Are you looking to make positive changes in your legal department?

Change is rarely easy. As a leader of your legal department, you must demonstrate the importance and priority of change. How to achieve this, balanced against short-term goals? It is key to have a process in place that fosters communication, drives momentum, and creates an understanding of the role of each individual. 

Engage and communicate

Recognizing the need for change does not guarantee those within your department will adopt that change. In fact, 70% of all major changes in organizations fail. Often, the reasons changes fail is a perceived lack of engagement by leadership and a failure to communicate  with the team that must implement the change. Avoid these pitfalls by meeting with the legal team as a whole to share with them your short- and long-term vision of the legal department. Create an internal legal department team of stakeholders (we’ll call them the executive team) to work through ideas on initiatives and get their feedback. GCs of a large legal department may not be able to do this personally; delegating this authority is fine, as long as everyone in the legal department knows that this transformation is a priority for the GC. Nothing – and I mean nothing – kills transformation in a legal department faster than the perception that a project is not a priority for the GC.  

Assess the legal department

Once the team is assembled, the first step is to assess the current state of the legal department, to understand its overall strategic vision and where quick wins may be had. To determine where to start, it’s important to evaluate all aspects of the legal department delivery model. Your assessment should include: 

1. What does the GC need to manage the legal department?
2. Is departmental staffing appropriate and how is success being measured?
3. How is the work allocated to outside law firms and how are the firms managed?
4. Is the right technology in place to support the operational and product delivery process of the legal department?
5. Are there other potential efficiencies that could improve service to the legal department’s internal clients?

Our whitepaper explores these key steps in detail, creating a framework to identify changes and manage a successful change in your legal department. Download it here.

Make the change

Once you’ve gone through the legal department assessment, it’s time to prioritize where to start making the change. This will depend on feedback from the executive team and your particular department’s needs. The need for change may be obvious to the general counsel, but one cannot assume that it is apparent to everyone else in a legal department. Some of the steps to lead the change include:

1. Make a formal case for change and define goals
2. Create a sense of urgency and ownership
3. Prepare for the unexpected
4. Celebrate wins

To discover how to start driving transformation in your legal department today, download our white paper here. 

Conclusion

A vision for change is great, but it is individuals that drive the change. A great change leader understands this and communicates, involves, enables, and facilitates involvement from these individuals throughout the entire process.

To explore key steps of transformation, download our white paper here.