Law departments do not allocate work like law firms. There are rarely any junior lawyers and too many paralegal tasks are done by lawyers. Accurate data on the number of matters, complexity levels, and hours by client is hard to come by without timekeeping, though techniques for accurate estimates are readily available. General Counsel are challenged to change resource allocation patterns, defaulting instead to simply responding to daily demands for service. Inside counsel are able to estimate the proportion of their year spent on matters that require 0-5 hours, 6-25 hours and more than 25 hours. Some law departments and senior counsel spend as much as 40% of their time on operational support usually on matters requiring less than 5 hours to complete. It is difficult to be strategic when one is engaged in this way.

People who are paid more to work tend to work more hours. Altman Weil’s 2020 Chief Legal Officer Flash Survey reported that, in spite of the pandemic, this averaged out to 10% more. A 45-hour week becomes a 50-hour week.
Productivity gains of at least 10% are readily available when law departments work to have their non-core clients be more self-sufficient. It is noted that 40% of workloads for core clients is still routine work. General Counsel should have an accurate picture of the current and future demand for their department’s services. They should introduce work intake protocols to reduce routine work by 50%. Finally, they should attend to the practice management habits of each member of the law department.

Conversations with 15 General Counsel over 3 days focused on four challenges: business plans and metrics; workflows and workloads; the organization and resources of the law department; and relationships with external counsel. Workloads are, by far, the greatest challenge. But few departments have programs in place to reduce routine work. Three principles should be applied to intake criteria: demonstrate productivity improvements in legal, increase coverage for specialization and special or strategic projects, and calculate the savings from additional resources.