains the department’s institutional knowledge, captured in documents and emails.
4. Comprehensive Governance and Security: The final tenet of modern document management is comprehensive security and governance. Legal organizations have stringent requirements for document security from both internal and external threats. This content requires comprehensive security protections, built on established industry best practices, to secure information assets and govern who can access them. Data is encrypted at every stage of the process, with security permissions defined by content type and automatically applied across all documents or email.
Real-World Case Study
To further illustrate these concepts, it’s helpful to consider a real-world law department example. A large multinational corporation with operations in 180 countries worldwide recently evaluated its legal technology environment. Their in-house team found that they struggled to manage their information resources effectively and identified specific pain points associated with finding, sharing, and uploading information. Their analysis showed that legal department employees needed to search and access four documents every day. The searches fall into three main categories:
“Easy” searches for documents the user has personally touched recently – 10-20 minutes
“Warm” searches for documents where the user has some confidence – 30 minutes-2 hours
“Precedent” searches where the user is looking for previously created content – 1-5 days
When calculating the business impact of this challenge across the department, it became evident that the productivity loss associated with inefficient document search was substantial. They found that data was stored in silos leaving users no single source of truth for business information. The result was a loss of speed and accuracy in searching for information, significantly limiting their ability to find and leverage precedent.
After conducting an evaluation and proof of concept, Legal Operations determined they would roll out a modern document management solution to enable knowledge sharing and leverage their information’s power. They based their decision on believing that they could deliver measurable value by better enabling legal work processes and products. Their objective was to deliver more than a traditional document management system. They wanted to provide a complete legal information, knowledge, and workflow management solution. A modern document management solution’s core value is transforming how legal professionals get work done, improving productivity, enhancing user experience, increasing knowledge sharing, and improving the overall quality of legal services delivered to the business.
June 2020 | Jamie Wodetzki, VP, Contract Strategy, Coupa
A fundamental question for any Legal Ops team is this: how do we know if we’re doing a good job? What would we measure to answer this question? More importantly, what would we measure to compare our performance to that of our legal peers?
To answer these questions, you need a legal data strategy. You need to start collecting and tracking data that measures various performance measures, and how these change over time. And where possible, you need to use data models that are normalized or standardized, such that you can compare contracts and contract performance against your departmental or corporate benchmarks.
But what is Legal Data? Where do you start? What sort of things can you realistically measure?
In no particular order, there are several obvious things to track:
First, internal legal team process and productivity. How long does the team take to complete common tasks? Who’s got what on their plate and are there any painful bottlenecks? Measuring these and other process data allows you to benchmark internal productivity, understand where incoming requests are allocated, and focus on actual problems rather than vague complaints about legal being too slow.
Second, external legal performance and value. How much legal work is farmed out to external counsel, and how do they perform in terms of speed, cost and outcome. What are the trends in terms of rates, billing models, and are you paying more or less than the market? Data not only helps you optimize your own process and performance, but that of your contractors, as well. Eliminating outsourced work in some instances and reducing cost and increasing value of external legal services in others.
Third, legal and compliance risks facing your company. Do you have trusted data on third party relationships and risks? Are you tracking golden customer and supplier data that satisfies KYC and other regulatory compliance demands? Do you have trusted data about your contracts and the obligations they contain? Can you measure the risks buried in your contracts, including liability risk, termination risk, IP risk and price risk, to name just a few? Are you able to foresee concerns before they become big issues? Can you identify provisions within contracts that put your organization at risk, including liability, termination, intellectual property ownership, and price? The role of attorneys is to minimize exposure and risk to the company, but are forced to become reactive instead of proactive when litigation matters arise. Since legal operations engages with each practice area, they have visibility into data that other practice areas may not know exists, and therefore are able to identify gaps without our processes and systems.
It’s safe to say the legal data landscape can be complex and confusing. Some data could reveal an existential threat to your business. Other data could save you a few bucks. You need to sort through and figure out what matters to your business.
Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch. In some cases, there are industry standards you can adopt. In other cases, there are technology suppliers that offer well-designed data models out of the box (with the added bonus of being connected to a community against whom you can benchmark). And you don’t need to get everything perfect on day one.
Coupa has spent two decades drilling into these questions and developing a blueprint for getting your legal data strategy started. Our goal is to set you on the path to making your legal ops team a top performer, and to give you the data to prove it. To learn more about Coupa’s approach to operationalizing data, visit us online at https://www.coupa.com/products/contract-lifecycle-management/.
While I have been sheltering at home in the Seattle area (where Icertis is based), I’ve had the opportunity to connect virtually with many of our customers as they weather this global crisis. In between virtual contract negotiations, home-schooling small children, or strategizing on which safety gear to wear to the grocery store, Icertis customers have generously shared their time and insights as they process what contracting and business will look like post-COVID-19.
It goes without saying that a “new normal” awaits us as we (slowly and responsibly) emerge from this crisis. But just what that normal looks like will vary person to person, organization to organization. In the commercial space, every company will have to assess what’s changed and what remains foundational to their business as they chart a path to rebounding and thriving in the months and years to come.
Still, generalizations can be made and themes are emerging. Based on my conversations, five distinct imperatives for attorneys and contract managers have surfaced amid the commercial turbulence; the operations professionals supporting these functions should also take notice. I call them the “The 5 ‘Ds’ of Managing Contracts in a Post-COVID World”:
Digitize Contract Processes
The more processes a company had digitized before their entire workforce was forced to shelter in place, the better positioned they were to react to the rapidly changing circumstances. This includes those companies that had digitized their contracts and contract processes. Imagine trying to identify tens of thousands of paper agreements that might be impacted by this pandemic. In this quarantine and work-from-home world, it would be impossible to retrieve those paper contracts that were stored in filing cabinets at physical office locations. Cloud-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) enables a level of business continuity simply not possible with paper-based systems.
As the Global Head of Contract Lifecycle Risk Management at a Fortune 500 company noted to me recently: “Any organization that has gone through this and decides not to digitize is certainly missing a big learning opportunity here.”
Discover Contract Data
Another major learning from COVID-19 is just how fast commercial conditions can change. With the COVID-19 situation evolving by the hour, legal and contract professionals had to quickly and continuously assess how the crisis impacted their company’s supplier, customer, partner and employee relationships—many or all of which are defined by contracts.
Companies that had embraced contract digitization could rapidly surface contract insights (remotely and from their homes) from a centralized pool of data, and were at a distinct advantage in crafting their strategies moving forward. Contract data can tell you with whom you’re doing business and on what terms, as well as where they are located and the commercial value of the contract. Access to contracting data and insights in fluid and uncertain times is truly invaluable when a global crisis hits. For example, one company I spoke with immediately surfaced what its contracts said about delivering services remotely, so they could confidently continue working with clients despite the travel restrictions and shelter-in-place orders.
Deliver on Commitments
Whether in crisis or in steady times, one foundational truth that will remain is the importance of trust and delivering on contractual commitments.
While attention can be diverted during a crisis to a handful of contracts that are disproportionately impacted, legal and contracting teams must be confident that the ongoing business of less-impacted agreements moves forward. Following execution, managing these ongoing obligations can be done manually and docketed in calendars. However, many companies that have embraced CLM have utilized technology to undertake this work. Some companies have optimized their obligations management process by utilizing AI/machine learning models trained on terabytes of contract data that can help discover obligations and their relationships, and manage them to fulfillment, ensuring that transactions off the contracts adhere to these obligations. This is an example of how technology can free up human capital to address those contractual relationships that take priority while contract managers remain confident that other commitments and obligations continue to be delivered.
Defend Against Risk
For our colleagues in the CFO office, the pandemic provided a crash course in enterprise risk management. As the outbreak disrupted markets, CFOs were in the hot seat to create plans that increased revenue, reduced cost, accelerated cash flow and ensured compliance.
The mandate to mitigate risk is reflected in contracts and contracting processes. Getting a vital contract under signature could mean generating the cash flow necessary to maintain operations; ensuring a contract is compliant with local regulations could save a company from crippling fines; preventing maverick contracts most certainly means no contracts go out on outdated templates that don’t reflect new business conditions and terms; visibility into all contracts across the organization means negotiations can be quickly pivoted to head off emerging threats.
That onus will never go away: COVID-19 proved that companies put risk management on the back burner at their own peril, and seamless contract management is a central component to both identifying and mitigating current risks and preventing future risks.
Don’t Delay
The companies in the best position to maintain business continuity when COVID hit were those who had already digitized core processes and developed the habits, skill sets and relationships necessary to get the most out of them. As one customer shared, “The great habits we developed with Icertis pre-COVID are now coming into play, to our benefit.” We don’t know when the next crisis will hit. But we do know that the longer you delay, the less time you’ll have to prepare.
Despite the current challenges posed by this pandemic, there will be a time when legal and contracting teams will return to some semblance of “normal” (and thankfully, educating will be removed from legions of parents-turned-homeschool teachers and back in the hands of educational professionals.) These contracting and legal teams, with the help of their legal department operations partners, will be well served to document the pain points presented in this current crisis and consider the Contracting 5 Ds before the next storm.
While I have been sheltering at home in the Seattle area (where Icertis is based), I’ve had the opportunity to connect virtually with many of our customers as they weather this global crisis. In between virtual contract negotiations, home-schooling small children, or strategizing on which safety gear to wear to the grocery store, Icertis customers have generously shared their time and insights as they process what contracting and business will look like post-COVID-19.
It goes without saying that a “new normal” awaits us as we (slowly and responsibly) emerge from this crisis. But just what that normal looks like will vary person to person, organization to organization. In the commercial space, every company will have to assess what’s changed and what remains foundational to their business as they chart a path to rebounding and thriving in the months and years to come.
Still, generalizations can be made and themes are emerging. Based on my conversations, five distinct imperatives for attorneys and contract managers have surfaced amid the commercial turbulence; the operations professionals supporting these functions should also take notice. I call them the “The 5 ‘Ds’ of Managing Contracts in a Post-COVID World”:
Digitize Contract Processes
The more processes a company had digitized before their entire workforce was forced to shelter in place, the better positioned they were to react to the rapidly changing circumstances. This includes those companies that had digitized their contracts and contract processes. Imagine trying to identify tens of thousands of paper agreements that might be impacted by this pandemic. In this quarantine and work-from-home world, it would be impossible to retrieve those paper contracts that were stored in filing cabinets at physical office locations. Cloud-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) enables a level of business continuity simply not possible with paper-based systems.
As the Global Head of Contract Lifecycle Risk Management at a Fortune 500 company noted to me recently: “Any organization that has gone through this and decides not to digitize is certainly missing a big learning opportunity here.”
Discover Contract Data
Another major learning from COVID-19 is just how fast commercial conditions can change. With the COVID-19 situation evolving by the hour, legal and contract professionals had to quickly and continuously assess how the crisis impacted their company’s supplier, customer, partner and employee relationships—many or all of which are defined by contracts.
Companies that had embraced contract digitization could rapidly surface contract insights (remotely and from their homes) from a centralized pool of data, and were at a distinct advantage in crafting their strategies moving forward. Contract data can tell you with whom you’re doing business and on what terms, as well as where they are located and the commercial value of the contract. Access to contracting data and insights in fluid and uncertain times is truly invaluable when a global crisis hits. For example, one company I spoke with immediately surfaced what its contracts said about delivering services remotely, so they could confidently continue working with clients despite the travel restrictions and shelter-in-place orders.
Deliver on Commitments
Whether in crisis or in steady times, one foundational truth that will remain is the importance of trust and delivering on contractual commitments.
While attention can be diverted during a crisis to a handful of contracts that are disproportionately impacted, legal and contracting teams must be confident that the ongoing business of less-impacted agreements moves forward. Following execution, managing these ongoing obligations can be done manually and docketed in calendars. However, many companies that have embraced CLM have utilized technology to undertake this work. Some companies have optimized their obligations management process by utilizing AI/machine learning models trained on terabytes of contract data that can help discover obligations and their relationships, and manage them to fulfillment, ensuring that transactions off the contracts adhere to these obligations. This is an example of how technology can free up human capital to address those contractual relationships that take priority while contract managers remain confident that other commitments and obligations continue to be delivered.
Defend Against Risk
For our colleagues in the CFO office, the pandemic provided a crash course in enterprise risk management. As the outbreak disrupted markets, CFOs were in the hot seat to create plans that increased revenue, reduced cost, accelerated cash flow and ensured compliance.
The mandate to mitigate risk is reflected in contracts and contracting processes. Getting a vital contract under signature could mean generating the cash flow necessary to maintain operations; ensuring a contract is compliant with local regulations could save a company from crippling fines; preventing maverick contracts most certainly means no contracts go out on outdated templates that don’t reflect new business conditions and terms; visibility into all contracts across the organization means negotiations can be quickly pivoted to head off emerging threats.
That onus will never go away: COVID-19 proved that companies put risk management on the back burner at their own peril, and seamless contract management is a central component to both identifying and mitigating current risks and preventing future risks.
Don’t Delay
The companies in the best position to maintain business continuity when COVID hit were those who had already digitized core processes and developed the habits, skill sets and relationships necessary to get the most out of them. As one customer shared, “The great habits we developed with Icertis pre-COVID are now coming into play, to our benefit.” We don’t know when the next crisis will hit. But we do know that the longer you delay, the less time you’ll have to prepare.
Despite the current challenges posed by this pandemic, there will be a time when legal and contracting teams will return to some semblance of “normal” (and thankfully, educating will be removed from legions of parents-turned-homeschool teachers and back in the hands of educational professionals.) These contracting and legal teams, with the help of their legal department operations partners, will be well served to document the pain points presented in this current crisis and consider the Contracting 5 Ds before the next storm.
We’ve met with more than 50 clients in the past 12 months and have enjoyed a front seat to the transformation happening across legal departments. Our meetings have reinforced that CLOC’s 12 core competencies are not stagnant and continue to evolve in their application and impact. Here is a taste of what we are seeing you all accomplish. You can use these to plan your next project, benchmark with your colleagues, and to continue to show the value that you bring to your legal departments and companies.
Financial Management: This has evolved into so much more than simply reporting on spend or managing to the budget. Legal departments are overlaying spend against key objectives of the company to ensure that the allocation of legal resources aligns with the strategic priorities of the company.
Vendor Management: We started with preferred vendors and negotiating favorable pricing. Legal departments are working with vendors to solve common challenges in technology, ediscovery, and more. They are also asking vendors for data dashboarding to spot trends and inform future action.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Legal operations roles are often filled with business professionals from within the company, including finance, products and IT. These hires bring with them relationships and institutional know-how, and allow companies to repurpose people, process, and technology used in the business for use in the legal department.
Technology & Process Support: Legal operations is changing the culture of legal departments by driving the adoption of technology and incorporating process-driven workflows into serving the business.
Service Delivery & Alternative Support Models: This is not just about insourcing versus outsourcing. It is about right sourcing the work to ensure that tasks are assigned to the right resource. This allows everyone on the team to focus on the high-impact and high-value work. Legal operations professionals are shining a light on churn and helping legal departments to stop doing tasks that don’t bring value.
Organizational Design, Support & Management: Legal operations departments are no longer behind the scenes. The groups are front and center within legal departments and the business. Legal operations professionals are increasingly leading pitch meetings, panel selection, fee negotiations, and outside counsel evaluations, and have more optics into organizational changes impacting their legal departments.
Communications: Together with their GCs, legal operations departments are helping accelerate change and are creating innovation fluency about the company’s business and legal industry. At legal department meetings, they are highlighting how technology is transforming their business, mapping legal goals to innovation objectives of the business, and are training on skills core to legal operations. At legal department retreats, they are changing the curriculum to include design thinking sessions, technology updates, and data metrics discussions. They are also bringing together outside counsel to share innovation success stories so that they may be replicated across all firms supporting the company.
Data Analytics: Using data, legal operations is changing the conversation about value. What is the business goal for the matter? How will success be measured? Are legal resources aligned to the business’s strategies? Legal operations departments are driving the creation of dashboards to spot trends, inform future action, and identify missed opportunities. They are also capturing knowledge about the performance and use of their outside counsel. This includes tracking who at what firms have done work in particular areas for the company, working toward a future where legal operations can provide predictive analytics on who is best suited to solve a specific problem for the business.
Litigation Support & IP Management: Legal departments are partnering with IT to bring even more of the ediscovery lifecycle in-house. Teams from information security, IT, internal investigations, and legal operations are working together to show how particular license offerings can reduce spend exponentially. They are using advanced features to identify risk before litigation and are reducing their digital footprint with their vendors by 50 to 90%.
Knowledge Management: In response to the needs of the business, especially during periods of rapid growth, legal operations departments are creating on-demand, self-service legal solutions for their internal customers. To do so, they scope what the business needs, how much of the need requires interaction with a lawyer, and what portion can be solved with automation and standardization. These solutions are driven by playbooks, AI and legal bots.
Information Governance & Records Management: Legal operations departments are creating programs that provide the business better access to information so that it can harness data for a strategic advantage and, in some cases, monetize that data. They are driving the creation of policy and procedure that is practical and enhances service to the business. They are also complying with emerging data privacy laws and protecting against data breach and the associated reputational damage.
Strategic Planning: Legal operations leaders are reporting directly to their general counsel and are helping set the strategy and goals for the legal department. They increasingly have a seat at the table and are measuring their achievement and performance against the established goals for the legal department.
