The overarching rules and standards that govern how legal services must be delivered and aligned with business objectives. The GLP is critical – as it is the source code for the solution that you want managed. If you do not have it – it is difficult to configure all of the CREs in the Managed Legal Services Line to perform – as landing within the safe zone of the GLP is the purpose of the MLS 

A structured review of current contracting or legal workflows to identify inefficiencies, risks, and opportunities for managed service support. This is essential as initially at least – the MLS provider must seamlessly take over what you re currently doing so that the BAU of the MLS process remains. Thereafter you can start improvement. As part of the audit will be benchmarking historic performance invest – critical as the MLS should improve on the existing levels if it is to deliver on the best, faster and cheaper process execution delivery outcome. 

The defined scope, thresholds, and boundaries for when and how managed services will be engaged. The contract parameters is the specifics in terms of what positions must be achieved in relation to a contracting function based MLS. This is vital in order to develop the upgraded assets need to optimise the clients contracting function but also to calibrate and leverage the supplier contract function support tools (eg clause banks, AI contract revies etc)

Selection or onboarding of an external managed legal services vendor to deliver part of the function. This stage is critical phase – and not for the obvious reasons. The future of legal function efficiency is never going to be the costs of the lawyer – lawyers should necessarily  be expensive – so  you need the best human talent. The future of efficiency is how the support tools, when used in conjunction with the high quality legal talent can bring down costs. And using technology to take over processes where expensive talent is not needed at all. The wave of sending important legal work to India where the financial profile is impacted by low labour costs is over. Cost efficiencies is achieved by a flight to quality – a MLS delivered through best in class support assets – high quality expensive lawyers using the most optimised platform. No more India. 

The tailoring of the provider’s service model to fit the company’s contracting and operational requirements. The MLS solution can be as much or as little as the legal team need. At GLS the solution designed is always kept simple and as the MLS case is proven – more features are delivered, and scope can be expanded.  Initially the solution should mirror what is currently being provided and then glide path up to a far better quality solution. And solution design need to take into account dynamic improvements- things are capable of always getting better in the MLS space. 

Establishing performance metrics, benchmarks, and service level agreements to measure value and hold providers accountable. A data based view of existing performance and cost is essential. Without it – how do you have a financial case for MLS in the first place. Sensible process performance diagnostics need to be extracted and then a glide path to new performance levels needs to be achieved. The client legal department needs to understand tha t the higher your SLAs the more expensive your service will be. However, there are optimal level of SLA based performance that represent “world class” legal department performance that will not bend MLS service provides out of place. In the case of SLAs – a limited number of highly qualitative SAL are needed. Not 4000 largely irrelevant SLAs. You do not want SLA measurement inflating the cost of the service. 

A controlled trial of the managed legal service to validate effectiveness before full deployment. This principle is simple but the point to reinstate here is that safe, modular and incremental implementation is one of the 4 corners stones of GLS’s world renowned transformation methodology. Make a song and dance about this. 

Rolling out the managed legal solution at scale across the contracting workflow or business function. GLS has a world renowned methodology around this – safe, incremental, modular and frequent. 

The formal commencement of the managed service provider’s operation under agreed frameworks.

Station– Continuous monitoring of provider performance, outcomes, and business impact against SLAs. MLS is about dynamic adjustment based on data based interpretation of performance. The service is not “set and forget” is requires active management – or what we call “performance management”. We deploy detailed data based diagnostics to ensure optimised service delivery – cover return time, resolution time, client instructing behaviours, document optimisation analysis 

Transitioning work back in-house or to a new provider at the end of a managed service arrangement. AT GLS – what we hand back is always much better than what we took over. The biggest issue we have is that too often our clients do not want us to hand the MLS service back as they are happy for us to continue providing it.