In House It: Should A Bad General Counsel Blame Their Tools?

3.46pm - You wipe sweat from our brow whilst you finalise a bundle to submit to the Court by 4pm.

3.48pm - Your worst nightmare is realised when you notice a series of unpaginated pages midway through the bundle. Panic!

3.50pm - You boot up Adobe to make the change, but notice your laptop has only been installed with the "Reader" version. You are going to have to handwrite the page numbers on a printed copy.

3.52pm - You storm over to printer in a fury and smash in your credentials. A large droplet appears on the screen accompanied by the unhelpful message "low ink." "Arghhhh!"

So, you are day one in your new in house role. You are beaming from ear to ear as the excitement bubbles over. You power up your shiny new laptop. What IT tools do you expect to find? Well, generally speaking the answer is whatever tools your employer has invested in for the rest of the business and therein lies the problem. These tools, be they software or hardware, will not be tailored to the legal profession. That means no Westlaw, Lexis Nexis, case management system or PLC. "No PLC" I hear you cry, "How will I survive?" Well as any good in house Counsel will tell you all you need is a pinch of creativity and a dash of initiative (Oh, and excellent proficieny at... 'Googling it').

Although it is tempting to go out and subscribe to the newest, shiniest piece of legal tech that is not always possible. There may be budget restrictions or limitations with internal IT infrastructure. With this in mind software and tools that you have at your very fingertips should not be overlooked, particularly as a solution for the short to medium term.

Personally, I have leveraged existing in house systems or software to create a variety of completely free IT tools which are tailored to my client's needs. To name a few:

• Precedent Bank - Don't underestimate the usefulness and functionality of O365. It is not just for word processing, you know. I am sure you are now shaking your head thinking "come on, that is not ground breaking," and you wouldn't be wrong. However, if used correctly they can make in house lawyers more time efficient and frankly, are just easy, quick wins. For example, any letter, document or report that the team sends out three or more times, it will be converted into a template document and saved as a .dotx file. This way all of my precedents will be at my finger tips the moment I open Microsoft Word. For the more complex precedents I have utilised the "Autotext" and "Field" functions which allow you to bring a level of automation to all of your templates saving precious minutes of the working day.
• External Helpline Service - As most in house lawyers will tell you the peaks and troughs (mainly peaks) in workload can be very volatile. As a result, at times in house teams are required to engage external lawyers to provide advice to stakeholders directly. This can be problematic as the in house lawyer will lose control and transparency of the advice given or solution agreed upon. To combat this, I have previously implemented a basic ticketing system utilising Google Forms. The process worked as follows: (1) My internal client would complete a form outlining their legal query and attaching any relevant documents. (2) This would populate a Master Google Sheet which could be accessed by the in house team and external lawyers. (3) The in house team would use a drop down menu instructing the external lawyers to (a) advise on the query (b) hold for more information or (c) inform them that we would deal with it in house. (4) If we gave the green light, the external lawyers would then contact the client directly to provide advice and leave a summary of their response in the Master Google Sheet. This fix, albeit simple, was a very effective solution allowing me and the team to remain informed of ongoing matters and to intervene in discussions at any time if we needed to provide a more 'in house touch.'
• Case Management System - When I have the opportunity to network with other in house lawyers one of the first questions I ask is "Do you have a case management system? Which one do you use?" I am sure you will be surprised to hear that a large number of in house teams are still required to rely upon a series of intricate spreadsheets or complex folder structures to manage their matters. This is certainly how I was operating until we managed to access a cloud-based tool offered by our external legal providers. This tool, although formally recognised as a collaboration tool (best described as a cross between OneDrive and Slack), has be customised and repurposed as a case management system which allows my team to track cases, store documents and run reports at the click of a button. If you feel that you don't have the requisite tools in house there is no harm in reaching out to your supplier to see what they have on offer. I think you will be surprised as to what you find.

The implementation of systems, processes and tools like those above are crucial. They drive time efficiency and consistency of your advice and drafting. However, as an industry we are very reluctant to change. To say we are creatures of habit is somewhat of an understatement. I am of the view that by implementing solutions based on software with which lawyers are already familiar (Microsoft Office, Outlook, etc...) this acts as a great stepping stone to the integration of more comprehensive and intuitive solutions.

There is so much opportunity in the legal tech space. However, at present there is a significant disconnect between the product offering and the client's perceived value. Legal tech companies need to demonstrate value not to the in house legal team to which they are selling, but the business as a whole. The question is not "what value does our 'ContractBot5000' add to the role of General Counsel," but instead "how does our 'ContractBot5000' drive profitability in a business." Once a link can be established between these legal tech products and a company's bottom line it will only be a matter of time before we see a much wider uptake (at least that is my hope, anyway).

So, should a bad General Counsel blame their tools? I think not, they are going to have to come up with another excuse. Legal tech is here to stay and all you need to benefit is a problem to solve, an open mind and the patience to see implementation through to completion. Go on, embrace it. What is the worst that could happen?

Well, AI lawyers could take over all of our jobs, but I think it best we cross that bridge when we come to it.