Part #1 of the 7-part Blog Series: How to Evaluate Legal Operations Solutions
First Step, Assemble a Team
Many corporate legal departments are now closely evaluating Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) technology solutions to operate more efficiently and reduce legal spend as we enter the new decade. Legal Technology evolves constantly, making the evaluation process appear rather daunting, but there’s a way to take an intelligent approach – step by step.
To explore technology solutions for your legal operations, start by taking a step back. That’s because, while you may understand the challenges your teams are facing with your current solution, these are likely different than what the system was originally brought in to address. Dig deeper to uncover the real problems the system aimed to solve and how the business situation has evolved. We offer a 7-point checklist to help you develop your path forward. This approach, inspired by our clients’ plans for success and our team’s expertise, helps you find the right solution.
NINJA TIP: The best practice to follow when assembling a team, broaden the scope of candidates you seek. Make your team cross-functional, multidisciplinary, and diverse. This builds the stronger foundation that will see the “big picture” of the entire company’s needs, not just Legal’s.
Who should be on the team?
This brings up the question, “Beyond you and your legal team, who should be involved in the evaluation process?” The short answer is to look at how other business unit teams are facing similar issues, and how they might contribute to your effort. They can also benefit from the outcomes. This can help ensure buy-in from other department champions, so consider adding them to the team.
To understand the business issue, this broader group might help redirect the conversation from identifying symptoms to identifying what drives change – in concrete terms. Escalating costs, for example, represent common issues in virtually all industries and departments. If cutting legal spend by 20%, for example, is your quantifiable goal, it flows from the business objective of reducing costs – familiar to any number of teams in your organization.
Other typical business objectives include:
- Boost performance
- Minimize compliance risk
- Build support for Legal’s decisions.
Bringing together diverse teams to deconstruct the problem or challenge and create a new way to express it gives everyone a sense of empowerment. With other teams in the conversation, you get the benefit of their varied expertise, their insights, and possibly even some of their resources.
NINJA TIP: It’s critical that Legal provide a holistic solution that addresses the needs of other business units to win acceptance. Seek team champions from other departments that can judge how best to overcome challenges in procurement, human resources, and accounts payable as well as increase contributions to business goals.
Create the structure & focus on the plan
To guide the process and make sure everyone is “marching in the same direction,” you need to create structure and a team t guide it through the process. You can begin with talking points in defined categories such as people, process, innovation, and technology. Use these to gauge the interest and opinions of the prospective team members.
These talking points may uncover systemic problems for the members you approach:
- Finding relevant data to advance their mission
- Making faster, better decisions
- Improving efficiency
- Mitigating risk
Define your talking points. These will form the core of your plan. They should include how to address the problems when choosing candidates. Each potential member may have ideas about the value an organization can expect once these issues are solved. Knowing who will make the decisions helps you decide who to include. If you’re reading this, a new legal ops technology might be part of the solution. However, some issues might be solved with better communication or process improvements outside of Legal Ops. Plan your strategy around finding strong champions to drive the best results.
NINJA TIP: We’ve all heard the adage, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Truer words have not been said when you plan for the team to evaluate new solutions. You need to find the right people to uncover critical pain points, possible solutions to those, and can plan out a company strategy to find the right solution.
What’s next?
Now that the team building is understood, let’s cover the rest of the blog series and what you can expect it to cover. A checklist helps improve focus and keep the team on track. It provides structure, giving the team ownership, empowerment, and a sense of accomplishment, while ensuring no critical steps are overlooked.
NINJA TIP: Ensure each member of the team understands their role in your evaluation process. Encourage open communication and allow for regular “brainstorming” sessions to ensure good ideas aren’t overlooked.
While every firm’s checklist will vary, yours should look something like this:
- Assemble a team (This blog post!)
Talk to leaders in every business unit that interacts with yours. If needed, invite them to join your evaluation team. - Ask incisive questions
Get to the heart of the business issue and identify a quantifiable goal. - Evaluate the need
Consider whether the need is great enough to commit your collective resources. - Set goals
Look at quantifiable goals for short-term (now through the next year) and longer-term (through the next 3-5 years) time periods. - Watch for deal breakers
Discuss what, if anything, would jeopardize a decision. - Gather evidence
Encourage members who are not part of your own unit to share challenges they face in theirs and what they’re doing to overcome them. - Follow best practices
It’s quite possible that examples of what other teams have done will include a formal or informal list of best practices – or at least some insights for creating that list.
Going forward…
By the time you’ve completed the full checklist, you’ll be ready to evaluate software providers and help them effectively provide the solution that meets your needs.
In our next post, you’ll find a list of questions that you can use or adapt for your company, along with “the most important question you might not think to ask.”