Legal Department Management

Legal Department Management: Overview

Updated January 12, 2025 | Argopoint Consulting

Powerful legal department management approaches bolster value to stakeholders by developing a specific set of actions that establish institutional continuity make the “whole” worth more than the sum of its parts. Corporate legal department management is increasingly complex and includes the management of resources, people (roles, collaboration, structure, incentive, and culture), workflow (systems, processes, strategy), and partnerships (with stakeholders, outside counsel, and other corporate groups).

Using an array of strategies and expertise developed over two decades of working with Fortune 500 corporate legal departments, Argopoint is able to effectively tailor management strategies for corporate legal department leaders.

LEGAL DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT: OBJECTIVES

Both the critical and lower-level tactical decisions of the legal department should align with a high-level legal department management plan that is based on clear objectives. It is imperative that the plan provides both short and long term direction (and boundaries). 

Legal department management encompasses an array of objectives: 

• Legal matter management: The legal department is typically responsible for all legal and legal related external matters such as litigation, employment law, IP law, compliance, M&A, etc. This is a diverse, and often unpredictable portfolio of challenges with complex workflows involving integrated, corporate-wide systems and an increasingly vast array of legal-specific technologies. 

• Service delivery management: The legal department is a service provider to key groups with the company.  Determining service delivery mission, boundaries (scope of service), and models (SLAs, etc.) are key.  Measuring and monitoring effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction is critical.

• Corporate role management: As a non-revenue generator in the company, the department must continually demonstrate how it adds value within the company.  Cost reduction, appropriate reporting, legal-specific KPIs and Metrics, tools and communication are vital.

• Stakeholder management and partnerships: TThe legal department must interact with internal clients and departments, outside counsel, subject matter experts (SMEs), regional and far-flung offices, consultants, technology providers, ALSPs, operations, and government and regulatory bodies. Diverse stakeholders must be managed effectively. 

• C-level management: The general counsel typically reports to the company chief executive. The general counsel has a high degree of accountability and visibility within the organization. Organizational accountability is best optimized using an appropriate legal department strategy and management approach. 

LEGAL DEPARTMENT FUNCTIONS

With 20 years of experience crafting legal department strategy and optimizing corporate legal management, we have driven legal transformation in the following corporate legal departments and legal operations functions: 

• Litigation

• Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, other IP

• Employment and Human Resources

• Real Estate

• Corporate and Securities

• Commercial Law

• Compliance

• Mergers and Acquisitions

• Regulatory Law

• Environmental Law

• Privacy  and Data Security

• Procurement, Purchasing, and Contracting

• E-discovery

• Telecommunications, Media & Internet Law

• Anti-trust

• Governmental Investigations

• Tax

• Tribal Gaming 

• Tribal Government & Tribal Services Law

Understanding where your department is on the roadmap for a legal department, and how progress on that path can be accelerated, is a critical first step.  Argopoint's expertise and knowledge of the best practices and pitfalls of legal change management is why top legal department leaders speak to us first when they want to get started.   Meaningful, sustainable improvements are not easy in the complex in-house legal context - an early conversation with an objective outside expert improves the success rate enormously.