Paragon Legal reposted this
President & COO of Paragon Legal delivering the best flex talent for your legal team | super annoying about playing pickleball | big fan of dogs | purposefully will have typos in my posts
Legal leaders- budget season is fast approaching! what’s the way to get an FTE approved? Be prepared with data! 1. Do a time audit with your team. It’s simple. Go old school with a piece of paper and a pen. Ask your team to track how they spend their time for a few weeks. Not in 6 minute increments — directionally correct buckets. The hardest part of this very simple thing is to get your team comfortable. They’re going to be uneasy/scared/nervous about this. So get them comfortable. Do it yourself first. Show the results. Explain that the goal is to learn so you can help them. 2. Go through the data. Is your team working on the right stuff? If no, take note of what should be moved down, up, or out. Are the things on their plates taking a reasonable amount of time? If not, take note of areas for training. 3. Determine what is a reasonable capacity for each seat. I don’t care what it is — 40 hours, 50 hours, an output goal, etc— but establish what you believe an average week’s capacity should be that is long-term sustainable. (Some weeks can be more or less, this is average) Now you have the real data. You are powered to make the ask. You’ve also done some work to make sure you’re aligning each role to its capacity. Show that you’re overcapacity, that this is not a reflexive hire. And show that it’s not sustainable. Your team is not able to deliver for the business even if things continue like thsi. Also, attrition is quite expensive (DM me if you want a framework for this). This won’t guarantee you’ll get the headcount, but you’ll put yourself in the best dang position to make the case And you thought I was going to make another case for flex talent 🤗🥳 Reach out if you want to chat through in more detail. #inhousecounsel #legalops
Martin Kuntz
1mo
Data data data. In-house legal needs to start showing the data!!!!!!!
Trista Engel
1mo
Or show what’s not getting done or what could get done better/faster if you had the right bandwidth on your team
Couldn't love this more - data is the key to unlocking $$.
Head of Global Legal Operations – Global Law and Compliance | Certified Public Accountant
1moThis data would be lovely to have, but it’s just not doable in a culture where timekeeping is tabu and the culture is based on trust and business partner general feedback. I’ve found that a much easier way to make the business case (when asking attorneys to keep time would create morale concerns) is to 1. Show what could be brought in house cheaper (if that work is currently outsourced to a law firm) and or 2. Describe what value added work isn’t being done that could be if high volume lower risk work is offloaded; say for example NDA review. There could also be a case made for flex talent or ALSPs when institutional knowledge isn’t required. It’s much harder to make a case for an extra head by trying to show that the current staff is overloaded by keeping time; it’s just not typical to do that in house. Also, many leaders won’t trust the data, as most people want to show how hard they are working and could fudge the hours so that they don’t appear less hardworking than their peers. I subscribe to work smarter, not harder, but the older school culture of in house law depts does not see it that way.