The legal industry is evolving at breakneck speed. Legal departments are expected to run as a business and drive cost-effective processes that benefit the entire organization.
General counsels too are required to invest in the operational support of the department, and legal operations has emerged as the glue that holds the various functions and practice areas together.
There’s no doubt that effective legal ops allows in-house counsel to focus on high value legal activities. And at the heart of this, is the need to define clear goals and KPIs around these activities to measure success. So, how do you do that?
Poor Data Visibility Hampers Performance
When it comes to contracting, legal is typically seen as a blocker instead of a trusted advisor to the business. However, by leveraging data and metrics around turnaround time and developing SLAs with internal clients, legal can support the business and help drive revenue by jump starting a new customer relationship.
The problem is that even in legal departments with mature legal ops that collect data around contract review, it’s rare to have visibility into this data.
Unless lawyers are manually extracting and tracking the different legal concepts they’re reviewing as part of the routine negotiation process, legal departments simply don’t have the relevant data and insight into the trends driving their contract review process. It is typically based on intuition, and occasional roundtable discussions between the lawyers on the team.
Contract Automation Enables Better Business
The good news is that a Contract Review Automation (CRA) platform can provide this data. It drills down to the source. It provides insight into how a contract measures up against a company’s legal policy and guidelines.
Legal teams can use this data to find interesting trends over time. For example, it can be used to establish if there is a specific legal concept that is always missing from a contract. Conversely, it can offer insight into the potential risks and implications of concepts that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.
This data is extremely powerful, as it enables in-house counsel to make strategic and informed decisions that can help position them as trusted advisors to the business. By turning data into tactical and actionable metrics, a business can use it to drive revenue and transform their bottom line.
