In-House Legal Tip: Evidence Your Contributions

It is simple, if you cannot produce hard data that speaks to the contributions of your in-house legal team, then your team will very likely be undervalued within your business.  
Old-school in-house leaders will tell you that “the” most important metric of in-house legal team performance is what your internal client thinks. And they are absolutely 100% wrong. Embracing this kind of thinking will ensure that your in-house legal team remains habitually underappreciated. 
Let’s be clear here: Yes, relationships with your internal clients are INCREDIBLY important. This is not in dispute. However, you SHOULD NEVER allow the value of your legal team to be judged solely by what people think of you.  
 
Why do we say this? Well, there are a few good reasons: 
 
1. Your internal supporters may come and go (leave the company, get transferred, etc.).  
2. Your internal client is not actually able to see the full spectrum of value that your legal team creates. 
3. Your legal team relies on you (as the team leader) to ensure the business recognizes its contribution. 
4. By demonstrating the “full value” of your contributions, you can easily and readily increase legal team recognition.  
5. Numerical data is the language of business, and you, like all other departments, should be using it.
 
As such – to succeed as an in-house leader, you need to embrace the role of hard data (in addition to positive internal client commentary) to evidence the contributions that your legal team makes.  
Every chance you get, you need to make your case in the “language of business” i.e. in numbers.  
A good way to ensure that you are not overlooking an opportunity to capture the value of your legal team is to adopt the mantra: 
 
“If the contribution cannot be evidenced in numbers, then it was not made.”  
 
Obviously, not everything can be recorded – but if you ever have to choose between different projects, choose the one that is capable of yielding empirical performance data!

READY TO TRANSFORM YOUR LEGAL TEAM?

Please check out the GLS solutions and know-how resources listed on the right side of this page – they might assist your legal team with the issues explored in this Blog. 

Of course, if you would like discuss your transformation needs – please book a 30 minute FREE CONSULT WITH GLS 

In the interim, here are 7 resources and tools that may assist you as you transform the performance capabilities of your legal team:

1. GLS's Ultimate Guide to Legal Operations: download this HERE, and read it thoroughly and regularly. It is a wonderful transformation companion

2. GLS Transformation Boot Camp: for our free and hugely successful, 10 week long, email-based boot camp on how to effectively transform your legal team you can SIGN UP HERE

3. GLS Knowledge Centre: click HERE to access lots of informative and instructive white papers, blogs and training resources etc. - all focused on helping to improve your legal team's performance

4. GLS Legal Operations Community: join the GLS Legal Operations Community and collaborate with other in-house leaders as they seek to tackle many of the same performance issues that you face, click here to JOIN NOW

5. Visit GLS Connect: visit the GLS CONNECT PAGE and select the information you would like to receive from the GLS Legal Operations Community

6. GLS Legal Team Transformation Plans: mitigate the risks of transformation failure by taking a GLS TRANSFORMATION SUPPORT PLAN 

7. Register: GLS Legal Operations Centre: REGISTER HERE to access the GLS Legal Operations Centre for free and to receive more than US$20,000 worth of legal team performance resources

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