Every month, Jonathan Bellis from HBR Consulting will present a new blog for Practical Law Global, sharing his expertise in law department management, advisory and implementation issues.
This month he introduces the top ten best practices to adopt in external and internal law department management.
General Counsel and law department leaders today face a wide range of challenges − some of which are long-established, and some of which are more recent. Long-time challenges that have confronted in-house lawyers for many years include:
Cost control, and staffing and budgetary constraints.
The pressure to do more with less; the demand for legal services continues to increase, while the resources to fill those needs have remained level or in fact decreased.
Maximising efficiency and optimising resources.
Demonstrating value to top management and clients.
Newer issues that have emerged in the past five to ten years include:
The growing visibility and accountability of top legal officers.
Ever-increasing complexity and risk associated with legal, compliance and regulatory issues.
Acceleration in the globalisation of markets, manufacturing and services.
Over the past two decades, we have identified and defined a comprehensive list of best practices for global law departments. Following are a subset of ten that have been at the centre of much of our consulting work with law departments in recent years. Five are focused "externally" to the law department − ie, on the relationship of the law department with its clients and the overall organisation. The other five are focused on internal law department leadership and management, organisation structure, and operations.
Identity and role. The identity, role and responsibilities of the legal function are clear both internally and within the organisation.
Business protection and facilitation. Lawyers manage and balance their multiple obligations − to both protect the organisation and help clients achieve their business objectives.
Legal relationship managers. Key clients have primary lawyers assigned to them who serve as the "lead partner" for the client, and who pro-actively co-ordinates and manages the services, and periodically prepares client legal services plans.
Legal risk management. The legal function has a formal and well-defined approach for conducting legal risk identification, analysis, mitigation and management that it performs on a consistent basis.
Performance planning, metrics and measurement. The legal function conducts annual operational and multi-year strategic planning which is aligned with corporate and business unit planning and which drives individual lawyer performance planning. It uses a performance measurement system to plan, manage and communicate its work both internally and with clients.
Organisation. Lawyers are efficiently organised, serving as respected members of business unit management teams, or as recognised experts in specialised, cross-organisation legal practice areas.
Talent development and management. The legal function has a comprehensive and effective approach to legal talent development and management which enhances the value and competitive advantage of the legal staff.
Legal resource optimisation. The legal function uses data, risk analysis, business planning sessions, and other methodologies to optimise the allocation of in-house legal resources to highest-value functions and most cost effective usage.
Organisational culture. The lawyers exhibit strong work characteristics of collaboration and teamwork and communicate effectively with colleagues, support staff and clients.
Outside legal services management. The legal function has a clear strategy and effective program for retaining, using and managing outside counsel and other service delivery providers, and tracks and reports metrics that demonstrate consistent execution of the program.
In subsequent articles we will discuss each of these areas in greater detail.
Jonathan P Bellis leads the Law Department Consulting Group at HBR Consulting. He has over twenty-five years of experience helping law departments identify and implement relevant management concepts, methods, programs and systems. Over his career, Jon has worked with several hundred law departments in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia Pacific regions.
His consulting work typically relates to the entire legal function within an organisation, although many projects relate to specific focus areas, such as outside counsel management; the intellectual property function; the office of corporate secretary; litigation; contract management; and legal risk management. A major area of focus in the past decade has been to define roles, relationships and organisational structures between legal, compliance, ethics and risk management functions. His client work spans all aspects of legal management and technology.
Jon established the leading benchmarking and compensation survey of US law departments in the mid-1980s which is now the annual HBR Law Department Survey. Since the mid-1990s, Jon has led the identification and definition best practices in global legal function management. He has worked with more global companies than any other consultant.