Stagnant Yield. Business processes are at the core of all business output, and legal teams are no exception. Overwhelming levels of information from a wide variety of data sources and data types can lead to stagnant productivity yield. High-volume-low-risk legal events are cost-centers for many organizations because of compliance requirements, where there is a direct correlation between manual workflows and costs. The more legal events, the more people needed. Being able to do more with less is easier said than done. Costs, productivity, risks, and change management have to be considered, but the right mix of people-process-technology can lead to improved legal team yield.
The Legal Whisperer. The emergence of the Legal Operations (“LegalOps”) role has been in parallel with data explosion and regulatory growth. LegalOps managers are tasked with bringing in the right mix of human and tech-enabled automation to create a seamless end-to-end process that is able to handle any level of complexity and stand up to legal scrutiny. Though knowledge of legal and business processes is important, the ability to juggle diverse stakeholder issues in light of potential change management is an art gained through experience and practice. Aligning interests and getting the right leadership on board coupled with the right timing and a little luck are all part of the magic recipe. Beyond luck is being a good picker – meaning, choosing the right areas to gain legal productivity yield where win-win-win is a likely outcome for all stakeholders. These areas tend to be high-volume-low-risk legal and compliance events.
No Need to Rip & Replace. A legal data cloud provides the foundation to gaining yield from legal technology. Having a central location to run legal data workloads means unifying data sprawl and automating intake, capture and routing to downstream legal vertical applications. A legal data cloud provides the flexibility to consider keeping legacy systems rather than pushing a “rip and replace” strategy that may meet with people and process resistance. Control over access management enhances security and reporting, and self-service search and retrieval translates to less time looking for data and faster turnaround times for responding to legal requests.