“Tech stack” is often a term we hear around when we talk about digitization. Various business verticals are leveraging technologies available in the market to gain an edge over business challenges. The boom in tech has propelled millions of innovations, and the market is inundated with numerous software solutions.
Legal technology has always been a “stick to the tradition” industry. However, change is already knocking on the door- legal tech has raised nearly $1 billion in funding during 2018. Today’s legal teams seek to be more robust and agile than their counterparts a few decades ago. There are unlimited opportunities that the legal teams can explore. But, how do you evaluate if a legal team requires an upgrade?
The 3 important questions that you must ask yourself before you come to a conclusion:
✋ Is my legal department becoming a business cost-center?
Legal departments are often cost-sinks for business centers. Reasons can range from slow-paced performances or ineffective. But the role that the legal team plays in any organization has substantially increased as business dealings have become complex.
It has become critical that the legal department be recognized as a business partner instead of a cost center. There has to be total visibility into legal spending and increased financial discipline to make this change apparent.
⚠ You should assess this using the following questions:
What is the status of the legal team’s spending?
Is the team aware of what they are spending on?
Can we measure the practical outcome of the expenditure?
✅ We recommend: Keep a close eye on your spending. The basis of legal operations is finance making it imperative that you manage your money. Using traditional methods of attending to spend management matters is a task that will chain you in inefficiency. It is best to switch to an automated tool that makes it easy to track the spending effectively. It will save your time and offer you the space you need to tackle core work requirements.
✋ Is my legal team reactive or proactive?
The role of legal departments in any enterprise is that of an advisor or consultant particular to legal matters like compliance or negotiations. But with the dynamic nature of the businesses, legal teams must be proactively adding value to business functions. This is the main reason why many legal teams are often in a very reactive state.
⚠ You should assess this using the following questions:
Does the legal team have the foresight to anticipate requests needed from the business side?
Are we able to rapidly replicate services and create an effective, repeatable process?
Does it feel like the team is constantly running? Does the team have to start at square one each time?
✅ We recommend: Get complete knowledge of the business to get more accurate at risk assessments. You need to sit down and have frequent talks with the company for you to be able to get the work done. It is implied that you develop a better understanding of the business side of the house and add value using legal grounds.
✋ Are there operational inefficiencies?
The legal team is one of the most significant contributors to effective in-house operations. Delays, deliberations, human errors are some of the most common causes of operational inefficiencies. Legal teams are often the bottlenecks where the entire process stalls because of the intricately complex nature of legal implications.
⚠ You should assess this using the following questions:
Are the legal experts in the team stranded because of basic administrative tasks?
Is there a clear and documented workflow?
Is the team able to rapidly acquire new resources or talent using effective methods?
✅ We recommend: Relentlessly prioritizing your focus on improving strategic issues will be a building block for long-term progress. Technology will be a boon for this upscaling, but only if bottlenecks are well specified.
⏩What is the way ahead?
Technological advancement will indeed prove to be a boon in making tedious tasks easy. A software or a platform that enables you to achieve more effective functionality is the obvious way ahead. If you are looking for a digitized solution, read our blog on what you should look for in software and make a perfect choice.
Provakil offers software that simplifies your legal operations and transforms your legal teams into business partners.
If you want more insights about how we do, what we do, feel free to drop us a line.
Maitreyee works as a content writer on the team. She is a lawyer by education and is passionate about creating content for the legal community that is relevant and thought-provoking.
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