The strategic planning process provides the law department with a roadmap and vision for greater alignment with the business and to underscore where legal fits into the bigger picture. It enables you to understand, at a deeper level, what barriers or gaps exist between where you are today and where you want to be as a function and it becomes a thoughtful and methodical approach to getting key initiatives done across the department.

Roadmap for the strategic planning process

Understand your current position. Having a baseline understanding of your current state will allow you to understand the delta between the current situation and where you need to focus to take the function forward. In addition to the perspectives of those on your legal team, consider getting feedback from key internal clients and stakeholders and also invest the time to understand their priorities and objectives. Think about all the possible inputs that will help to shape and inform your plan, including available data such as your internal/external spend and work types and volume.

Develop a SWOT analysis

Now that you’ve collected this input from your stakeholders and team members, along with your personal insights and available data, you’ll want to consider how you’ll synthesize all of this information. A SWOT analysis becomes a great tool, or executive summary, for you to see where you need to focus to go from point A (current state) to point B (future state).

Define mission/vision

Defining your role as a function will align the team and help to drive priorities going forward, and it importantly it becomes a directional north star as you decide how you want the team to be spending their time. This is especially important in law departments that are growing quickly. Making sure that the business understands the role that the law department plays is key to aligning expectations.

Identify top level goals

A “goal” is a broad yet realistic outcome that guides the specific actions you intend to take. It doesn’t describe the action that will be taken, it sets the vision for what needs to be done. These goals should be tied back to your corporate priorities.

Prioritize

Through the process of discovery, you’re more than likely going to uncover several important goals. You’ll need to ruthlessly prioritize otherwise you’ll face potential fatigue across the department and even possibly disappoint your internal stakeholders. Using a prioritization matrix will enable you to rank projects based on factors such as benefit vs. complexity or cost.

Build a plan

Once you’ve nailed down priorities, you can start to put together your high-level roadmap. This isn’t an execution plan, but a high-level view of what you need to get done and when and who will be accountable. You’ll use this plan to communicate your destination and where you are along that journey.