The Point Corporate Legal should be aligned with the company’s strategy, and its success or failure in supporting that strategy should be judged by two outcomes: Legal’s financial sustainability: By disciplined, continuous cuts in unproductive costs, free up dollars for reallocation to spiraling new demands. Prevention of legal problems: Guided…
The Point In turning from the current reactive, makeshift approach to Legal, to a financially sustainable and operationally coherent strategy, what options does the business have? I suggest three kinds. This Matters to Your Business 1. Where a task is best done by a lawyer, get one deeply experienced in…
The Point The business press and specialty legal press are replete with speculation about how “Generative AI”, ChatGPT, GPT4, and other AI developments might change law firms’ delivery of legal services. Most center their discussion on functionality: How well will they work? But the likelihood, and pace, of adoption will…
The Point Part I of this series concluded: ” … In most companies, corporate Legal is a business function without a strategy … without objectives and metrics by which to assess its effectiveness .” In other words, most corporate Legal functions neglect to target specific results for which executive management can…
The Point In most companies, corporate Legal is a business function without a strategy. Executive management needs to fix this. Because neither attorneys in law firms nor those in-house have defined what is — and is not — within Legal’s scope of responsibility. And, apart from generalized concern about cost,…
The Point So reports The American Lawyer / Law.com (subscription). In recent years corporate Legal departments have loudly announced that operational excellence is their new goal. Promising speed of service delivery, lower cost, and enhanced accuracy in work product as results. Headlines like the one above raise doubts about the…
The Point This week a strategy consultant sought my advice about engaging counsel on the legal implications of a project. I explained that her project was in an area where governing law was relatively straightforward. Though attorneys need to do lots of expensive work to address some situations, this project…
The Point Why don’t law firms use a software-enabled platform to automate transaction processes that attorneys typically carry out themselves? For less cost, with more accuracy, and faster than those attorneys can do manually? Last month Gartner analyst Ron Friedmann put the question this way: “Over the last 5-7 years,…
The Point 1. An attorney’s duty to maintain client communications as confidential is one of the central pillars of legal ethics*. For obvious reasons, this is vital to the well being of a business enterprise. 2. Based on my years as a practicing lawyer — and at other times as…
The Point Why approach the contracting function as a form of business process management? Two reasons. First, efficient contracting drives — and ad hoc contracting impedes — cash flow. By making the order-to-cash cycle fast or slow. Second, efficient contracting enables quick action — and ad hoc contracting creates roadblocks…