Unlocking Scalability

As legal professionals (and frankly, just as humans) we are constantly expected to do more with less. The reflex over the past few years in the legal industry is to turn to a software application, API, or plug-in solution because the reasoning – purely reasonable – is that the volume is at the heart of challenge in keeping up. Despite the hype of AI, the tools that are on the market fall short of providing meaningful impact in measurable ways as to time or cost savings that can be readily seen in day-to-day operations. If you are struggling to identify the next right steps for your organization, use this framework to evaluate whether or not a project will deliver on the impact you need.

The Issue

You feel The Issue every day: pressure from stakeholders from all directions to respond faster, to streamline advice, to demonstrate value. Then you are presented with a pretty simple math problem: there are simply not enough hours in the day.

1. Scope creep. You have absorbed additional responsibilities and tasks that you are neither the subject matter expert on nor do you have the authority to control. Legal often ends up absorbing these tasks because Legal has highly organized and accountable professionals that will ensure they get done.
2. Because you get stretched, gaps appear. These gaps tend to pop up in the area of compliance that you only find out about when whiffs of litigation float in. Once this starts, your control of legal spend evaporates.
3. Burnout and turnover. When people feel overworked, unappreciated, or do not know how their value is reflected in operations, they become disengaged and leave. With them, they take the investment in recruiting, training, and benefits, but almost more importantly the institutional and relationship knowledge that you do not have captured.
4. Overflow and delegation. In connection with turnover, most legal teams are not in a position to outsource overflow work in high volume times. Knowing how to segment and delegate work that is appropriate for contractors has to be developed.
5. There is a constant pressure to automate responsibilities that are in Legal’s purview and to make things like initiating contracts able to be more “self-service” to others across the organization. Not only is that concept nerve-wracking, Legal ends up having to put in more effort to correct things that are obvious to us but not to others.

These reasons can be helpful to articulate what you have been experiencing to others and give you a starting point in the discussions to realign or secure more resources.

The Rule(s)

The next step to address is how to assess where you are at and how you can balance the equation to this math problem. For any given responsibility, repeatable task, or process, you can use the following to “Marie Condo” your department (replacing “does it give you joy” with “does it fulfill your strategic goals”):

1. Do you own the deed to this Sandbox? This question is about the appropriateness of ownership. Is this matter really yours? Does it require information only you can have access to (e., attorney-client privilege, employee confidentiality, etc.)? Does it require advanced legal knowledge or constitute legal advice? Does the scale or impact the organization as a whole? Or, did you assume the ownership because of (a) quality control issues; (b) overflow from others; or (c) because of downstream implications? If the reason is any of these, it is a sign that you need to re-align these with the appropriate person or department.
2. Who can you collaborate with to accomplish the need? Whether you are starting a new initiative or re-evaluating what you already have, make sure you are not going alone. The risk is that this creates more points of failure; the upshots are that you will get to a point where people bring you in when you are needed and most impactful. You will also no longer be the single point of failure.
3. How is this load measured? We have all heard “what gets measured is what gets done” and the same applies here. By asking how is the value of this load measured, you are making it matter in the opportunity cost calculation. If this can be delegated in favor of higher value, higher risk work, that is a win. If the value is unclear, then it is time to re-align about whether or not the task should be retained, which brings us to the next point.
4. Does this add value? Once you know how something is measured, you can then compare it. This is where it gets tricky: lawyers especially want to try to cover too much. That’s when you have to revisit each item with a “reasonableness” standard. For example, when my husband wanted a truck one of his “needs” was that it be a four-wheeled drive; the options available would have increased the price by about $10,000 more. Then I asked “how many days a year have you used that feature” and the answer was 1-3 on average. That “need” – mitigating risks to safety in inclement weather – simply did not bear out especially for someone in IT who can work remotely as needed. While that feature – like your task – undoubtedly has tangible value, it has to make sense on balance. Value is comparative and contextual.
5. Ask “am I ready to be ruthlessly honest…with myself?” Of all the challenges to initiating change, being objective about our own behavior is difficult. You do not want to get stuck here in an endless witness examination of yourself, but re-establishing the purpose of your work is a worthwhile undertaking. Yes, it will take time away from current work, but the cost of you continuing to absorb complexity long term is greater than the cost to change. Sometimes the answer is “I know this is a thing, but I do not have the capacity to deal with it all right now” and that is okay. At least you have gone through the steps to identify the low-hanging fruit if you are ever asked “what can we do to help you” – you will be ready.

The Application(s)

With this framework in mind, you can evaluate your responsibilities and workload against feedback. There are stakeholders who want an improved outcome. Let’s work through a common one: “Legal is so slow”. Let’s get beyond that “what do you mean by Legal is so slow” question; in this example, let’s apply the assumption that by “slow”, stakeholders mean Legal is taking too long to resolve a question or request.

1. Do you “own” the cause a given matter is slow? Matters often appear stalled with Legal because the problem is not clear. Information is missing that has to be collected from the requester or from other subject matter experts. Improving information gathering at intake will accelerate decision-making and resolution times.
2. Who can you collaborate with to speed it up? For matter types that tend to repeat or have a pattern, you can work with your requestors to improve your intake. Having a conversation about how you can action feedback will include setting reasonable expectation. As legal professionals, we are really service providers. When people feel heard – even when there is no action to take – the frustration goes down and the pressure abates. The “help me help you” approach similarly relieves you from having to come up with all of the solutions and carrying mental load; the strength of a team is that you do not have to have every answer.
3. How is speed being measured? What is the benchmark? If you are using a ticketing solution as your intake, like ServiceNow or JIRA, you will have some of this measuring done for you (though you set the parameters of how time is counted and when). Time to respond and time to resolution are very different things; time to respond is something within your control, time to resolution is not.
4. Does speed add value? Speed in isolation is not particularly helpful to determining value for Legal and is at most about freeing up time. The value of measuring speed is also about capacity, reliability/accuracy of the resolution, and speed as balanced against risk. Unique fact patterns are going to take longer because these outlier cases are not going to be captured or resolved in even the most niche systems. If you choose to believe most people are reasonable, they are not likely giving feedback regarding speed on these outliers; when speed is a concern to other business functions, it is about those matters that are repeat ones that are not visibly complex. When that complexity is not visible because Legal has absorbed the other tasks or checks on the back end, it may be better to re-align those elements.
5. Was I honest about capacity and is there a reasonable solution?
   Did I wait for information that I did not truly need? Am I asking only for the information I need to take the next best action? Will I have a disciplined approach and regularly redirect people to the appropriate front door?

Answering these questions will help you re-align your responsibilities, which will empower you focus on the things that you are best positioned to do while leveraging both your skills and the skills of those around you. After you have started to address and control for the scope creep, you can move on to formulating new projects that will allow you scale in practical ways. For each project, you will be able to identify a clear objective, deliverable and benefits. Keeping these questions in mind as you move through identifying these benefits, you will figure out where to start and how to stay focused on getting to “done” instead of perfect.

The Conclusion

Shifting your mindset from reactive to proactive is more than just about capacity or individual contributions: it takes shifting the centerpiece of conversations from independent tasks or feedback to systems that address patterns of resource allocation. Patterns are more readily recognized when we zoom out a level. The most important thing to remember is not to bite off too much at one time: focus on the next right step instead. This could be as simple as making time to solicit feedback or collecting data. You have to know where you are before you can accelerate forward. Be on the lookout for practical deliverables using this framework that will reap compound benefits all the way through the process by connecting with and following me on LinkedIn.