GC secrets
How GCs lead: 10 key traits
What are the qualities that make for the best leaders in legal departments? Sterling Miller distils his 25 years of GC experience at Marketo, Sabre Corporation and Travelocity.com into this article on the 10 key traits for legal department leadership.
6 things that modern GCs really want
The role of the GC is broader than ever before, and finding reliable, forward thinking external counsel is key to helping GCs optimise their performance. Steven Walker, an experienced GC turned independent consultant, summarises the 6 things that modern GCs are looking for time and again.
Secrets to reducing legal spend
In a survey of FTSE 100 in-house teams, The Lawyer has found that teams are more successful in reducing legal spend by improving their management of external counsel (through panels, negotiating rates with external advisers and implementing billing policies) rather than by using technology.
Legal ops
Innovation ≠ automation
Lucy Bassli, former assistant GC of legal operations and contracting at Microsoft Corp argues that innovation doesn’t equal automation:
“Sometimes it can, but right now, especially for where the legal industry is, there’s a ton of innovation that can happen with just optimizing processes, just rethinking your resource allocation, the who’s doing what type of work, who’s doing which parts of the process.”
Stop “tolerating” old-fashioned law firms
Richard Susskind, author of Tomorrow’s Lawyers, urges in-house lawyers to stop “tolerating” old-fashioned law firms. Legal operations is breaking down traditional ways of working, and with in-house teams coming together to share techniques and content, we are “moving towards an open source concept of legal content”.
Legal tech
How will AI affect the legal profession?
39% of in-house counsel expect that AI will be commonplace in legal work within ten years. Lauri Donahue, Director of Legal Content for LawGeex, provides a helpful primer on using AI in the legal profession. The various legal and ethical implications of AI are also rapidly coming to the fore.
Why legal tech fails: top GC mistakes
Andrew Mellett, CEO of Plexus, a NewLaw provider based in Australia, predicts that many GCs are setting themselves up for frustration and failure when trying to implement legal tech. He explains the top 8 traps that GCs have fallen into.
Design thinking
Comic contracts
Most people don’t read the small print. In a bid to make legal contracts understandable, lawyers are rethinking contract design using mind maps, illustrations and even contracts in comic strip form. Here’s an NDA in 3 pictures.
A fresh approach for lawyers
Design thinking should be a tool for lawyers to better serve clients, argues Helder Santos, a Senior Business Technology Manager. By taking a human-centered approach, which is already popular in many other industries, and using it as a framework for the delivery of legal services, lawyers can think differently about problems and come up with innovative solutions.
Lexoo
How we can help you
An FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2017 winner, we have helped GCs across all sectors including tech, media, telecoms, renewable energy, oil and gas, finance, real estate and retail to vastly reduce their legal spend by building effective, long-lasting relationships with high-quality boutique firms around the world.
Want to find out more about how Lexoo can help your team? Request a demo now.