In recent years, environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives have become strategic imperatives for companies as they seek to build trust with employees, partners, and customers. ESG builds brand loyalty, gives a competitive advantage in the marketplace, and attracts and retains talent within an organization. A study by Unilever found that a third of all global consumers choose to buy from brands because of their ESG commitments. Accordingly, across enterprises, all departments are exploring how to best match their respective programs to support ESG initiatives. 

The legal department is often associated with enterprise-wide ESG discussions on account of the General Counsel’s role in providing advice and guidance regarding these efforts. However, beyond providing ESG legal and regulatory counsel to the enterprise, GCs must also consider how the legal department can adopt practices that align with these ESG goals. More and more GCs are turning to their Legal Department Operations practitioners (LDOs), who will play a critical role in operationalizing ESG initiatives within the Legal department. 

In a recent conversation I hosted with a diverse group of legal operations leaders, it was clear that LDOs are already putting a lot of thought into how the legal department can build programs to align themselves with these ESG initiatives. Here are just a few ideas that LDOs might consider deploying within their own departments that surfaced in that earlier conversation: 

Environmental 

While each industry’s operations carry different environmental impacts, every company (and legal department) would do well to consider how they can make their operations greener.  

Reducing waste and consumption are obvious first steps. Some LDOs have implemented some easy wins like policies that ban disposable coffee cups or issuing reusable water bottles to all legal department employees to reduce reliance on single use plastic bottles.  

Other departments are going paperless, which is especially impactful when you consider that approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away each year in the United States. Accordingly, many LDOs are reviewing manual, paper-based processes and moving to digital contract management. When contracts are managed digitally, it means no more printing out 70-page contracts to do redlines or to gather wet signatures. It’s staggering how much paper can be saved thanks to a digital document workflow.  

In addition to investigating the impact of going paperless, LDOs are looking at the environmental impact of legal department travel. The pandemic has proven that many of the meetings we thought had to happen in person—like in-person negotiations of a contract–can in fact be done virtually. LDOs should consider whether they can continue some of these practices post-pandemic—not to prevent the spread of COVID, but to keep carbon out of the atmosphere.  

Finally, legal teams are looking beyond contract processes and looking at the substance within the contracts. As LDOs help build templates and make them accessible to the legal department, they might consider creating and deploying standard contract clauses and contract playbooks that address environmental sustainability. Making such clauses available is a unique way for legal departments to contribute to an enterprise’s environmental goals. 

Social 

The “S” in ESG asks companies to think holistically about all their stakeholders—employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and the communities that companies work in—and explore how the company might help close the opportunity gap that has historically existed in these populations.  

To be part of the solution, LDOs should consider the legal department’s hiring practices. Reversing historical bias in hiring within the legal department is one way an LDO can make a meaningful contribution to its organization’s social goals. The CLOC competency model identifies Training & Development as a core skill; LDOs can leverage this competency to create professional development opportunities around unconscious bias training for all members of the legal department. This review of hiring practices should extend to all roles in the legal department, from in-house counsel, allied legal professionals and members of the legal department operations team.  

Alignment with these social goals can also come from how legal teams hire outside counsel. Firm & Vendor Management (also a CLOC Core 12 competency) can provide guidance as the legal department engages and hires law firms with track records of diverse hiring and promotion.  

Governance 

Finally, LDOs can play a big role in ensuring the legal team and the company as a whole are operating legally and ethically.  

Top governance concerns for today’s enterprises include issues around bribery, money laundering, cyber-security, and data privacy. While GCs will play a central role in setting the company’s direction around these laws and regulations, LDOs can assist on this front by identifying technology available to the legal department to enable appropriate governance and compliance. 

For instance, LDOs can make sure that all governance policies are easily accessible in a single, shared location (like SharePoint) and simple to read and understand. Transparency and accessibility are key to good governance; accordingly, LDOs can champion the avoidance of legalese and search out opportunities to more clearly explain the rules—so people can follow them. 

LDOs can take a more ambitious step by identifying technology that can assist in an audit of third-party agreements to ensure partners are obliged to follow company guidance on questions of governance. Contract management software can assist in centralizing all contract data in a single location, and AI trained to detect obligation language can automate discovery to turn up gaps in compliance. With past contracts analyzed, LDOs can then turn their attention to future contracts by setting up rules to ensure all relevant regulatory clauses—from privacy to anti-corruption and beyond—are appropriately included in every executed contract. 

Conclusion 

Legal is a critical voice in the organization urging management to look beyond quarterly earnings to understand how a company’s behavior impacts its long-term viability and reputation. With the help of LDOs, legal departments can help operationalize these enterprise-wide ESG initiatives through new programs and technology. This is a golden opportunity for legal teams, and especially LDOs, to step up and lead like the world depends on it. 

The art of tailoring an approach that aligns to an organization’s unique needs 

As corporate law departments continue to look for ways to do more with less, the concept of shared services frequently enters into the equation. For most organizations, centers of excellence (COEs) represent a generally familiar approach. Historically, a “typical” COE model was often thought to rely upon lower-cost/administrative resources focused on lower-risk tasks that arise with frequency. And while this type of COE most certainly still exists, gone are the days where this one-size-fits-all approach to shared services is the only option on the table. This blog post will outline the considerations most heavily influencing the design of shared services models today, identify a few potential challenges (most of which can be proactively mitigated) and provide guidance on the next steps toward designing a (successful!) shared services model. 

In exploring how a COE might drive value in an organization, where should a corporate legal operations department start? 

There are many reasons to consider legal shared services: improving client service, reducing costs, standardizing processes, lowering legal costs or spend, supporting corporate strategy, eliminating redundant processes, or helping to introduce new technologies. So — where to start? 

1. Define  short- and long-term goals in collaboration with stakeholders for the shared services initiative 

Shared services centers appear to be underused, according to findings from a 2021 EY study in conjunction with the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession. While 73% of companies use them to support the legal function in some capacity, only 9% use them extensively. One frequent driver of this lag in shared services adoption is the absence of a clearly articulated set of goals and objectives for the initiative. In the absence of this, shared services models can stagnate, thereby reducing overall value and leaving internal resources frustrated by the lack of progress. To avoid this outcome, formally define goals at the outset and include all impacted stakeholders in the process. 

2. Solicit executive feedback on shared services goals and enlist leadership support to drive stakeholder buy-in 

The implementation of a shared services model can be challenging under the best of circumstances. However, with a well-articulated set of goals and buy-in from appropriate members of an organization’s leadership team, the likelihood of success with a COE initiative will increase exponentially! Once the goals for the shared services initiative have been defined, pressure test them with leadership to confirm alignment with other strategic initiatives that may or may not be in the COE line of sight. Finally, ask for a commitment from leadership or an executive sponsor to help drive stakeholder messaging, thereby confirming a top-down approach to promote enthusiastic acceptance of the shared services initiative and the organizational changes it will bring. 

3. Develop an implementation strategy  

There is no substitute for a well-defined strategy, except a well-defined and documented strategy. With this in mind, be sure to formally capture the requisite details of the implementation plan, socialize and gather feedback as required, and identify a resource to maintain and update the COE plan as required. 

4. Communicate early and often 

No one likes to be surprised by changes to organizational strategy and/or structure. Thus, a change management and communication plan that contemplates stakeholder outreach both early and often is likely to drive the best outcomes. 

Realistically, what legal work can be managed in a shared services setting? 

The law department’s move toward shared services does not necessarily mean making wholesale changes all at once. Typically, law departments will start a shared services journey with activities that are high volume or low risk that have clearly defined and standardized processes, for example, e-discovery, template automation, document review, entity management or contract life cycle management. Starting with high-volume or low-risk areas, companies can design specific workflows and can measure performance according to standard metrics and process guidelines. Begin with one, two or several of these activities during the initial move to this delivery model. 

However, there is a trend for companies to also look at expanding the legal shared services model beyond those traditional activities to include more transactional-type support. These activities may include regulatory remediation and repapering programs, contract drafting and negotiating (vendor or customer) intragroup service agreements, and IP rights management. These types of activities were previously thought to be too high risk to be handled by a shared services format; however, with detailed workflows and proper oversight, there has been success with expanding beyond process support. It should be noted that the expansion typically requires a legal-driven shared services model with the right mix of legally trained professionals or a COE that utilizes professionals with the right legal skills to provide the necessary amount of legal expertise to offer guidance when needed.  

Is it a COE or something different? 

There is often a lot of confusion about the differences between COEs and shared services teams. A shared services center (SSC) usually refers to a dedicated unit, including people, processes and technologies, that is structured as a centralized point of service and is focused on one or more defined business functions. Shared services may come from several different physical locations (regional or global) and can operate onshore, offshore or virtually in some cases. Service delivery may be executed by internal resources or external providers, or a hybrid combination of both, and can involve a single or multiple business functions. Companies sometimes engage external providers to consult with various elements of the design, structure, location and execution options.  

Comparatively, a COE is typically thought of as a specialized knowledge center. A COE is a team that provides leadership, leading practices, research, support or training for a particular focus area. The focus areas of COEs vary and may include technology, business concepts, strategic initiatives or specific legal skills. In other words, they are smaller groups within an organization that can get better results by devoting themselves to a particular activity or set of ideas. Within COEs, there is an emphasis on advanced training and certification, knowledge sharing, and development of standards and methodologies. For COEs to gain acceptance within an organization, they must be given a clear mission and then provide demonstrable value to the business units. Like SSCs, COEs have many variations and should be implemented to meet an organization’s individual legal needs. COEs can be centralized at the enterprise level, within business segments or in the form of smaller communities of practice.  

This is a big change — what is the best way to bring the shared services vision to life? 

The deployment of a shared services team can represent a big change from a cultural and resourcing perspective. A strong business case that clearly illustrates the overall benefits to the organization and the impacted resources will establish a solid foundation on which to build. From there, internal socialization of both project goals and project approach is key, although a methodical change management and communications plan is equally important to determine the right messaging at the right time. Finally, a flexible, phased approach to shared services implementation will allow for adjustments as needed.  

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization. 

EY member firms do not practice law where not permitted by local law or regulation. Ernst & Young LLP (US) does not practice law or offer legal advice. 

Co-authored by: 

Christine Sanz, Senior Manager, EY Law – Legal Function Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP 

Melissa Miller, Senior Manager, EY Law – Legal Function Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP 

 

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.

Advice on building an organization that can adapt to new challenges

Two popular sayings in the legal world are 1) people, process, technology, and data are what make a firm unique, and 2) change is constant. So how do those two elements work together? How can you ensure that you have the right people, processes, technology, and data for today’s constantly changing world?

Shearman & Sterling, a 150-year-old law firm, recently asked themselves this question as they undertook a massive data analytics project, as shared in a recent Ask the Experts session for CLOC. The firm had one billion documents, only 4% of which were in their document management system (DMS), that they needed to quickly get into ship shape to meet new compliance standards. By the end of the 18-month project, not only were all documents in an easily searchable cloud repository, but the firm was also able to roll out features that are beneficial to the client like partner dashboards, more accurate forecasting, and revenue models for value-based pricing.

Here’s a look at their pillars of people, process, technology, and data, that empowered their success as a data-driven firm.

People

“The people aspect cannot be underestimated,” said Meredith Williams-Range, Chief Knowledge and Client Value Officer at Shearman & Sterling. “You have to bring your people along in your [change] journey. Your processes won’t matter. People are your culture and culture will trump your strategy any day of the week.” In the Shearman & Sterling’s case, that meant truly making the initiative firm-wide, as opposed to the responsibility of a certain team, with top-down support from the C-level executives.

Part of the success of the people aspect can be attributed to hiring and involving the right people. Lawrence Baxter, Shearman & Sterling’s Chief Technology Officer, touts the strategy of balancing IQ, EQ, and AQ — that is, intelligence, emotional intelligence, and adaptability — in new hires. (A former marketing executive, he has seen his share of companies go under because they are unable to adapt). He also likes to create teams with equal proportions of, 1) veterans with strong institutional knowledge, 2) tenured employees who are willing to learn new skills, and 3) newer employees, especially those from other industries, who can bring in fresh new ideas.

The success of the project also depended on a fundamental understanding that this effort was not about replacing people with machines. As Williams-Range explained, “It’s simply about adapting the processes that we have and enhancing those processes because the amount of information and the amount of data coming at us as lawyers is growing each day. The technology holds the hand of the lawyer.”

Process

In terms of process, Williams-Range believes there’s no one right place to start — the important thing is to simply start. For Shearman & Sterling, the beginning point was understanding clients and regulations at a global scale. Baxter also recommended asking clients what’s working and what isn’t, and using those answers to drive internal change, since what the client wants carries weight. Of course, unforeseen circumstances can also drive change — Baxter said he has seen years of innovation in the past few months.

The team agreed there are no shortcuts when it comes to process improvement. As Glenn LaForce, Global Director of Knowledge & Research at Shearman & Sterling put it, “You can’t shortchange the pre-work that goes into getting to what we call the sexy stuff, all the cool analytics projects. You have to go through, you have to look at your data and be sure it’s clean and in order, make sure you have the right governance behind it and make sure you have the right policies behind it, and that takes time.”

A whole-firm initiative also meant involving the whole firm. The company created a multidisciplinary data steering committee to get an understanding of how each part of the organization was using data and the downstream effects of making any changes. How will a change to a process in HR affect the DMS in eDiscovery? How should workflows be adjusted for the unique needs of finance and the research team? How do you ensure there’s an audit trail?

For Jeff Saper, Global Director, Enterprise Architecture & Delivery Services at Shearman & Sterling, a lot of the process work comes down to reducing complexity. “We create complex environments and at the end of the day, they need to be simplified,” he said. However, this process of simplifying and streamlining cannot compromise compliance, regulatory processes, or confidence in your work.

Saper and LaForce also stressed that failure is an important part of the process and should not be viewed as a negative — if it happens within a development environment. Finding processes that do not deliver value is just as important as finding ones that do. The important thing, they agree, is learning how to adapt and move forward.

Technology and Data

Again, when evaluating which technology to use, the question ultimately comes back to what benefit will the client receive. For example, Shearman & Sterling decided to move their DMS to the cloud. However, as Saper pointed out, “It’s not about cloud. It’s the agility of what we can do to make things work faster or leaner and hopefully have a better return for our firm.” People wanted to be able to access data anywhere, on any device — a desire that was certainly fast-tracked by the COVID-19 pandemic — and the cloud enabled that.

Similarly, the firm found success in using established technology in new and different ways. For example, the firm used DISCO eDiscovery to sort through and classify emails. Using the platform’s artificial intelligence capabilities, the team was able to classify some 30 million emails in 12 days.

The team developed a clear strategy around who they would partner with to find the right technology. “We’re never going to be a firm that builds technology,” said Williams-Range. “We have talented lawyers and that’s our sweet spot, but we need to provide the right technology and the right system to our people to be as efficient as possible to deliver the best value to our clients. What we do is we look for those partnerships that are going to really work with us.” 

As someone who spent 16 years on the technology vendor side and has seen a lot of finger-pointing, LaForce emphasized the importance of looking for partners as invested in the success of the project as the internal team is, who have governance procedures and skin in the game. “Otherwise, they’re just selling us a product,” he said.

Baxter also noted that the legal landscape has become complicated. A service provider you are in a joint partnership with on one proposal could be a competitor pitching against you in another matter. Cultivating a friendly relationship throughout these complicated dynamics is an art form that will serve law firms well.

Parting Words of Advice

Ultimately, the work of digital transformation is never done, but with the right people, processes, technology, and data in place, the Shearman & Sterling team feel confident they can tackle new challenges that come their way. Their advice to others looking to make the leap? “Just start somewhere,” said Williams-Range. “It can be overwhelming, but just start.”

“Change is not the devil,” added Saper. “It’s ok to continue on a journey as long as you do it safely and securely within compliance. We’re in a different world and law firms have to adjust to it.”

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.

As we shifted from traditional office roles to COVID-induced remote work being the norm, businesses across most industries adjusted and adopted new policies and tools to stay afloat and, in some cases, succeed. Now, as lockdowns ease and restrictions change, 2021 finds us watching as more businesses move into a hybrid workplace.

A myriad of questions face organizations. Some of the major ones are concerns across the board, regardless of where in the world you’re located. Will your staff be willing and allowed to work in the physical office? How many companies will remain flexible about remote work? With findings showing that remote workers are more productive than they were in the office, most will likely offer the opportunity in the long run.

In fact, according to a report by Owl Labs, respondents felt that if they were no longer allowed to work remotely post-pandemic, 66% would stay but be less happy, 54% would stay in their roles, but be less willing to go the extra mile, and 44% would expect a salary increase.

A new strategy is needed

As more questions materialize, it’s time to formulate and implement a strategy for how best to support and manage employees to succeed in the new hybrid workplace. You dealt with the shift to remote work – can it really be that much more difficult? Short answer: yes.

“In a lot of ways it’s going to be more disruptive than when we went all remote,” said Brian Kropp, vice president of research at Gartner, to The Washington Post.  In short, Legal Ops plays a huge role in helping the rest of the organization address the issues that a hybrid workplace may face, from business continuity challenges to implementing effective automation at a time of confusion.

Legal Operations needs to prioritize building a legal tech stack that can securely and productively unite an ecosystem of in-house teams, outside counsel, and service providers. What are the essential technologies that can get you started on this path?

Legal Workflow and Process Automation

If your Legal Operations employees are disseminated across various locations and scenarios, it’s paramount to ensure that your work processes are efficient, collaborative, and trackable (in case of a future audit). This means it falls to legal ops to implement the right technology – i.e., workflow and process automation to unite the hybrid workforce around optimized, digitized processes.

An end-to-end automation solution that spans your organization and covers all of its needs is ideal, particularly one with legal and operational best practices and security measures embedded within it. The effectiveness of your hybrid workforce greatly depends on workflow automation. Your technology solution should offer flexibility, ease of use, and transparency.

Enterprise Legal Management

Efficiency has taken on a whole new level of importance post-pandemic, and it’s crucial to cast an eye over your daily operations and reevaluate each one, especially through the lens of information governance. An effective ELM solution should support an array of corporate legal needs, ranging from matter management to spend management and much more.

An ELM should provide a centralized matter management capability. This is of paramount importance in managing multiple matters being handled by far-flung staff.  Also, your ELM should also be your single source of truth for all your legal matters. In this new hybrid environment, all your Legal Ops team members need equal and immediate access to materials, documents, status updates, and so on. Having disconnected systems for information retrieval will result in wasted time, effort, and money.

That’s why your ELM should also enable a complete audit trail of all changes made to information assets or documents, mitigating compliance and security risks.

Expanded Integration Capabilities

As work-from-anywhere becomes the norm, collaboration tools have experienced a surge in popularity. You would be hard-pressed to find an organization that doesn’t currently use Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a similar platform for internal and/or external communications.

As the number of collaboration tools and platforms increases, it’s crucial that your solution offers expanded integration capabilities to let it work seamlessly with them – particularly in the case of workflow automation.  Not only does this help ensure efficiency across the board, it gives greater functionality to your legal tech stack since the right workflow automation solution will connect and accelerate other solutions, even legacy platforms.

Addressing the needs of hybrid Legal Ops

There are three major “must-haves” that Legal Ops needs to consider as it assesses technologies to support hybrid working environments. The first is flexibility– your technology solution should be able to easily accommodate different scenarios as they arise, especially ones as unique as we have experienced in the past year. Second, your solution should be agile and able to pivot quickly to address these scenarios. Finally, your Legal Operations team should ensure that any solution adopted supports business continuity. Whatever operational or organizational changes may happen, or disruptions occur, your tech tools should always enable you to keep fulfilling the legal objectives and strategy of your enterprise.

 

The three technologies we’ve covered are crucial, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Watch our sponsor session, “Justin Time! The Legal Ops Ecosystem of Today and Tomorrow” at CLOC Global Institute on Wednesday, May 12th at 9:00 AM-10:00 AM PT. The virtual session will address the cornerstone technologies that make sense for legal ops to adopt to meet near-term needs, and future solutions that incorporate collaboration tools, big data, and machine learning for the long haul.

 

 

May 2020| Rachita Maker, Vice President, Chief of Staff and Head of Legal Operations, Tata Communications Limited

Do any lawyers remember going to law school and hearing the words “project management”? I certainly did not, and I suspect most of my colleagues didn’t either. It is a different world now with a number of institutes focusing on Legal Project Management and I see there are multiple courses available on the topic. Legal Project Management or LPM is an identified functional area in The CLOC Core 12 for Legal Operations, therefore, identified as a key skill for the legal operation professional.

I chanced upon project management purely by accident in my fifth year as a lawyer. Overnight, I was handed a high-volume complex contract management project with a tight deadline. In an instant, I was made responsible for a team of twenty bright, young lawyers who were relying on me to give them guidance; a demanding client who had expectations beyond the project scope; a deliverable that I had no idea on how to execute; and a management team that wanted me to make the whole thing work. No pressure? To tell the truth, I loved the challenge and still do today.

So, for all the lawyers or legal operations professions who get thrown into large engagements or complex implementation projects, with no one to tell them how it is done – I am sharing a few of the strategies I have forged over many years of managing projects successfully in the legal services industry.

Overview of Legal Project Management

My experience has taught me to view project management as having four pillars – client management, delivery management, team and stakeholder management, and financial management.

Projects within the legal industry could include large scale contract lifecycle management implementations including data migration from old systems to new, obligations management, M&A due diligence, contract drafting and negotiations engagements, and 50-state regulatory research to name a few. Typical challenges in legal projects relate to: scope; balancing the right number resources while ensuring subject matter expertise; maintaining quality; anticipating and mitigating risks; anticipating changes in projects due to unforeseen circumstances like regulatory changes, changes in production timeline or changes in client requirements and unresponsive clients.

Below is my advice for transitioning from a great lawyer to a successful project manager that no one spoke about in law school:

1. Understand the “pulse” of your client
Understanding the “pulse” of your client – in other words, learning what they value most in the delivery of a project and why – is the key to any successful client-provider relationship. No matter what happens, you should be the go-to person for your client. Set up a communication schedule that matches your client’s needs and try to anticipate what they might need next.

I start any large project by identifying what is most critical to my client. Sometimes it is quality; other times it is timeline; and all too often it is cost. While most clients will say that ALL of those factors are equally important, there is usually one aspect that stands out as the priority.

For example, in a 50-state regulatory research project where timing is of the essence for your client, spending too much time ensuring you have researched every angle and missing the expected deadline will likely leave you with an unhappy client. In this example, setting realistic expectations up front on how the research might be restricted to meet the timeline would likely have led to the client suggesting more specific instructions to provide better focus for the research. As you build trust through a series of meetings and in meeting mutually agreed-upon expectations, the client will start to see you as an extension of their team.

The best way to set and adjust expectations is to create a regular cadence of communications that matches your client’s style. As lawyers, we tend to get so involved in our work that we wait to go to the client with our final “masterpiece”. There is nothing worse for a client than not knowing how their project is progressing. I recommend having at least a once a week check-in call, email or meeting. Depending on the timeline and scale of the project, you may want to have more frequent, shorter, or more casual conversations to establish rapport with your client. These meetings are also a great way to learn about the client and anticipate their upcoming needs.

2. Manage “scope creep”
For your clients and for your organization, success is most often measured in financial terms. As project managers, you manage the budget by avoiding “scope creep” – in other words, ensuring that the requirements of a project have not unnecessarily expanded, making the project more expensive than anticipated. Scope changes are easier to identify if a client makes explicit changes to the deliverables or timing of the project; but in practice, small accretive changes are made in smaller bits and become difficult to quantify – in other words, they creep up until the project is ultimate off-budget.

Managing scope begins even before a project starts. As more clients now want fixed pricing or alternate pricing models for projects, the days of hourly billing have almost disappeared. Clients routinely ask for a quote without giving, or sometimes not knowing, any details around the project. Imagine a template harmonization project for a large multinational company – at a minimum, it would help to know how many templates, across how many geographies, the number of business units with overlapping templates, etc. Even if you are able to get some of this information in advance, chances are that you will get answers in approximates, but the client will demand certainty on pricing. It is important to define the project scope to the best of your ability and build in strong assumptions to protect your client and your organization.

Even with the best planning, scope creep can continue through the life of the project and often happens in short bursts. Since we are anxious to maintain good client relationships and we want to earn their business, we tend to overlook the scope creep issues, often leading to unanticipated bills to the client or unsustainably low margins for your organization. I recommend logging all requested changes, no matter how small they seem at the time, and their potential impact on the project. Assess these impacts with your clients and organization at regular intervals in order to anticipate any potential changes in cost or timing. Your clients will appreciate the open communication. The alternative, which is not mentioning scope changes until it is too late, can chip away at trust with your client and your organization.

3. Measure and meet your client’s quality and timeline expectations
As lawyers, we are trained to provide high-quality work product. After all, our work product is the showcase of our talent. While it is easy to control our own deliverables and quality, it can be difficult to be responsible for what someone else is producing. The truth is that as project managers, we are responsible for the overall quality of the project. For example, whether you are overseeing 5 people working on an M&A transaction or 30 people working on a document review, you will need to ensure that quality and the timeline are met by the entire team working together.

The first step to providing quality work is to define and measure what quality means to the client. Work with your client to define quality metrics and then track them. As a project manager one should be able, at any point in time, to confidently talk about the “quality percentage” of their engagements. Tracking quality through pre-defined metrics also helps project managers identify if issues are related to a particular person or if those issues are general across the team.

While high-quality work is expected, most legal projects are deadline-driven, whether it is a deadline related to production, regulatory demands or a transaction. As lawyers, we are used to burning the midnight oil to meet our deadlines and produce the best output we can. The challenge is to help your project team stay motivated to work the extra hours when large deadlines are looming. In order to minimize all-nighters or unsustainable work hours, as well as to avoid any curveballs that may come up in a project, I usually try to build a buffer in project timelines. For example, if I have a 4-week project that needs about ten people, I will staff it with twelve people instead and set an internal timeline of 3 weeks so that I can conduct last minute checks, conduct quality review and make changes that may have come up during the life of the project.

4. Build and maintain reports that your clients and management will value
Maintaining daily, weekly and monthly reports on your engagements will benefit both your clients and your organization. As a project manager you are expected to have a real-time understanding of project metrics – whether they relate to number of documents, hours worked on the project, throughput per hour, quality measures and any other information that can be sliced and diced.

I recommend updating clients and other stakeholders with progress reports. It helps to understand your client and stakeholder communication styles and timing, and to set expectations upfront. Weekly, or sometimes daily, reports may be needed. I was once working on a project that I knew was VERY important to my CEO, and I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and worry about where we were on the project. I proactively set up daily reports, and it worked wonderfully to keep my CEO updated and comfortable with the project.

There are a number of tools and technologies that can help you track the progress and performance of your project. Using automated workflow tools, you can generate delivery dashboards, quality metrics, monthly information reports, etc. These tools help you collect analytics on each activity of your project. For longer-term engagements, I have also seen the Balanced Score Card approach work beautifully with clients, as they can see a holistic view of the team’s performance based on operational and delivery excellence, client satisfaction and additional value by way of innovation. As lawyers, we are not always proficient with tools and technology in the market place, but as good project managers we need to identify the best-suited person in our team who can support us in generating and maintaining reports.

5. Invest in your team’s growth
A colleague of mine once said, “After a certain point in your career, it isn’t what your boss thinks of you, but what your team thinks of you,” and I totally agreed with her. Your team is a testament of you. A great project manager knows how to get buy-in from the team, give them the right training and resources, challenge them and use their strengths to the fullest. I try to build my project teams with complementary personality types to provide balance. No one person can do everything and most project managers think that the burden of performance is on them. The truth is that we should use our team’s strength to the fullest – this not only helps them to enhance their skills and helps them feel vested, but also takes some of the burden off our shoulders.

Remember that no matter how much you plan, there are things that may be out of your control. Great project managers focus on what is in their control, escalate what is not, identify risks early on and mitigate them to the best of their ability. As lawyers and professionals, we juggle multiple projects every day, and effective project management will help us stay organized.

With excerpts from “The Ten Questions to Ask Yourself to Influence Your Future”, as Presented by Dr. Zachary Walker, Educator, Author, and International Speaker, University College London Institute of Education at the CLOC 2020 London Institute.  He can be contacted on LinkedIn or through his website at www.drzacharywalker.com.

One of the most complicated tasks facing companies today is the challenge of aligning the cultures and expectations of multiple generations in their organization. Legal departments are not immune to these challenges. Like others, legal is often composed of multiple generational influences from Boomers to Gen Xers to Millennials. Gen Z is just starting to enter the workforce which brings in yet another shift in workplace dynamics. Today’s leaders need to manage the differences and similarities between four to six generations while integrating them into a cohesive, functional, high-performing team.

Each person comes with a different set of expectations and definitions of loyalty, ethics, and skills. Leaders need to shift to make the most of these energies and skill sets that bring incredible potential to both the department and company. The generation into which one is born is an important determinant of these personal characteristics. Of course, each individual is different – however, generational trends tend to shape ideas on “big picture” issues such as the value of teamwork, workplace expectations, and the relationship between the individual and society, and each generation tends to share similar experiences as a result of growing up at the same time.

A 2014 Harvard Business Review article exclaimed that “for the first time in history, five generations will soon be working side by side.” It continued:

“The Boomer mystified by Facebook; the Millennial who wear flip-flops in the office; the Traditionalist (born prior to 1946) who seemingly won’t ever retire; the cynical Gen Xer who’s only out for himself; and the Gen 2020er [known as Gen Z today] – born after 1997- who appears surgically attached to her smartphone.”

If you’ve attended a seminar or conference on this topic, you may have learned that these stereotypes are not valid and that all generations can and do share common values and goals.  Still, generational tensions exist within our multi-generational workforces and it’s our job to help our employees recognize and respect the skill sets that each generation brings to the table.

The U.S. Government projects the number of workers over the age of 75 will double in the next decade. In many cases, workers continue to work longer because they can’t afford to retire when they reach retirement age. And many workers in the legal profession choose to work longer because they enjoy their work and value their relationships with their coworkers. 

Generation Z, our youngest generation of workers, is just entering the workforce. By 2026, that group will surpass the number of Millennials (who are now the largest) in the workforce. These two generations will define the future of work.  Whether a 35-year-old manager managing a Boomer workforce and Gen X workforce or a 65- year-old manager managing a Gen Y and Millennial workforce, or somewhere in between, it is incumbent upon leaders and managers to know who they lead. To be successful, we will have to understand what each generation wants out of their jobs and how they envision work.

Companies that shift to strike a multi-generation allegiance will have an efficiency advantage over others that don’t. A multi-generational team offers a diverse way of looking at a project or problem. Leading them can be both a challenge and an opportunity. Understanding who they are is key.

Leading an Inter-Generational Workforce

In January 2020, the CLOC London Institute ended its educational conference with a session led by Dr. Zachary Walker from the University College London. Dr. Walker’s session was one of the highest rated sessions during the Institute. His current work focuses on Generation Z, educational neuroscience and high performance leadership.

During his session, Dr. Walker explained a few of the traits of generational groups that are, or will be, employed by your organization in the future and challenged everyone to be willing to adapt their leadership style accordingly. 

Generation Z: (Born 1996 – 2015)

According to Statista, Gen Z represents 24% of the workforce worldwide. Gen Z grew up in households that were significantly affected by 911 and the 2008 recession. As a result, financial security and stability are vital to them.

Gen Z’ers are entrepreneurial and ambitious. Surveys show that about half of them want to work for themselves – because they believe they can do “it” better – while half also want to do something that will change the world. They are competitive and financially driven. They have expectations of advancing in their roles quickly and being rewarded financially. This group is prone to burn-out, so they will need your assistance to achieve work-life “harmony.”

Gen Z values authenticity and meaningful interactions. Although they are digitally astute, they prefer to communicate face-to-face and work collaboratively. Gen Z craves feedback in real-time. Waiting until their annual evaluation to provide negative feedback will likely offend them. They want mentorship and constant feedback. They appreciate it and value it.

They value inclusion, social justice, diversity, and fairness. Dr. Walker noted organizations that simply aspire to these values would not impress a Gen Z candidate. They are influenced by “Doers.”  Congruence between what organizations say and what they do is absolutely critical to Gen Z.

Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 – 1995  

By this year, 2020, Millennials are forecast to comprise half of the American workforce, and by 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce. 

Millennials do not want the life of their parents, who valued work over relationships. They value work-life balance suited to allow them to enjoy their lives outside of work. Work satisfaction and financial stability are essential to Millennials; however, they aspire to strike a healthy balance between work and relationships outside of work.

This generation seeks a first-name basis relationship with their employers. They treat their employers respectfully, but they expect their employer to earn their respect. They enjoy a relaxed work environment where colleagues at various levels of leadership and responsibility can easily talk, joke, and laugh with each other while maintaining the appropriate hierarchical management structure.

Millennials value honesty, are eager to learn, appreciate personal connections, efficiency, and a sense of community.  

Generation X: Born 1965-1976   

According to Statista, Gen X represents 35% of the workforce worldwide.

The income gap between Gen X and Millennials grows wider each year.  Generation X makes more money and spends more money – 11% more than Boomers and 33% more than Millennials. They spend more because they are raising a family and caring for aging parents. The dual responsibility of caring for parents and children puts a high demand on their resources. 

Gen X values freedom and responsibility in the workplace. They are more likely to question authority than their parents and prefer flexibility in work arrangements. They don’t want to be micromanaged.  

Baby Boomers: Born 1946 – 1964 

Baby Boomers represent 6% of the workforce worldwide.

Baby boomers are hard-working – some would say workaholics – and motivated by position, prestige, perks, and money. They are independent, confident, and define themselves by their professional accomplishments. Their parents grew up during the Great Depression, and Boomers grew up under the threat of global nuclear war. They were exposed to protective drills in school in the event of a nuclear attack, lived in households stocked with food and supplies, and knew where they would shelter in the event of a nuclear attack.

A “good worker” was defined as having a strong work ethic and the willingness to “do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

Baby Boomers are often critical of younger generations for what they perceive as a lack of work ethic and commitment. 

What does the future of work look like across multiple generations?

The influence of Gen Z and Gen Y is already changing what work looks like. The future of work will value health and wellness, offer flexible workspaces and work locations, emphasize continuous professional development, use technology to create efficiencies, and enable a mobile workforce. According to Dr. Walker, the future of work will include workplace neurodiversity and the use of collective intelligence to solve problems.  

“Neurodiversity is a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. These differences can include those labeled with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others.”

Research suggests that neurodiverse individuals receive, process, and interpret information differently and often solve problems in unconventional ways. These employees are loyal, highly dependable, and adept at fitting into different work cultures.

Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, joint efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. Dr. Walker explained it this way:

“[A] group-based approach to harnessing the collective intelligence of people who work together, matching different skills and knowledge sets of internal experts to address future project needs.”

Collaboration is how younger generations prefer to work. As leaders, we are responsible for “upskilling” our employees so that we can build an environment that supports collective thinking to solve problems.

What now? 

Multiple generational organizations are the future and understanding the behaviors and drivers for each generation is critical for success. There are new ways of working every day. Collaboration and communication continue to be two of the most important components in bringing the generations together, especially as the world embraces a work from home mentality. 

Every generation is expressing a need for more flexibility, the opportunity to shift hours—to start their workdays later, or earlier, for example, or put in time at night, if necessary. Work-life balance drives satisfaction for all generations. The similarities in attitudes across generations are striking when it comes to benefits that drive satisfaction.

Multi-generation organizations are here to stay. The key is to foster the intergenerational culture by respecting the varied differences each generation contributes. It also means working as a proactive leader to eliminate strife, find the similarities and strengths and establish clear communication paths to ensure loyalty and success.