Why legal transformation projects can fail (and how to avoid this happening to you)

“By 2025, corporate legal departments will capture only 30% of the potential benefit of their contract life cycle management investments” - Gartner

I’m not surprised by this statement.?

If, like me, you've been in the digital transformation world for the last decade or so, you’re probably not surprised either. This percentage is comparable to the adoption rates, or lack of, for technologies like Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) when it first launched in 2011.?

In fact, today, many organisations still struggle to get the expected ROI from their investment in modern workplace technologies. That’s even when the digital transformation project is instigated by the IT team. So what chance does an individual department, like Legal, have when they’re trying to transform their working environment with contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools or other legal tech solutions?

The good news is that we’ve all learned some lessons over the last decade. IT professionals now know that you cannot force change on end users by deploying technology and expecting everyone to use it. Or without having a clear business case for a specific technology.

In this article I share some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and how to apply them to your legal transformation project.

Lesson 1: Align legal tech with business outcomes

When legal teams are asked what they want to achieve from legal transformation, you often get some rather vague answers. ‘Save time’, ‘increase productivity’, ‘streamline processes’. All benefits that legal tech can deliver, but what does that actually mean for the business?

What I’ve learned from the digital transformation projects I’ve been involved in is that the first step is to identify a clear business case or desired outcome, and then find the technology that can deliver it.

Business outcomes should deliver quantifiable cost savings, increases in revenue or other strategic results. Defining the business outcome helps you to identify the right tech for your organisation, enables you to calculate the realistic payback period and provides end users with clear reasons to adopt the technology.

Lesson 2: Take end users on the legal transformation journey

Why do some end users resist change? Because no one thought to consult them about the transformation. Before embarking on legal transformation you need to take into account your end users. How will technology impact them, positively and negatively, and what do they want from legal tech?

It’s not just about the impact once the solution is deployed either. It’s also the impact on their working lives to get there. Will onboarding the solution take hours, days, weeks or months, and how disruptive will that be to the people who ultimately need to use it? Will they need to find time to help migrate data and configure the solution, or will this be done by someone else?

Finally, what about end user training, adoption and change management? When exploring different technologies make sure you’re factoring in the support your end users will need, and the resources (time and money) required for a successful adoption.

Staff time can be a significant barrier to a successful transformation. If they don’t have the time to support the onboarding process, or even attend training sessions, everyone will struggle to get the benefits of the tech.?

Lesson 3: Don’t believe the hype!

Gartner’s research into why legal departments are not capturing the benefits of CLM solutions identifies sales and marketing as being partly responsible: “Technology marketing hype breeds lofty expectations and ambitious timelines that can rarely be achieved.”

To avoid this pitfall you really need to understand what the ROI will look like for your organisation, not Marketing’s best case scenario. Everyone is different: your workplace, people, data, existing technology and objectives, so make sure you work with a legal tech company that takes the time to understand you.

I would always recommend an in depth discovery session with the technology provider - they should suggest it. The output from this session should be a transformation roadmap that includes the entire process from designing and deploying the solution, migrating data, technology adoption training and support, and a realistic timeline for recouping the initial investment.

Lesson 4: Manage stakeholders’ expectations

One of the consequences of a legal transformation project being perceived to be a failure, is that when you request budget for future investment it becomes harder to obtain.

It might be tempting to use the technology company’s hype to sell a solution to your internal stakeholders. After all, it’s effective and readily available for you to copy and paste into a proposal.

However, securing budget using unrealistic expectations is short-sighted. Legal transformation may also be about transforming the image of corporate legal, transforming its reputation as a cost centre into a strategic partner and a business enabler.

If you don’t manage stakeholder expectations for a technology’s payback period, you risk confirming all those preconceptions and undermining your efforts to transform legal’s relationship with the rest of the business.

Lesson 5: Get support for legal transformation

Back in the day when IT teams were procuring cloud technologies like Microsoft 365 directly, deploying them internally and then struggling to get return on investment, a new breed of IT service companies sprung up.

These companies offer digital transformation services to support internal IT teams by identifying the right technology and approach to achieve business goals, ensuring they have sufficient resources to deploy solutions effectively, and training and supporting end users.

They make sure that transformation projects succeed and that organisations get the results they desire. Even an experienced IT team needs expert specialist support at times.

Similarly, with the advent of legal tech there is a need for legal transformation experts to support legal teams in helping them deploy the right solutions, so they can get value from their investments.?

Unless you’re a transformation expert, don’t do it by yourself! Partner with a trusted specialist who can help you navigate the pitfalls and deliver the results you want.

OK - so that last point was a bit of a plug for me and my team, but you don’t have to speak to me, there are other companies out there. However, I hope you’ve found the above article useful and if you do have any questions or need some advice I’d be happy to help.?

Contact me in the usual way or leave a comment below…