End-of-Year Legal Department Reporting

At the end of the year - calendar, financial or both - it is important to take stock of the work done by your Legal Department, to fully understand and evaluate performance and to identify opportunities for the future.

Why?

Readers of this blog may recall that the name 'Xakia' is derived from the persian water wheel, sakia, that creates an efficient flow of water. Like a water wheel, legal work will keep coming (and likely in high volume!), the wheels of business will keep spinning, and for Legal Departments it is important to consider the most efficient way to take the work in, then to triage, assign, prioritize, disseminate and resolve the work. 

As this work volume continues to grow in an expanding regulatory landscape, finding ways to do this efficiently and effectively is critical to both survival, and to supporting your organization's strategic objectives.

Within the context of shifting legal demands, the top three reasons why a Legal Department should run end-of-year reports are:

1. Know where you stand
2. Spot key trends early
3. Stakeholder engagement

Know where you stand

Before you can congratulate, commiserate or improve on the performance of your in-house legal team, the first thing you need to do is take stock of the performance itself, with a structured evaluation against key metrics.

Though you might have a "feel" for how you performed this year, how busy or quiet (haha) it was and how your team is feeling as you round out the year, there is nothing like a well structured data visualization to show that performance and give you a clear indication of where you stand.

Spot key trends early

Even the most stable business will experience shifts in legal work demand and composition, and particularly those navigating changes to a regulatory environment, undergoing extreme growth or a cost out program. Whatever the circumstances of your organization, spotting and actioning those trends as early as possible will allow you to plan, resource and address changes before they happen.

It is essential that you take a moment at the end of a year to look at work volume, composition, spend and resourcing across a full 12 month timeline to help you spot these trends. A simple chart that visualizes key metrics will make this work easy (and should be available out-of-the-box with your legal matter management software).

Stakeholder engagement

It's no secret that Xakia is passionate about making sure that the critical work of a Legal Department, and its contribution to an organization's strategic goals, is made clear through reporting. Demonstrating the value of a Legal Department through a succinct, visual end-of-year report that provides a clear summary of the work done, spend, resourcing and key trends will ensure that your Board, C-Suite and Legal Leadership Team are all clear about the role the Legal Department plays in its organization.

Download: End-of-year Legal Department Reporting

If you would like to generate an end-of-year report for your Legal Department and don't know where to start, download our white paper here.