Process
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
William Edwards Deming, Professor of Statistics, New York University Graduate School of Business Administration
We know it can be hard to take a step back but we believe that what’s always been done can always be done better. Over the years, we have tailored approaches to cut down on duplication of effort and help make sure the right work is being done at the right level. This doesn’t mean solving everything with technology. People and process are at the heart of our operations review so our starting point is always for our experts to come in and work with your teams to identify areas for improvement.
We have developed a number of approaches for reviewing in-house legal departments, including an innovative three step model. This has been devised by our lead consultants using experience accrued over decades leading the legal teams at four FTSE100 companies. A skeleton of each stage of our 'ABC' review model are set out below.
Analyse
-
Analysis of external legal cost to identify key drivers of spend; focussing on classification of matter type and authorising budget holder.
-
Analysis of internal legal budgets; focussing on identifying salary creep vs role and inconsistent approach to banding and resource allocation.
-
Identification of individual team process efficiencies and risk management opportunities using our 'ICE' model.
-
Identification of commoditisation/automation/alignment opportunities.
Blueprint
-
Mapping of company strategy to team and individual objectives.
-
Creating an optimum service delivery model with supporting behaviours framework.
-
Devising KPIs and an implementation roadmap.
Create
-
Assisting with the implementation of the Blueprint. May include the creation of a managed legal service model, overseeing a panel review, creating a continuous improvement programme and/or devising a value add model with panel firms.