Upping your game · 22/4/2020 · Upping your game Five principles for enhancing legal department...

Upping your game

Five principles for enhancing legal department efficiency and effectiveness

22 April 2020

©2020 | Apperio Ltd 2

Setting the scene

According to ACC Northeast President, Gemma M. Dreher

"As in-house advisors, we are accustomed to wearing multiple hats and engaging with other executives to get the

job done. Fulfilling our role as trusted business partners is more critical now than it has ever been."

Managing complex workloads

across multiple States

Reducing external legal spend

and managing internal

expectations on cost

Reporting finance and strategic

decision making processes to

the c-suite

Managing resources and

workstreams with unfamiliar

technology


Discover the five principles that can be applied to improve how your legal department runs

How can General Counsel adapt to these new demands while running their legal department?

Think about the pain points facing in-house legal teams

View best practice examples from the UK to see if there are any common themes/ challenges emerging across US & UK

in-house teams

Take away useful tips and suggestions that can be applied to your teams today!

We want to get GCs thinking about how they can develop business-facing abilities. Here we will:


The five principles for running a successful legal department

Build transparency into

legal spend processes

Build trusting relationships

with your external legal

counsel

Use meaningful KPIs to

measure departmental

progress

Strengthen relationships

with internal stakeholders

Invest in technologies to

automate administrative

tasks


How many of you received an

unexpected invoice in the past

six months?

The first principle: build transparency


Tips on building transparency

Start gathering your legal

data

Get transparency of

WIP/accrual spend

Categorize your data, it

will make your life easier

Monitor regularly,

intervene early

Ensure your matters are

time-bound

The following steps can be taken to manage your accruals and WIP to bring clarity to legal spend across all stages:


How would you describe your

relationships with existing

legal counsel?

The second principle: build trusting relationships with external partners


Case study: Network Rail

Network rail is Britain’s rail infrastructure operator and has a duty to spend its money

wisely. So it needed to optimize the information it was getting from external law firms

on its £15m annual spend.

This involved changing its relationship with their external suppliers to be mutually

beneficial to both parties.

The existing relationship consisted of firms submitting quarterly reports and producing

metric packs. This was an additional burden on law firms and generated data that was

at-least three months out of date.

The GC of Network Rail, Dan Kayne, said this meant duplicated activity and sub-optimal

relationships with law firms.


So what did they do?

Network Rail used Apperio to assess each of their law firm relationships. Having data on hand allowed for easier negotiations and helped both

parties have open honest conversations.

Cross-comparisons of law firms against others in the field

Bringing clarity to the types and frequency of upcoming work

Being able to judge work based on geographical modelling, specialist or diverse skills sets

This included:


Tips on building external legal relationships

Set clear expectations

from the outset

Invest in relationships with

your firms

Get the right level of

experience on your work

Talk about money from

the outset

Open and regular communication is the foundation to strong and effective relationships, and legal should be no different.

Several Apperio clients report that they meet regularly to review their business objectives and operate horizontally.

How to strengthen relationships:


Do you use KPIs to measure

performance of your legal

department?

The third principle: Use meaningful KPIs


How to build meaningful KPIs

KPIs must be meaningful and

capable to drive change

KPIs need to be easy to extract

and measure

Tie the KPIs to operational

priorities

Set KPIs in advance and

communicate with firms

Examples:

% of Matters over budget, number of matters without a budget, team composition, Alternative Fee Arrangements v billable hour, and the ratio of internal to external

spend


How is the legal department

perceived by the wider

business?

The fourth principle: strengthen internal stakeholders relationships


Case study: findings from UK GC panel discussion

CFOs who rely on GCs to present

accurate, transparent legal spend

Boards of Directors that require

GCs to justify headcount

HR & IT departments that seek

advice from in-house legal issues

including data security, remote

working and employment legal

support

Procurement teams who work

with legal to determine supplier

spend

In October 2019 Apperio hosted a roundtable discussion in London. One of the recurring themes shared by UK GCs was around how they

interacted with other in-house departments.

Delegates all agreed that there was a need for greater cohesion across departments.

Key stakeholders included:


Case study 3: findings from UK GC panel discussion

During the roundtable, one GC said:

Legal is very much seen as being on the periphery but having a seat on the

board allows me to justify legal spend. If I didn’t have a seat at the table I

would be perceived as a cost center.

““


Tips on strengthening internal stakeholder relationships

Speak the language of finance

and c-suite

Create a regular cadence of

meetings to cover off KPIs

Demand clarity on the non-legal

goals of the business


Have you bought tech

specifically for the legal

department?

The fifth principle: invest in technology


Considerations for GCs interested in purchasing legal tech

When assessing technology providers, GC should first consider their ability to clearly and succinctly communicate their solution. If they are unable to

do this GCs risk not fully understanding how it solves their problem.

The first thing that your CFO or COO will ask about a tech platform is: how secure is it? How safe

is it? Is it going to be around in two years time? How viable is it, and most importantly how does

it plug into the wider team?

“

“

Sean Thomas, Group GC, AlphaSights


How to start investing in technology

Define the problem Build the case Know the process Tech is not magic Think big, act small

We hope you find the tips and insights in this presentation helpful

Why not take our legal health assessment quiz and find out how prepared your legal department is for tomorrow’s challenges

or

contact us on [email protected]

https://info.apperio.com/maturity-assessment.html??utm_campaign=WS_PG1373

mailto:[email protected]

Upping your game · 22/4/2020 · Upping your game Five principles for enhancing legal department...

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