Four management challenges are being addressed by the law departments of progressive companies:
• Coverage, organization and resources;
• Efficiency, workflows and workloads;
• Value performance, metrics and KPIs; and
• Legal spend and costs.

Five steps are described
1. Determine the department’s activity levels;
2. Select a handful of performance indicators that are part of the value proposition;
3. Manage work traffic in the department;
4. Assign and align the right amount of legal and paralegal resource with each user group; and
5. Actively manage the cost of external counsel in two ways.

Six processes support process improvement. The first three focus on the customer for value engagement. They include value creation, figuring out how the work gets done and removing waste. The fourth requires evidence-based decision-making, fifth is people empowerment, and the last is sustainable process improvement.

Process improvement will be successful when client behaviours change to require less legal service and more self-sufficiency from clients.

Up to 50% of the operational support provided by law departments to business lines can be standardized or kept with business units. There are 5 steps to preparing a good business plan for the law department: alignment with corporate priorities, detailed work estimates, work allocation protocols, improving practice management, and metrics. Accurate forecasts and good business plans improve the value of the law department.

A 4-part assessment tool to guide law departments is profiled and critiqued. It covers opportunities for creating value in the company, optimizing talent for higher value work, operational effectiveness, and the effectiveness of external counsel. The article comments on the 20 segments supporting the assessment and suggests several new assessment questions.