Today's General Counsel, November 2022

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FEATURE

Creating a World-Class Legal Center of Excellence By TRIPP HEMPHILL “could X process be better and, if so, how?”

WHY DO COES MATTER?

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he legal industry is awakening to the critical need to transform the way it works. The need for cost control, increased productivity, risk mitigation and talent retention has never been higher, as legal teams strive to meet increasing demands on their time while providing valuable legal counsel and being strategic business partners. Successful legal teams leverage the momentum of the past two years to “actively embrace transformative change” for workflow automation, contract management, artificial intelligence for contract analysis, risk assessment, or due diligence, among other things. However, according to Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey, some

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of the biggest hurdles to embracing transformation are tech adoption and change management. How can legal departments help drive change and adoption of meaningful transformation? By embracing the development of the “center of excellence” model.

WHAT IS A CENTER OF EXCELLENCE (COE)? Centers of excellence are common in the world of business, and include teams of cross-functional managers who are empowered to look at and improve the way their business operates. The methodology by which these centers arrive at operational excellence may differ, but the process is largely the same — they ask,

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With a laser focus on making continuous operational improvement, CoEs are a way to encourage creative problem-solving in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment — to manage change strategically. Consequently, CoEs are an important space to consider the benefits of innovation and technology. Departments within businesses can apply the same corporate logic to the continual development and iteration of their own processes to become recognised departments of excellence — guaranteeing efficiency and value. In its 2021 Law Survey, Ernst & Young noted that the use of outsourced CoEs or shared service centers to support legal operations, were, despite the benefits, potentially resource-intensive and cumbersome to manage.

BUILD YOUR OWN COE There are six characteristics of a successful legal CoE that can be applied to in-house legal departments.

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Obtain a mandate from the top A mandate to become a center of excellence is vital in order to give the legal department the authority BACK TO CONTENTS


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