How To Set Up An In House Legal Department

Businesses are starting to expect more from their general counsel and legal departments, according to Deloitte. They want strategic insights for business growth rather than a tactical focus on legal communication for take chances management. With expectations for reduced spend combined with circuitous and unpredictable legal piece of work, the question becomes; how can you do more with less without sacrificing quality?

The answer? Information technology starts with structure. With thinking and performance similar a business unit. You lot demand to ascertain roles, create processes and automate tasks, and track and collect data at one central betoken for your legal section to function at its best.

Design defined roles for team members

You need to ascertain roles for your team so everyone knows the tasks and responsibilities they are answerable for. Doing this will ensure essential tasks are prioritized and taken care of earlier less important ones. Defined roles besides boost staff productivity and satisfaction. A Enquiry Gate study found that a lack of office clarity reduces employee performance and causes employee turnover.

Pinpoint the strategic purpose of your legal team within the business equally a whole

To define team member roles, you need to empathise the main legal functions you provide to the business. A corporate legal department's efficiency needs to be anchored around the value it brings.

One way to discover your department's purpose is to examine legal or regulatory risks the business organisation has faced in the by. Categorize matters your legal section has previously handled by blazon. You'll run across which matter types require the nigh resource, and you can assign defended roles and team members to them.

Define roles and their relation to each other

Once you've defined roles for team members, create an organizational chart that describes who reports to whom.

Source: https://www.slideserve.com/lev/enron-europe-legal-department-structure-chart

If one person needs to report to multiple people, define who they should report to for each task.

You should also define what piece of work your outside counsel does and who they report to as well. Otherwise, you lot may pay heavy fees for tasks that could exist washed in-house.

Create processes for all tasks

Documented procedures establish a standard for your whole team, so everyone knows which tools and workflows to use for everyday tasks and why they employ them. Processes too get in easier to place flaws or opportunities for improvement in your workflow.

Identify recurring tasks: Monitor workflow over a defined period to observe tasks the same person has done for the same thing, more than than three times. Let'southward say you identify three tasks: performing due diligence for deals, reviewing invoices, and manually tracking spend in excel.
Rank tasks by frequency and importance: Commencement with loftier-value tasks that need to be done more oftentimes. Using our instance, we might rank those three tasks in this order from highest value to lowest value: performing due diligence for deals, reviewing invoices, manually tracking spend in excel.
Analyze how those tasks are currently washed: Look for similarities between tasks and how they are washed. Determine which processes yield the most results, and then find room for comeback, if any. Notwithstanding using our case, we might discover that reviewing invoices and tracking spend are pretty similar. Therefore, nosotros'd merge and automate these two tasks using a spend direction solution.

Designate your standard process to exist the one that yields the all-time upshot in terms of time spent performing it, costs incurred, efforts needed and results obtained.

Designate tech for automating tasks and tracking data

In a ServiceNow report for Workflow Quarterly, 80% of employees in highly automated organizations reported improved productivity compared to 59% in highly manual organizations.

Identify easily automated tasks: You've already identified recurring tasks. Some of those are skillful candidates for automation. You can determine which could exist automated by identifying which require piddling-to-no human supervision or which require piffling thinking, creative work or human interaction. For case, tasks like contract management, matter intake, reporting and invoicing are great to automate.
Choose your automation or tracking software: Choose a reliable automation software depending on what you demand to automate or track. Tech like SimpleLegal, for example, automates tasks like due east-Billing and tracks spend management, so it would exist an excellent fit for a squad that needs to spend less fourth dimension on invoices.

In one case you've automatic tasks, you'll accept more time to focus on other, more than involved tasks.

Assign a primal point for data

You demand to assign a cardinal bespeak for your data— like timekeeper rates and accruals— so in that location'south no inaccurate or missing information during data analysis. Data analysis is of import because you tin can proceeds valuable insights into your legal department'south operation with it. Yous'll be able to see reports on what you lot're doing well and what you lot need to meliorate. These reports volition as well help you show your legal department'due south value to stakeholders.

Choose a dedicated legal ops solution

Consider choosing a defended legal ops solution to serve equally a central source for your data. Equally you evaluate a solution, think most the post-obit:

Features: Some key features to look for in an ideal legal ops solution include eastward-Billing, thing management, spend management, vendor management, reporting and analytics. Depending on your priorities, knowledge management may also be a feature to look for.
Ease of access: Your solution should, ideally, exist deject-based, so anyone can access it from anywhere, be it on a commute to work or from another branch halfway around the world.
Data security: Because yous deal with a lot of highly sensitive information, yous need a solution that'south private and secure. While no solution is infallible, SimpleLegal'due south security policy is exactly the sort of policy you should be looking for.
Integrations: To ensure a seamless workflow, the solution you choose should accept an API that allows you to connect other tools you already use.
Back up: The ideal solution will also take responsive customer support, whether via telephone, e-mail, chat or social media.
Toll: The price of the solution you lot cull should be within your upkeep.

Once you lot've chosen a legal ops software and started to collect data, you'll be able to offset benchmarking the legal metrics that matter most to your company. This volition not only hateful you'll have an easier time building and sharing reports with stakeholders, simply you'll as well be able to amend cross-team collaboration. For example, you'll be able to collaborate with the sales team to simplify contract negotiations and gain control of legal spend with the finance team.

Structure your in-house legal section to increase efficiency

Proper legal department structuring will help yous take your department from juggling limited resource to maximizing all resources. With good structure, your team tin can focus on doing piece of work that positions your department every bit a valuable strategic business partner, and the insights you provide can influence decision-making.

It's the legal operations team'southward responsibleness to scrutinize all legal tasks and discover room for improvement. Legal operations is non nearly as effective without a dedicated tech solution that understands what an in-house department needs to evangelize. SimpleLegal has helped legal departments intelligently manage matters, vendors, spend, reporting and more than since 2022.