According to recent data, chief legal officers (CLOs) are under pressure to do more with less. In 2024, 58% of CLOs received cost-cutting mandates, nearly 75% had experienced law firm rate hikes, and many were pessimistic about hiring.
All of this means that in-house lawyers may take on a larger proportion of their organization’s legal matters, often without hiring additional hires. A heavier workload only exacerbates process inefficiencies, so now is the time to implement better strategies.
Here are our top six time management tips for lawyers and in-house legal leadership.
Key Takeaways
- Chief legal officers face pressure to do more with less as cost-cutting mandates and law firm rate hikes collide with heavier workloads.
- Simplifying request submission gives stakeholders one place to submit, increasing complete information upfront and faster prioritization.
- Getting on top of communication and speeding up resolution through automation reduce wasted time on legal matters.
- Minimizing reliance on IT and using tools built for in-house legal help teams work more efficiently.
- Want to give your team time back? See how Streamline AI streamlines intake and communication, and book a demo.
How to manage the legal team’s time effectively
- Simplify the request submission process. A chaotic (or nonexistent) intake process is one of the biggest time-wasters for internal legal teams. By streamlining request intake and triage, you give business stakeholders a single place to submit requests, increasing the likelihood of receiving complete information upfront. You can also prioritize and address urgent matters faster when all requests come through the same system. Decide on a process that works for your team and communicate it to the rest of the organization.
“With legal requests in email and Slack, it could take up to a week to process a request because we wouldn’t have all the relevant background information, context, and latest information and communications in one place.” - JP LaMunyon, Senior Legal Manager, Favor Delivery
- Get on top of team communication. Few things slow down legal matters more than disorganized communication. When lawyers are stuck playing phone tag or tracking down emails, they lose valuable time they could spend resolving legal requests.Avoid excessive back-and-forth by finding a centralized system to organize all communication related to in-house legal matters. Task management software can enable in-house lawyers to navigate to the matters they’re working on and see all updates and approvals (or lack thereof) in one place.
“I just came to this point where things become too complex, and I could no longer remember who said what, where, and when. We’d go back and forth on documents or versions of a contract, but it was hard to keep track.” - Eva Metsu, General Counsel, Lighthouse
- Speed up the resolution of legal requests. Better communication is one strategy to speed up time-to-close, but another is to automate repetitive, day-to-day tasks. For example, contract review requests can pile up quickly for in-house teams. AI-powered contract review tools can help identify clauses that don’t match standard company terms, saving lawyers time on the initial review process and helping kick off approvals.These types of process improvements have tangible impacts: With the help of legal matter management software, Redwood Software reduced its time-to-close by 50% and average response time by 25%.
- Minimize reliance on IT. Generic project management systems often require considerable technical rigging to mimic legal workflows, resulting in many IT requests and delays. Homegrown systems, while built to your team’s precise needs, inherently depend on IT involvement. Even systems designed for law firms, like case management software, can cause issues when applied to in-house legal. Instead, choose tools built for in-house lawyers that the legal team can manage independently, avoiding unnecessary reliance on IT or other teams. That way, you can make efficiency-boosting changes on the fly.
“I had worked with legacy tools like Jira previously, and the workflows were super hard to build. For even one little update, we had to rely on a technical team or admin to update it. It would be so frustrating not to be able to get past a request because we were blocked by needing to wait for someone else to update the workflow.” - Brenda Perez, Senior Legal Operations Manager, Apollo.io
- Set up workflow automation rules. Stop writing the same emails, Slack messages, or tasks for the same approval processes over and over. With modern legal technology, you can automate review assignments and approvals based on custom parameters or form inputs. Plus, built-in reminders can help you stay ahead of future deadlines and avoid last-minute scrambles for regularly occurring tasks.
- Use metrics to improve efficiency over time. In order for metrics to help with time management, you’ll need to accumulate some data first (if you don’t keep track of operational metrics already). Legal matter management software can help you establish baseline numbers for high-volume request types, identify where matters get stuck in the approval process, and measure team capacity. Once these benchmarks are determined, you can investigate the causes of bottlenecks and implement solutions to improve the team’s efficiency.
“We’re now able to bring data to the table, and highlighting our team’s success with concrete data through Streamline is incredibly empowering. Our legal team really welcomed this transparency, finding immense value in providing visibility on work distributed among the team and visibility on the value the legal team is providing outside of Legal.” - Ilan Hornstein, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, 8x8
Reclaim your time with Streamline AI
Bad technology requires more time to manage than it saves, but the right technology can be a game-changer for Legal. In fact, 87% of legal professionals report that technology has improved their day-to-day work, and in-house legal matter management software like Streamline AI is leading the charge.
Learn more about how your team can speed up processes and stop wasting time with the help of legal matter management software.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Can In-House Legal Teams Manage Time More Effectively?
In-house teams manage time better by simplifying request submission into one channel, getting on top of communication, automating repetitive tasks to speed up resolution, and minimizing reliance on IT. Centralizing intake and communication reduces wasted time chasing information and lets lawyers focus on resolving legal requests.
Why Is A Centralized Intake Process A Time-Saver?
A chaotic or nonexistent intake process is one of the biggest time-wasters for legal teams. Centralizing intake gives stakeholders a single place to submit requests, increasing the chance of receiving complete information upfront and letting the team prioritize and address urgent matters faster because everything flows through one system.
How Does Better Communication Speed Up Legal Work?
Disorganized communication slows legal matters as lawyers play phone tag or hunt through emails. Centralizing all communication related to a matter in one system lets lawyers see updates, approvals, and document versions in one place, avoiding excessive back-and-forth and saving time they can spend resolving requests.
How Can Automation Speed Up Legal Request Resolution?
Automating repetitive, day-to-day tasks speeds resolution. For example, AI-powered contract review can flag clauses that deviate from standard terms, saving time on initial review and helping kick off approvals. Workflow automation routes requests to the right people automatically, reducing manual follow-up and accelerating time-to-close.
Why Should Legal Teams Minimize Reliance On IT?
Generic project management systems often need considerable technical configuration to mimic legal workflows, creating IT requests and delays. Even homegrown or law-firm-oriented systems depend on IT involvement. Tools built for in-house legal that the team can own and adjust reduce this dependency and help legal move faster.
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