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Key functions of a legal team
Practical Law UK Practice Note w-009-3932 (Approx. 5 pages)
Key functions of a legal team
| Maintained • United Kingdom |
If you are new to in-house or are leading a legal team for the first time, this note will help you plan your approach. It explores the most common issues facing legal departments and looks at some of the challenges you will face, what your organisation will expect and hope you can meet those expectations.
A legal team should be at the heart of an organisation and be regarded as a key resource and valued business partner. To achieve this, your team must talk the same language as its clients, understand the business and demonstrate the value of its contribution to the organisation.
Common challenges faced by legal departments
Business, regulatory and political environments are changing rapidly and, as a result, legal departments face a variety of challenges, including:
- Increased competition.
- Uncertainty around longer-term planning and investment.
- Increasing regulation.
- The need to protect your business's brand and reputation.
- Supply chain vulnerability.
- Rapid changes in technology.
- Tightening budgets.
- Rising customer and client expectations.
Many of these factors will define the role of your legal team. Organisations increasingly want their lawyers at the heart of strategic business planning. As well as ensuring compliance, lawyers have a big role to play in achieving business goals and protecting property, brands and reputation. For further information, see Practice note, Legal operations: aligning legal and business strategy.
At its heart, the legal team exists to ensure that accountable decisions are taken at the right level and function in the organisation, and that the individuals making those decisions are suitably informed about the level of legal risk inherent in them. Contracts, advice and training are an in-house lawyer's way of helping the business to keep its legal risks at tolerance. For further information, see Practice note, Delivering contracts, advice and training to the business.
What the legal team does
Your legal team's work is likely to be a combination of:
- Transaction support, including in relation to contracting and compliance.
- Helping the organisation understand legislative and regulatory change that may impact its business model and operations.
- Helping the organisation understand the legislative and regulatory implications of its new projects, products, services and expansion plans.
- Litigation. For example:
- claim and defence work;
- risk assessment
- regulatory investigations; and
- managing the legal consequences of business failures.
- Intellectual property work.
- Managing external counsel and controlling costs (see Practice note, Legal operations: external performance management).
In addition, you may manage risk and help your organisation improve its efficiency by providing early warning and intelligence, and also be involved in formulating its strategy. Good business planning should factor in legal, regulatory and compliance risks, and associated spending.
Exceeding your organisation's expectations
As the leader of an in-house legal team, you should aim to achieve the following three key objectives.
To be at the heart of your organisation
Align your goals with the organisation's aims and focus on what's most important at the expense of unstructured or lower priority activity (see Practice note, Aligning the legal department with a company's strategy, vision and values). Know your organisation, the sector you are working in and the competitive, regulatory and political factors that affect it. Understand what is expected of you by:
- The board (see Practice note, Influencing the board).
- Senior management.
- Key internal clients and external stakeholders (for example, customers, suppliers and regulators).
Make your contribution measurable
Set out what you will do, and the value that it will deliver. Adopt performance management measures that tell your team, and the wider organisation, what you are doing, how much it costs and how it contributes to the organisation’s success. Use metrics that demonstrate this contribution, including in financial terms. For further information, see Practice note, Using KPIs and value-added measurements to demonstrate value.
Demonstrate your value to the organisation
Control spending by managing your own resources and those that affect external partners, particularly external legal providers. Share knowledge to improve planning, risk management, operational efficiency and self-reliance among clients (see Practice note, Knowledge management overview). Be innovative by looking at ways to improve your service and increase value (see Practice note, How to provide customer-centric legal services). Finally, manage relationships with partners, regulators and stakeholders (see Practice note, Communicating effectively: fundamental skills for lawyers).
The Centre for Legal Leadership provides education, coaching, mentoring and related career support services for in-house leaders to get the best performance from themselves and their teams.