Author: Onit

State Attorney Generals are on the Hunt for Bad Actors

Posted on October 3, 2019 by - Legal Operations

It’s an eye-popping figure: since 2000, the headline reads, more than $105 billion in fines have been paid by corporations under judgment after successful cases litigated by attorneys general across the states.

Over at Law.com, writer Sue Reisinger highlights a report by the DC-based Good Jobs First, a DC-based nonprofit dedicated to government and corporate accountability. She cites a recent report, Bipartisan Corporate Crime Fighting by the States, more than $105 billion wherein the successes of state AGs are cited.

According to GJF’s intro of the document, “the report focuses on 644 cases in which AGs from multiple states took on companies over issues ranging from mortgage abuses to illicit marketing of prescription drugs and collected more than $100 billion in settlements over the past two decades.”

Among the biggest targets? Bank of America, which has paid requisite penalties to states totaling $26 billion.

For his part, the BofA spox demurred, saying “[t]here’s nothing new in the report, which simply highlights the well-known fact that we made substantial payments to resolve mortgage-related issues largely stemming from Countrywide and other acquisitions.”

That’s an interesting way to talk about $26,000,000,000.00 in fines.

One interesting observation was the bipartisan note the report rings. While many may observe the partisan rancor over suits filed over Obamacare or President Trump’s immigration policies, co-author Phil Mattera said the report “shows quite a significant history of states working together, especially in a bipartisan way.”

Mattera went on to say he expected suits and assessments like those described to grow.

What does this mean for corporate leaders? Well, if you’re GJF, probably nothing, if you play by the rules.

Every company and individual in America is entitled to a vigorous defense, with the presumption of innocence. But we all know the law and the priorities of attorneys general can change with every election year. With 2020 approaching, it’s smart for every savvy general counsel to take a look at their legal spend, and make sure they’re taking steps to maximize the value of their spend while matching matter of the highest need to talent of the highest caliber.

Bodhala is a groundbreaking legal technology platform created by lawyers to transform the half-a-trillion dollar global legal industry. Our platform refines organizational processes by empowering your legal team with deeper insights that allow you to better analyze, interpret and optimize outside counsel spend, trailblazing a new era of legal market intelligence.

We’re built on data – and how we develop it, how we utilize it and how we analyze it for the benefit of our customers sets us apart. Our proprietary benchmarking metrics and rate review algorithms generate detailed insights into every aspect of legal spend. An intuitive dashboard puts the information you need to make more cost-effective decisions about legal service providers at your fingertips, effectively boosting efficiency and reducing your bottom line.

Get in touch [email protected].

Dive Deeper

Want to learn more about how our cutting-edge AI system can supercharge the value in your legal spend? Download this FREE whitepaper with three billing guidelines that will start you down the right track:

Free Billing Guidelines

Five Steps Towards Legal Digitalization

Posted on September 30, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Digitalization creates new business models. Uber provides mobility services without owning cars, thus displacing classical taxis. Airbnb offers private apartments for rent and thus creates competition for long-established hotel chains. All industry leaders must ask themselves if their traditional value propositions are still intact or if innovative players can use disruptive and networked technologies to push them out of the market.

This is also true for the legal industry, which, for decades, appeared to be immune to substantial changes caused by technology. While the core of legal services, i.e., the assessment of facts concerning the law, in most practice areas and cases, is still too complex to be executed by machines, this assessment of facts remains supported and surrounded by many operational activities such as document analysis, contracting and project management for which clients are no longer willing to pay high hourly lawyer rates.

The deconstruction of legal work has led to the standardization of high-volume and low-value tasks and the emergence of legal process outsourcers (LPO). In essence, corporate legal services today are in a situation like the one corporate information technology, financial, and human resource services were in some 30 years ago: Chief financial officers (CFO) now also expect in-house legal departments and law firms to use technology to deliver legal services better, faster, and at lower costs.

But legal departments often don’t know where to start with legal digital transformation. Often, they ask themselves questions such as: What differentiates legal technology projects from classic IT projects? Are legal departments per se a special/different audience? Do legal departments have the necessary funding? Can legal departments work/carry out the project in isolation?

This blog offers an overview of the basic steps to take in your legal technology journey.

STEPS FOR LEGAL TECHNOLOGY SUCCESS

  1. Identify pain points. Don’t get tricked by all the exciting legal technology on the market. It’s critical to detail the pain points first so you can work out what the solution is. Example pain points are a high volume of trivial (legal) work, insufficient reporting capabilities, cumbersome admin tasks, and increased external legal spend.
  2. Plan the budget. Work out the potential of the legal digital transformation project and create a business case. Costs at this stage will be rough, but you can make estimates and assumptions about benefits to calculate the potential ROI. (If high legal spend is a pain point, this guide to “Building a Business Case for Legal Spend Management” will help.)
  3. Initiate the digital legal project. Develop a project and resource plan and assign team members and roles.
  4. Consider the solutions. Define your requirements and evaluate build vs. buy (vs. do nothing) options. At this stage (when you have clear requirements), you should contact legal technology vendors. Ensure you include potential future users at some point during the solution review. This ensures the users have demoed the product you will consider their opinions. This will help with the adoption of legal technology after implementation.
  5. Go live! Procure, install, and test the solution. Consider onboarding users in stages. Embrace failures and adjust accordingly for a successful full implementation.

These five steps are just five essential stages and only scratch the surface of how to approach a legal digital transformation project. For more detail on tackling each of the steps above and more steps, read our three-part series on seamless legal tech implementation or download the Right Legal Spend Management Solution Guide.

Learn more about BusyLamp from Onit, our end-to-end legal spend management solution built for European corporate legal departments. 

IN FÜNF SCHRITTEN ZUR DIGITALISIERUNG IHRER RECHTSABTEILUNG 

Posted on September 30, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Die Digitalisierung schafft neue Geschäftsmodelle. Uber bietet Mobilitätsdienstleistungen ohne eigene Autos an und verdrängt damit klassische Taxis. Airbnb bietet Privatwohnungen zur Miete an und schafft damit Konkurrenz für alteingesessene Hotelketten. Bestehende Branchenführer müssen sich fragen, ob ihre traditionellen Wertversprechen noch intakt sind oder ob innovative Akteure sie mit disruptiven und vernetzten Technologien aus dem Markt drängen können. 

Das gilt auch für die Rechtsbranche, die jahrzehntelang immun gegen wesentliche technologiebedingte Veränderungen zu sein schien. Der Kern der juristischen Dienstleistung – die Beurteilung von Sachverhalten in Bezug auf das Gesetz – ist in den meisten Praxisbereichen und Fällen immer noch zu komplex, um von Maschinen ausgeführt zu werden. Daher wird die Beurteilung des Sachverhalts weiterhin von vielen operativen Tätigkeiten wie Dokumentenanalyse, Vertragsabschluss und Projektmanagement unterstützt und umgeben. Mandanten sind jedoch meist nicht mehr bereit dazu, hohe Anwaltsstundensätze zu zahlen. 

Die Dekonstruktion der juristischen Arbeit hat zur Standardisierung von Aufgaben mit hohem Volumen und geringem Wert sowie zum Aufkommen von Legal Process Outsourcer (LPO) geführt. Im Grunde genommen befinden sich Inhouse-Rechtsabteilungen heute in einer ähnlichen Situation wie die Abteilungen für Informationstechnologie, Finanzen und Personalwesen vor etwa 30 Jahren: Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) erwarten nun auch von Rechtsabteilungen und Kanzleien, dass sie Technologien nutzen, um Rechtsdienstleistungen besser, schneller und zu geringeren Kosten zu erbringen. 

Doch Rechtsabteilungen wissen meist nicht, wo sie mit der digitalen Transformation anfangen sollen. Oft stellen sie sich Fragen wie: Was unterscheidet juristische Technologieprojekte von klassischen IT-Projekten? Sind Rechtsabteilungen per se eine besondere/andere Zielgruppe? Verfügen Rechtsabteilungen über die notwendigen finanziellen Mittel? Können Rechtsabteilungen das Projekt isoliert bearbeiten/durchführen?‘ 

Dieser Blog bietet einen Überblick über die grundlegenden Schritte, die Sie auf Ihrer Legal Technology Reise unternehmen sollten. 

  1. Identifizieren Sie Pain Points: Lassen Sie sich nicht von all den aufregenden Rechtstechnologien auf dem Markt blenden. Es ist wichtig, zuerst Ihre Pain Points zu identifizieren, damit Sie die passende Lösung finden können. Beispiele für solche sind ein hohes Volumen an trivialer juristischer Arbeit, unzureichende Reportingfunktionen, mühsame Verwaltungsaufgaben und hohe externe Ausgaben für juristische Dienstleistungen. 
  2. Planen Sie Ihr Budget: Ermitteln Sie das Potenzial des Projekts sowie dessen Beitrag zur digitalen Transformation der Rechtsabteilung und erstellen Sie einen Business Case. Die Kosten, welche sie heranziehen müssen, um den potenziellen ROI zu berechnen, werden in diesem Stadium auf groben Schätzungen basieren. Laden Sie sich hierzu unsern Inhouse Guide „Ein Business Case für Legal Spend Management“ herunter. 
  3. Initiieren Sie das digitale Rechtsprojekt: Entwickeln Sie einen Projekt- und Ressourcenplan, weisen Sie Teammitglieder und Rollen zu. 
  4. Berücksichtigen Sie die verfügbaren Lösungen: Definieren Sie Ihre Anforderungen und bewerten Sie die zur Verfügung stehenden Optionen. Die Bewertung sollte dabei individuell, auf Ihr Unternehmen angepasst, stattfinden. Dabei gilt es zu klären, ob sie eine eBilling-Software benötigen und ob sie diese selbst bauen oder kaufen möchten. In diesem Stadium sollten Sie mit Rechtstechnologie-Anbietern Kontakt aufnehmen. Stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie potenzielle Anwender zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt in die Prüfung der Lösung einbeziehen. Dadurch wird garantiert, dass die tatsächlichen Anwender das Produkt ausprobiert haben und ihre Meinung berücksichtigt wurde. Dies hilft vor allem bei der Akzeptanz der Rechtstechnologie nach der Implementierung. 
  5. Gehen Sie Live: Beschaffen, installieren und testen Sie die Lösung. Erwägen Sie eine schrittweise Einführung der User. Akzeptieren Sie eventuelle Misserfolge und passen Sie diese gegebenenfalls entsprechend an, um eine erfolgreiche und vollständige Implementierung zu erreichen. 

Diese fünf Schritte beschreiben lediglich kurz die fünf wesentlichen Phasen eines digitalen Transformationsprojekts im Rechtswesen.  Weitere umfassende Informationen sowie weiteren Aspekten finden Sie in unserer dreiteiligen Serie für eine reibungslose Legal Tech-Implementierung oder im Leitfaden zur Auswahl der richtigen Legal Spend Management- Lösung. 

2019 Law Department Operations Survey

Posted on September 30, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

20 Minutes of Your Time Can Impact the Entire Legal Operations Profession

What do the next 10 years hold for legal ops? According to the Blickstein Group, it’s likely to be more change at an even faster pace in law departments, in law firms and industrywide. More and more general counsel agree on the need for LDO professionals and the skills they embody. They are also actively pushing their lawyers to conduct business with the level of “operational awareness” required to succeed in today’s legal market. What is a quick way to make an impact toward improving the LDO profession as a whole? Take a survey!

Onit is excited to be a sponsor of the Blickstein Group Law Department Operations Survey and we invite you to take the survey, which is the only way to receive the full results with unique and valuable insight into law department management trends.

Blickstein Group’s Law Department Operations Survey is the longest running research specifically covering legal operations. It is designed solely for the professionals who manage complex legal department operations for their companies. Onit has been a part of it for years and are thrilled to do so again.

The survey will take you only 20-25 minutes to fill out. There is no cost, but only survey participants receive a copy of the valuable proprietary results – including 300 data points you can use to benchmark and better understand trends in legal operations!  You can access previous years’ survey reports, with a summary analysis of results, here.

All responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will only be used in aggregate form.

Please complete the survey by October 4.

Onit Launches Contract Lifecycle Management Software

Posted on September 26, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Contract management has always been a siloed entity from the rest of the company that is normally handled by the legal department or dedicated contract managers with legal knowledge. But for those who aren’t familiar, what is contract management? In simplest terms, contract management is the process of managing contract creation, deliverables, deadlines, terms, conditions, and execution, while ensuring all parties involved comply with the signed agreement until the contract lifecycle ends. Many companies still use manual processes to manage their contracts but this can become a very labor-intensive and time-consuming operation that ultimately ends with an overflowing file cabinet that is eventually lost or forgotten. When contracts aren’t managed or analyzed properly, companies can unknowingly become non-compliant or miss substantial profits.

Therefore, by driving technology and automation to manage the contract management lifecycle, companies can dramatically increase efficiency by reducing contract processing times, mitigate risk by tracking all contract agreements and improve overall customer and vendor satisfaction in the process. Onit observed that most customers experienced this pain when it came to the management of their contracts and decided to take action.

Today, Onit launched its new contract lifecycle management (CLM) software which empowers legal and business teams with end-to-end automation of their entire contract management process. Onit CLM is a cloud-based contract repository with automated functionality that supports all phases of the contract lifecycle from capture and creation, through negotiations and approvals, to execution and post-execution management.

onitfinaostage.wpenginepowered.com Contract Lifecycle Management Dashboard

With Onit CLM, companies can automatically generate well-formed custom contracts and include/exclude clauses based on a robust rules engine and contract metadata. It also empowers users with Microsoft Word integration, allowing them to create, review, approve, and execute on contracts straight from their preferred word processing tool while maintaining a secure link to Onit CLM. Seamless eSignature integration with DocuSign and Adobe Sign is another out of the box feature that comes with Onit CLM, to ensure convenient and rapid execution.

Onit developed CLM to allow companies to not only dispose of their outdated manual processes or legacy systems but to combine the management of contracts throughout the enterprise into a single cloud-based platform. Deployed in the world’s most advanced cloud platform, Amazon AWS, companies are able to achieve maximum performance, reliability, and scalability. With this cloud-based approach, Onit CLM is accessible on all major web browsers and mobile devices allowing end-users to access their business-critical contract information anytime, anywhere.

In conclusion, technology is paving the way for organizations to maximize control, speed, and provide greater insight throughout the entire contract lifecycle. Effective contract management can maximize reward, minimize risk and ultimately create powerful business relationships and pave the road to greater profitability over the long term.

Click here to read the entire press release or listen to a podcast from Onit’s CLM product manager Victor Cizinauskas.

Listen to Onit’s Podcast About Our New Contract Lifecycle Management Solution

Posted on September 25, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

We’re thrilled to announce our latest podcast! In this episode, Onit’s Senior Product Manager for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), Victor Cizinauskas offers some interesting insight into Onit CLM.

Vic begins by covering a bit of background behind the development of Onit CLM, the next evolution of Onit’s current contracts offering. He goes on to share some of the business benefits of this contract management tool, such as streamlining and automating manual processes. Manual, disconnected contract processes still plague many organizations of all sizes, and Onit CLM makes these processes much less error prone. This significantly mitigates risk in the contract process. For example, sales wants the contract done quickly, while legal wants to take time to review and make sure everything is absolutely correct. Onit CLM goes a long way in balancing these two seemingly opposing forces, driving faster revenue and managing risk appropriately.

Vic then explains how Onit CLM is unique. It is built on Onit’s proprietary software platform which allows Onit CLM to integrate seamlessly with our other products – legal holds and enterprise legal management for example. Onit CLM is also integrated with MS Word, much to the delight of lawyers and legal operations professionals worldwide.

In closing, Vic tells us why implementing contract lifecycle management technology should be a top priority for any organization. “To save time and money,” he simply explains. It’s hard to think of better reasons than those.

Listen to the podcast.


REQUEST A DEMO

Onit and Morae Global Customer Pearson Takes 2019 Legal Procurement Award for Process Improvement

Posted on September 23, 2019 by - Company News and Events

We are thrilled to celebrate our clients’ successes! Congratulations to Pearson plc on winning Buying Legal’s 2019 Legal Procurement Award for Process Improvement. Read what BuyingLegal had to say about Pearson’s recent transformation, which included a deployment of Onit’s Contract Management and Legal Service Request solutions, which are provided as part of a managed service from Morae Global.

“Pearson plc created a truly transformational Transaction Services Center: Together with an external provider who is part of the service delivery chain, Pearson leveraged technology and used standard processes, workflow and templates, to deliver legal services for its multinational business. The creation of the Center consolidated multiple legal teams and streamlined service delivery. It provided a department-wide technology platform for intake, service delivery/management, and reduced costs by over 35%.”

Onit, together with Pearson’s implementation and operations partner Morae Global, applaud Pearson for its recognition in this space!

The Buying Legal© Council has awarded winners for three years. Winners in legal procurement continue to innovate and set the stage for even greater collaboration and efficiency.

“Our goal is to identify and acknowledge best-in class leaders in legal procurement,” says Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein, executive director of the Buying Legal© Council. “Each award winner and runner-up not only succeeded in their respective area, but also surpassed the current status quo of the discipline. These leaders in legal procurement are at the forefront of new developments. Their advances inspire all of us and we all do well learning from them.”

Submissions for the awards were entered in a blind peer-review. All decisions were made unanimously among the judges, all of them experienced legal procurement professionals.

In 2018, Jaguar Land Rover, an Onit customer, was a runner up for the 2018 Legal Procurement Awards in the Best Use of Technology category. Archer Daniels Midland won in the same category in 2017.

Smart Read of the Week: A New Direction for Legal Insourcing?

Posted on September 21, 2019 by - Legal Operations

Over at Law.com, Nicholas Bruch posits an interesting theory: the long term trends suggesting continued growth in corporate insourcing of legal work — that is, hiring internally versus offloading work to outside counsel — may not tell as complete a story as the trend lines suggest.

As the graph shows, and our data cited in The Wall Street Journal confirms, the cost of doing business with Big Law is going up. In fact, it’s now about 3x the cost to work with outside counsel versus hiring in-house at a legal department. But there may be more to consider for the future of corporate counsel beyond in-house or outside counsel.

Interestingly, Bruch suggests that while outside counsel ultimately will have to adjust its outlook to deal with the rise of insourcing, a viable new option has emerged for corporate legal departments, highly correlated with the rise of the advent of big data in the legal market: alternative legal service providers.

What’s driving this trend? Costs cut by efficiency.

The ALSP operational model, which tends to be less reliant on costly lawyers, will be able to deliver services more efficiently. All of this will change the way law departments approach pricing and sourcing. Notably, it will fundamentally change the math that led law departments to in-source.

As you probably know, ALSPs help give corporate legal departments a new way to manage high-demand matters like document review, electronic discovery, research, and more.

We’ll keep monitoring developments in this space so keep looking out for more. In the meantime, we’d love to talk more about how we can help continue the trend of bending the cost curve downward, while working with your inside and outside counsel, and any ALSPs you currently utilize. At Bodhala, our data scientists built our proprietary machine learning platform to help you understand, predict, and act with confidence on your legal spend.

Shoot us an email at [email protected] to learn more.

Legal Department 2025

Get It Right The First Time

BODHALA IQ WHITE PAPER

Driving Disruption in the Legal Department Part III: What’s Ahead for Legal Operations

Posted on September 11, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In part II of this blog series we discussed the joining of forces of legal operations and technology. Technology has been a key player in the unprecedented growth of legal operations in recent years, and this relationship will continue growing even faster. Now it’s time to reveal what some experts have to say about the future of legal ops.

To set the stage for what the future holds, it’s best to see the current lay of the land in legal operations. There have been some major disruptions in the legal sector in the past decade, one of which is advancements in technology. Some external and internal drivers of change have been the rising cost of legal services, the strategy of doing more with less, globalization, mergers and acquisitions, and advancements in cutting-edge technologies1.

Onit’s CEO Eric M. Elfman and Nathan Wenzel, General Manager and Co-founder of SimpleLegal have each spent almost three decades in disciplines that are now known as legal operations. Based on their experiences, these thought leaders foresee continued growth in legal ops, with legal operations professionals moving well past matter management, spend management, and the selection of counsel and evolving into more strategic roles. Here are their seven predictions for the future of legal operations:

  1. Legal operations professionals will continue to take on administrative burdens – in far more areas than spend management – in order to let lawyers be lawyers.
  2. Law departments will work to untangle overcomplexity in their enterprise legal management systems and return to basics that allow work to be done more efficiently and effectively.
  3. The use of collaboration and workflow tools will continue to grow as the legal function becomes more global and complex.
  4. More will be expected of technology vendors, and law departments will less frequently integrate a variety of tools and instead build platforms that handle multiple functions seamlessly.
  5. Legal ops professionals will engage more closely and directly with their companies’ businesses units, with a heightened focus on turn time and customer satisfaction.
  6. Law departments will build expertise to match the pricing experts that have become commonplace in law firms. Firms currently have the advantage in negotiations and AFAs because they understand the data better; legal ops will look to even the playing field.
  7. Legal operations professionals – and in-house counsel – must get better at data and analytics in order to make better decisions to behave more like business units while also better serving their clients.

Advancements in technology, process-driven service delivery and evolving and segmented roles in operations will be spearheading the future of legal operations for many years to come. The most proactive legal departments have already recognized this and are taking control of their future by taking action now.

Click here to read the white paper, Driving Disruption in the Law Department.

1 The legal department of the future: How disruptive trends are creating a new business model for in-house counsel. Deloitte, 2018.

Preparing Your Legal Team for Legal Operations Success

Posted on September 9, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Despite legal operations being a relatively established function (only 2% of organizations are not focusing on it), 44% of organizations assign legal ops responsibilities to a corporate lawyer rather than a dedicated person. However, the broader trend is toward creating dedicated legal operations positions and building teams. So how do you prepare and train your existing team for legal operations success?

WHAT IS LEGAL OPERATIONS?

“Legal operations” has been around longer than you might realize; for example, the Corporate Legal Operations Institute (CLOC) formed in 2010. Many legal operations functions have been around for years, just without the name attached. The focus is usually on driving efficiencies, controlling spend, monitoring external counsel fees, and deriving KPIs.

Generally, legal operations encompasses all the functions of the legal department that are not the law itself. CLOC breaks these areas into 12 competencies at three maturity levels; you can find this resource on their website. The typical skills and responsibilities of legal operations are to:

  • Define and drive initiatives to improve efficiency and process workflows.
  • Manage outside counsel guidelines, legal spend (visibility, control, and reduction), and department budget.
  • Optimize law firm performance for maximum value for money.
  • Implement, measure, and analyze metrics that inform decision-making, turning them into actions that deliver improvements.
  • Implement technology to achieve departmental and business goals.
  • Work cross-functionally to demonstrate the legal department’s value within the organization.
  • Understand and monitor the risks, risk appetite, and risk profile of the legal department within the organization’s framework.

So why the recent focus on legal operations? As businesses grow in scope and complexity, the volume and breadth of legal expertise required increases, and costs also go up. General Counsel are under more pressure than ever to justify their legal costs, improve the efficiency of their department, and collaborate with the broader business.

Legal operations will bring the legal department closer to the business and thus to the other specialist departments, resulting in Legal playing a different, more critical role in the company. With this demand to make the legal department act more “like a business” comes a need for cost control and process improvement. The problem with this for a traditional legal team is two-fold. First, the legal department’s priority will always be to advise on legal matters. Operations will take a back seat during busy periods or with an insufficiently staffed team. Second, achieving operational and business goals requires skills that are not necessarily part of a lawyer’s standard repertoire.

DEVELOPING LEGAL OPERATIONS SKILLS IN THE CORPORATE LEGAL TEAM

Whether your legal department has a dedicated legal operations resource, a whole team, or legal counsel doing legal operations as part of their “day job,” now is a vital time to future-proof your entire legal team and get them thinking beyond the practice of law. In-house lawyers have many skills that will enable them to succeed in legal operations, including law firm management, company knowledge, and a deep understanding of the legal department’s day-to-day operations and challenges. However, more is needed, and lawyers’ skills gaps tend to be in technology and software, change management, budgeting, and analytics.

Finding people with all these skills will be rare; whether your legal operations head should be a lawyer or non-lawyer is a matter for debate, but most agree that the end goal should be a diverse team of lawyers, non-lawyers, and specialist experts supported by the whole team having at least a basic knowledge of all the functions of legal operations.

Some of the ways to build these additional skills into your corporate legal team include:

JOB SHARING/SHADOWING

Consider placing lawyers with finance, sales, marketing, operations, product management, and data analysis – any area of the business that will broaden their skillset in a way that addresses one of the functions of legal operations. The challenge will be finding colleagues from these other departments qualified to do a genuine “job swap” into Legal. Shadowing is a desirable alternative in these scenarios. Also, try to upskill the non-lawyers in the legal operations team. Allowing them to shadow lawyers will enable them to better understand the different roles, responsibilities, and challenges facing the lawyers and hopefully build stronger working relationships within the function.

LEADING PROJECTS

It’s more than likely that your team members will have already been involved in large projects such as a merger or acquisition, but only from the legal perspective. If they lead the whole project, they will get exposed to other areas of the business and their impact on the overall recommendation and outcome. It doesn’t even have to be such a big project. An internal re-brand, product launch, or HR initiative will all work. Involvement in a software roll-out would be beneficial. Managing projects that involve stakeholders from multiple departments to deadlines and budget is a key part of legal operations, so leading any cross-functional project will build these skills.

TRAINING COURSES, CONFERENCES, NEWSLETTERS

The most obvious way to build the skills you need in your team is through training courses, but conferences can also impart knowledge and inspiration. Training doesn’t have to be an external cost as many of the skills will exist in the company already, and colleagues from other departments can help train. For example, lawyers should gain insights into data analysis, cloud, cyber security, AI, and commercials. Likewise, the business background professionals about the practice of law and the legal market so that they can provide the most value.

IMPLEMENT AND USE TECHNOLOGY

In today’s digitalized world, goals such as transparency, efficiency gains, and data analysis come through the combination of skilled personnel and software. The legal operations discipline is no exception to this; just look at the world’s leading legal operations teams. Each one relies on tailor-made legal operations tools in their daily work.

For this reason, empower your team to think about what slows them down at work daily and investigate if technology could solve these challenges. Encourage them to research and recommend software tools to help them and the wider team and lead the roll-out project.

REGULAR PRESENTATIONS AND OPEN Q&A ABOUT COMPANY REVENUE, PROFITS AND GOALS

If your company does regular “town halls” where they present financial updates and mission statements, encourage your team to attend these or start doing them just for your Legal team if they don’t exist on a company level. Get your team interested and educated in the organization’s financial health and how legal can contribute. A modern legal team must be fluent in financial terminology and confident with budgeting and reporting.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today.