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In corporate law, legal matter management is the primary focus of the in-house lawyer and the legal operations team, helping to streamline workflow, collaboration, performance, and team communication. While lawyers manage the intricacies of cases, they also pay attention to corporate governance as the gatekeepers of corporate integrity and risk mitigation.
That’s why legal matter management is so critical for organizations. It involves all of the tasks, activities, and roles that in-house lawyers must play to appropriately manage and deliver the legal services that the general counsel expects.
Imagine the intricate parts that comprise legal matter management that every lawyer must pay attention to in the corporate legal department:
Requests for legal services come from business units and stakeholders throughout the enterprise. With an enterprise legal management solution, a work intake feature allows company employees to access a form and enter a legal request. These requests queue up in the legal department for attention. At this point, a request may become a matter.
For every matter onboarding, lawyers managing matters in-house must conduct initial client consultations, perform conflict checks, create and sign engagement letters and open the matter in the legal matter management and case management system.
Effective legal matter management requires meticulous due diligence that include gathering facts and conducting investigations, researching relevant laws and precedents and assessing potential risks.
At the heart of legal matter management is robust document handling that encompasses the creation and organization of case files, drafting necessary documents like pleadings and contracts; implementation of version control and tracking; and ensuring secure storage and retrieval of all documents.
Strategic planning is a cornerstone of effective legal matter management. The first step is developing a comprehensive case strategy; creating timelines and setting milestones; and assigning tasks and responsibilities to team members
The review and analysis of documents contribute to the success of discovery and evidence management. E-discovery processes must be accurate to prepare for and conduct depositions.
When and if a legal matter ends up in court, paralegals and lawyers manage court filings, prepare for hearings and trials; and organize and manage exhibits.
Effective legal matter management depends on clear communication such as regular client updates and reports, internal team communications and coordinating with opposing counsel, experts, and others.
Not only is financial management critical for the overall legal department budget, but it is also important for legal matter management. Lawyers must track time and expenses; manage billing and invoicing; and monitor budgets and create financial forecasts.
Maintaining ethical standards is non-negotiable in legal matter management. The legal team must ensure adherence to legal and ethical standards; manage potential conflicts of interest; and safeguard client confidentiality.
To bring a case to a close, billing and collections must be finalized; case files need to be organized and archived, and post-matter reviews, sometimes called postmortems, to glean insights about what worked well, what could be duplicated and what needed to change.
After a case ends, legal matter management continues. The legal team must track important deadlines, statutes of limitations, and stay abreast of changes in relevant laws or regulations
A final step in the matter management cycle involves capturing and sharing insights from cases and maintaining and updating precedent databases.
When the general counsel and legal operations team select a robust enterprise legal management solution, the legal and operations teams collaborate in a streamlined workflow that links applications in a single legal operations hub.
Enterprise legal management software is an integrated solution combining matter management, contract management, financial management tools, vendor management, and analytical reporting capabilities.
This type of software ensures that everyone in the legal department can track matters in synch. Performance of matter results and legal team production can be tracked and analyzed for future planning. Outside counsel performance is also gauged with the vendor management feature of the software.
Moreover, the financial management features offer smart tools to automatically flag invoice errors and correct them. The corrections are based on billing guidelines and rule sets put in place prior to the commencement of a matter. Any legal services providers must conform to the rules and guidelines or risk their invoices being flagged for errors. This type of feature offers cost-savings opportunities for legal operations professionals who often manage the budget.
Ultimately, without enterprise legal software that comprises the features listed above, the legal department would be challenged to deliver accurate reporting to the leadership team, provide streamlined efficiencies to the legal team, or add productivity to the cycle of legal operations.
Selecting the right enterprise legal platform enables all matters and contracts to be stored in one single repository. Matters and contracts link together and are no longer separated. This enables easier search capabilities and time savings. Each matter includes its respective contract, and contract details are easily accessible for anyone searching for contract details.
Essentially, legal matter management improves with a robust and advanced enterprise legal management solution. Learn more about such capabilities with a software demo.