Cost constraints along with an increasing workload mirrored against a time of increased external economic and geopolitical volatility, and the advent of other external factors such as the use of technology, all represent one important thing for in-house teams - opportunity. It’s an opportunity to uncover efficiencies, build resilience, foster leadership and ultimately be a true partner with the business.

In this session, our presenters discussed a framework for how to create strategic legal function plans that attract buy-in and investment. This framework focuses on the importance of creating alignment with the business and stakeholder engagement, along with assessing and optimizing the delivery of legal services and reporting on your contributions.

In our recent global in-house legal insights report, one of the key takeaways reinforced how important it is for law departments to achieve greater alignment with the business whether supporting organizational revenue growth or protecting reputation and risk.

 Our speakers discussed how you might achieve this alignment:

• Understanding the business. This is ultimately about creating an environment where stakeholders will want to come and engage with you, not because they have to. Consider asking yourself the questions: Are we curious enough about the businesses that we support? Do we understand how our organization makes money? Do we know what our stakeholders are worried about and how can we support them?
• Plans are critical to establishing your leadership. Once your colleagues can see and understand how your actions within the law department are intertwined with their plans and priorities, your value will stand out to them. Through the strategic alignment and planning process you will begin to attract the buy-in essential for further investment.
• Think of yourself as a business person with legal skills and knowledge. Consider how you might immerse yourself in the business by engaging in activities that aren’t strictly of a legal nature such as participating in speaking events or townhalls and even by simply walking the floors.

The above-referenced legal insights report also highlights that one of the top actions that in-house teams are taking to improve operational efficiency is assessing and optimizing their workloads. Taking a look at what work is being done across the department and whether it can be done differently, can be a helpful exercise. If you map your work types against a matrix of strategic importance and exposure to risk, you will have a clearer picture as to where your team is spending the bulk of their time and whether there are ways to optimize or even eliminate workloads, perhaps through automation or self-service tools. Any efficiency that you can create within the team will further demonstrate that you are dialed into being value added.

Reporting

Celebrating your success and momentum against your plan, pinpointing why you exist and the value you bring to organizational objectives, is an important advocacy approach. This can further support the narrative with your stakeholders that you are a business enabler.

Data can also be a game changer, but sometimes getting access to data can be a challenge for some organizations. Looking at specific data points such as your spend, can sometimes be an easy starting point. For example, you can evaluate your internal spend as a percentage of total revenue and then benchmark that against your peers. You can also look at data related to the type and volume of work being done across the department, which can be a helpful metric to understand workloads while also supporting any additional investment that might be necessary to deliver against those needs.