The Vital Role Of Reporting For Legal Operations

Easy to use, clear and comprehensive reporting functionality has evolved from an added bonus to a must-have requirement for corporate legal teams when evaluating legal technology. The pressure on legal operations to demonstrate improvements and return has led to reporting features being almost as important as the fundamental benefits of the software tool in use.

Where legal operations is missing a trick is when data analysis from a particular tool is used in isolation. To use legal spend management software as an example, out-of-the-box spend reports and user-friendly analytics wizards allow legal departments to monitor work in progress, measure actual spend, and forecast budgets accurately.

That’s not to say legal spend data isn’t useful on its own. On the contrary, legal operations teams use spend data to make better matter resourcing decisions, negotiate discounts, get more value from firms, and hire more internal staff.

Combining Legal Data To Better Manage Risk

Where the in-house legal function is working closely and in partnership with the business units across the company, the range of information and data it holds will often put it in a unique position within the organisation. This data not only supports an awareness of what the business is doing but also forms part of the historic corporate knowledge that is built up over the years; such as previous contracts, decisions and outcomes. Historically, this information was not held in a structured electronic format, which meant any form of data and trend analysis, as well as knowledge management, was extremely manual and time consuming.

With the increase in legal matter management and legal spend management solutions as well as better document search and retrieval there is a growing need and clamour for data processing, data analysis and knowledge management. Capturing basic contract terms and/or details of legal opinions in a matter management system provides a very simple knowledge management tool and a rich source of data. Other tools that will help provide data are any solutions used to create standard contracts, access to benchmark reports, as well as internal resources (finance reports etc.).

Those legal operations teams that are seeing the most value are those that combine data from various technology tools to take their strategic input to the next level. One such area is management and mitigation of risk.

A legal operations team that is carrying out data analysis on all the data at its disposal will be in a position to identify trends that will lead to a range of questions that should spark further debate, such as;

• How much work is done “in-house” versus being sent externally?
• Are the correct processes being followed?
• Are we getting the right level of technical support for the type of transaction?
• Is there a growth in the types of transactions either at a business unit or country level?
• Is one firm being used more than others for similar types of transaction from a particular part of the business / legal team?
• How does the firm perform against others for similar types of transaction both on price and performance?
• How does the business differ to market peers?
• What is required to manage a specific regulatory change?
• Is the in-house legal function and its staff compliant with the relevant regulatory authority guidelines, such as the Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) etc.?

Below are some examples of how the answers to these questions could demonstrate a change in the risk profile and risk appetite.

By monitoring the volumes of work, what type of work is being done, who is doing it (in-house lawyers, external lawyers or a combination of both), the time taken, the costs etc. the legal operations teams will be better placed to advise on the organisational design, support and management of the legal function as well as the risk profile and the risk appetite of the legal function and in certain cases, the supported businesses.

A better understanding of what is being done and by whom, will help ensure that the legal function is properly resourced, is not taking on activities that are better placed in other parts of the organisation, and that the appropriate processes and procedures are in place and controls are being administered. For the legal function and its in-house staff, this might include ensuring that they are complying with the rules of the governing bodies such as the SRA, NALP, the Federal Bar Association in Germany etc.

Spotting an uplift in a particular type of work (such as litigation) or activity (such as drafting) could indicate a lack of understanding of the contract terms within the business front line areas who are requesting contract changes, bad working practices, poor standard documentation, or changes in the markets and/or economic climate (each of which also presents opportunities). Legal operations teams can help to mitigate these by highlighting trends and ensuring that the legal function;

• Delivers better training and communication to the business and legal function
• Carries out regular reviews of standard documentation,
• Supports reviews of policies, practices and procedures, and
• Develops a better understanding of the market.

Consistent use of one firm over others should provoke questions as to why that firm is being used. It may be that they are very competitive on price or they have the appropriate skill sets. Fixed fee arrangements are increasingly popular, but if the firm is not providing any supporting timekeeper activity data, it becomes difficult to know whether the firm is providing the right level of technical support and whether the fee structure is still fair and balanced. As part of the legal operations team’s vendor management programme, they should ensure that that firms are maintaining the right level of skill sets for the work they are being asked to undertake, as this will help mitigate legal risk caused by a lack of technical knowledge and support. For the more complex deals it would be normal to see more senior lawyers engaged with the matter.

With the increase in cyber security and greater scrutiny by regulators who are starting to require more rapid, robust, evidence-based reporting, the need for greater use of these solutions is becoming more prevalent to avoid data being compromised and fines being levied. Understanding what data has been passed to which supplier helps ensure that those suppliers have appropriate controls in place to manage that information in line with Information Governance and Records Management policies and procedures and that any breaches promptly reported.

It is also worth noting that a lack of data in the legal systems is equally as insightful as it will show where parts of the business and/or legal function are not following agreed practices and procedures. Furthermore, using “gap” reports in the legal systems helps identify problems within the data that will distort any data analysis.

For legal operations teams to deliver process improvements and efficiencies, ensure compliance with policies and regulatory requirements, optimise their spend and manage risk, they should analyse the data that is available to them from all the data sources at their disposal. As they start to analyse all their data, instead of analysing point solution data in isolation, they will start to discover new trends and insights not previously seen or understood.

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About BusyLamp

Founded by a team of lawyers and powered by frustrated users of endless spreadsheets and clunky legacy legal tech systems, BusyLamp is the leading SaaS alternative for efficient legal operations. We help legal departments save time, significantly reduce costs, and collaborate more effectively with in-house and outside counsel by simplifying and improving their legal processes. Legal departments leverage our end-to-end solution to improve visibility and efficiency from pitch to completion. Become a member of the BusyLamp user family and take advantage of our sophisticated sourcing, fee tracking, e-billing, matter management and vendor management features, all with powerful reporting and analytics.

www.BusyLamp.com

Who’s got the right insights into designing an airplane: the pilot who’s going to be taking a seat in the cockpit, or the engineer pouring over blueprints and test data?

The answer is both, of course. Without sharing their POVs and expertise with each other, nothing gets off the ground. The same thing holds absolutely true in developing any technology for Legal Operations: The product provider, its end users, even non-user stakeholders and others impacted by tech adoption need to have a voice in the final product.

Why? Because each of them is already being affected by the problems it’s trying to solve. They’ve got their own valid angles on those problems, and their own individual needs that have to be addressed.

When this kind of “co-innovation” is done right, it doesn’t generate compromised, design-by-committee products, but useful and effective solutions to real-world, on-the-ground Legal Ops challenges. And in our view (and that of most other Legal Ops professionals, we’ve found), it’s the magic ingredient for transforming Legal Operations – and even the legal industry as a whole.

Uniting a complex ecosystem

When we were considering the topics we could highlight at our panel at this year’s CLOC Institute Vegas, it made perfect sense to focus on co-innovation…and how it’s a proven, powerful tool with limitless potential for shaping tomorrow’s evolution of Legal Operations: Legal Ops 2.0.

Legal Ops 2.0 will only be a reality when an entire corporate legal ecosystem can be united under a single broad umbrella of best practices, governance, efficiency, and collaboration. One that features seamless integration of every product in a legal tech stack that expands innovation and excellence across the entire business.

When you consider the potential complexity of that ecosystem, and the different demands put on it by different users and stakeholders, unifying it and the many varied processes it contains may seem unlikely. Yet we’ve already seen the path forward, lighted by the work of Legal Ops pioneers who are proving right now that co-innovation is key.

Making it work in the real world

For these leaders, a primary step was to commit to becoming a more strategic partner to the rest of the enterprise, in effect creating “Legal Service Centers” within their corporate legal departments. These are designed to provide a hub of best practices, technology, innovation and excellence that can lift more than just the legal department. The rest of the company can be elevated, too, as those practices and tools are adopted elsewhere in the organization.

We’ve already seen this kind of cross-departmental adoption in action at companies where Legal Ops was the first to use a tool such as SaaS workflow automation; soon enough, other departments began to ask Legal Ops’ help in adopting it for their needs, too.

The contributors to our May 14 panel – Legal Ops leaders from The Gap, Shell, Ingersoll-Rand, and Keesal Propulsion Labs – have been driving these changes by prodding everyone inside and outside of their organizations with skin in the Legal Ops game to commit to co-innovation.

Like so many in both the CLOC and Mitratech client communities, they believe in sharing their experiences, so at this presentation they’ll discuss these efforts. They’ll have real progress to demonstrate in getting Legal Ops leaders, CTOs, internal clients, corporate stakeholders, technology providers, and implementation specialists to work together to improve outcomes and results at their respective companies.

The challenges these co-innovators have faced have ranged from change management to process improvement, adopting new technologies, and considering other fresh approaches to addressing existing challenges. But meeting any of these challenges has demanded teamwork and trust between everyone involved, and the willingness to embrace a shared vision of success.

The results? Our panelists have witnessed transformational changes in culture, behavior, outcomes, KPIs, and more. Plus, they’ve encouraged the growth of both CLOC and at least one solution-specific user community dedicated to the greater success of Legal Ops technology for everyone.

Building a use cases cloud

All of our panelists are advocates of building a stronger client/user community, something Mitratech is incredibly proud to be a part of. For them, process improvement and co-innovation are absolute cornerstones of Legal 2.0. As a means of embracing and promoting these? Taking an active role in the user community, where best practices and actual workflow designs can be shared.

Mitratech found one opportunity to promote co-innovation through something that was already happening organically in its TAP user community. The concept of a “workflow use cases cloud” that allows everyone involved to take a hand in moving Legal Ops forward by continuously sharing, adapting, refining and their work with each other. In fact, this even inspired us to formally promote online sharing of workflow designs among our user community via our TAP Co-Innovation Center.

Prepping for Legal 3.0

Creating and promoting mechanisms like this for sharing expertise and experience is foundational to achieving Legal 2.0, and is also laying the groundwork for the next step: Legal 3.0.

We don’t know exactly what 3.0 will look like, but there are some market trends that cannot be ignored. Advanced analytics and data-based insights will increasingly drive decision-making, new technology will become even more pervasive and potentially disruptive to traditional ways of conducting legal business, and Legal Ops will find it now has a far bigger hand in overall business strategy, both inside and outside of the legal department.

The ultimate lesson the success of our panelists provides for everyone in CLOC, or in Legal Operations anywhere? To stay active, innovative, and collaborative within your professional community, because you’ll receive as much as you give by embracing co-innovation. And you’ll be having a real role in shaping the destiny of the legal industry for years or even decades to come.

See You in Vegas for the 2019 CLOC Institute

Register here to attend CLOC 2019 Vegas Institute – and please join our CLOC session:

Legal Ops 2.0: How Co-Innovation is Driving the Industry’s Future
Tuesday, May 14th at 1:30pm
Speakers:

• Vincent J. Cordo, Central Legal Operations Officer, Shell Oil Company
• Justin Hectus, CIO/CISO, Keesal, Young & Logan
• Jason Parkman, CEO Mitratech
• Mike Russell, Lean Leader – Legal Operations, Ingersoll Rand

About the author: Kelli Negro is Chief Marketing Officer at Mitratech, charged with driving business results through omni-channel marketing and content strategies that are grounded in research, analysis and customer insight. Kelli joined Mitratech after a successful tenure at Thinksmart, a pioneer in SaaS workflow automation.

Questions? Email info@cloc.org.

HBR Consulting will present an educational session at CLOC’s 2019 Corporate Legal Operations Institute— “Don’t Gamble Your Future . . . Advance Your Operations Maturity” — in which we will explore strategies to help corporate law departments advance on the CLOC Legal Operations Maturity continuum. This article is the second in a three-part series of blog posts to provide CLOC attendees with context regarding the major strategic areas in which law departments can advance in their maturity.

In this post, I will be focusing on the topic of legal technology — “Technology & Practice Support” — as one of CLOC’s foundational level core competencies.

Becoming More Mature in the Use of Technology

The effective use of technology is a topic that gets a lot of attention these days in legal operations circles and is often a contributing factor when comparing operational effectiveness among similar law departments. For those law departments seeking to improve their technology use, there are several steps that can help your department make incremental progress along the CLOC maturity model.

A key first step is to evaluate your current state with respect to use of legal technology solutions and establish a three- to five-year technology plan. The plan should consider notable gaps you discover in key functional areas, as well as how effective current tools are at achieving their intended use. With respect to specific tools, your department’s core stack of solutions should include matter management, spend management and document management, as well as any other technology platforms that may be crucial to support key disciplines required for your industry (e.g., intellectual property management).

Once you have “checked-the-box” on having implemented the core stack of solutions, it is a good idea to routinely review how these tools are used, the level of adoption and the relevance of their design when compared to your business processes. The following questions can help assess next steps:

• Do the solutions we are using provide strategic value to our legal professionals?
• Are we presenting meaningful analytics to demonstrate the value of the information (data) we are asking our legal staff to enter and track?
• In implementing the core stack of solutions, have we equally and adequately addressed both litigation and transactional sides of the house?

Many corporate law departments discover that their existing technology investments are not providing strategic value and are perceived as “back-office systems.” Often legal professionals are asked to enter matters and update key dates, but little is done to demonstrate the way that information can inform and enrich legal decision making. Finally, a concern we are hearing more often is that the core legal stack tools are more supportive of litigation functions than of transactional work. I will focus on that last issue here. We suggest that the next major step in technology maturity for most corporate law departments should be increasing focus on tools that support transactional management.

Leveraging Technology for Workflow and Transaction Management

Transactional attorneys can benefit from the core stack of tools for features such as tracking advice and counsel, organizing work product, tracking key dates and memorializing iterations of work-in-progress. That stated, two additional sets of tools that are receiving more attention from legal professionals are legal request and workflow tools and contract lifecycle management systems. These tools provide legal professionals with the opportunity to more effectively engage with their business partners — not obviating the need for direct contact or phone calls, but rather supplementing and enriching these other points of contact so that both parties are better informed at request inception.

1. Legal request and workflow (“LR&W”) tools are gaining momentum in the corporate legal market, as more legal organizations are trying to better manage their increasing demands for legal work, while managing cycle time and regularly updating their business partners on the status of those requests. Eighty-one percent of respondents to HBR’s 2018 Law Department Survey expect their legal needs to continue to grow. The two most commonly cited practice areas in which they expect increases were regulatory and M&A.

2. Contract lifecycle management (“CLM”) systems can also help transactional attorneys work more efficiently and effectively. CLM systems provide a structured way to manage all legal work connected to the creation of a contract. Typical CLM systems can capture necessary data contracts, track key dates, serve as a repository for pre-approved templates and create contracts using those templates, manage the contract approval workflow process, flag negotiated changes, validate all required signatures and monitor contract terms for rights and obligations, for example.

CLM systems can also help ensure that contracting requests are thorough and processes are consistently followed, trigger appropriate escalations, assist in controls enforcement and provide a mechanism for easier execution. Already implemented by 55 percent of corporate law departments, 29 percent of companies plan to implement CLM solutions in the next one to two years, according to the HBR’s 2018 Law Department Survey. CLM systems were the most commonly planned technology implementations of the 19 technology types surveyed.

Along with implementing CLM systems, it is HBR’s experience that many law departments are also simultaneously leading the charge with their companies to establish contract management programs, to ensure standard processes throughout the organization. The combination of a strong, companywide program and a CLM system supporting that program not only streamlines transactional work, but also provide organization-wide consistency and can help manage an organization’s contract-related risk.

Conclusion

Technology used to support transactions can help improve the efficiency for every stage of a corporate transaction. The combination of LP&W and CLM systems gives in-house legal professionals what they need to better handle transactional work from inception to completion.

In the final post in HBR’s three-part blog series, my colleagues will explore the use of analytics to measure performance and to guide your department’s decision making.

See You in Vegas for the 2019 CLOC Institute

Register here to attend CLOC 2019 Vegas Institute – and please join our CLOC session:

Don’t Gamble Your Future…Advance Your Operations Maturity
Wednesday, May 15th at 1:30pm
Speakers:

• Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer, HBR Consulting
• Marc Allen, Senior Director, HBR Consulting
• Molly Perry, Chief Operating Officer, Office of Legal and Administrative Affairs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• Greg Bennett, Sr. Manager, Legal Operations, Gilead Sciences

Questions? Email info@cloc.org.

Annya Dushine, Solutions Consultant, CPA Global
Sam Wiley, Intellectual Property Solutions Architect, CPA Global

Best practice: The term long ago surpassed buzzword status and reached ubiquity. After all, what organisation willfully adopts (let alone admits to adopting) the worst practices when doing business?

For many in the legal operations field—including IP operations professionals—a good starting point toward best practices-oriented strategy is the Core Competency Model laid out by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). Made up of 12 primary functions (i.e., core competencies), the model represents focus areas that every legal operations department should manage to ensure discipline, efficiency and best outcomes. These competencies also help legal operations departments gauge their own maturity, serving as a benchmark for comparison to your industry peers.

Still, there’s a significant difference between recognising best practices and actually implementing them. When it comes to the latter, many organisations have little to no idea where to start. For companies attempting to evolve their current IP strategies, this can seem particularly challenging. It’s difficult, after all, to view a situation with objectivity when you’re directly in the thick of it.

When you want to know where your IP operations business is lacking and how to implement the best practices necessary to bring it up to par, an IP diagnostic may hold the answers. Here are five ways an IP diagnostic provided by an expert third-party vendor can help your IP department comply with CLOC’s Core Competency Model, but also to make the most of it.

One: Objective Assessment

One of the first steps toward complying with any set of best practices is assessing where you currently stand in regard to them. How compliant are you? Where are you strongest and where are you lacking?

It can be difficult for any organisation to ask difficult questions of itself, and even more difficult to answer honestly. An IP diagnostic performed by a third party can provide the objective view you need to determine where you stand. CPA Global’s IP Diagnostic services, for instance uses a methodology that forces organisations to thoroughly examine itself, and our extensive client base allows for anonymized benchmarking and standards assessment.

Two: Develop a Game Plan

Done well, an IP diagnostic should provide you and your IP operations colleagues with the information and insights you need in order to devise a best practices-oriented strategy—including areas of improvement.

Once the IP diagnostic provider has correctly assessed your maturity level in each core competency, they can apply their expertise in technology and best practices to help you create a plan for improving from one level to the next.

Three: Measure Resource Needs

It’s not enough to have a list of best practices and a strategy: You also need the budget, resources, head count, and executive support to implement those practices and execute that strategy. But—even in the largest, most profitable organization—funds and jobs don’t simply appear just because they’ve been requested. They have to be justified.

Conducted in alignment with CLOC’s Core Competency Model, an IP diagnostic should provide objective, third-party data that supports your resources requests by providing evidence of their necessity and projected benefits.

Four: Expedited Evolution

A best practice IP operations strategy doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes time—and often a lot of it. Indeed, perhaps one of the most frustrating, or at least challenging aspects of implementing best practices is the lengthy amount of time it often takes to identify them, prepare for them, and execute them. Moreover, if you don’t get things right the first time, how much time is lost starting over?

Your IP diagnostic provider should not only be able to tell you how to correctly get started, but how to do so in the most efficient and timely manner. They’ll provide actionable steps along the shortest path from one maturity level to the next.

Five: Continuous Improvement

An IP diagnostic is not a one-and-done project. Instead, it should yield insights and results that your organisation can build on over time, and, if necessary, revisit and revise. After all, much like the technology and innovations produced by your company, trends and best practices in IP operations constantly change and evolve. Your strategy should lend itself to doing the same.

Choose an IP diagnostic provider you can envision working with over and over again, and who you trust to develop a deep understanding of your organization that results in the nuanced, comprehensive strategy you need to take the core competencies to the next level.

 

For the first time, Intellectual Property tracks will be offered during the 2019 CLOC Vegas Institute. Guided by experts in IP operations, we’ll explore some of the latest innovations and trends in the IP space—including best practices and how to implement them. Join us during the following sessions to learn more.

Don’t Gamble with Your IP: Ante Up for Patents and Trademarks
Tuesday, May 14th 10:30 – 11:20 Monet 1 & 2

Don’t Gamble with Your IP (Part 2): Know When to Hold’em in IP Litigation
Tuesday, May 14th 11:35 – 12:25 Monet 1 & 2

Sittin’ at the Table: Panel Discussion on CLOC IP Core Competency Matrix & Best Practices
Wednesday, May 15th 11:35 – 12:25 Monet 1 & 2

Hit the IP Operations Jackpot with an IP Diagnostic
Wednesday, May 15th 3:35 – 4:05 Bellagio Ballroom 4

Playing with a Full Deck: Best Practices to Build & Maintain Extended Services Teams
Wednesday, May 15th 4:20 – 5:10 Monet 3 & 4

Annya Dushine and Sam Wiley are IP solutions experts from CPA Global, the world’s leading intellectual property management and technology company.

The goal of the CLOC Metrics Initiative was to deliver a core set of metrics and a common language to be used within law departments to measure performance. The resulting set of metrics should be easy to implement and are based on readily accessible data using a number of common underlying systems such as eBilling, matter management or contract management. Over time, the broad adoption of a standard set of core metrics such as these will support more accurate benchmarking across the ecosystem.

The CLOC Core Competency Reference Model provides the steps to build an effective legal operations function. The CLOC Core Metrics Initiative summary presented below focuses on the following critical and impactful competencies when developing the metrics needed for your legal operations function.

• Strategic Planning
• Data Analytics

The CLOC Metrics Initiative cohort presents a high-level introduction to a core set of metrics and a data dictionary and glossary. In this document, you will learn why a core set of metrics and processes matter and how you can build and implement these practices into your legal department.

It seems that all of us, especially those in the corporate space, are being asked to do more and more with less. Being more efficient is something that we all want, but how should we quantify it? Can we measure the changes we are driving? How do we determine if we’re operating efficiently or measure the impact of the changes we’ve already made? Can we, or should we, compare ourselves against others in the same space? What data points are most important to measure and how do we gather data on those points? These are just a few of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves.

Metrics are a big topic, too big to define completely in one initiative. The Core Metrics Initiative worked to establish a core set of metrics that could be universal to everyone, today. This, they hope, will form the basis for a common language and taxonomy that, over time, will evolve into a standard.

Why Standard Metrics Matter

Metrics not only allow law departments to measure their performance against internal standards but also, when there is a common language, against comparable external benchmarks. HBR Consulting’s 2018 Law Department Survey indicates that legal organizations continue to deal with increasing demand; however, budgets are flat and in many cases are declining. Law department leaders are often looking for external measurements to see how they stack up on key operational metrics such as spend, additional uses of technology, outside counsel, and many others. The need for consistent metrics is critical across those data points. Whether you need to evaluate how your department stacks up in its current state, as part of a broader operational review, or just to identify ways to take the department to the next level. Metrics must be used objectively to quantify, analyze and report on performance over time.

A large majority, 81 percent, of departments reported an expectation that their legal needs will continue to increase in the next year, citing commercial contracts, regulatory compliance and mergers and acquisitions as the top practices areas likely to require legal attention next year.
– HBR Consulting’s 2018 Law Department Survey.

A thorough benchmarking analysis can be a critical tool to determine best practices; however, if a law department’s metrics are not clearly defined, and in writing, the information may not be reliable. There are a growing number of surveys in the industry; yet there is also a lack of consistency in the types of companies that participate, as well as in the specific areas of focus of the benchmarking surveys. Gaining alignment on which data points are the most important and, at a minimum, creating an inventory of the metrics that should be used by law departments is a gap addressed in the CLOC Metrics Initiative.

Part of the CLOC Metrics Initiative goal was to identify a core set of metrics that could be incorporated into underlying systems like electronic billing, matter management, etc. to allow for a common taxonomy regardless of which software vendor used.

“Intel’s legal department grew up around a number of different tools across the practice areas and we never had one central place for data that was similar. Whenever we wanted to benchmark it was really difficult to pull together the data with high confidence. We would typically start off with our finance team to get our financials. But, since the finance team couldn’t see into our e-billing System, they could only give us our spend totals. The spend totals couldn’t give us any real insight into whether we were being efficient. I was constantly looking for ways to show the results of the programs we are running.”
– Sandy Owen, Director of Business Services, International Legal and Operations, Intel Corporation

Finding ways to accurately capture data the right way, and benchmark it, is a fairly common refrain amongst all legal operations professionals. Everyone is trying to collect data and metrics on their law department performance. Each person, in their own silo, is capturing data in the way that they deem best for their own use. While that works for the individual, it doesn’t always create a common standard that can be used to compare department performance with peers or with best practices.

Creating a Standardized Language

We began to see metrics as a kind of language. What we’ve seen in our industry is that each person is creating their own language. We were determined to take all of the metrics – the languages that have been created – and use them to create a common language with common words and common definitions. The CLOC Core Metrics Dictionary and Glossary was created to provide a foundation for any legal operations professional to generate a financial profile and communicate key performance indicators about their law department. The Dictionary and Glossary ensures that there is consistency in how all legal operations professionals are calculating their core metrics.

The CLOC Core Metrics Dictionary The ultimate common language which all legal operations professionals should speak along with calculations, formulas, and how to interpret the results.

The CLOC Core Metrics Glossary Explanations of the data elements and what other law departments typically include.

The CLOC Core Metrics Dictionary and Glossary also shows how to generate reports, what systems to generate reports from, and how to apply filters. In keeping with the language analogy, the dictionary contains the word and the glossary defines the word.

Getting Started with Your Department’s Metrics Program

We put together a suggested set of metrics to develop – what we consider to be the baseline, or foundation. In reality, if you’re capturing the 5-6 data elements that make up these core metrics across the categories of spend, resourcing and demand, you can create a much more robust metrics program across various practice areas for your organization.

This is by no means the end of this effort. Much like a “normal” dictionary, words will continue to be added. We look forward to growing a common dictionary across the ecosystem, but for today let’s get started with what we have!

Step One – Gather the Data

Starting a metrics journey may be a little daunting at first. The key is to take baby steps and know where to look for the data that you probably already have. We found that the key core tenet of metrics is related to spend. Spending and staffing are most often the areas that people look to for their key core metrics.

Many law departments have already implemented an e-billing system. Consequently, data on spend by firm, by practice area, or by region can easily be obtained. However, the core metrics that we’re really looking for rely upon a higher-level category of spend data — internal, outside counsel, and other non-law firm vendors.

Look for other sources of data that will provide any missing information. For example, every company should be able to gather information from their AP system, even those that may not have an e-billing system or are in the early stages of technology adoption. It doesn’t take a significant amount of work to gather some of the core elements needed to begin a metrics journey.

Step Two – Cleanse Your Data to Ensure Accuracy

Our goal in developing the Core Metrics Initiative was to simplify the process and only require a handful of data points to be captured. However, it’s important to keep in mind that your metrics are only as good as the data that you’re able to collect. We all agree that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But if what you can measure is based on bad underlying data, your management decisions will be negatively impacted.

You’ve got to start somewhere. However, you also need to complete a thorough review of your data to get a sense of whether your data is clean, or needs additional cleansing. Make sure to identify incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate or irrelevant parts of the data and then replace, modify, or delete the dirty or coarse data. Cleansing your data on a regular basis is an important step in accurate data analytics.

Step Three – Analyze and Interpret the Results

Once you’ve captured your data and ensured that it’s clean, you’re only a few steps away from viewing your law department’s core metrics. There are many options to analyze, visualize and communicate your results.

The CLOC Core Metrics Dictionary includes calculations that you can use with a few data points and minimal effort. By using those formulas, you can recalculate your core metrics in a basic tool like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. As you begin a more advanced metrics evaluations and link to the rest of your data, you may want to consider utilizing a business intelligence platform designed to consolidate and analyze data. The goal is to put the power in your hands.

Calculating core metrics is something that you can easily do on your own, but it’s important to know that you have options and that you’re supported by the CLOC community.

So what’s in it for you and why should you care?

It can be a challenge to undertake a metrics project. However, we hope you’re getting excited about the benefits that data metrics can bring to your legal operations and that you’re starting to think about what you can do with your own data. If you’re just beginning this journey remember to start small. Take small steps with incremental improvements.

The benefits to metrics collection are huge. Not only will you have a tool that you can use internally, but you’ll have the ability to share data and benchmark your results.

“Probably one of the most immediate benefits we got from our metrics project at Intel was to identify areas we were operating inefficiently and put programs in place to fix them. Starting small with the data we already had allowed us to deliver immediate value and build credibility as we expanded our metrics program.”
–Sandy Owen, Director of Business Services, International Legal and Operations, Intel Corporation

Key Takeaways

1. Download the CLOC Data Dictionary and Glossary (Access for Members Only) so that you can begin to understand the data that you need to collect, and then you can begin to identify the data that is easily accessible.
2. Take small steps with incremental improvements.
3. Identify data streams and determine how to collect and cleanse the data.
4. Use programs to analyze, visualize and present your findings.

Attend a CLOC Institute to learn more about this, and many other topics of interest to legal operations professionals. Are you an in-house legal professional? Join CLOC as a member and be part of the discussion!

More is being asked of the modern day corporate legal department than ever before. General Counsel are required to function like a business within a business, optimizing people, processes, and technology to serve the company effectively and efficiently. Legal operations excellence is no longer an option; it must be top of mind.

Whether you’re in a startup or in a mature organization, building a sophisticated legal operations program from scratch can be a daunting task. It takes time away from day-to-day legal duties and requires a heavy focus on business principles. To get it off the ground, many questions must be considered: Why is it necessary? When should you start? Who do you hire? What should you build and buy? How do you manage change and measure performance?

The CLOC Core Competency Reference Model provides a cycle to walk you through the steps in building an effective legal operations function. The CLOC 2018 Conference keynote outlined below focuses on these critical and impactful competencies as pillars when developing your legal operations function, as well as other competencies as you grow the function.

• Strategic Planning
• Technology Process & Support
• Cross Functional Alignment
  & Communication

• Financial Management
• Vendor Management
• Knowledge Management

It’s time to build a legal operations function that bridges your legal department to the rest of the organization

What’s the first thing you need to think about? Start with the big picture and what you’re looking to accomplish in your legal operations function. Your primary goal in building the function should be to enable the business.A well-defined legal operations function follows twin paths of organizational and functional maturity in its growth. Functional and organizational maturity are symbiotic and depend on each other for balance.

 

• Organizational Maturity: How mature is the organization in relation to people, process, technology, and measurement? A mature organization operates with predictability, process, and precision. Are you reactive or proactive? Organizational maturity includes building out your team and your legal operations organization in a fashion that can serve the legal department.
• Functional Maturity: How mature is your organization based on the prevalence of specific functional areas? As you grow, functional areas may include legal finance, knowledge management, technology implementation, vendor management, etc.

The more mature your organization is along the organizational maturity X-axis, the more opportunity you have to achieve areas of functional maturity. Likewise, increased functional maturity along the Y-axis will allow you to make a better business case to add more people to your organization. It’s challenging to develop both levels of maturity at the same time; however, it’s critical to keep both of these areas in mind as you develop your legal operations department.

In the beginning, as you develop your legal operations function, you may be all by yourself. It’s just you trying to achieve a lot of different goals. As you grow in organizational maturity, you can begin to think about hiring additional functions, like an eBilling specialist. Then, as you develop your organizational and functional maturity, you can hire for additional functional areas.

The CLOC Core Competency Reference Model is designed to show functional maturity in a cycle. Starting at the top with strategic planning, you need to work with your GC to set the strategy for the legal ops function and determine how you will build out that function. Once the processes are nailed down, you can start implementing technology to automate those processes.

Steve Harmon, Cisco, “In my opinion, everything revolves around the hub of knowledge management. You need to have at least a basic level of competency in order to establish the building blocks to address various issues. A robust knowledge management exercise is critical in creating a repeatable, scalable model that will standardize process across the organization.”

Executing Your Kickoff

In the strategy phase, you need to meet with all your key business partners. This is the time to start asking questions in order to understand the issues and pain points faced by each of your strategic business partners. Supporting your business partners is a critical component of your job and you will achieve the greatest success by working in a collaborative, cross-functional way with all the business units.

Ask questions that will enable you to understand each of your stakeholders’ priorities. This will help you determine how the legal operations function will drive the overall business.

Sample questions:

1. General Counsel: Who are our clients?
2. Practice Area Leaders: What are your key processes?
3. Finance: Who are the legal department’s business partners?
4. IT: What is the universe of legal technology in place?
5. HR: How can existing talent serve operations goals?

Leverage Additional Resources
Leverage and identify talent throughout your organization who can help you. Even if you don’t have headcount, there are resources that you can leverage in other departments. Think creatively in terms of who you want to hire for your new roles. The person you hire may not have a legal operations background, but is passionate about operations and about changing the industry.

Lay the Foundation of Your Operations Organization
Laying an effective foundation will vary by organization and by priorities. Each of the pillars you select as your foundation will have underlying components. It can be overwhelming at first, but by focusing on the fundamental pillars in the CLOC Core Competency Reference Model, you can make manageable changes.

Mike Haven, Gap, “The 3 pillars for me were legal finance, partner management, and technology, with an overarching umbrella of strategy. Remember, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and you need to focus on the pillars and mature gradually.”

The hardest part of the job is managing change. Things can become more painful before they get better. You might be going live with a new process or technology before the end users have fully adopted the idea. The key to change management is communication, engagement, and credibility.

• Communicate. Explain to both your stakeholders and end users what you are doing and why you are doing it. They need to understand “why” in order to fully engage.
• Engagement. Bring your stakeholders and end users on board with the change early and often. Get their feedback and ideas and make them a part of the change.
• Credibility. Build your credibility early in the process. Start with some quick wins that show value right away.

Examples of Quick Wins:

• Invoice Review: Take the first pass out of your attorneys’ hands to ensure compliance with policies and flag potential substantive issues.
• Workflow Automation: Firm matter, timekeeper onboarding, rate reviews, settlements processing.
• E-Signature: No more “Print, Sign, and PDF”.

Measure Your Traction as You Mature
There are a number of components you can use to measure your success. Spend, timekeeper rate management, invoice review, key matter status, and law firm performance are just a few of components that can be measured. When you first come into a legal department, make sure you measure your baseline, or starting point, for your most important initiatives. As you evolve, establish milestones to show your progression and prove your success.

Acknowledge that you are a service organization to a service organization. Why do organizations have law departments at all? The sole reason for their existence is to enable businesses to design, build, and sell products in a legally appropriate way. Ultimately, legal services must drive results.

How do you decide where you’re going to allocate resources in your department?

One way to allocate resources is to use the Core vs. Context Resource Allocation Model. This strategic method of allocating resources will allow your company to focus on what you do well and outsource the remaining activities to 3rd party firms.

First, determine which activities are mission-critical vs. non-mission critical. Second, decide if the activities are context or core. Finally, determine what percentage of your resources should be allocated to core, mission critical activities and which should be outsourced.

• Mission Critical: Activities that, if performed poorly, pose an immediate risk.
• Non-Mission Critical: Activities that, if performed poorly do not pose a risk
• Context: Activities that are necessary, but not tied to competitive advantage.
• Core: Activities that contribute to competitive advantage.

Examples of Typical Legal Operations Activities

• High stakes litigation compliance: Mission-critical and Context -> Out-task.
• IP Rights: Mission-critical and Core -> In-task.
• Smaller litigation: Non-mission Critical and Context -> Outsource.
• Routine transaction processing: Non-mission critical and Core -> Self Service.

Tools, Process, and Culture Trade-off

The three fundamental components of culture, process, and tools must be balanced when launching your legal operations function. In order to achieve your desired outcome, you need to understand your organization’s current processes and its culture.

Start with process definition. Understand how things are being done in your organization now. Define processes and map them to desired behaviors. Establish measurable metrics that are proxies for those desired behaviors. Process is going to be influenced by both tools and culture in your organization. You need to be nimble and be ready to iterate as new challenges arise.

Then, address the most challenging piece – the culture. How do the people in your organization make decisions? Culture is usually set and hard to change, especially in legal departments. You’ll need to create some motivating reason to persuade people to change the way they do work.

We recommend that you don’t start with tools/technology. It’s very tempting to just throw technology at the problem in order to achieve a quick solution. However, in the beginning we recommend that you focus on the narrowest set of tools that will solve the issues you face. By understanding your process and culture environment, you’ll be more successful implementing the right tools that will solve issues in the long term.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t make this a tools problem. Go through the exercises and develop a strong foundation.
• Start with process definition. Determine what matters to your organization and drive toward measurable results.
• Recognize that you’re not going to be successful until you address the cultural challenges.

Attend a CLOC Institute to learn more about this, and many other topics of interest to legal operations professionals. Are you an in-house legal professional? Join CLOC as a member and be part of the discussion!

So, you’re new to legal ops. Or your company is new to legal operations. Or maybe you’re in an existing role and looking to do a reset. Whatever the case, the CLOC 12 Core Competencies Reference Model can be used to structure your legal operations function.

 

The areas outlined below from the CLOC 2018 Conference keynote focus on three critical and impactful competencies.

• Strategic Planning
• Technology Process & Support
• Cross Functional Alignment & Communication

These competencies provide you with all the insights you need to:

• Approach goals, use and drive GC priorities, and learn how to size and staff your organization to achieve your goals.
• Understand your department’s current state through a SWOT analysis
• Create world-class strategic assets like vision/mission statements and tech roadmaps

Using strategic planning supported by technology process and support, cross-functional alignment and communication can help you build the right foundation for your legal department’s success.

Strategic Planning

A strategic plan sets you and the legal department in motion. An effective strategic plan is the difference between a reactive admin function and a partnership with your legal team where they trust you to guide them into places unknown. Without strategic planning, there’s no compass. With it, you’re at the helm and you steer the ship.

So, what exactly is a strategy? It’s the how. Or rather, a plan of action you lay out to achieve the mission, vision and goals of a legal department. You will always have competing priorities. Stakeholders and even vendors will try to influence you. Do your homework and build a strategy so that when competing priorities come up, you have a True North and can align people, projects and initiatives to that selfsame True North.

So where does one start?

The key is to start where the org is. The way to determine this is to embark on a roadshow of listening, asking probing questions and getting to know who your stakeholders are and what their needs are. You must deeply understand company goals, legal leadership goals and GC goals. Next comes a thorough analysis against CLOC foundations and core competencies. Through this high-level active analysis, you can start to get a sense of the current state, identify current opportunities and risks, what’s happening and what’s missing. To go into a framework, you have to prioritize based on company, GC, and legal leadership goals. But it all starts with the listening roadshow.

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT— strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats— Analysis is another strategic planning tool which can provide the business with a clear view of the advantages you have over competitors and your possible vulnerabilities. It’s an essential business planning tool that will help you:

• Uncover opportunities that are quick wins
• Understand the weaknesses of your business in order to help manage and eliminate threats.
• Where do you need investment? Is it process, budget, resources, etc?
• Determine strengths that serve as a foundation or starting point for a solution.

While developing your SWOT Analysis ask yourself on the following questions:

• Are you thinking about the long game?
• What are the unique priorities of your GC?
• What has the most value?

Strategy Components

To help clarify the who, the why, and the what of a legal operations strategy, formulate and document the following:

Mission Statement: Formalize the aims and goals of the org or department in order to communicate what you want to do. Make it clear, concise and useful.

• Who are your primary customers?
• What service does your department provide?
• What is the GC’s primary focus?

Vision Statement: The long-range emotional picture of what you’re striving to achieve. Building blocks:

• What are three relevant industry and technology trends?
• Who will we serve in five years?
• What problems will we solve in five years?

Goals: What are your organization’s goals for the next one, three or five years. How will your department support said goals? Are these goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)?

• Establish top objectives
• Define top initiatives to support the initiatives
• Establish measurable and repeatable metrics

Don’t rely on assumptions or what the org has done previously. Leverage the people that you have. Do interviews. Discover trends. Create the mission, vision and departmental goals, overlay them onto your SWOT analysis, and create a work plan using SMART goals. SMART goals have clear objectives, initiatives, metrics, owners, deadlines and project plans.

Technology Process & Support

Legal ops focuses on increasing efficiency and productivity by optimizing the delivery of legal services to the wider business. Technology and process are a core ingredient of any successful legal operations function. As you roadshow, develop strategic goals and conduct your department SWOT analysis, there will be issues, gaps, problems, and asks that can be solved with process engineering and technology solutions. Centralize all of these, categorize them as opportunities, and place them into a technology backlog and roadmap. The backlog is where all opportunities are captured, managed and prioritized into a list of work, or roadmap. The roadmap outlines sequentially which technology or process solutions you will implement over the month, quarter, and fiscal year.

Roadmaps are another strategic planning tool in your toolkit ensuring investments meet the short and long-term goals of the organization. They can also be used as a budget, alignment and communications tool and are often accompanied by more in-depth business cases, implementation and communications plans.

“[Backlogs and Roadmaps] are the easiest way to let people know that you’re listening to them, that it’s on the radar and that you’re setting appropriate priorities and expectations.” –Frances Pomposo, Director of Legal & PEC Operations

Cross Functional Alignment & Communication

But wait, there’s more! Communication & buy in (internal & external) can make or break any initiative. A new process may rely on inputs from Procurement. A new technology may also feed data downstream to Finance.

Key Business Unit Alignment

Think about the key business units cross-functionally that work with Legal. Who do you need to start meeting with on day one? Establish relationships and align legal ops with your partners in other organizations. Not only will this provide you with an in-depth understanding of their goals and work dependencies but it will also help you get buy-in. Communicate what legal ops is aiming to achieve, establish early adopters, set up periodic meetings and get on their roadmaps.

Department Comms

A huge part of legal operations is being the department spokesperson, responsible for making sure those who need to know about projects, successes, etc. are in the know. As the head of the legal ops function you are responsible for marketing the department and keeping initiatives top of mind and bolstering the work the team does and how they positively impact the company and serve as a business partner.

Key Takeaways

• You are customer service brand for your department.
• Over-communication is key. Because legal operations is often executing behind the scenes, it is important to make sure your department knows what is going on/being worked on at all times.
• Cross-functional alignment is critical to success. Maintain and/or improve relationships with key business units.
• Think about the long game and track trends year over year. Develop a tech roadmap and make your vision a reality.