Better matter management for legal leaders
Legal leadership has evolved dramatically over the years.
The role has developed from being like an air traffic controller for law firms, to working as more of a business leader with legal skills – leveraging data to predict risk, manage the function and optimise operations.
Embracing technology and data-driven leadership is key to driving strategic business impact.
Despite the need for tech-driven solutions, and the wide variety of options available, only 36% of in-house legal teams currently use dedicated matter management software.
This means teams remain bogged down by manual tasks and struggle to access the data they need to work strategically and demonstrate business value.
Investing in the right matter management solution helps both the legal team and the wider business get important work done with more efficiency. This reduces risk and frees up valuable time.
For legal leaders, matter management software is also critical for operating at the same or higher levels as their peers in leadership, management and operations. Without it, leaders will constantly struggle to have the visibility and insights needed to effectively lead their function.
Providing insights into what matters
While it’s increasingly common for larger organisations to use e-billing and contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions, teams of all sizes often operate with limited transparency into the work they do.
Picture a pie chart that represents the work a legal team does: part is contracts, part is working with law firms and part is administrative tasks. Everything else is ‘matters’.
The risks of being data-driven without matter management
When I led a large corporate legal department without internal matter management technology, I manually surveyed my team to understand their workloads.
We were doing our best to provide data so that we could manage the function effectively, but this methodology is time consuming and results in inaccurate data. This leads to inaccurate decision-making.
Another pitfall of not having technology is that it leaves you in a constant struggle to maintain a ‘high friction’ manual process, which impacts overall team efficiency and effectiveness.
For example, you might have a manual intake process, but in an in-house team things are happening too quickly to rely on processes that require much data entry or context switching. That means it’s impossible to capture the data you need in a reliable way.
Scaling a legal function with people, process and technology
If you want to be a legal business leader who operates at the same level as your peers in leadership, management and operations, you need to create a scalable, data driven and cost effective department.
The LawVu general counsel dashboard (pictured below) is an example of combined data for all legal work in one platform.
In my experience, the right combination of matter management technology, people and processes allows you to do that.
The software gives consistency and shape to your ways of working. This then generates high value data and transparency while streamlining your workflows.
If you choose a matter management solution wisely, and implement it well, you’ll build an efficient, scalable and forward-thinking in-house legal function. You’ll also get the data you need to be a more effective legal leader.
To discuss this topic in more detail, connect with David Lancelot on LinkedIn, or book a demo with a member of LawVu to see the ideas in action.
Sponsor information
LawVu is the legal workspace for in-house legal teams. By empowering legal teams to operate more effectively and providing them with total visibility and control, LawVu helps in-house lawyers do their best work, all in one place.