Early in the summer, The Lawyer summarised the results of a report by Axiom, highlighting the pressure being placed on General Counsel and in-house legal teams. At first glance, the ask seems reasonable: evolve from business partners to strategic leaders. However, the article also pointed out that the backdrop of this request includes:

• 95% of GCs feeling they lack the staff and skills necessary to accomplish everyday tasks;
• 87% anticipating a hiring freeze;
• A staggering 96% experiencing a slashing of external supplier budgets.

This changes things somewhat, and conjures images of a legal Sisyphus, perpetually trying to roll his boulder (bundle) of legal work up a never-ending, increasingly steep hill. So how can you break this cycle and finally crest the hill?

1. Map your demand: Data is key

When facing hiring freezes and budget challenges, trying to justify new hires can seem futile. However, as with any good business case, incorporating data can significantly strengthen your position.

Mapping the demand being placed on your team is a great place to start. If you have a matter intake and/or management system, great! You probably have the means to pull some reporting on your team’s workload. If not, no problem. More manual approaches like surveys, time-boxed time-recording exercises (not to everybody’s taste), or even user diaries can be just as effective in painting a picture of your team's activities.

Once you have this data, some analysis should be able to help you identify areas of high demand, and potentially, insufficient staffing. Adding potential risks to work areas (for example missed deadlines, lost revenue, or regulatory fines), can really help you to tell a data-driven story showcasing the impact of understaffing. This is much more compelling than an anecdotal “we are understaffed”.

Interested in hearing about how this can work? We have a great client story.

2. Quantify your skills: Understanding your skill gaps

Another step you can take – which perfectly complements demand mapping – is mapping your skills. In essence, this means:

1. Identifying the skills needed for your team to respond to the demand being placed on it. This might include technical knowledge in specific areas, like industry regulations or contracts, but also ‘softer skills’ (as much as we dislike using that term) like negotiation and stakeholder management.
2. Assessing the level of those skills in each person across your team.

At the end of the process, you will not only have a great insight into where your in-house skills are strong, but more importantly, where you may have skill gaps, and need to develop internal expertise or rely less on external resources.

How might this work in practice? Let’s say you are in a scenario where:

• headcount reduction and external spend cuts are being mandated (very likely according to the Axiom report);
• demand data from surveys you ran showing industry regulatory are taking up more time quarter-on-quarter;
• industry regulatory expertise is a complete skill gap in-house, which it turns out you've been relying on law firms to fill.

Presenting this data again transforms your position from anecdotal warnings against the risk of cuts, to a quantified risk that requires mitigation through either external spending or increasing headcount. Not only does this help tackle your immediate problem, but the positioning and data-driven approach helps position the Legal function as a strategic leader.

If this is something you are interested but don’t know where to start, Norton Rose Fulbright’s Legal Operations Consulting practice offers a fixed-fee, end-to-end skills mapping exercise.

3. Making do with what you have: Resourcefulness is essential

However good your data is, tight budgets will always limit your ability to invest in improvements like process overhauls, outsourcing projects, or new technology. So, you need to be resourceful:

• Pinpoint requirements: Start by identifying areas causing you problems, and what you need to fix them. Demand data can help here, but sometimes anecdotal feedback can be a good enough starting point. Maybe, for example, your team feels they spend excessive time on back-and-forth with the business negotiating sales contracts. Speak to the team and understand what they need to improve it. In the best-case scenario, maybe there is a quick-win there that will resolve things immediately (e.g. communications, a training session). In other scenarios, having a clear list of requirements, (e.g. automated assignment of contract review requests), will position you well when you need to identify solutions, which leads us nicely onto...
• Make friends with your IT team: Collaboration with IT is crucial. They have visibility on existing tools within the organisation, and how they might meet your requirements (see above). In an environment where spending is limited, a request for additional licenses for existing software is much more palatable and realistic. Building a good relationship with your IT team, and learning to speak their language, makes this process much easier.
• Start small and build momentum: It’s fair to say we’ve established that time and resource are tight. In this sort of environment, large, long-term projects often fall down the pecking order quickly and run out of steam. Instead, if you want to make a change, start with a small team or even a single individual. Expand iteratively and crucially, don't hesitate to abandon something early if it doesn’t go as planned. This not only saves you from investing too much precious time, but allows you to learn as you go and build momentum gradually, rather than losing it altogether.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the current climate is challenging. Demands will not lessen, and the hurdles will remain. However the above steps will help you get the ball (or should I say boulder) rolling, and crest the hill as a strategic enabler to your organisation.