Incorporating Value into the Strategic Planning Process

Excerpt:

A law department should develop a strategic plan to assure that its view of its role and the view held by its clients coincide. A plan also enables a law department to chart out details of that role, what resources it has and what additional resources it would need to fill that role and various other aspects of its position within the company and relative to its mission on behalf of that company.

The department should address the issue of value directly when preparing its strategic plan. Since clients typically view some legal service as more critical and valuable to the company than other legal service, when developing its strategic plan, the department should engage its clients in discussions about how much and what types of value they expect or want to derive from the various types of legal service that the department provides them. Educate those clients about the various elements of value in the service managed and provided by the law department.

Those discussions should also cover the implications of that categorization. For example, a recognition by clients that, when resources are more constrained, high-value legal work will receive a higher priority of attention will serve the department and its clients well over the long haul. That recognition should prevent or reduce clients' frustration in those circumstances.

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