Legal Operations Health Check<\/em><\/a>, an intensive survey designed to help in-house lawyers evaluate the health of their departments and plan operational improvements. They rated their team\u2019s adoption of 100 tactics, ranging from financial management to technology tools to strategic planning.<\/p>\nBy tracking the projects they marked as \u201cin development,\u201d we can see what\u2019s in the pipeline for legal operations. Here\u2019s what to expect in 2021:<\/p>\n
A major focus on strategic planning.<\/strong> Of the top 20 projects in development, seven involved strategic planning, including the highest-rated initiative, the incorporation of well-defined and measurable metrics into a Legal Operations plan, with 18.3% of respondents working toward this goal.<\/p>\nOther strategic initiatives:<\/p>\n
\n- Alignment of Legal Operations strategy with company strategy \u2013 17.2%;<\/li>\n
- Performance of regular (at least quarterly) tracking against metrics and key initiatives \u2013 16.8%;<\/li>\n
- Commitment of all team members to continuous improvement in Legal Operations \u2013 16.8%;<\/li>\n
- Performance of regular (at least annual) review of progress against Legal Operations initiatives \u2013 16%;<\/li>\n
- Alignment of Legal Operations strategy with other corporate and support functions \u2013 15.7%; and<\/li>\n
- Appropriate resourcing for Legal Operations, in both time and money \u2013 15.3%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This is affirming; data from the Legal Operations Health Check showed that many Legal Departments were winging it; forming a plan, and committing to track progress against it, will empower more purposeful action in the year ahead.<\/p>\n
Knowledge-sharing.<\/strong> Fifteen percent of Legal Departments said they are actively working to develop processes to ensure knowledge capture is part of work completion \u2013 a smart move that will save time initially and pay dividends over the long term.<\/p>\nMore exciting, though, is the intel that respondents plan not only to share knowledge within the Legal Department, but to deploy it outside through:<\/p>\n
\n- Self-help tools and guides for customers for regular and low-risk work that doesn\u2019t necessarily warrant Legal Department involvement \u2013 17.8%;<\/li>\n
- Updated precedent documents available to the internal team, external legal service providers and business customers \u2013 16.1%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Contract-wrangling.<\/strong> Given the vast amounts of contracts handled by the average Legal Department, it is a natural target for initial legal operations efforts. Several projects to better control the contract process are in development, among them:<\/p>\n\n- A centralized and searchable precedent bank for common contracts \u2013 18.1%;<\/li>\n
- Playbooks for contract position rationale, fallback positions and focus areas for lawyer review \u2013 16.2%; and<\/li>\n
- A centralized and searchable contract repository \u2013 15.5%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
It\u2019s not surprising that Legal Departments working toward maturity in legal operations would focus on these three areas: strategic planning, knowledge management and contracts. Recall that simply put, legal operations is the quest for efficient delivery of quality legal services; to get there, you need a smart plan, a well-developed strategy. Efficiency hinges on the smart capture of lawyers\u2019 intellectual property and its availability throughout the organization. And there\u2019s no better target for efficiency than the beast of contract management.<\/p>\n
Do these match your plans for 2021? Do you need ideas for your organization \u2013 or an idea of how you measure against teams of similar size, teams in your industry or teams in your region? Explore the results of the Legal Operations Health Check<\/em><\/a> today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the fourth quarter \u2013 time for budgets, planning, and predictions for the year ahead. When it comes to legal operations, we can share a forecast based on data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88988,"featured_media":16628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3637,5055],"tags":[3672,1292,3833,3036,3556],"class_list":["post-16625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-member-content","category-press-release","tag-legal-departments","tag-legal-operations","tag-member-content","tag-press-release","tag-xakia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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It\u2019s the fourth quarter \u2013 time for budgets, planning, and predictions for the year ahead. When it comes to legal operations, we can share a forecast based on data.<\/p>\n