legal departments

How are law firms and in-house legal departments collaborating to deliver results?

“I think legal departments now are really focused on how do they narrow the funnel of work as much as possible to their own department, and that is through self-service or bots,” said Brenda Hansen, senior legal operations consultant at UpLevel Ops, an advisory firm for in-house legal departments. Through her lens, Hansen noted that legal departments are increasingly using technology to give their internal clients the best information they can before letting them go off on their own, and also outsourcing to alternative legal service providers.

Colin Miller, managing director at FTI Consulting added that teams are collecting and organizing data differently.

“The question has become ‘what do I do with this new form of data, and how do I transform it, and how do I enrich it in a way that allows me to do the things I used to do to make those legal decisions?’ so it has become more advisory in that regard,” said Miller. The change in data is forcing people to innovate very quickly, Miller added.

Collaboration is critical when it comes to cybersecurity so the team at Fasken have developed a collaborative privacy protection program for their clients.

“The Fasken Edge site helps

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Why Major Companies Are Outsourcing Legal Solutions

city-g491968b92_1920More legal departments are looking to outside talents to bolster their ranks and grow their business. Wolters Kluwer’s new survey of 100 legal executives shows that 93% of legal or compliance departments have outsourced work in the last three years.

And these are more than just smaller companies: The respondents came from entities making more than $500 million in revenue, with the increase most prevalent among institutions with $1 billion-$4 billion in annual revenue.

Why are even institution-sized firms pulling in external experts? And what duties are those hires performing?

Why Now? 

As the survey responses show, outsourcing legal solutions solves multiple problems for legal departments.

One: It eases workflow, allowing companies to redistribute workload to dedicated experts, thereby freeing their in-house counsel to manage and tackle larger, more complex aspects of their project.

Two: On-demand in-house counsel keep the budget down without sacrificing quality. As Wolters Kluwer found, GCs anticipate a 25% increase in workflow, but 88% anticipate needing to trim their budgets. On-demand solutions let them do both.

Third, hiring on-demand counsel for bespoke solutions allows companies to grow their business without burning out their staff. Plus, it lets legal departments test new methods that keep

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How Law Departments Can Increase Efficiency In The New Normal

nonstop-6952188_1920While the pandemic era has created plenty of challenges for legal departments, it’s also given corporate counsel a chance to rethink how they operate.

In a recent webinar sponsored by Paragon Legal and Above the Law, legal industry experts explored new strategies for how legal departments can boost efficiency, streamline workflows, and increase staff well-being.

Moderated by Jared Correia, the panel included Deanna Brock, Senior Manager and Senior Corporate Counsel at Autodesk; Venora Hung, Associate General Counsel at Truepill; and Stephanie Corey, CEO & Co-Founder at UpLevel Ops and a CLOC co-founder.

Read on to learn more about how corporate counsel can achieve success in this era of “new normal.”

Emphasize Well-Being

The pandemic has led to an increase in attorney burnout, which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the legal industry is full of overachievers who burn the candle at both ends. But emphasizing well-being can lead to happier, more productive attorneys, and the experts offered ideas for how to do just that.

For instance, in order to combat Zoom fatigue, it’s helpful to suggest doing calls via audio, noted Venora Hung, associate General Counsel at Truepill. Exercise and movement can also

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