Spring-Cleaning Checklist For An Efficient Legal Department

The office is often worse than home with paper (yes, there’s still paper) files collecting dust in the corner, digital files spread among remote storage, digital folders, portable hard drives, and the cloud. Add overflowing email in-boxes, folders and bookmarks to the mix, and who has time to organize their technology and make an efficient legal department?

Spring is a good time to put technology at the top of a cleaning list so you can make an efficient legal department where everything runs smoothly. Here’s a spring-cleaning checklist of items to sort, toss, delete, archive, or keep, along with revisiting organizational procedures that may need a refresh.

• Nomenclature. Revisit the nomenclature of file urls. If the system is old and needs an update, begin with a fresh policy on naming architecture for all files that take up server space.
• Software Status. Work with IT to check the status of any software that has been or is in use in the legal department. Archive and delete installation files that are no longer necessary and take up valuable space on servers.
• Completed Litigation. Archive all completed matter files with the company’s preferred third party for offsite storage or put these important records into a cloud document storage system. Ensure that physical files are not relegated to a filing cabinet! Most of all, legal hold files must be documented and stored in the appropriate, accessible location.

Follow the corporation’s document management policy for approved timing to appropriately discard/shred expired legal files.

• Stored Files Record. Maintain a record of what is stored and the date it was added to the secure cloud folder; add that working list to the cloud repository for easy access.
• Vendors. Corporate legal departments have a long list of vendors they’ve worked with that goes back many years. Perhaps the legal team has a preferred list of vendors they parse out matters to, or perhaps there’s an archived list of previous law firms still stored in the system but are long gone. Manage your vendor program and determine outside counsel performance, productivity, invoicing, legal spend, accruals, and diversity of the team.
• CLM. Use contract lifecycle management to adjust contracts to active, in progress or terminated status. Store all active contracts in a central repository for easy access and reference. Archive all terminated, incomplete or inactive contracts into accessible cloud folders.
• Work Intake. File all inactive work intake requests one folder. Ensure that the legal team moves these completed files into the designated storage folder as a reference for auditing purposes. To manage and streamline incoming work requests, you can utilize the work intake feature which makes the process more efficient.
• Storage Policy. Revisit and update the policy for the length of time that files need to be stored by the legal department to track engagement with finance, human resources or other business units that have worked with legal.
• Inboxes. Is a zero-inbox policy realistic? Apparently, it is possible to sort the inbox into folders that help reduce unnecessary clutter and server overload. Here’s an article on this very topic: Inbox Zero.

Hybrid Workplace?

Hybrid work environments are becoming mandatory with 52% of remote-capable US employees working both from a remote location and in the office several days per week, according to a November 2023 Gallup poll.

For the hybridized workforce, ensure there’s a policy against local disk storage of critical files. With greater mobility and laptop usage in shared cubicles and remote environments (that could be other than a home office connected to the VPN), employees may forget to upload files they’re working with to company servers.

As an enterprise legal management solution, CounselLink+ provides specialized services to optimize the corporate legal department. Talk with one of our experts to develop a spring-cleaning checklist that will also make your department more productive.