NewLaw – OldLaw: what’s behind these buzzwords?

In essence, ‘NewLaw’ refers to legal solutions that support corporate legal departments in order to propel them to the next level. They do this by integrating three critical components in new, innovative ways: People, Processes and Technologies. NewLaw is about using new ways to deliver legal services, embracing technology and focusing on processes. Initial discussion about NewLaw should always cover the following aspects:

• Strategy: what is the legal department’s multi-year strategy and vision? What are its strategic priorities?
• Governance: what are the respective roles and responsibilities, the organisational framework and the job and task descriptions?
• Operations: what is the target operating model of the legal department? How is ‘success’ measured?
• Transformation: is there a cost-based transformation plan to increase overall performance, innovation readiness, stakeholder demands and client satisfaction?
• Processes: are processes documented? Where does it make sense to automate specific processes or outsource them to alternative legal providers?
• Benchmarking: how is the in-house legal department performing compared to its peers?

Once these basic questions are answered, a more detailed analysis can be conducted with regard to the ‘NewLaw Readiness’ of a corporate legal department. Based on our experience, we have developed the following checklist to help with this analysis:

• DOING THE RIGHT WORK
  • Eliminating superfluous working steps: assessing whether certain steps are truly necessary and beneficial.
  • Optimising self-service: process optimisation to reduce the time spent on less profitable activities and to provide optimised self-service legal services
  • Evaluating the organisational set-up: eliminating potential additional workload through new blueprints
  • Changing policies and procedures to reduce demand: standardisation of processes and approaches for the involvement of legal services to minimise time spent and improve impact.
  • Reducing non-labour-related expenses: provider consolidation, tariff reduction and strategic sourcing (including alternative service providers/managed legal services) to achieve overall savings.
• THE RIGHT WAY:
  • Standardisation and simplification: standardisation of routine or time-consuming activities to focus on relevant high-value, high-risk activities
  • De-layer and de-level: reducing the number of layers to minimise the organisation’s administrative workload.
  • Digitalisation and automation: digital platforms, workflow tools and automation can increase efficiency and significantly improve quality, risk management and information management.
• IN THE RIGHT PLACE:        
  • Optimisation model for task allocation: adaptation of the model with core tasks in Switzerland and nearshoring solutions abroad
  • Identifying local cost-cutting potential: sourcing topics as well as process and technology improvements to reduce costs and improve performance of standard tasks.

The above aspects should not be looked at in isolation. A well-functioning, corporate legal department is like a mechanical Swiss watch: all parts need to work together in sync.

For more information about NewLaw, please feel free to visit our website or contact one of our team members.

Contact us

Feel free to contact us if you’d like to talk about the specific challenges you face and how we might help you overcome them.

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