Do you feel like you are constantly “re-inventing the wheel”?

Is information flowing within your legal team, from law firms and through to business clients in an unstructured way? Often the same information is sought repeatedly, and legal teams are challenged not to “re-invent the wheel.” All of that knowledge can be curated and stored effectively, so that everyone has access to what they need, when they need it. Most importantly, it is the same information every time, and legal advice is consistent. 

Quick Tips….

• Identify someone from the legal team to lead the project, perhaps a paralegal who has passion for KM – credibility is key
• Perform an inventory of existing content 
• Identify the right topics and practice areas to focus on as a pilot – don’t be tempted to boil the ocean
• If you haven’t already, conduct an assessment of existing technology that would be appropriate to capture and share content

Are your self-help tools and FAQs collecting dust on your internal portal? 

To have truly successful self-help tools you need to make the guidance simple and immediately actionable (plain language, visuals, etc). If your internal clients need to decipher those self-help materials, they are more like to text or message the lawyer who they already know to be very responsive.  

Quick Tips…

This vicious cycle can be broken with a two-part approach:

1. simple and actionable content, coupled with,
2. regularly redirecting the business to the tools.

Are you wasting time searching for files?

While many departments struggle with implementing a successful document management system (DMS), there are also many mature legal departments who are striving to really effectively use the DMS they may already have in place. In many ways, it can be easier to launch a new DMS when the slate is clean and new processes can be defined. Once a system is in place and expectations have been set, the change management becomes the greatest challenge. 

Two proven tactics that have seen success in increasing the adoption of a DMS are:

1. Identifying a champion in the legal team who is actually using the DMS can highlight a real use case and show the perceived benefits; and 
2. Demonstrating with data the increased value, whether speed or accuracy of gathering information or even locating a document. 

Is your legal team known as the department of “no” or the department of “know”?

With increasing pressure to demonstrate value and in the constant competition for scarce resources, legal teams today need metrics to demonstrate contributions and momentum toward organizational objectives, both to secure budget and to address any misalignment between perception and reality of the legal team’s value to the business.

Quick Tips…

1. Look at your spend from previous years and measure how you are tracking against that. Ask your internal finance partner or your law firms for support. 
2. Begin to manually track some of the work that comes into the legal team. Consider setting up a legal team alias and email inbox for general questions from the business
3. The metrics you choose to report against should be aligned with what you are trying to accomplish as a law department (your strategic plan!) and as an organization.

Can the legal department be the only corporate function without a strategic plan?

Not any longer. Developing a strategic plan for your legal function will help you to chart a course for success while demonstrating the value and contributions of the legal function and ultimately making it easier to justify resources. 

Quick Tips…

1. Start with a baseline understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to understand the delta between the current situation and where you need to focus in order to take the legal function forward.
2. Establish realistic goals and consider building team engagement with accountability and align projects against individual performance plans
3. Make sure that your key internal stakeholders understand your goals and how you are progressing against those.