Association of Corporate Counsel offices. (Courtesy photo)

When starting a legal operations function, getting the entire legal department and other factions of the business on board may be a challenge but the data those functions collect is invaluable, according to a panel of European legal operations experts.

On Tuesday, the Association of Corporate Counsel hosted a webinar of European legal operations experts to discuss driving efficiency in the legal department. A poll done at the beginning of the session indicated that the majority of the audience had just implemented legal operations functions at their companies.

Leonie van Gulik, legal operations specialist at PVH Europe B.V., said her company is relatively new to legal operations. Van Gulik said she was brought in by the general counsel in August to help the legal department operate more efficiently.

“Optimizing legal services to the businesses and achieving efficiency for the legal department is a key part of my role,” van Gulik said. “Demand is everywhere. It starts with the general counsel and the leadership team.”

Van Gulik said she has the full support of the general counsel, but it has taken time for the legal team to buy in and truly understand what legal operations is. She said she is working to collect reliable data to inform decisions in the legal department.

A more mature function is likely to have collected data and use it to drive both business and legal decisions, the panel said.

At Visa, senior attorney Emma Jackson said her department developed two initiatives to streamline in-house legal services. The first is a portal that has frequently asked questions and template contracts that those in the business side can go to for answers without having to contact the legal department. The legal department at Visa also created a legal engagement form. The form was created in response to the lawyers feeling like they were not getting a lot of good information from the businesspeople for certain projects. When a businessperson needs to get in touch with the legal department for something that is not urgent, they fill out the form and then legal decides how to handle it and who would be the best lawyer for that particular task.

“One of the drivers for us wasn't necessarily to get good data and measure efficiency; it was to respond to the business which actually resulted in that data,” Jackson explained.

The data collected for finding efficiencies does not need to be perfect, Ben Eason, head of legal transformation at Barclays, said. He explained it is important to take in as much data as possible and then use it to make decisions.

“It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect data in order to drive activity and decisions,” Eason said. “You need to think about what it is you're looking for when you have this palpable data at your fingertips.

Jackson said at the end of each month they look at the different requests that came in through the engagement form and determine whether or not those requests can be self-serviced through the portal. Ultimately, she said, it has given Visa's legal department an insight on where it needs to focus its resources.

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