A “Best in Class” Legal Department In 4 steps

An international manufacturer reached out to Lumen Legal for consulting services with two primary objectives: to determine how geographic expansion would impact its current legal department’s service delivery model, and to enable a General Counsel, new in the role, to determine how to move the legal department to “best in class.”

Typically, as a corporation’s global footprint expands, the legal department implements standardized processes to ensure operational consistency. For instance, because different countries and branch locations often have their own method of assigning work to outside counsel, the development of a decision tree matrix may be useful in establishing what work is performed in-house and what work is sent to outside counsel.

And, a new General Counsel, often hand-picked by the organization’s leadership, must understand the needs of internal business clients, how to impact the organization’s bottom line and how to add value.

Lumen applied its successful four-step consulting framework to the international manufacturer’s needs.

Define

The General Counsel sought to develop both a short- and a long-term strategic plan. Objectives were to meet the needs of internal clients and to make sure the legal department had sufficient staffing with the right skill set and could impact the corporation’s bottom line over and above controlling the cost of legal services.

Diagnose

Lumen performed a desktop review of key operational and financial documentation to understand the international manufacturer’s rich history and developed two surveys to focus on the priorities of the internal clients and to assess whether the legal department was aligned with the organization as a whole.

First, Lumen interviewed legal department team members using a structured questionnaire consisting of 35 queries, such as “What’s your core role in the department?” This helped to determine if the department was optimally staffed and could deal with future demand. Lumen also asked questions to determine how performance of the in-house team and outside counsel was measured to help identify and define a range of key performance indicators.

Lumen then conducted an independent online survey, in two languages, of 100 key internal business customers. The overall results captured the current view of services provided by the legal department and what internal business clients perceived to be future requirements.

Design

Lumen identified target areas on which to focus and developed the new “to be” model. The recommendations associated with the consulting engagement were related to resource optimization, exceeding internal business customers’ expectations, process performance optimization, effective litigation management, working effectively and efficiently with outside counsel, overall cost management and favorably impacting the organization’s bottom line.

At the core of the “to be” model was development of a communication plan that set forth the vision for change and defined the role of frequent and concise communication.

The international manufacturer was provided with a detailed interim report from which client feedback was provided.

Deliver

The deliverables related to the consulting engagement included a strategy document (high-level overview), a report (detailed results of surveys, questionnaires and interviews), key initiatives and recommendations to better align the legal department with client expectations, and a detailed implementation plan consisting of more than 600 separate tasks.

The General Counsel requested targeted presentation materials that could be used for presentations to the Executive Management and the Board of Directors to roll out short- and long-term strategies, which Lumen also provided.

Working with the client, Lumen was able to formulate a clear business case for increasing the size of the in-house legal department, a primary goal of the General Counsel, and to show that the bottom line legal spend could be decreased by more than 15 percent.

Consulting an Invaluable Tool

As Lynn DeLap, Lumen Legal’s Vice President, Strategic Services, says, “Consulting is an invaluable tool for GCs who are new to the company or new to the role because it allows them to have a good mental picture of every aspect within the legal department—all of the information they really need in order to incorporate best practices and meet the needs of their internal business clients.”

And for those corporations that have expanded globally, it’s an opportunity to systematize processes and work closely with other departments. In this consulting engagement, for example, the legal department worked with the information technology department to create “self-help” tools such as contract templates for internal business customers to use. These templates enable internal business customers to create an initial contract draft and obtain input from the Legal Department as a best practice. “This both empowers the internal business clients and optimizes resources,” DeLap says.