Legal Operations include business processes, activities and professionals who allow legal departments to help their clients more effectively through technical practices.
Optimizing legal operations has become vital in today’s world as it is one of the most highly trained and skilled departments of an organization. Business owners lay a major emphasis on the optimization of legal departments to add strategic value to their business, increase productivity, and reduce costs. Improving the operation of legal departments is not a one-time thing. It is a gradual and continuous process.
Shikana Group, one of the leading legal advisory firms in East Africa, offers legal operations consulting. Hiring our legal operations consulting services can lead to greater efficiency and improved insight for your business. Moreover, our team specializes in providing legal services such as international trade and taxation, commercial and business law, compliance, venture capital, and private equity advisory. Hence, you can trust our advice on accelerating and optimizing your legal operations.
All you have to do is follow the steps given below.
1. Implement a consistent process for catering to new matters
The decentralization of opening new matters and managing workflow progress can burden the legal department staff. They become confused and cannot handle the challenge of managing matters from different departments within the organization simultaneously. Centralizing the matter management process can significantly contribute to optimizing legal operations. Another solution can be to automate the matter opening processes. This will create standardization and reduce the overall time taken to cater to matters.
2. Automate the process for invoice review and approval
Legal departments undergo increased budget scrutiny and are expected to provide accurate information regarding counsel management. Hence, it is imperative for them to predict their spending and form an effective strategy for managing counsel relations. To make these tasks easier, legal departments can adopt:
- Up-to-date electronic billing processes: E-billing can make the payment processes much faster.
- Automated invoice workflows: Automation expedites the process of reviewing and approving invoices and also saves the staff time which they can dedicate to other tasks.
3. Track KPIs and make their progress visible to the entire team
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help keep track of performance and outcomes. Increasing their awareness, such as the goals the team is striving to achieve, can drive beneficial outcomes. Legal Operations can make use of KPIs to keep a record of the following:
- Number of open matters, their status, and how many days on average would it take to close the matter.
- Number of matters assigned by the staff members for resource allocation.
- Legal spending based on the type of matter
These records can assist the legal operations department to form strategies and tactics to reduce the total matter lifecycle, keep the team members on track, and address any trends hindering the department’s performance.
4. Create a strategic hiring strategy
One of the most valuable ways to make legal operations effective is to hire staff according to needs and areas of opportunity. You must carry out an evaluation of your current team and their roles and responsibilities. Based on this evaluation, you can determine if additional hiring is required. You can then plan to recruit people with the needed skills and experiences. Hiring additional staff without proper evaluation will not only increase your department’s redundancy but also waste your money.
Looking for guidance?
Are you facing difficulty in optimizing your legal operations? No need to worry anymore as Shikana Group has the solution for you. Shikana’s legal advisory firms can aid your legal department’s development. Our legal team presents comprehensive guidance concerning strategic business decisions. We are also very experienced and well-aware of East African economies; therefore, you can trust us completely.
Contact us for advice and take your business to new heights!