What to change in the legal department to increase efficiency. Five steps

Functional specialization and the principle “everyone replaces everyone” are giving way to narrow specialization, but in new formats. Cross-projects, business partners, a flat structure, rotations within a function are a small part of the current changes. The leaders of the yurdepa now are high-level managers with strategic thinking, they often work as therapists: they know who to “give a coupon” with what problem.

technical functions . Drawing up and accounting for powers of attorney, corporate documents, sending mail, standard contracts, mechanical work to fill out forms and forms - before all this was done by lawyers. Now these functions are transferred to other departments under the strict guidance of colleagues. The task of lawyers is to develop standards and guidelines. Usually these functions are transferred to the administrative department.

Some legal departments introduce the position of an administrator who draws up notarized powers of attorney, assists lawyers in copying and scanning documents, in agreeing on standard internal procedures, etc. The updated functionality needs to be fixed in business processes and work standards.

Colleagues post regulations, forms of standard contracts and powers of attorney, registers and dossiers of legal entities and projects on corporate resources. To this content are added instructions for working with legal services, news of legislation. Such online services are available to any employee from a computer, laptop and mobile phone at any time.

These changes reduce the number of lawyers, but at the same time the quality and volume of legal services are increasing. Resources with the necessary information for employees of the company remove part of the load from lawyers: the time that colleagues spent on working with requests from departments for the submission of documents is freed up.

Business partners . This format of interaction with a company can be called differently: business partners, work in business areas, legal partners. it allows you to interact with the business as closely as possible, immerse yourself in its agenda and influence decisions. In simple words, each business unit is assigned a legal curator. It provides a close link between the supervised unit and the legal service. A legal partner examines in detail the processes of “his” unit. In this case, the business sees the work of the legal function with precision.