Change management (or the lack thereof) could be the missing piece. In short, change management involves guiding and supporting individuals, teams, and organizations through the process of adopting and adapting to new digital technologies, processes, and systems. It is about the “why” and “what’s in it for me”. If carried out professionally and consistently, it focuses on ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing the benefits of the digital transformation while minimizing resistance and disruption amongst all stakeholders.

In transformation projects, change management has its own role and should be regarded as a separate and equally important workstream beside process design, configuration, and development.

Key elements and considerations

Here are some key elements and considerations involved in change management for legal digital transformation projects including a list of exemplary means:

• Establishing a clear vision: Define a compelling vision for the digital transformation project, explaining why it’s necessary and how it aligns with the organization’s overall goals. Clearly communicate this vision to all stakeholders, including lawyers, support staff, and management.
  Exemplary activities: project scoping, project charter, kick-off meeting
  
  
• Stakeholder engagement: Engage key stakeholders early on and involve them throughout the process. This includes all legal professionals, IT staff, management, and other relevant parties. Seek their input, address their concerns, explain the benefits to them (“what’s in it for me?”) and involve them in decision-making to gain their buy-in and support.
  Exemplary activities: stakeholder maps, stakeholder communication plan, different meeting formats, project landing page
  
  
• Change impact assessment: Prior to the project start, assess the potential impact of the digital transformation on different aspects of the organization, such as workflows, roles and responsibilities, job requirements, and stakeholder interactions. Identify potential areas of resistance or challenges that may arise during the implementation and, more importantly, monitor any trends throughout the project and post-go live.
  Exemplary activities: target operating model, legal services portfolio map, user journey maps  
  

• Change champions: Identify change champions (or better “ambassadors”) within the organization who can act as promotors for the digital transformation. These individuals should have influence, credibility, and expertise in both legal and technology domains. They can help drive adoption, address concerns, and provide training and support to their colleagues.
  Exemplary activities: stakeholder mobilising strategy, starter kit, engagement plan
  
  
• Communication and training: Develop a comprehensive communication plan to keep stakeholders informed about the digital transformation project’s progress, benefits, and timeline. Provide regular updates, address concerns, and highlight success stories, like go-lives of specific processes or use cases. Offer training programs and resources to ensure individuals have the necessary skills and knowledge to leverage the new technologies effectively.
  Exemplary activities: stakeholder communication plan, publication schedule, train-the-trainer and end-user -training
  
  
• Piloting and phased implementation: Consider piloting the digital transformation project in a specific practice area or department before scaling it across the entire organization. This approach allows for testing, refinement, and gathering feedback before broader implementation. Phased implementation can also help manage risks and mitigate (perceived) disruption.
  Exemplary activities: Legal Design sessions, User Acceptance Testing planning and procedures, rollout schedule
  
  
• Change resistance management: Anticipate and address resistance to change. Some individuals in the Legal and Compliance team may be hesitant or resistant due to concerns about job security, lack of familiarity with technology, or fear of increased workload. Implement strategies to address these concerns, such as providing training, offering support, and showcasing the benefits and positive outcomes resulting from the transformation. Leverage your change ambassadors for communication activities! A school of thought even suggests addressing specifically the fiercest critics, assuming their change of mind may have a more impactful implication on the reluctant but potentially silent majority. 
  Exemplary activities: key stakeholder engagement plan, retrospectives
  
  
• Continuous evaluation and improvement: Regularly evaluate the impact of the digital transformation project and identify areas for improvement. It is a journey, not a once-off initiative! Solicit feedback from business users, legal and compliance professionals, executive management and other stakeholders, measure key performance indicators (select a few meaningful ones for the start) and make necessary adjustments to ensure the project’s success and maximize the actual and perceived return on investment.
  Exemplary activities: feedback / “client listening” sessions, governance by change boards
  
  

A final word

Remember, change management is an ongoing process, and it requires a combination of effective leadership, communication, training, and support to facilitate a successful legal digital transformation. Furthermore, it requires sufficient time, expertise, and funding. Instead of considering external advice and support, the internal communication team may be a good partner to be engaged!

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“Legal Intake” or “Legal Front Door” – words which may prompt nightmares for many in- house counsel. Will present personal face-to- face, phone or email interactions be replaced by anonymous, semi-, or fully automated portal inquiries and a ticket system? How will business colleagues respond if they are asked to communicate in a rigorously structured way, potentially via a portal?

The article by our team member Ignaz Fuesgen, published in The Legal Business World, May 2023, explores the “Legal Front Door” (or “Legal Intake”), a key element of contemporary Legal Business Partnering which in its entirety should “make it easy [author: for the business user] to collaborate wherever and whenever the need occurs”. 

The article can be downloaded here: 20230224_LBW_May_2023_Fuesgen_article_extract.

The full edition is available here: https://lbw2023us3.legalbusinesslibrary.com/

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What is legal design?

To put it in a nutshell, legal design is the application of human design thinking principles to the legal industry.

It is a set of methods and principles aimed at creating better legal services and products, as well as at better communicating legal information. Legal design is about making legal systems more understandable and “user friendly”, for all of us.

What are design thinking principles?

Applying design thinking principles means adopting design mindset, which differs drastically from lawyers’ mindset.

Legal professionals are taught to operate in a “perfectionist” way by delivering precise and legally correct results at all times. This is due to the high standards and ethical codes that the legal profession is bound by.

Design mindset, in turn, tells you the following:

• Be more experimental. Iterative design process (define, ideate, prototype, test) forces you not to stick to one solution only and drive it perfection, but instead discover and test out different solutions – freely, without constraints and without being afraid of making mistakes. This is crucial for designing a good solution, but something that lawyers are not quite used to.
• Adopt a beginner mindset. When creating a product or service, designers focus on how the future users of this solution (and all the stakeholders involved) will perceive it and interact with it. The goal is to create a seamless, delightful experience that will make you want to use this solution again. This means looking at the solution not just through professional lenses, but also through beginner lenses (or in the legal context, lay person lenses), and looking for ways that will make the end user life easier.
• Embrace criticism. It is only possible to create a good solution after openly admitting the flaws of the previous one. Being open to admitting mistakes and starting again by developing a new prototype is a crucial element of the design mindset.

How exactly are design thinking principles applied to law?

Probably the most known area of legal design is info design or visual design. We all know how a typical contract looks like: pages and pages of complex legal terms in small print, difficult to read and understand. The goal of info design as applied to law is to create more understandable and visually appealing legal contracts and documents. The intention behind it is that those without legal background can better understand their rights and obligations. As a result, those readers have a better feeling and control over signing legal documents.

However, legal design goes far beyond just creating visually appealing legal documents. As follows from the infographic below, apart from info design this discipline encompasses product design (creation of legal tools and offerings), service design (structuring legal processes in a more user friendly way), organization design (creation of better legal practices in law firms and legal departments in order to make work of legal professionals easier) as well as overarching system design (rethinking how our legal systems’ structure as a whole: this also encompasses design on a legislative level).

How can I learn more about legal design?

If this article sparked your interest in learning more about legal design, here are some further book and source recommendations:

• Law By Design is the already referenced open source book by Margaret Hagan (The Legal Design Lab). It outlines the basic principles and ideas behind legal design as a discipline
• “Legal Design: Integrating Business, Design and Legal Thinking with Technology” by Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Helena Haapio, Margaret Hagan, Michael Doherty is another book of reference from the leading professionals in legal design field
• Legal Design Pattern Libraries is a great open source database of visual design materials by Helena Haapio, mostly focusing on contract design

Book a legal design workshop with us

You would like to see how you can apply legal design principles in your law firm or legal department? Then make sure to book a legal design workshop with us here. The interactive legal design workshop helps analyze and improve day-to-day processes in legal practices. It will make life of legal professionals and their clients easier.

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Becoming a strategic business partner

“Business partnering” is “the application of functional expertise in one area of the organisation (often finance) to enhance decision making in business units throughout an organisation. Effective business partnering can improve the speed and quality of decisions that impact the organisation’s bottom line and ultimately drive business value.” Gartner

If IT, HR or Finance can render those contributions to a company’s overall strategy formulation and execution, why not Legal?

… Is it because of internal perceptions from peers and management that Legal is not contributing but rather, getting in the way of closing business deals by being notorious naysayers?

… A cost centre that always choses the safest route?

… Or is the Legal function simply lacking the tools, techniques and confidence to move into a more strategic enabling role?

The 101 of good Legal Business Partnering

This is a plea for Legal Business Partnering as a way to strategically position the Legal function as a core corporate enabler. By doing so, it pre-empts of growing pressure for more business amongst all corporate functions. Delivering a definitive and sustainable value, the Legal function will be well placed to determine the nature and direction of change.

What are the traits of good Legal Business Partnering?

• Make it easy to collaborate wherever and whenever the need occurs. Invite business to easily submit their requests, enquiries and questions in plain English and without giving in on your information needs. Self-service offerings in addition to personal advice are a great asset to offer a 24/7 service contributing to business velocity.

• Be a trusted but critical advisor who speaks up, challenges and holds a mirror up to the business. This might involve identifying and raising issues such as an an unintended consequence of a business practice and an escalation in hidden legal compliance costs.

• Build influencing, relationship and communication skills. These are required to get the message across and get a discussion going. Move into the limelight and be the moderator, facilitator or idea-giver to set the agenda or keep a project on course. Project management skills greatly assist.

• Persistence. Challenging decisions and assumptions may not be welcomed by others at first. However, peers from other functions will eventually understand the wider and longer-term implications of an initiative or action.

• Understand the business. Frequently liaise with business to immerse yourself in current objectives, challenges and developments of the business units. Establish a legal radar screen in relation to those findings and be a proactive contributor to business strategy.

• The ability to translate the laws and regulations into a business story. How does black letter law influence business process sequences, documentation and which risks and opportunities are attached to each process step? Translate “Legalese” into business terms: what can, must and should be done from a company’s perspective. Legal compliance can easily become a competitive advantage raising the bar for competitors and achieving a superior offering in the eyes of customers.

The next step

If one agrees with the reasoning up to this point, the imminent question one must ask: what’s next? From our experience, we recognise the need to create a baseline for legal service delivery by listening to the business first. Complaints, praise or simply hints and insights captured in a structured process will provide a robust benchmark and foundation for identifying the most pressing issues Legal can assist with from the vantage point of the internal client community. In addition, it will greatly assist in setting expectations within the legal function and amongst business users in terms of what should receive priority support and what not.

What is your experience in developing an effective Legal Business Partnering approach? Join the conversation.

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The very first step when initiating legal digitisation initiatives is to start thinking of your legal and compliance work as processes. 

The next logical step is to review and map your processes, and to analyse whether your processes need improvement. This is where the concept of workflow steps in. “Workflow” is defined by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) as “an automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.” (“Next Stage Legal Project Management: Future-proof Your Matter Management”, Global Law and Business 2021) 

In short, process is a sequence of activities, and workflow is a way to improve efficiency of this sequence. When we talk about process digitisation, we are referring to rethinking and organising your processes in standardised workflows with clearly defined steps, objectives, stakeholders, as well as associated analytics and KPIs.

How do you adopt a workflow mindset?

The good news is that you likely already have it. We all work in processes, even though we are often not aware of it and even though our processes might be unstructured. Workflow mindset is about transforming those “unconscious” processes into more formal workflows, while always thinking about the best ways to improve their efficiency and overall effectiveness. 

Workflow mindset is also about noticing interconnections between different, at first sight unrelated processes within your law firm or legal department. It is also about being attentive to the stakeholders performing different activities, and about listening to what they think the improvement opportunities could be.   

How do you create a legal workflow?

Good news again: we’ve got you covered. Using our own approach to process visualisation and workflow streamlining, we have developed a free toolkit Legal Workflow Canvas that can be used under a Creative Commons (CC) license.

Legal Workflow Canvas is a template that helps you plan your workflow (by reviewing your objectives and stakeholders), analyse and build it (by defining process phases and possible limitations), as well as measure and learn from it (by analysing problems, opportunities and KPIs).

We are committed to sharing our know how within the legal industry and hope that our free toolkit available for download here will be a great start for you and your organisation adopt workflow mindset and future proof your practice. 

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Business process can be described as a set of tasks and activities performed by stakeholder(s) to achieve a certain goal. Processes can be simple (with limited amount of steps and only one relevant stakeholder) or complex (involving various steps and multiple stakeholders and organisations). They can be short, or they can take a long time. From contacting IT support to requesting time off — there is a process behind everything. 

But when it comes to legal work, we are not used to thinking in processes. Due to high complexity of legal work, it is often thought that every single task a lawyer performs is unique and thus cannot be properly described or quantified. While there are some repetitive, administrative tasks, a large part of legal work can only be solved on an individual, case by case basis. For this reason, it is often assumed that legal work cannot be seen as a business process. 

At the same time, any legal matter performed in law firms and legal departments can be separated in a set of sub-tasks and can thus be viewed as a process. Let’s take a practical example of a trademark registration:

• All the necessary trademark information is gathered (e.g. trademark name and/or logo)
• Prior rights check is performed (to ensure that there are no conflicting trademark rights) 
• Trademark application is filed with the chosen Trademark Office
• It is monitored that no objections or oppositions are filed against the trademark application
• Regular reports on the status of the trademark application are sent to the client 
• In case of a successful registration: steps associated with trademark portfolio maintenance are taken

Thinking of legal work in processes does not by any means undermine the individual approach and complexity associated with legal work. Rather, it helps organize and make sense of the tasks and activities carried out in law firms and legal departments. Process thinking helps streamline our work, while leaving room for creativity and personalised approach. 

When we talk digitalisation, we are talking digitalisation of processes. Hence, the very first step when initiating legal digitalisation initiatives is to adopt process thinking: thinking of all the legal work in your organisation in terms of step-by-step processes brings more clarity in terms of your workload and daily routines. 

As a next step, it is time to review if the processes in your organisation are well organised or if there is an improvement potential to make your day to day work more efficient. 

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The Canvas is available at www.legalworkflowcanvas.com.

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