The strategic importance of in-house legal teams is more widely recognised, in part because of the role played during the pandemic. Many in-house legal teams are improving the efficiency of business processes and enabling innovation. A well-run legal department can become a significant competitive differentiator for organisations across many industries. However, many in-house teams are unable to maximise the value they deliver, because they are held back by low-value, repetitive tasks.
Our recent publication The Tech-Enabled Lawyer: The evolution of the legal function, discussed how 53% of in-house legal teams spend too much time carrying out repetitive tasks that add very little value. This should be concerning for any in-house team. If we put this another way, more than half of the industry believes it could be creating significantly more value for their organisations.
Document review became a key pain point in 2020. More than half of in-house legal teams said they spend too much time reviewing documents, up from just 32% in 2018. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic played a part. In-house legal teams were front and centre of the rapid and dramatic change in business practices during lockdown. They were required to review much higher volumes of documents, often with fewer resources.
As we approach 2022 and business returns to some form of normality, are in-house legal teams assessing how they can reduce the volume of low-value work, and increase their strategic value? It is a critical question which will determine their long-term value.
Two competing factors have pushed the industry to an inflection point. On the one hand, there is a growing recognition across organisations that in-house legal teams can deliver significant value. On the other hand, in-house teams are often unable to deliver greater value because they are overwhelmed by repetitive work. These factors cannot stay in equilibrium for long. Either in-house teams find a way to free themselves from low-value workloads, or their perceived strategic importance will diminish.
Automation is increasingly viewed as an answer to move staff away from low-value tasks. The processes that are most easily automated are repetitive and often mundane, the type of tasks that occupy too much of an in-house lawyer’s time. All in-house legal teams should consider what processes can be done by technology, and what are best done by humans. Where can the value humans bring be maximised? What improvements can staff make to which processes?
While a digital transformation is a multi-year project, most start by using technology to streamline existing processes. Self-service portals accelerate the time to which the business can access the information they need; disintermediating lawyers from simple requests frees them to work on other tasks. Many other workflows do not require specialist knowledge and can be automated, such as drafting a basic contract or lease.
The effective communication of priorities and the collaboration of ideas is hugely beneficial to the legal function. The shift to home working means most staff can now access collaboration tools, which have improved the way in-house legal teams communicate. There has been a noticeable decrease in the number of legal departments that find it challenging to communicate with the wider business or within their own teams.
Many other technologies exist that will further streamline existing processes. For example, robotic process automation can be used to automate the drafting of simpler documents, such as a contract. Cloud-based document sharing, contract management software, project and time management software, and agile practices can all help free lawyers’ time to focus on value-added services.
However, the rush to automate individual processes could lead to future problems. Individual workflows may be automated, but the overall effectiveness of the department may not improve. It’s important to approach digital transformation as a journey, with an ambitious end goal, not a series of individual projects to automates specific processes. A series of individual projects may create a series of unconnected data silos, which could cause considerable issues in the near future.
Data will become one of the most valuable assets to in-house legal teams. For example, incredible value lies within a contract estate, which could bring new insights to the wider business. Data provides general counsel with the insights to identify process bottlenecks and pain points, and help define the department’s future strategy. Without the ability to prioritise resources to the most pressing issues, the team can lose focus. A coherent long-term plan will help define the data required to drive an insights-led legal department of the future.
* denotes a required field
0330 161 1234