Matter management software should be a “Non-Negotiable”

In-house legal departments face mounting challenges in maintaining smooth operations. The increasingly complex and dynamic business landscape demands more from these teams. They must deliver high-quality advice, proactively manage legal risks, and handle litigation—all while staying within budget and meeting diverse business needs. These range from routine contract reviews and non-disclosure agreements to strategic initiatives that keep the organisation aligned with its priorities and goals.

Adopting a technology-based approach to legal operations can alleviate many day-to-day challenges for legal professionals. Matter management systems offer numerous benefits, including standardising and streamlining processes, bridging communication gaps, and effectively managing outside counsel spend. 

Let’s look at four key challenges that make matter management technology adoption a no-brainer for core legal activities in in-house departments.

The continuous onslaught of new matter intake

Picture this: a sprawling corporation with subsidiaries spanning multiple locations, its central legal department inundated by hundreds of new instructions and requests monthly. These arrive through various channels – emails, Teams, phone calls, and in-person office visits – each with its own level of urgency. Some requests demand immediate attention, while others, though less time-sensitive, remain crucial to business operations. Amidst this deluge, duplicates abound, and many queries are misdirected to the department, never even meant for legal's eyes. 

The complexities of triaging and managing this influx are evident, right? Each issue necessitates some degree of communication to properly gather essential information and allocate it to the assigned lawyer. Given the sheer volume, there's a risk of matters slipping through unnoticed or being addressed belatedly, potentially exposing the business to risk.

In attempts to streamline, legal departments often establish a central email address to receive new requests. However, email's inherent limitations as a project management tool render this approach ineffective. The ceaseless barrage of incoming messages proves unwieldy and time-consuming to manually manage.

Another common strategy involves asking business stakeholders to complete Word document templates detailing new matters. However, frequently non-legal employees struggle to provide the pertinent information needed for effective triaging and risk assessment.

A matter management solution such as Lawcadia is designed to address these challenges. The system's portal serves as a legal front door, allowing business stakeholders to submit requests via tailored workflows for each legal function. We all know legal language for a non-legal individual can be impossible to comprehend. The solution enables lawyers to frame questions in language that is easily understood.

The workflow forms in the solution are designed to capture necessary information upfront, so that legal professionals don’t waste time wasted gathering data. In fact, for straightforward matters, the workflow engine can automatically triage and allocate work based on predefined business rules and logic.

Best of all, the system can offer self-service options to business stakeholders, supported by FAQs, company policies, training videos, and automated document generation tools. This approach not only saves time for employees and legal professionals but also enhances overall efficiency in managing the continuous influx of new matters. 

• Don't have a matter management system? Visit our Lawcadia legal operations product page for a full list of benefits

Email is the default tool for managing matters, documents, and communication 

Email has become the all-encompassing default tool for managing matters, documents, and communication in legal departments, serving as an information storage system, knowledge repository, and even a project management tool. In-house lawyers rely heavily on their inboxes to manage matters, resulting in email overload and a lack of transparency among team members. This situation often leads to confusion about task assignments and duplication of efforts. The absence of a central repository for matter-related documents complicates assistance when designated lawyers are unavailable.

To address the need for visibility across the matter landscape, in-house legal departments frequently resort to using Excel spreadsheets to log new matters. However, this approach requires manual updates, which are rarely performed consistently.

A central repository for matters is crucial for effective legal department operations. Lawcadia’s matter management offers integrated email and document management capability tailored for legal departments without existing systems. For larger departments already using the iManage Work email and document management system, Lawcadia seamlessly integrates. The solution's automation engine creates workspaces for new matters in iManage Work automatically, utilising predefined folder structures and permissions to ensure confidentiality and data privacy. Furthermore, Lawcadia provides various productivity tools to help lawyers efficiently manage and complete their work, including document automation, task management, reminders, collaboration features, and visual reporting applications.

Managing external legal spend 

Legal departments often face significant challenges in managing their relationships with external counsel. The traditional approach to engaging and overseeing legal services is fraught with inefficiencies and lack of transparency. In-house legal teams typically maintain a panel of preferred law firms, but struggle to effectively control work allocation, fee arrangements, and budgeting across these partnerships. Law firms frequently fail to provide clear budget estimates or detailed scopes of work, leading to unexpected costs and disputes over invoices. The absence of a robust system for tracking approvals and changes further complicates matters.

To address these issues, some legal departments resort to competitive RFP processes. However, these are time-consuming and susceptible to manipulation, with some firms (perhaps inadvertently in the interest of competitiveness) underbidding to secure work and then expanding the scope to increase charges. The manual nature of invoice approval and limited reporting capabilities based solely on received invoices add to the administrative burden. Overall, there is a significant lack of visibility and control throughout the process of engaging and managing external legal services.

Lawcadia offers a comprehensive solution to these challenges through its secure, two-sided platform infrastructure. This innovative system enables in-house legal teams to seamlessly instruct and manage external matters, budgets, and invoicing. The workflow engine allows in-house lawyers to directly engage specific partners from their panel law firms, with access to template instructions for high-volume work. A unique, automated RFP process simplifies the task of issuing briefs, receiving and comparing responses, and capturing crucial data. This streamlined approach can lead to substantial cost savings, with legal teams potentially reducing fees by up to 30% through more frequent use of RFPs.

Lawcadia facilitates clear agreement on scopes of work and fee arrangements, with all invoices submitted against agreed budgets. Any changes to fees or scope are meticulously tracked. Law firms submit invoices through the platform, which can be routed for approval before automated payment processing. Additional features such as automated rate card compliance and line-by-line invoice review provide further control and accountability. By implementing these processes and controls, Lawcadia empowers legal departments to manage their external counsel more effectively, ensuring greater transparency, efficiency, and cost control throughout the engagement lifecycle.

Lack of detailed reporting and metrics

In the legal industry, data management and reporting have long been a challenge. Lawyers, renowned for their expertise in law but often less comfortable with data analysis, struggle with manual data capture processes that are often incomplete and inaccurate. Potentially, being time-poor has a lot to do with this. The issue is compounded by the fact that the General Counsel often has specific reporting requirements for Board meetings, and each legal team's needs can vary significantly. These challenges create a significant gap in the efficient management and utilisation of legal data.

Once again, enter Lawcadia’s innovative solution, designed to address these pain points head-on. The platform's unique approach allows for secure data capture across all operations, seamlessly integrated into lawyers' workflow. By marking specific data fields as "reportable," the system makes this information readily accessible through a user-friendly Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tool. This flexibility enables the creation of customised dashboards tailored to different audiences and needs, ensuring that everyone from the General Counsel to the Board receives the precise information they require.

Furthermore, the BI reporting tool is designed with non-technical users in mind, allowing even those without data analysis backgrounds to create their own reports or drill down into data as needed. This unique combination of rich functionality, ease of use, robust data capture, and customisable reporting, makes Lawcadia’s solution an unmatched asset in the legal technology landscape.

Establishing a strong core infrastructure for smooth legal operation is easily doable. Ascertus is here to help, please get in touch. 

See also:

• Lawcadia matter management and Legal operations solution 
• Legal workflow automation : the strategic advantages