Page 8 - CCCA Magazine Spring 2014

{ PERFORMANCE IN THE LAW DEPARTMENT } STRETCH GOALS MUST BE STRATEGIC By Richard G. Stock A growing number of legal departments are becoming attuned to better capturing and communicating their contributions to the company. orporate, international and govern- With some probing, GCs can produce a outcomes defning excellence in the le- ment organizations are more struc- list after the fact. Members of the depart- gal department. From this point of view, Ctured than ever. They require their ment comb through their emails, have a it is a real challenge to add value to the legal departments to address company discussion, and voilà, the list is produced. company because the legal department is priorities and performance targets. Gen- Yet it seldom has any link to the corpo- continuously on the defensive, focused on eral counsel still struggle with how best rate strategic plan. The signifcance of working faster with longer hours, and un- to do this, arguing that they are not re- each item to the company is not particu- der constant pressure to reduce its costs. sponsible for sales, engineering and other larly apparent. The answer to the question There has to be more. It is essential revenue-generating or program activities. “What difference do the lawyers make?” is for GCs to get ahead of the curve when it opaque at best. comes to allocating legal resources. There Form and content is simply not enough time to do every- There is no escape. The online forms for Getting ahead of the curve thing the legal department wants to do. the corporate strategic plan are produced Both the 2012 and 2013 CCCA Barometer Good data is a prerequisite, so GCs be- each year. The legal department must Surveys asked, “What are the main ways gin by asking each lawyer and paralegal to complete them. More often than not, in which your department provides value allocate their time for a year by business the forms are twinned with the annual within your organization?” A list of nine unit served and type of law. They include budgeting cycle. One size fts all depart- choices was provided. Only 45% of the re- administration and practice management ments with no customization for legal spondents believed that “helping the or- time in the list of legal activities. Lawyers departments. There is the usual focus on ganization and its business units achieve and paralegals use percentages rather headcount, operating budgets and capi- their strategic and operating objectives” than hours to estimate their time, since tal requirements. None of this begins to was one of the main ways the legal depart- few have time-keeping systems. They then tell the legal department’s story. There is ment provided value. calculate the worked hours (actual hours nothing about deals to be done, litigation There was a more favourable response worked minus vacations and statutory resolved and risk managed. Characteriz- to the questions on managing and reduc- holidays) for the year and apply the per- ing the legal department as a cost centre ing risks associated with business deci- centages to the result. invariably leads to viewing it as part of sions, resolving disputes, and managing The second parcel of essential data is the overhead — something that must be regulatory barriers and compliance. Each the number and distribution of matters minimized and from which not much else of these is undoubtedly an important by complexity for each lawyer. In-house is expected. function. Taken collectively, they are the counsel and paralegals struggle with this Yet there is hope. Some companies are face of a “captive law frm,” always ready question because they do not keep time asking their corporate support depart- to support and enable but seldom want- and have no matter management systems ments (HR, Finance, IT and Legal) to ing to take the lead. in place. Moreover, they do not have a demonstrate how they plan to add value When interviewed about this, law- working defnition of a matter. At its most to the organization. There is the opportu- yers say they do not control the project, basic level, it is best to defne a matter as a nity to break out of the box. Not many le- the activity or the service that defnes the self-contained project, dispute or contract. gal departments today prepare an annual business, so they should not be held ac- Lawyers are asked to calculate how report of their achievements, highlighting countable for the results. Their focus is many such matters they have in a year, at least 10 signifcant undertakings from overwhelmingly on service delivery with group them by average duration (under the last 12 months. availability and effciency rather than 5 hours, 6 to 25 hours, and over 25 hours 8 CCCA MAGAZINE | SPRING 2014 PRINTEMPS