Now more than ever, legal departments are striving to align with their company’s overall strategic direction and looking for real business initiatives they can take to the CEO. While risk and cost reduction are key factors when evaluating a new legal tech product, for the typical general counsel, those advantages alone don’t move the needle.
However, there are many opportunities for legal departments to provide substantial benefits to the business by helping generate new revenue. To be a good business partner, you must first understand the business, and you need to select technology that allows you to be an enabler, according to Mike Haven, associate general counsel and head of legal operations at Intel.
“You must find a path for the business to achieve its goals despite the challenges that arise,” Haven says. “The legal department has to be a business pathfinder, see the way forward and anticipate the challenges that the business may not see. Legal operations can help you find those paths, and it can directly impact the business with certain initiatives as well.”
Another way for the legal department to be a good business partner is to show what value the legal department is providing, both by communicating that value directly and by demonstrating it through metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). Ultimately, GCs must be able to present data and tell the story behind the data, according to Jeff Marple, Director of Digital Transformation Strategy at KP Labs.
To effectively automate the capture of such data can be a significant challenge for most legal departments. When considering legal tech solutions, it’s important that GCs select tools that can capture data that is both informative and evaluative. The informative data is important for the department to understand and optimize its operations, but to report up to the CEO, the GC also needs to provide data that is evaluative.
In an upcoming webinar presented by Today’s General Counsel, legal and technology experts will discuss how GCs can leverage technology to their organization’s advantage to close business more quickly and improve risk mitigation and profitability. Speakers include:
Stephanie Corey, Co-Founder, UpLevel Ops
Mike Haven, Associate General Counsel & Head of Legal Operations, Intel
Jeff Marple, Director of Digital Transformation Strategy, KP Labs
Dan Broderick, CEO, BlackBoiler
The panelists will discuss key approaches the legal department can take to become a better business partner, including:
- Which tools and processes best position the GC and legal’s in-house team to transition from being general advisors to becoming strategic partners and business enablers
- How to select the right technology that can improve speed to close, demonstrate to prospective clients the company is easy to do business with, and enable the business to handle contracts with limited legal oversight
- How to effectively measure and demonstrate ROI
To register for the webinar, click here.
