Corporate law departments may have a perception problem, according to a recent survey commissioned by the technology company Onit. But there are also widespread opportunities for them to correct misunderstandings and ensure they get the recognition they deserve.

The Enterprise Legal Reputation Report reveals that organizations often fail to see the full value the legal department brings. And this reality could be impacting GCs’ fundamental business relationships. 

A few highlights:

• 78% of enterprise employees view the legal department as protectors of the business, yet 65% knowingly bypass legal and their policies due to inefficiency and poor responsiveness.
• Only 19% of enterprise employees believe Legal considers client service a priority, while 8 in 10 (79%) do not see Legal as a modern operation. 
• Only 39% of U.S. employees see legal as a good business partner — and, spanning the globe, that number plummets to just 24% in Germany and 16% in France.

The study drew on 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 in-house legal professionals in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France. (Read the full study here.) 

As Onit CEO Eric Elfman put it in a news release: “The ELR Report reveals a glaring reality check on the full spectrum of how Legal is perceived by their enterprise organizations.” 

In light of these metrics, here are some steps to consider today, which will help ensure individuals throughout your organization remain aware of what your team delivers. 

Prioritize Tech Adoption … 

According to the Onit report, 79% of employees say they do not see Legal as a modern operation. 

One way Legal can refute this idea is by continuing to embrace and implement technology. Many of these tools can modernize interactions between Legal and other departments, strongly demonstrating that the law department is in fact a modern operation. 

AI and workflow automation can address inefficiency and responsiveness complaints and help with increased workloads and understaffed teams, especially when working remotely, for example. 

New tools can streamline workflow intake and workflow management, and self-help tools can automate responses from the legal department to common questions it might receive. 

These types of tools will also allow you to compile data on the work your department is performing. You can use this data to demonstrate your department’s value to the organization, make effective management decisions, and demonstrate budget needs.

… But Move Deliberately

It’s key to do the upfront readiness work in implementing any of these types of tools — start slow, and work from process maps. 

“Maybe you want to start with automating NDAs,” Stephanie Corey of UpLevel Ops said in a recent webinar we sponsored. “You’ve got to understand what your templates are, make sure they’re harmonized, make sure you’ve got only one or two or three instead of 87, and really reduce the number of templates you’re using, and do that upfront readiness work.” 

“That’s what’s going to make the automation so much more simple, and thus, the reporting and information you’re getting out of it more simple.”

And with the modern solutions available, bringing this type of technology on is easier than ever. 

Focus on Partnership

Above all else, Legal is there to play by the rules — and that’s why the vast majority of respondents in the report view their law departments as stellar business protectors. 

But remaining a good business partner is a separate challenge. 

Of course, there are times when a lawyer must push back on a risky idea. But even then, responding with suggestions and alternatives will help you be viewed as a team player.

A better approach, though, is to always be on the lookout for ways to drive these conversations before they occur. 

Take the time to keep everyone in the know with companywide status updates on key objectives or projects. 

Proactive communication will keep you more visible, and it will keep your department in a positive light.

Consider the ALSP 

These advances in technology, operations, and business philosophy are also accompanied by new staffing options — particularly flexible counsel. 

Consider, for example, how you may approach a special project or work surge.

You could simply ask your staff to take on the extra work — but putting too much on their plates could lead to burnout. 

You could hire another staff attorney — but that means onboarding a new person and trying to wring an additional salary from your budget. 

You could kick the work to an outside law firm — but their rates continue to rise, even as budgets continue to fall.

With flexible interim counsel, law departments can access high-quality support without overextending their resources. 

Not only do these attorneys have premier credentials and work experience, but they’re also able to seamlessly fit into your legal department — and offer big wins to GCs. 

Lead From the Front

While much of the Onit report could be jarring, the news wasn’t all bad.

Take the following excerpt, for example: 

The ELR report found that Legal has a direct and positive impact on various functions from sales, revenue, and renewals to the corporate brand, R&D, and innovation. Legal can use this opportunity to lead from the front and transform beyond a traditional, back-office function.

Through updated policies and processes, embracing tech, and focusing on partnership, Legal does have the power to be viewed as a leader.

Ultimately, these steps will help you better protect the company, be an integral part of the future, and garner respect from all within the organization.

Recent headlines have been riddled with news of an impending economic downturn in the U.S., with some experts predicting a  downturn in the coming 12 months.

Whether or not the recession hits, organizations and their in-house legal departments should start preparing for all possible scenarios now. While recessions or even just dips in the economy tend to impact all sectors, there are things you can do in advance to lessen the amount of hardship your department has to bear should  the hard times come. 

Better yet, if we avoid a recession, the changes you make now will still benefit you in the future in the way of increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

The following are six tips for in-house legal departments looking to proactively manage for risk from a future recession.

1. Focus on budget

In-house legal departments have been asked to do more with less for years now, and those demands will only increase if a recession comes. Trying to spend less during economic uncertainty seems like an obvious answer, but finding ways to do exactly that can be a little tougher. 

Start by taking a step back and taking a thorough look at all your spending to see exactly where your money is going. Then determine how that matches up with where you should be spending your money and what’s must-have versus nice-to-have, with an eye toward targeting the biggest buckets of spend where you can make the most impact. 

In those areas, figure out how you can decrease or shift your spending — the remaining tips in this list are helpful ways to go about it.

2. Review processes to identify inefficiencies

Even with an increased focus on efficiency in recent years, many legal processes are still plagued with inefficiencies. Now is the time to really drill down into how you’re doing things and whether there’s a better way. 

Solicit perspectives from newer team members, other teams, or an outside consultant – often a fresh pair of eyes can better identify necessary changes than those who are entrenched in the business. Once you identify your biggest inefficiencies, you’ll know where to focus your efforts.

3. Rely on legal ops

If you have a legal ops function at your organization, use it. If not, you might want to consider creating one. Legal ops exists precisely to help in-house legal departments streamline their workflows and boost efficiency. 

Lawyers should be focusing on legal work – tasking them with reviewing processes and improving efficiency is itself inefficient. 

Companies with a legal ops function will be better positioned going into any recession that may come and have better resources for surviving it when it does.

4. Automate whatever you can

If you have yet to embrace legal technology, the time to start is now. Many of the tasks and processes of a legal department no longer need to be, and indeed shouldn’t be, handled manually. 

In fact, many of the most time-consuming activities of in-house departments are ideal candidates for AI and automation. 

This doesn’t mean they’re unimportant – often they’re critical to the department and the organization’s success, but they’re simply routine, repetitive, and tedious. Automation tools were developed to handle exactly these kinds of tasks, and to do so faster and more accurately than humans can. 

Letting technology handle the tasks it can and focusing your staff on higher-value work is critical to accomplishing more within limited budget constraints. And there are options for every budget.

5. Rethink your staffing

Recessions don’t have to mean headcount reductions. They should, though, make you reconsider how you’re using the resources you have. 

Are the members of your legal team working on valuable work that benefits the organization, or are they still bogged down in routine or administrative work? 

Given current pressures to contain costs, having your staff work on tasks that are below their skill levels is a waste of your valuable resources, and during a recession it just won’t be an option. Start focusing on using your team to the best of its abilities now, and you’ll be in the best possible position if budgets get even tighter.

6. Consider outsourcing more

Once you rework your staffing to make the most use of your resources, how do you handle the tasks that remain? The answer isn’t always hiring more people. 

In fact, outsourcing work to a third party is often the most efficient and cost-effective solution. 

The market for alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) has exploded in recent years, and ALSPs now offer affordable services in nearly every area you can imagine.

Switching from outside counsel to flexible counsel, where appropriate, can provide numerous benefits in addition to cost savings — and the flexible counsel rates do represent a significant discount from Biglaw. 

Flexible counsel providers attract the best and brightest from in-house and private practice roles. These lawyers bring deep expertise without the commitment of a full-time hire or the price tag of a large firm.  

An additional benefit of outsourcing is that you have access to a scalable workforce, so you can bring in help when you most need it and not have to worry about idle staff when things are slower. 

You can focus on maximizing internal efficiency in tasks that most build company revenues and value, while outsourcing the rest. It’s a winning strategy for your department that will set you up now for a workflow system that can withstand a recession.

While no one can predict the future, many experts are seeing storm clouds on the horizon. 

Regardless of how the economy may ultimately fare, taking the right steps now will keep you from being caught unprepared in the event a downturn does occur.

January gives us a chance to step back and assess what’s working … and what isn’t. As an in-house attorney, this is the perfect time to identify issues you’d like to improve at your law department and brainstorm ways to address them this year.

Below, we offer five ideas that will help in-house counsel make 2022 their best year yet.

1) Stop Over-functioning 

Performing tasks that could be handled by non-lawyers can be a major time drain. Attorneys should assess whether they’re overburdening themselves by handling administrative or business tasks, leaving them with less time to provide strategic legal services.

“Lawyers should not be correcting grammar in contracts, or looking at business terms, since that’s a business decision,” said Stephanie Corey, the co-founder of UpLevel Ops, a legal operations advisory firm. “A lot of times, the legal department gets turned into a word processing pool, where they’re over-functioning.”

Instead, Corey recommends better defining responsibilities between the internal client and the legal department. Attorneys could also use automation, outsource the work to a legal service provider, or even stop doing certain tasks altogether, according to Corey. It all adds up to more time for in-house counsel to focus on important legal issues, reducing the need to send work to law firms.

2) Invest in Legal Operations

Investing in legal operations can also go a long way toward making your legal department more efficient and providing insight into how it functions. No matter how big your department is, you should be thinking about operations issues, Corey said, such as how work is coming in, how it’s being triaged, and whether you have a clear understanding of the department’s overall work landscape by the end of the year.

“Having somebody who’s responsible for the operations is critical,” Corey said. “And that should be everyone’s New Year’s goal — having somebody in your department who’s focused on this as the main part of their job, not 10%, or nothing will get done.”

Legal operations professionals can also be crucial for maintaining clear, effective communication with outside counsel, eliminating one more thing that attorneys have to worry about. 

3) Be Open to Legal Tech

From contract management software to e-signature solutions, there’s no shortage of legal tech out there that seeks to make attorneys’ lives easier. For a more organized and streamlined 2022, it’s worth exploring how technology can address your law department’s specific pain points.

“The world is shifting on its axis towards more, not less, technology in the corporate legal space,” said Jason Winmill, a managing partner at Argopoint, a legal department consulting firm. 

Winmill advised in-house counsel to “keep an open, albeit skeptical, mind towards technology” and be willing to give new tech a try. For best results, Corey recommended hiring a consultant to assist with tool selection or, if you opt to do it yourself, interviewing the people who will be working with the system to see what will work best for their needs. 

Getting references from current clients is also critical. And attorneys should be sure to carefully consider how any new legal tech will fit into their broader tech ecosystem, in order to reap the highest efficiency and investment from it.

4) Refocus On Client Management

As we head into the new year, in-house attorneys should also focus on their client management skills, according to Winmill, who noted that great legal advice won’t be effective if you can’t influence decision-makers.

“Client empathy and management is a different part of the brain, in my view, than hardcore legal knowledge, but it’s just as important,” Winmill said.

Sterling Miller, an in-house veteran and current CEO at Hilgers Graben, has written that being practical, responsive, and humble are a few of the things you can do to have a good relationship with in-house clients.

5) Control Outside Counsel Costs

In-house attorneys may also have to grapple with higher costs from outside counsel next year, as law firms are seeking to push for “aggressive” rate hikes in 2022, according to Law.com. However, there are ways that in-house counsel can control spiraling costs, according to Winmill.

“Sophisticated in-house counsel is applying a wide range of cost management strategies, approaches, and tools to manage these rate increases,” Winmill said. “Those approaches include shifting work away — either to lower cost outside providers or in-house — more rigorous review of outside counsel activities and bills, or employing more programmatic approaches, such as strategic partnering programs with select law firms.”

Law departments may also want to consider trying to ​​negotiate lower rates with outside counsel or utilizing smaller firms for less strategic matters.

The Bottomline

Although these tips likely don’t encompass every issue your law department might hope to address this year, they should give you a solid foundation for crafting a few in-house New Year’s goals, ensuring that you’ll have a smoother, more productive 2022.

For many attorneys, the concept of “work-life balance” can seem like an urban legend, except even more far-fetched. 

Indeed, maintaining time for a robust life outside the office can seem like a mythical concept — like a beautiful unicorn or a Harvard alum who never mentions where they went to school.

At Paragon Legal, we aim to provide both flexibility and high-level work, allowing lawyers to finally make work-life balance a reality. 

And from the client’s perspective, happy lawyers are better positioned to deliver top-quality work than those who are burned out. 

In the spirit of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we bring you some time management tips that busy attorneys of all stripes can take advantage of.

In the first installment of this series, we noted how lawyers can audit, guard, and schedule their time. Here, we provide additional tips to manage your day. 

Try Time Blocking

Time blocking is when you divvy up your day into blocks of time, during which you focus on specific tasks. 

For instance, you may only check email messages for 10-11 a.m. and 4:30-5:30 p.m., allowing you to avoid constant email interruptions while you’re working on projects.

When you decide to do certain tasks is also important. 

For some people, it’s easier to tackle important tasks in the morning, while others may find they have better focus in the afternoons. Try scheduling tasks that require more concentration for when you have better focus. 

(For even more on when to schedule certain tasks, check out When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink.)

Reduce Multitasking

From Slack notifications to news alerts, we live in a distraction-heavy world. 

But each of those interruptions can come with a time cost — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task at hand, according to Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

To protect your focus, minimize switching between tasks as much as possible. 

Mute that group chat, turn off unnecessary social media notifications, and even consider putting your phone in silent mode or in a drawer while working on a project.

Use a Timer

Using a timer can also be immensely helpful in keeping you focused, while also encouraging short breaks to keep your brain fresh. 

The Pomodoro Tracker will help you use the Pomodoro Technique, which is a popular time management system in which you focus on a task for 25 minutes, followed by a five-minute break. 

Similar apps exist for your phone, like Focus Keeper or the Bear Focus Timer, which acts as both a timer and a way to stop you from checking your phone screen. There are also a plethora of tools — such as Dewo and Freedom — that will help you reduce pesky app distractions.

Outsource, Delegate, Just Say No

Sometimes, the best way to find more time is to get rid of a task altogether. In Time Smart, Harvard professor Ashley Whillans advocates for outsourcing tasks that you especially dislike, noting that shelling out a bit on “time-saving services — like shopping, cleaning, and laundry — can reduce time stress and increase happiness.”

Similarly, don’t be afraid to delegate tasks, even if it means giving up some element of control. There’s no sense in lengthening your workday by insisting on doing things you could be giving to others (as long as they have room on their plate for it). 

And if you’re a perfectionist who struggles with delegation, keep in mind how perfectionism could be stealing your time in other ways — for instance, by spending 20 minutes perfecting an email that really could have been written in 10.

Finally, harness the power of saying no. This can be tricky for people pleasers or folks who are eager to show they’re team players. But attending every meeting or taking on too many projects can make you feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. 

When possible (and we know it isn’t always possible, but go with us here), try gently excusing yourself from unnecessary meetings or extra projects. 

And hey, if there’s no way you’re getting out of that hefty request that a partner just emailed you, at least you’ve got these other time management tips to help.