Legal work streams

The challenge for in-house teams

When considering the approach to managing legal work streams – namely the day-to-day performance of legal work – it can be difficult to know where to start. The diverse nature of each work stream, the number of competing priorities across the Legal function, limited budget and lack of enabling technology, means GCs need to be strategic and prioritise where to spend their time and resources.

Work streams may include:

• Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
• Litigation management – including eDiscovery
• IP management
• Compliance and risk management
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Delegations of authority

It is no surprise therefore, that research shows that many in-house teams lack the operational infrastructure to effectively manage their legal work streams. In particular, legal teams often lack documented processes for key work streams, centralised databases to manage templates, precedents and other knowledge, technology tools that effectively support people and processes, and data to inform strategic decision making.

A common misconception is that each legal work stream requires a bespoke point solution and that implementing more robust processes and governance would be costly and time consuming. Whilst this may be true in some instances, the benefits of improved management of legal work streams often far outweigh the costs: from improved data analytics and risk management to better utilisation of resources and control over budgets. We are also seeing a trend in the market, towards the optimisation of existing technology and use of enterprise solutions, which can – when underpinned by appropriate processes and governance – improve collaboration with business stakeholders, eliminate data silos, and reduce change fatigue.