Law and innovation – Legal Management

In Brazil, a survey conducted in 2018 investigated the technological insertion of 403 law firms of varying sizes.

The changes from which the law has been transformed have been discussed for some time. Equally, there is nothing new, the diversification of players, especially in the international scenario and the impact of technology in the delivery of legal services. In this combination of factors, there is an important gap to reflect on the new trajectories of legal management from the perspective of long-term strategic health.

In Brazil, a survey conducted in 2018 investigated the technological insertion of 403 law firms of varying sizes. The use of software was found to assist the procedural (77%), financial (53%) and document management (26%), in addition to other daily tasks (44%). It should be added that 37% of the societies that participated in the study claimed to have a team or person responsible for knowledge management1.

In the United States, 362 offices reported in 2018 that the most frequent initiatives in the area of ​​legal management aimed at increasing efficiency were linked to automation (48%), ongoing training and support in project management (36%), maintenance formal knowledge management programs (28%) and systematic renewal of workflows (22%) 2.

In order to visualize the benefits of these practices, it is essential to adequately measure their results in the daily life of the law firm or department. Key Performance Indicator is an example that can collaborate with this purpose. When used systematically, based on widely accepted and disseminated indicators, it allows to observe qualitatively and quantitatively the progress of a given project.

Legal operations appears, then, to facilitate the new directions of legal management, as a group of multidisciplinary tasks that enables offices and departments to serve their clients more effectively, applying management practices and techniques to the provision of legal services. It is already used to disseminate and consolidate new technologies in legal management, as in initiatives associated with digital signatures, document and contract management, legal analytics and various metrics3.

These transformations depend, however, on an in-depth understanding of the needs of related parties together with the ability to transform them into legal solutions. Therefore, attention is paid to information governance, knowledge management, innovation, projects, flows and people. Equally, it is essential to maintain operational discipline and quantitative rigor to analyze data and indicators and monitor the results achieved by software.

All of these innovations ensure the understanding that there is a permanent requirement to guide legal management by strategic priorities, supported by innovation, in order to increase efficiency, reduce costs and identify new opportunities.

1 SILVA, Alexandre Pacheco da; FABIANI, Emerson Ribeiro; FEFERBAUM, Marina (Coord.). The future of the legal professions: you are prepared. São Paulo: FGV, 2018. Available at: <https://hdl.handle.net/10438/28628>. Accessed on: 19 ago. 2020.

2 ALTMAN WEIL. 2019 Law Firms in transition survey: at Altman Weil flash survey, 2019. Available at: <http: //www.altmanweil.com//dir_docs/resource/28BC6AB5-10E9-418D-AED2-B63 …. Access at: Aug 19 2020.

3 Results verified in a survey with legal departments of 140 corporations, in more than 30 economic sectors and 17 countries. See CLOC. What is legal operations. Available at: <https://cloc.org/>. Accessed on: 19 ago. 2020.

By: Wilson Sales Belchior