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How to improve law department efficiency and effectiveness: Use a legal technology roadmap

Companies often press their legal departments to be more efficient and “do more with less,” but how can your department deliver the same level of service with fewer resources? The departments who have made that shift uniformly credit a purposeful use of technology and data, to help the department work better and ultimately demonstrate the value of the legal department. A clearly defined legal technology roadmap is a critical tool to help your department control cost, drive efficiency and effectiveness, and ultimately demonstrate value by acting as a business enabler.

The most recent State of the Corporate Law Department Report from Thomson Reuters found that law department leaders see technology as a clear way to help departments be more efficient and meet cost control goals. Despite this enthusiasm, many law departments are not satisfied with the pace of the introduction of new tech. According to the report, “while law departments seem high on aspiration, 90% admit to making only slow to moderate progress in adopting new tech and only 32% report anticipating an increased legal tech budget.”

Yet, the appetite to explore tech further is there. “More than three-quarters (76%) of in-house legal professionals said they believe that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help them achieve their goals of greater internal efficiency, while 72% see using technology to simplify their workflow as a high priority.”

Even as corporate law department leaders express frustration at the slow rollout of some technologies, they’re looking for innovations to support the team and the business.

Developing and managing a legal technology roadmap can help the legal department stage the rollout of new technologies to meet the greatest needs of the business without introducing too much change too quickly.

This work can also help you manage rollouts for greater adoption and communicate the overall vision to stakeholders more effectively. The result of more successful tech rollouts should be greater efficiency, better use of the department budget, and better business outcomes.

By deploying technology, the legal department can better control costs and free up attorney time to focus on strategic, higher-value work. In the most recent Thomson Reuters Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index, 75% of today’s corporate legal departments identified place a high priority on using technology to simplify workflow and manual processes as a high priority, and 63% increased the number of legal technology tools utilized in the last 12 months. Both are significant from five years ago, when they were at 70% and 51%, respectively.

Now let’s take a deeper look at what a technology road map is, how to build one, and the risks of not having one.

Chapter One

What is a technology roadmap?

A legal technology roadmap is best defined as a plan that identifies the specifics of how technology can support the legal business strategy and priorities over a period of time (typically over three years).

Chapter Two

How to start building a roadmap

1. Prioritize

What are the biggest pain points or challenges that map to the strategic priorities for the legal department?

If you don’t have clear strategic priorities for the legal department, start with surveying the legal department and/or business stakeholders that regularly interact with legal on areas of greatest need.

2. Process map

Before building a plan, you must understand the current people, processes, and systems in place. You can start by listing current systems used by the legal department and by looking at the common legal department responsibilities, or the most common business requests.

A great way to identify where process re-engineering or new technology is required is to look specifically at processes that are high-cost, difficult, cumbersome, time-consuming, repetitive, high-volume, and/or low-value. As you go a level deeper and map processes that lead to a need for technological improvements, be sure to define requirements and success measures along the way.

3. Plan for implementation and/or procure solution

Technology roadmaps don’t always have to be the addition of new technology. You may have a system in place that needs an update based on business changes. Also, you may have prefered systems that are both easy to implement initially and expandable over time. Once you have a map of processes and priorities, start with your highest priority — don’t try to do it all at once. Instead, focus on what can be successful in that specific area, and then build on that success.

Look for solutions that can deliver cost savings. Then, be sure to promote and report the cost savings to show success and build support. You should be able to re-allocate those savings to procure additional technologies or resources to tackle the next priority on your list.

Chapter Three

What are the risks of not having a technology roadmap?

  1. Lack of buy-in from the legal department or leadership when attempting a change. An approved and communicated roadmap will make the change management journey simpler 
  2. More difficult to secure a budget when you find a solution. A clear legal roadmap builds a better internal relationship with IT, finance, and procurement for faster purchase 
  3. Ending up with the wrong technology at the wrong time. You can think through which tools should come first as you build the roadmap. As an example, you may not want to deploy a contract review AI tool before you have contracts in a central repository 
  4. Not considering interconnectivity and overall simplification of tools. There is danger in procuring too much technology that doesn’t work together 
  5. Lack of resources to ensure technology success. Consider as part of your roadmap legal department staff to support implementation efforts, and gain better partnerships with IT for support if you need it
  6. Competitive disadvantage for your organization. If your competitor’s legal departments are deploying technology to more effectively control costs and do more with less, you may be operating at lower levels of effectiveness. This could result in your company having fewer funds to deploy to other more strategic priorities

When vetting technologies, identify your priorities (see a sample list of priorities on the previous page) and deploy a simple 1-5 scoring to help you compare and contrast solutions: 

  • End-user friendly
  • Designed for legal workflows
  • Strong data security and access controls
  • Quick to deploy
  • Measurable ROI/cost savings
  • Open platform with APIs to connect corporate systems
  • Quality of connections to standard business tools like Microsoft® Outlook and Office®
  • Integrations with enterprise systems like AP Systems, HR Systems
  • Connection of legal workflows – connection between spend and matter management, contract management, and eSignature, for example
  • Cloud-based
  • Legal department management (or ownership) with no code/low code to make updates and changes
  • Valuable reporting and data visualization
  • Use of modern technologies and capabilities, like generative artificial intelligence

When considering core solutions for your legal department:

  • Focus on your area of greatest need 
  • Consider what solutions are: 
    • Foundational
    • Demonstrate a clear return on investment 
    •  Help your organization minimize risk

In several surveys including the LDO Index, e-billing, and matter management are the most widely adopted technologies for corporate legal departments. While some technology delivers a broad-based approach to helping manage your legal operations, other simple tools like eSignature can yield significant benefits to drive efficiency within your business processes.

The sample list below provides common legal department technologies in terms of what is foundational, advanced, and leading-edge depending on the sophistication of the department.

Ultimately, for your department, you should focus on the areas of biggest need based on your prioritized roadmap.

Chapter Seven

Conclusion

If you’re on a journey to improve your legal operations technology, the best place to start is with a technology roadmap. It is through this process and the resulting documentation that you’ll more clearly understand what you have, what you need, and how to get there. That way, you are more likely to succeed in controlling cost, driving efficiency, improving effectiveness, and mitigating risk.

To learn more about how Thomson Reuters can help your law department demonstrate its value to the business, explore our corporate legal and software solutions.

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