A corporate legal department’s management is complex, given that it involves dealing with multiple stakeholders such as other departments in the company, retainer law firms/lawyers, senior lawyers, vendors, legal service providers, consultants, the government, regulatory bodies etc.

Legal departments make critical decisions every day, if not every hour. These decisions range from resourcing to budgeting, training, client engagement, risk assessment and planning and more. In the absence of quantitative data or metrics, these decisions are often made based on ‘gut feel’; on judgment, experience and intuition, rendering the whole exercise subjective.

The team needs to stay on top of every request and deadline always, and constantly increase the value it provides to the organisation.

Here is a snapshot of the challenges faced by a corporate legal department, the emerging issues and how technology can help

Legal departments receive hundreds of legal services requests of various types, and the sheer volume of requests can lead to lost or mishandled requests, and drive up costs. These requests are often tossed to the legal department sporadically by email, text, or informal conversations from various departments.

A tech tool simplifies and streamlines this intake process, by providing a simple portal that allows different departments to interact and engage with the legal department. This enables the legal department to get a comprehensive view of all requests received and can report on request types (by department, region, subject, time frame etc).

Client requests can be directed to the appropriate legal practitioner, even if the requester is not aware of the most appropriate recipient of the request. Clients can also self-serve to keep track of the status and resolution of legal service requests.

Priyanka is COO at Manupatra.

www.mykase.in is a cloud based Practice Management Platform for Lawyers, Law Firms and Legal Teams developed by Manupatra.