P2P

15 I L T A N E T . O R G involves new ways to manage legal risks. Working with tech-enabled ALSPs can help provide information into such critical areas as how to generate more valuable insights and identifying what others in the marketplace are doing that the GC's organization isn't. ALSPs can help to answer these questions while offering opportunities to allow lawyers to act more as counselors. That can help change the perception of legal departments and set law firms apart. Deploying the Right Partners and Processes However, challenges remain for law firms and legal departments to fully embrace ALSPs and identify the right technology partners. As the Thomson Reuters "Alternative Legal Service Providers 2021" report found, about half of law firms and corporate law departments still have some doubts about the quality and security of ALSPs, even as they are growing in their acceptance of them. This is why it's so important to find providers who understand the pressures on GCs and work to become better business partners. The right ALSPs will be asking themselves what they aren't doing that they should be doing better. That is why legal teams should be working with ALSPs that aren't just using the right technology—they also need to understand how to improve processes and utilize data in the most optimal way possible. Legal teams should look for tech-enabled ALSPs that are willing to learn what their clients need and want. They should proactively try to determine what clients are trying to accomplish, whether it involves cost, volume, expertise, or other matters. Once they understand the goals and technology, they also need to understand processes. Often, when legal teams decide to embrace new technology, they want to dive in immediately with the hope that new software will immediately solve all kinds of problems. However, that approach rarely works. The new software will either be part of a bad process, or no one at the organization will choose to adopt it. Examining the process from the beginning, understanding where it needs to finish, and then look for the tools that might help facilitate that process or potentially take steps out of it, is critical. Legal teams and their providers need to create a baseline and understand the workflow; what people are doing now; who the clients are today and who they will be in the future; how the work is being packaged; and what kind of communication is taking place. The entire process itself needs to be mapped. This also comes back to the need to understand the client's goals. Once lawyers and their providers understand that, then they can get ahead of whatever the client is trying to accomplish. This involves frequent conversations with clients and a willingness to listen. Any provider that won't engage with client needs and be responsive and flexible will not be the right partner. It's also important to determine how and if the current processes are supporting those goals. Identifying pain points and where those exist are critical in reimagining existing processes and improving those. Legal teams and providers also need to realize what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are in the process in its current state. Some useful KPIs can include the volume of work, the amount of time or the costs involved in capturing or finishing that work, whether it is done by outside counsel, ALSPs, or internal counsel, and client satisfaction. Along with a process roadmap, it's also important to have a technology roadmap—although in some cases, it may be more accurate to think of it as a legal operations roadmap since that includes process. These types of workflow analysis don't need to be complicated. Starting small with a handful of metrics that are important to clients or executives is important. This requires a broader perspective and an awareness among attorneys and providers that the legal perspective isn't the only one, and it's often not

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