What is legal management? What roles does legal management play in business operations? Should companies opt for legal management software? Read further to find answers to these questions.
In this article
If you’re a part of a legal department, you would probably be required to follow legal management practices for smooth business operations. Law firms would need an efficient legal team to deal with official legal matters, internally and externally. Companies often require a lot of legal expertise, and the work could become more tedious without an appropriate legal management system. This article aims to highlight the role of legal management in business operations as well as the benefits legal practice management can provide.
What do you mean by legal management?
Legal operations management is a process or activity that helps automates many day-to-day tasks of legal professionals. For instance, it might become challenging to manually keep track of all client documents and different legal departments and trace every move during a particular case. But, legal operations can help in all such tasks and simultaneously improve the efficiency of legal departments in companies.
What does legal practice management software do?
Legal practice management software helps legal professionals and firms manage case-related workflow and overall legal business operations. This software helps automate legal practices such as client appointment scheduling, calendar management, storing case-specific data in a repository, tracking emails, managing billing and invoicing and assisting firms in remaining law compliant.
What is the role of legal management in business operations?
The legal practice management software market is predicted to reach a size of US$3.6 Billion by 2027, as reported by Research and Markets. This data could mean that businesses would be effectively following legal management practices for improved business performance. Below we have discussed the many benefits and roles of legal management in business operations.
Efficiently helps in storing all contracts and legal documents
The legal management team usually helps create a centralised repository for storing all business contacts and essential legal documents. The repository can also be used for knowledge management and sharing and serve as helpful for the organisation's new members. Legal operations can also help design and draft legal contracts and other business documents.
Helps in business budgeting and finance management
Financial and budgeting tasks might also come under the domain of legal operations. Legal operations can help assess and evaluate your business’s finances and prepare a systematic financial plan. A well-planned budget can help companies to control spending, foresee any potential issues, determine all profits and losses and identify investment opportunities, if any.
Cross-functional alignment with other departments
Legal operations can also include collaborating with other significant departments in the organisation, such as HR, sales and marketing. Cross-functional alignment can help these business areas to be legally compliant and take advantage of legal expertise whenever required. For instance, legal support could be needed in the HR department while creating documents for employee onboarding or other such contracts.
Provides technology and process support
Legal management systems can provide technical and process support to tackle the daily pain points of carrying out varied legal tasks. Usually, the systems can help automate many time-consuming manual legal processes, which can help improve the overall efficiency and workflow. One example could be implementing a contract tool having a glossary of legal terms and other do’s and don’ts, which can help users create, review, negotiate and sign contracts effortlessly.
What are the features of a legal management system?
Law firms typically have to deal with business-critical and sensitive information daily. Therefore, businesses should ideally check and evaluate the security standards and appropriate features before purchasing a legal management system. Here are some common features of legal practice management software:
- Document management: Legal management software can help businesses collect, share and store all legal documents and other case-related files in a centralised place.
- Calendar management: With the help of this software, businesses can view task deadlines, schedule appointments with clients, and manage meetings on a shared calendar.
- Legal case management: These tools can help manage overall business workflow, including tracking emails, taking case notes, managing contacts, creating client portals and keeping tabs on all tasks.
- Time tracking: Legal management software can help legal professionals track their time spent in all legal work. The software helps automate the typical manual process of jotting down daily tasks and time spent on each activity.
- Billing and invoicing: The software also helps businesses automatically generate bills for case-related tasks.
- Legal matter management: Corporate legal matter management software can help companies manage internal legal activities such as compliance, marketing, sales and internal claims.
To sum it up
Every company may want efficiency and smooth business operations. A law corporation, big or small, would require an effective legal operation management system. Legal operations could be a key to an efficient in-house system that can help businesses grow. However, many types of legal management software might be available in the market. Choosing the right one would depend on factors such as the firm size, budget, priorities and goals that are unique to your business.
