Setting Goals and Measuring What Matters: 3 Keys to Corporate Legal Success

Note: The below article was originally published in Legaltech News on 10/23/2018. See here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2018/10/23/setting-goals-and-measuring-what-matters-3-keys-to-corporate-legal-success/

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Running a corporate legal operation like a business can be a double-edged sword. While a dedicated legal team should operate in lockstep with the parent organization’s business practices, it can be a detriment when that team takes on some of the bad habits associated with them. This includes focusing on tactics rather than goals, or measuring inputs rather than the outputs that truly matter.

Let’s say a legal operations department wants its lawyers to be more aligned with departmental priorities. The legal operations director determines every attorney should attend a certain number of hours of departmental training every year and requires those hours be tracked.

This is an exercise in futility. Tracking training hours, in addition to being difficult, doesn’t necessarily address the alignment goal. The number of hours an attorney spends in training may or may not improve the degree to which that attorney is aligned with the department, and there is no way to be sure. Thus, it is like a person who meticulously calculates the number of Weight Watchers points they’re consuming, but refuses to step on a scale. It reflects a focus on input while the degree of alignment with actual, concrete departmental goals is ignored.

Focusing on the latter and using metrics to measure progress toward objectives can help corporate legal departments stay on track and drive their initiatives forward. With knowledge in hand, legal operations teams can build out long-term roadmaps that can help them deliver true value for their organizations. Here are a few strategies that teams may want to consider as they move forward.

Establish SMART Goals

Most businesses are familiar with the concept of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals, but most people are also familiar with the idea that they should eat right and exercise. It doesn’t mean they do it. And even when they try, sometimes goals that appear to be SMART in theory end up looking pretty fluffy in practice.

For instance, the idea of requiring budgets for legal matters and ensuring their compliance sounds facially simple. But in fact it’s too simple. What form do budgets need to take to be “compliant?” When do they need to be received and approved??If a budget is entered and then exceeded without being updated, does that count as “compliant?” ?Is the technology in place to administer the budgeting program in a businesslike way?

SMART goals outline exactly what needs to be accomplished, and when and why those actions should take place. Their specificity alleviates the challenge of teams committing to an effort with full-throated gusto, only to falter due to undefined goals. Teams can commit to action, rather than simply “committing to commit,” adhering to uncertain initiatives that haven’t been written out in black and white.

Share and Communicate Goals

Indeed, goals should be clearly written in statements that can be shared with, clearly understood, and agreed upon by other team members. Communication is critical to ensuring that everyone understands the direction in which the team should be moving. You should even consider reducing your SMART goals to a sort of contract or Service Level Agreement that other teams are required to agree to and sign. Although it sounds bureaucratic, the very act of putting everything down in writing and handing someone the pen may be the only way to bring out underlying issues or questions that may not have been raised.?

Goal agreements should include specific provisions about the mathematical calculations used to measure success. Data sources, numerical equations, definitions of success and failure, and more should all be part of the agreement. Those factors should be continually measured and assessed as efforts move forward -- always with an eye toward outputs, not inputs.

Eliminate Distractions and Goal Proliferation

Perhaps even more important than establishing what goals are is the opposite – subtracting the unimportant. Organizations can struggle here, too. Nobody wants to tell somebody that their agenda didn’t make the cut, but if everybody gets what they want the department will be spread too thin to accomplish anything. This results in goal proliferation and numerous initiatives that become distractions that can take away from and potentially undermine efforts that actually support true departmental priorities.

Often, metric proliferation accompanies this phenomenon. For example, while it’s important to get law firm invoices approved and paid on time, departmental goals and metrics should ideally focus more on ensuring invoice compliance and cost reduction. Focusing on more than the most essential metrics waters down your message and distracts people from true priorities.?Sometimes less is more.??

Establishing and measuring goals can be the difference that turns a business’s corporate legal department into a value center that drives the organization forward. By focusing on outputs, rather than inputs, legal ops teams can increase their chances for success by ensuring they remain true to those goals.