For in-house legal teams, productivity is crucial to meeting demands without compromising quality, speed, or team wellbeing. A legal matter management system can offer multiple efficiency benefits, via streamlined workflow management, self-service options and automation.
Adopting a matter management system can also unlock data, reduce risk and improve security.
A well-designed system that is built with in-house legal teams in mind should also deliver significant benefits in terms of improving relationships – within the team, with business partners and with outside counsel.
In this article, we explore these benefits in more detail.
For in-house legal teams, productivity is crucial to meeting demands without compromising quality, speed, or team wellbeing. A legal matter management system can offer multiple efficiency benefits, via streamlined workflow management, self-service options and automation.
Adopting a matter management system can also unlock data, reduce risk and improve security.
A well-designed system that is built with in-house legal teams in mind should also deliver significant benefits in terms of improving relationships – within the team, with business partners and with outside counsel.
In this article, we explore these benefits in more detail.
In-house legal teams face pressure to do more with fewer resources, despite already feeling under-resourced. The volume and complexity of their workload is increasing, making productivity crucial to meet demands without compromising quality, speed, or team wellbeing. A legal matter management system can offer multiple benefits:
If your team is spending valuable time responding to repetitive, low-value queries, it’s worth considering whether business partners can handle such work with some support from self-service resources.
In an ideal world, these resources should be accessible via the same system used for legal intake and matter management. If not, you will be creating new siloes and asking users (lawyers and the business alike) to switch in and out of multiple systems which is neither efficient nor user-friendly.
Matter management systems can enable the use of automation through native functionality or integrations with other software.
While there are any number of workflows one could seek to automate a common priority is document automation.
Document automation can reduce the time lawyers spend drafting documents, or even enable business partners to draft appropriate documents themselves, taking the load off the legal team.
Legal teams sit at the centre of a broad range of valuable data due to their inherent cross-functional nature.
Nevertheless, without the right technology, most of this data goes unrecorded or winds up scattered across multiple silos.
By implementing a matter management system, legal teams can capture and analyse more data, unlocking valuable insights for both their department and the organisation a large.
A matter management system can help capture and organize workflow and other related data from intake to completion. This enables legal teams to identify and prioritize improvement opportunities and – crucially – build more data-driven business cases to secure the buy-in and resources needed to take them forward.
In-house legal teams are often viewed as ‘cost centres’, which can make it difficult to secure resources or a seat at the decision-making table.
A matter management system can help by unlocking clear, objective data on the work they do, who they do it for and how this adds value to the business.
Such data can be particularly useful in scenarios where charts, spreadsheets, and metrics are likely to be more convincing than written reports.
Tracking legal workflows manually or relying on tools which are not fit for purpose – such as shared inboxes or spreadsheets – increases the risk of errors such as missed deadlines, misunderstandings, and misplaced documents.
A matter management system reduces risk by alleviating pressure on your lawyers and business partners alike, providing a single source of truth and producing a robust audit trail.
First, relying on more general systems/solutions used elsewhere in the business may be less secure than a solution specifically built for the legal market.
Second, absent a dedicated system, individuals may be tempted to create their own personal mini systems.
This can mean data leaking into and onto personal devices, notebooks, free apps or even Post-Its stuck to walls and laptop monitors – none of them visible to the organisation or approved from an infosec perspective.
It’s sometimes a concern that technology may create a barrier between in-house lawyers and the colleagues they support, making the legal function appear distant or unapproachable.
However, this needn’t be the case. In fact, with the right matter management system in place, the legal-business relationship can be enhanced in several ways.
For example, a matter management system will facilitate collaboration, e.g. by making it easier for in-house lawyers and business colleagues to share information, documents, and relevant data.
By tracking and managing legal matters, the system can also create a transparent workflow that builds trust and promotes better communication with business colleagues.
A good matter management system should also include the ability to exchange messages and share updates in real-time (while also creating a robust audit trail), streamlining communication between legal and business teams.
Your lawyers can then focus ‘face time’ on the conversations and interactions that matter most to their colleagues, promoting greater productivity and better outcomes all round.
Working inefficiently with outside legal counsel can be costly in more ways than one. Not only can it lead to higher bills, but it can also eat into the valuable time and resources of your in-house team.
As such, it would be wise to ensure that any matter management system you invest in includes features that will help you to streamline your interactions with outside counsel.
Taking a selection of Tabled’s features as an example, such capabilities might include:
If you’re not currently using a matter management system – or if your current system is not delivering the benefits outlined above (and more) – we’d be delighted to learn more about your goals and challenges and give you a tailored demo of our platform. Please feel free to get in touch with any questions or request a demo below.