If you feel mired in Month 13 of a tough year, it’s easy to miss the fresh energy that traditionally fuels so many strategic plans and New Year’s resolutions. It’s tempting to wait or skip planning altogether.
Legal Departments that proactively pause to plan for the “new normal” will be better prepared for the transition, be better equipped to handle non-COVID work, and will weather what promises to be another strange year with less stress.
When it comes to legal ops, there are many straightforward steps you can take that will take little time and cost no extra money, but pay ample dividends in terms of expedience and sanity.
When it comes to legal ops, there are many straightforward steps you can take that will take little time and cost no extra money, but pay ample dividends in terms of expedience and sanity.
It’s Q4 2020 – time for budgets, planning, and predictions for the year ahead. When it comes to legal operations, we can share a forecast based on data.
Xakia shares the results of the Legal Operations Health Check, the most practical look yet at how Legal Departments across the spectrum of size, industry and geography are evolving their Legal Department tools, policies and procedures.
Most helpful, the Legal Operations Health Check will recommend straightforward tactics to help you become more effective and efficient – a plan to thrive during and after the coronavirus.
This blog series has focused on Agile, a way of working that’s being used by more than 70 percent of our business colleagues, according to the Project Management Institute, and an increasingly popular matter management system for in-house teams.
his series explores the ins and outs of Legal Intake & Triage – and how a few adjustments to the process can improve your operations, service and morale.
Your Legal Intake & Triage framework can borrow a few best practices from the school of queue management – the study of how humans behave in line for a bank teller, an airline check-in counter or….a roller coaster.
It may not be the stuff of compelling legal thrillers, but Intake truly is a paramount concern for Legal Departments: Done wrong, it can lead to fumbled projects, duplicated efforts and/or an overwhelming pipeline. Done right, it can set up each matter for success.
In our new series, we will address the ins and outs of Intake – and how a few adjustments to the process can improve your operations, service and morale.
Reporting should be more than a necessary evil: It’s an opportunity to connect with your Legal Department’s stakeholders and share critical information. This series will address the art and science of reporting by audience. In short, who needs to know what? In the final installment, we will look at the Legal Department itself.
Reporting should be more than a necessary evil: It’s an opportunity to connect with your Legal Department’s stakeholders and share critical information. This series will address the art and science of reporting by audience. In short, who needs to know what? In the final installment, we will look at the Legal Department itself.
Reporting should be more than a necessary evil: It’s an opportunity to connect with your Legal Department’s stakeholders and share critical information. This series will address the art and science of reporting by audience. In short, who needs to know what? In this installment, we’ll cover your organization’s top leaders: the CEO and board.
Reporting should be more than a necessary evil: It’s an opportunity to connect with your Legal Department’s stakeholders and share critical information. This series will address the art and science of reporting by audience. In short, who needs to know what? In this installment, we’ll cover your organization’s top leaders: the CEO and board.
Reporting should be more than a necessary evil: It’s an opportunity to connect with your Legal Department’s stakeholders and share critical information. This series will address the art and science of reporting by audience. In short, who needs to know what? First up: your business unit clients.
We’re here to help: The Xakia team has created a field guide to make legal data analytics accessible for Legal Departments of all sizes and lawyer of all backgrounds.
Download our free e-book, In-House Legal Data Analytics for Beginners, and get started today.
The fundamentals of legal data analytics are universal, and data collection can be simple and relatively painless. “The when.” There are two key timing elements for Legal Departments: turnaround time and working time.
The fundamentals of legal data analytics are universal, and data collection can be simple and relatively painless. The what - calls to your Legal Department’s output: What exactly do you do around here? A smart collection and classification of your legal work will help you identify opportunities for improvement.
Legal Departments are so often buried in work that it’s hard, if not impossible, to pause and contemplate strategic projects. However, without a strategic plan, your Legal Department will be trapped under 'busywork' and unable to accomplish meaningful improvements or demonstrate value.
Legal Departments are so often buried in work that it’s hard, if not impossible, to pause and contemplate strategic projects. However, without a strategic plan, your Legal Department will be trapped under 'busywork' and unable to accomplish meaningful improvements or demonstrate value.
As a recent general counsel and chief legal officer for Toll Group, Adam Martin understands the evolving role of corporate legal counsel. He was a senior legal leader for the global transportation and logistics company for almost 20 years
Nearly half of corporate Legal Departments are working without a formal plan, according to Xakia’s Legal Operations Health Check. This survey polled in-house lawyers and legal operations personnel on five continents; it provides valuable insights on the state of strategic planning within legal operations, providing data on alignment, metrics and more.
Two-thirds to three-quarters of large organizations struggle to implement their strategies. Are you ready to start 2019 with some strategic direction? Download Xakia’s ready-to-use Legal Department Strategic Plan Template today.
Why should Legal Departments make strategic plans? According to the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Legal Operations Maturity Model Toolkit, there are five primary reasons to engage in strategic planning.
More money, more problems? For small Legal Departments, the opposite may be true: While their budgets may have fewer zeroes than their larger counterparts, the pressure to deliver with fewer people and fewer resources is huge.
As consumers of legal services know, when the outside counsel spend is governed by hourly billing, it’s inherently hard to predict, as it can vary with the phase of a project, the demands of the other side, even the habits and styles of the lawyers involved.
The unpredictability of legal activity has been the top reason in-house teams struggle to accurately predict legal spend. But, this is changing, especially with the rise of legal operations. Legal teams can no longer operate as a black box, spending with impunity. They must be more quantitative. They must take a disciplined and strategic approach to spend management so they are armed with the necessary data to enforce real change.
Are you planning to build LegalTech infrastructure for your department? Watch a recorded webinar with Sean Power, General Counsel of BlueScope North America, and Mishca Waliczek, Senior Legal Counsel of BlueScope Buildings North America, who shared their department’s approach to technology.
Our white paper will show you how to write a legal technology business case that doesn’t simply ask for “more lawyers,” but considers the processes and systems to streamline delivery and increase accuracy. We have also included a template to get your legal technology roadmap started.
Budget season approaches – and soon it will be time to turn your attention from the law to the ledger. More than 70 percent of companies have a December 31 year-end; for this majority, the next few months are a critical time to request and allocate resources for the year ahead.
On its face, ROI seems pretty straightforward – a basic math equation that determines the ratio between an investment’s profit and its cost. But with legal technology, this can get a little nebulous: Your department deals in time, not in widgets.
Since Xakia launched the Legal Operations Health Check, in-house counsel on five continents have completed the online assessment. Two months later, their responses provide a quantitative look at the real state of legal operations in departments of all sizes.
The best legal technology can be doomed to fail without a purposeful plan for the human beings who will use it. Here are tips for securing leadership support, fostering user involvement….and overcoming your lawyers’ skepticism.
As you explore legal tech solutions, it’s imperative to get buy-in from your IT department. You are more likely to succeed if you understand the IT team’s concerns and go in prepared. We provide 10 questions to get you started.
Legal Departments are acutely aware of the importance of protecting company information. Ensuring legal technology tools meet appropriate information security standards is critical to any procurement decision, and this checklist will help you to move through the Q&A stage as quickly as possible.
Legal departments face a messy and mutating maze of regulations and a bigger workload. As the work expands, three options emerge: Hire more lawyers, spend more on outside lawyers, or find new ways of doing things.
Four practical tips for Legal Departments to make the most of the lessons and expertise delivered at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s 2018 Conference
How do we ensure that in-house counsel are engaged in strategy instead of inundated by legal whack-a-mole? Legal operations provides a surprisingly straightforward solution: Track your activity, measure its strategic value, and make smart, data-driven change.
Regardless of size, all in-house teams want to provide the best legal services to their organizations in the most efficient and effective manner. That's the basic objective behind legal operations, and you don't have to be in a monolithic corporation to get there.
This white paper is suitable for companies of any size to guide the beginnings for implementing successful corporate legal operations initiatives in four simple steps.
Whether you are among the 61% of U.S. law departments that report directly to the CEO or whether your relationship is more dotted-line, it’s important to know what executives and boards value most – and how you can leverage legal operations to bolster your most important work relationships.
Is the value added by a legal team defined by cost savings, value of matters worked on and risk avoided, or by the achievement of an organisation's strategic goals?
