Dedicated matter management software can make life much easier for an in-house team especially when the pressure builds.
Your operations team has provided some vital information to the in-house legal team and as a result you are behind schedule and cannot update your board of directors with progress in the matter. External counsels are now not available to handle the case. This is an example of a common frustration for in-house legal teams.
“In-house counsels are pushed from pillar to post trying to keep the matter moving forward and keeping all stakeholders abreast of what is happening,” says Raphael Segal, director at Legal Interact
“The most common complaint we hear is that in-house teams seldom get the information they need when they need it, they often don’t get fully instructed by their business colleagues, they don’t get timely updates from external counsel and, on top of all that, their systems are inadequate.”
Some in-house teams are still trying to handle this process by using spreadsheets populated with data from email – or from colleagues walking down the hall and making verbal requests. Other teams have to use their business’s existing CRM systems to perform tasks, that those systems weren’t designed for. Several are trying to get by with practice management software.
“Practice management software is great for law firms; it’s got functionality that is relevant and useful for law firms, but it’s principally built around the management and charging of time,” says Segal.
Private practice lawyers, on the other hand, face distinct challenges and problems that in-house lawyers do not.
As a starting point, managing legal matters calls for an enormous amount of information gleaned from different sources. All of that information needs to be collated, centralised, and categorised so legal teams can work in a coordinated and collaborative way, says Segal.
The majority of internal lawyers typically have their own way of working on a case. If a legal department lacks a system to standardize its approach, it can be difficult to implement new practices so lawyers can collaborate more efficiently.
Legal matters in-house typically involve multiple stakeholders across the wider business and they may not be aware or understanding of the legal risks. The sharing of information can be difficult under those circumstances.
Legal departments can use dedicated matter management technology to effectively manage their work, provide clear timelines to stakeholders, ensure transparency when it is safe to do so, and ease admin burdens so they can focus on the legal work at hand.
In order to help in-house teams be more productive and deliver greater value to their business, Legal Interact developed its Legal Matter Manager software.
“Matter management is all about being able to build a best practice for the efficient management of legal matters, enabling all parties to collaborate as efficiently and as effectively as possible,” says Segal.
Through the use of Legal Matter Manager, your in-house legal team can gain real-time insight into your legal exposure. With this tool, you can manage your costs and set up a budget on a per-matter basis, which will help you better control and monitor your legal spending. Using automation and process efficiency, you can collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring no deadlines are missed. Additionally, it creates a sense of alignment between the legal department and the broader organization by ensuring greater transparency on the progress of matters, which keeps everybody informed and focused on what needs to be achieved.
