Strategies and insights from our white paper, “Turning Legal Into a Value Center” 

Controlling costs is an evergreen concern for corporate legal departments. One incredibly important aspect of cost-saving projects is change management. In fact, a December 2023 survey showed that after cost containment, implementing business process improvements was the second highest priority for legal departments, with 46.7% of legal departments ranking it among the top three challenges they’re facing. 

Priori and CLOC recently partnered on a white paper, “Turning Legal Into a Value Center,” which looks at different strategies that legal departments use to achieve cost savings. Unsurprisingly, change management was a key concept that underpinned many of the strategies discussed. 

Below you’ll find some tips for handling change management—a key component of executing successful projects that optimize legal spend. To learn more, download the full white paper. 

Packaging the Value Story – Change Management & Communication 

Whether you’re launching a new internal initiative, implementing new legal technology or having conversations about spend with your outside counsel, clearly communicating your goals and expectations is necessary for success. Just about every task your legal department undertakes to drive business value and optimize legal spend contains elements of change management, and implementing change management well starts with communication.  

There wasn’t one legal operations professional who we talked to that didn’t emphasize the role of communication. Here is some advice for approaching conversations and getting buy-in from stakeholders for your next project. 

Start From the Top Down 

When you’re launching a new initiative, it is important to get the top-level stakeholders on board from the beginning. If you don’t have the support of the people at the top, it can be hard to get other stakeholders and the teams that will help you execute to come on board and follow through with the vision.  

Build Relationships 

Starting with buy-in from the top sounds great, but how do you get there? Often, successful project management (in the legal operations space and elsewhere) is a long game. You want to show the stakeholders in your company that you understand where they’re coming from and what motivates their decision-making. Communicate throughout the year so you’re not just talking when something has reached a boiling point. The more you can empathize with and show respect for the work they do, the more they will be willing to trust you when the time comes to make a change.  

Know Your Audience 

Getting to the point where stakeholders trust you means learning about their roles: What their priorities are, the type of work they do, the pain points they experience related to legal, etc. Interview your business partners and get their perspective. When combined with metrics like projected cost or time savings, anecdotes about how a given project will help team members do their job better bring the narrative you’re trying to sell together. 

Make the Business Case 

Come into discussions with an inventory of what the situation is now, where you hope to get to upon completion of the project and recommendations for how to get there. This likely includes current data and projections about the project will affect those metrics (e.g., How much time does a task take now? How and why will this initiative reduce that time spent?). Show how the solution you’re recommending brings you from the current state to that desired end state. 

Ultimately, getting buy-in for a project is about telling your value story. You want to bring your stakeholders along with you on this journey. The more you can get them involved and make them feel like they are a part of it, the more likely it is you’ll get approval and find success. Nobody should feel blindsided by the change you’re recommending, they should feel the opposite—that they had a say in how the project came together and are as much responsible for its success as you are. 

For more cost-savings best practices, strategies and insights, download the white paper, “Turning Legal Into a Value Center.” 

The members of the CLOC Legal Project Management Committee are excited to play an active part in the CLOC Community.  Our intent is to provide educational opportunities (through regular Committee meetings) and tangible industry work product (through  Workstream workshops).  Whether you desire to just “be in the loop” or help problem solve, there is a place for you as a member of the LPM Committee.

Attend this meeting to learn more about workstream development for LPM Committee projects and to provide your insights and input to further refine the scope of the committee’s work.

The members of the CLOC Legal Project Management Committee are excited to play an active part in the CLOC Community.  Our intent is to provide educational opportunities (through regular Committee meetings) and tangible industry work product (through  Workstream workshops).  Whether you desire to just “be in the loop” or help problem solve, there is a place for you as a member of the LPM Committee.

 The next phase of our committee begins on Wednesday, July 10^th at 12:00-1:00pm EDT.  All are welcome!  Come learn about the revolutionary work done to date and how we are planning to continue making a difference in CLOC and the legal community at large.  At the meeting, we will share insights about our new workstreams, seek your feedback to further refine our work, as well as review opportunities for your participation and where you can make a meaningful impact.  

Associated with LPM Committee

Let’s build upon this year’s CGI momentum and continue sharing best practices across our chapter and stay up to date on CLOC resources supporting legal ops.

Agenda:

1. Welcome
2. PWC Generative AI Demo
3. CLOC Maturity Assessment Resources
4. CLOC Legal Project Management Committee Spotlight
5. Networking Social

Open to the Toronto eco-system. 

Social to begin at 5:00pm: Sud Forno, 132 Yonge Street, Toronto  (Yonge/Temperance)

Associated with CLOC Toronto

Join the second installment in our regional roundtable series. We will be discussing how your peers are using business process automation and optimization to improve efficiency. Be ready to share tips and discuss challenges, from roadmapping to solutioning.

We will be limiting the number of attendees to promote participation, so please register quickly to secure your spot.

Deborah Haile, Associate Director, Legal Operations at Gilead Sciences, Inc. will be our moderator for this event.

Associated with San Francisco Bay Area

Join CLOC San Francisco Bay Area for an interactive, virtual roundtable discussion on legal project management. Learn what your peers are doing, and share your tip and tricks in this small-forum format. We will be limiting the number of attendees to ensure group participation.

This session will be moderated by Deborah Haile, Associate Director, Legal Operations at Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Associated with San Francisco Bay Area

If your company has spent years trying to streamline your contracting process, it’s easy to get excited hearing about the ease of implementation or the ability to achieve ROI quickly via a contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool. But once your organization has selected a CLM tool, you might be thinking: how do we get started? How do we turn these promises into reality during implementation? 

It’s 100% possible for your organization to implement a CLM efficiently, effectively and with demonstrable go-live success. Here are the top 10 tips for an agile implementation of contract lifecycle management from DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner: 

Tips to follow before you kick off a CLM project: 

1. Document your existing process. Whether it’s on the back of a napkin or a color coded swimlane diagram, starting with a visualization of your existing contract process helps your team understand the starting point for developing a process within CLM. Even if this entire process ends up getting scrapped, starting from the same point helps your team get on the same page. 

2. Know your stakeholders. If your process is the “what”, your participants in the contract process are the all-important “who” (legal, for instance). If you hope to design a better process within your CLM system, you’ll need not only their input, but their buy-in.  

3. Designate an executive single point of contact (SPOC) for build decisions. What happens when there’s a disagreement on a path forward between your legal and sales teams? To streamline the process, you’ll need someone to break ties and stalemates to avoid delays. Delegate an involved leader to be the final vote should these situations come up.  

Tips to follow before you begin the CLM build: 

4. Focus on the big steps before diving into details. If your team has been working through a manual process for years (or decades), seeing the advanced capabilities of CLM solutions can be eye opening. But a good process is more important than any bell or whistle a system offers. Define your MVP and make sure you align on the larger process steps before diving into nuanced functionalities.  

5. Get your subject matter experts (SMEs) engaged. During design workshops, it’s extremely important for the core project team to stay involved. The core team should prioritize engaging cross-functional SMEs internally to ensure that the process design is not only streamlined, but all-inclusive of necessary participants. A bonus of this engagement–these SMEs will be more equipped to become future power users and evangelists of the system within their unique department or function. 

6. Formalize your sign-off process. Once you’ve completed your design, put a bow on it via a formalized sign-off. This act may seem symbolic, but it’s a way to ensure your team is fully engaged and bought in. A clearly defined scope of work that is agreed upon across your team, the vendor and the implementation partner is critical to avoid an untimely “re-designs” in the middle of the build, or worse, after the build has been fully completed.  

Tips to follow during CLM implementation: 

7. Get trained: Classroom Style. If your CLM solution has formalized training offerings, the best time to take these courses is during the build. That way, as your team completes the technical components of the build, you’ll have your training at the top of your mind and be well prepared for the subsequent testing and go-live.  

8. Get trained: Hands-On Learning. Whether your team is utilizing a solution implementation consultant or not, hands-on learning during the build is a great call. Ask to take some time during the technical portion of the build to facilitate knowledge transfer. That way, you’ll be able to pair your knowledge of the concepts of the system with the real-world example that your organization will be using for years to come. 

Tip for user acceptance testing: 

9. Try to break everything. If you’ve followed the tips up until now, you’ll have a good understanding of your process, your people, the CLM tool and your specific CLM configuration. This is where it all comes together: bring a cross-functional team together to test all of the functionality of your configured system. If your team wants to do UAT right, don’t just test the standard path – test the nuances, exceptions, and one-offs. The best CLM systems have been fortified by a robust UAT with engaged participants. 

Tip for CLM go-live: 

10. Advocates = Adoption. Congrats – your team has made it to go-live in record time! Now how do you get your team to start using the system right away? If you’ve engaged your cross-functional teams throughout the process, utilize them as departmental trainers and system advocates. Change management is crucial to an efficient start on CLM. The more your team spreads the word and stays involved, the more likely your organization is to adopt usage of your new CLM tool.  

The more you invest upfront in these best practices ahead of time and throughout your CLM implementation, the more long-term success you’ll have. The most successful CLM implementations include an experienced system integrator partner and a dedicated vendor account team including customer success managers who’ve helped hundreds of customers navigate these projects successfully. 

While these 10 tips can be utilized for any contract management solution, selecting the correct tool increases the likelihood that you’ll have an efficient and effective start with contract lifecycle management. Learn more about how DocuSign CLM helps automate manual contract tasks, streamline workflows, and reduce errors and risk in your contract process. 

This blog was contributed by DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner.  

Questions on how the DocuSign CLM function can make your business more efficient and streamline your agreements process? Contact jennifer.schwartz@docusign.com or ahelin@spauldingridge.com. Or visit our sites at https://www.docusign.com/products/clm/toolkit or https://www.spauldingridge.com/docusign 

This guide is intended to provide an overview of the work product developed by the LPM 2.0 committee and to provide the CLOC membership with a guide to implementation of best practices for matter life cycle management incorporating LPM principles. This guide is also designed to be used internally and in collaboration with external resources or vendors.

This guide is intended to provide an overview of the work product developed by the LPM 2.0 committee and to provide the CLOC membership with a guide to implementation of best practices for matter life cycle management incorporating LPM principles. This guide is also designed to be used internally and in collaboration with external resources or vendors.

CLOC members have access to the full collection of artifacts (documents and templates) created by the committee in support of MLM that are outlined in this eBook. The zip file can be downloaded through Community Connect.

Download the eBook PDF

This guide is intended to provide an overview of the work product developed by the CLOC LPM Committee and to provide the CLOC membership with a framework for implementation of best practices for matter life cycle management incorporating LPM principles.  The guide is designed to be used internally and in collaboration with external resources and vendors.