Technology can play a vital role in helping legal departments evolve and improve the level of service they provide.
Legal departments, often assisted by legal operations managers, are increasing the efficiency of their services, improving alignment with other functions in the company (like HR, Sales, and Finance), establishing data governance, mitigating risk, controlling spend and more, through enabling technologies.
However, if you are a General Counsel with limited resources for optimizing legal operations, choosing the right technology can be daunting.
A 2017 study of European General Counsel from Wolters Kluwer showed that 77% of the largest corporate legal departments use technology to manage matters, contracts, spend, legal risk and compliance, while only 4% of CLDs in companies with revenues under €4bn employ such technology.
While larger companies have the resources to implement and integrate solutions to meet different needs, small legal departments are faced with a significant challenge – picking the right technology to “do more with less”.
When looking at alternatives, one option is to continue along the current path, however doing so can undermine your ability to protect and grow the company. Data loss, compliance risks, data protection and inefficient decision making are just some of the consequences you may face without better tools.
The other option for small legal department is to choose a tool to manage a single matter type, like contracts. However, if the problem is that you can’t find your contracts (because you lack structured document storage processes), you need to solve that problem before you can benefit from the bells and whistles of new contract management system.
For small legal departments that have difficulties tracking down legal information and documents, digital transformation should focus on selecting the right technology to 1) centralize your legal information in a 2) secure, collaborative system that is 3) flexible enough to meet the variety of compliance and information management challenges that are unique to your business, today and into the future.
To approach this final option, we’ve created an 8 step digital transformation plan to help you find a legal information management solution and get the most out of your investment. Get your free copy of “Digital Transformation for Legal Departments” here.
