Top tips for scaling your team with tools & tech

Earlier this month, Openli Community had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion on how to scale your legal team using tools and tech.

Our panellist, Linn Alfredsson (Principal Corporate Counsel Western Europe at Microsoft) and Vilde Nondal (Legal Counsel at Cognite) shared which challenges they’ve solved using tools and tech in their respective teams, their learnings, best advice, and which tools they specifically recommend. 

More than that, Linn and Vilde have been kind enough to summarise their top 3 tips for this article. 

Linn Alfredsson - Principal Corporate Counsel Western Europe at Microsoft

• Do your inventory and a proper analysis before purchasing any new tech tools or legal tech products, there may be products/systems/processes in place that are already implemented that the legal department can use. Prioritise from a business perspective what is a “need” to have and what is a “nice” to have. This should be aligned with the core values of your business.
• Ensure that the legal department is an integral part of the business operations. Recent trends show that legal departments are seen and measured on the same basis as other business units. Make sure your legal team works alongside the business to provide the best support and understanding the business needs for any new tools or processes.
• Analyse what type of products are relevant and whether these are scalable with your business model. If not, move on to the next as this will not be scalable long-term.

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Vilde Nondal - Legal Counsel at Cognite

• Start by mapping the team's responsibilities and processes to identify your core improvement areas. Based on this, it will be easier to identify the low-hanging fruits with the biggest potential for impact - the "quick wins". Start with one of these, and prioritise those that will impact and benefit other teams too. This will help you get buy-in from management and allies in the implementation.
• Don't underestimate change management and make it fun. Think outside the box to increase engagement in the company. Spend time with other teams that will be impacted by the new process to understand their challenges and keep a big focus on user experience at every step. Tools and tech should not only make your work more efficient but your colleagues' work too, and this is the message that will enable you to "sell" the process internally.
• There are a lot of great legal tools out there, but many companies are holding back on new investments these days. Sit down with your sourcing or IT team and scan the company's existing software subscriptions to see if some can be used for your purposes. Tools don't have to have the tag "legal" to be useful, and using existing software will require less work with implementation and training. 

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A big thank you to Linn and Vilde for sharing their time and insights with us and thank you to Aušra Mažutavičienė for moderating.