Roundtable: Talking Digital Transformation with UnitedLex

All of us white collar workers have been experiencing what some have branded a ‘digital revolution’ since the coronavirus pandemic forced us to work remotely back in March.

Water cooler chit-chat has been replaced by Microsoft Teams, international business travel now constitutes using an exotic background on your Zoom call, and after-work pub sessions are increasingly being replaced by the dreaded virtual pub quiz.

No better time then to talk about digital transformation within in-house legal departments. The topic kicked off day-one of this year’s General Counsel Strategy Summit in a session hosted by Meredith Brown, vice president of digital advisory at UnitedLex.

The theme of our summit this year centred on how in-house lawyers can be a driving force for positive change within a business. Digital transformation is an integral part of this dynamic.

The roundtable session saw general counsel from some of the world’s largest organisation express their opinions on why digital transformation is needed within legal teams, how to integrate new technologies while also maximising the capabilities of the tech you already have in place, and how to engage stakeholders and the wider business on digital innovations within the legal process.

Understanding how to get started on a digital transformation journey is vital, but can be a tricky process, explains Meredith Brown, “It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. You need to understand what people are spending time on in order to plan your journey. But because you’re operating on largely manual processes, it can be hard to have the information available.”

Why is digital legal transformation important for your legal dept?

The exponential growth of legal departments within large organisations is leading to a growing desire for digital solutions in order to help integrate the legal offering.

One contributor to the roundtable stated that: “Our team is growing very fast. In the last five years we’ve gone from no lawyers to 40, and we’re starting to lack consistency across our teams.”

Another GC mentioned that her team “still runs a lot of manual processes. This makes it quite hard to work out what anyone is working on at a given time. Its also hard to keep track of what’s coming through the department, and how long it is taking to complete tasks.”

Indeed, technology has the capacity to free up time otherwise spent by lawyers on menial repetitive tasks. This could in turn slowdown that exponential growth and cause a pivot towards effective scaling.

Non-disclosure agreements were a common culprit for time consumption stressed by our attendees. “NDAs are a really great example of where technology can save you time. We’ve created an electronic template which colleagues can fill it to receive an NDA in under 24 hours. We, as lawyers, can then do meaningful work for the business in the time saved,” said one GC.

One respondent quipped that systems like contract management and e-signature aren’t “rocket science”, but they are useful tools that can improve efficiency and save lawyers’ time.

Making sense of technology

The issue for many of the attendants was the amount of technology out there and the vagueness surrounding what certain solutions provide. There can be some confusion around what terms such as ‘digital transformation’ and ‘legal technology’ actually mean.

“The challenge sometimes is that there’s just too much tech about, and you get snowblindness. If you’re busy you don’t have time to work out what the right answer is, and you’ll just carry on using Excel,” said one attendee.

Another GC mentioned that: “The issue often isn’t the choice of technology; it’s trying not to pour more garbage into an old system.”

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown has led many of us to use the technology we already had in ways we hadn’t bothered to before. Indeed, many attendees stated that many of the technologies they currently had in place were not fully understood or utilised.

Another attendee stated: “You can try to get complicated systems in place, or you can focus on basic contract management systems while utilising the technology most of us already have. We’ve all got Office and there’s some amazing functionality in systems like Word to create standard documents.

“It’s a whole lot easier to persuade the business to invest in systems they’re familiar with.”

Building a business case for technology

Getting investment from the wider business, both from a financial and mental perspective, is an important aspect of digital transformation within a legal department.

With in-house legal functions often operating on much tighter budgets than their private practice counterparts, convincing the business to invest in streamlining the legal process can be a struggle, particularly within sales-oriented businesses.

Attendees stressed that in order to make a successful business case, the best approach is to explain how streamlining the legal process is beneficial to the entire business.

“Every year we get together as a company to talk about the problems each department has,” said one GC. “Last year the main issue was that the company’s contract management database was separated across the business and lawyers couldn’t get hold of the documents they needed. Sometimes we even had to go to the customer for these documents, which was bad PR for the company.”

Meredith Brown advised the attendees to “have conservations with your business. Engage the relevant personnel and process map to demonstrate why certain technology is needed for the legal department.”