The following are some of the largest problems that a Legal Front Door can address:
- Invisibility: So we have no idea how many legal requests are arriving, what their nature is, and how long it ends up taking to resolve the same.
- Inadequate prioritization: By not having a system in place, the urgent could very easily be forgotten and the low priority requests could consume a lot of precious time.
- Lack of coherence: Members of the legal team may provide dissimilar answers to similar questions leading to confusion and danger.
- Scattered communication: As the requests arrive through various channels (email, chat, meetings) one cannot trace them and keep them under control.
With the introduction of a Legal Front Door, the companies will be structured, quick, and transparent.
The Operation of the Legal Front Door
The central aspect of a Legal Front Door is an easier, less complicated interface often in the form of a web form or even an online portal, where it gives employees the opportunity to post their legal requirements. These are then logged, segregated and allocated on the basis of urgency, subject matter of the case, and availability of the legal staff.
In the background, it may be instead or in addition to automation, templates, workflows of documents, or maybe using AI to direct the correct request to the correct person quicker. However, in the employee point of view, it is just an easy, convenient method to choose to have a chat with legal without bother.
Major Advantages of Legal Front Door
To determine why every growing business should consider a Legal Front Door implementation, the reasons to do so should be separated into bite-sized pieces:
1. Legal Team Efficiency
Legal professionals would not have to be bombarded with random messages, and instead of being pulled into meetings to answer basic questions, they can be left to perform high-value tasks. A Legal Front Door transforms and minimizes the flooding of airports with inbuilt requests creating productivity and minimized noise.
2. More Cross Department Collaboration
When all the people in the company understand where they can turn to get legal advice and get the same experience, it is less difficult to work across functions such as Sales, HR or Procurement with Legal. The result of this is trust in the long term and decreased lags in transaction closings or issue settlements.
3. Statistics and Information
In a centralized system, you will be able to measure important metrics: the number of requests being made, what kind of issues are most frequently requested, the current time it takes to resolve issues and possible areas to optimize processes. This information is useful in decision-making by legal leaders and demonstrating their worth to the business.
4. Reduced Risk
To have a clear framework of legal work that could be audited is a huge value addition in compliance and risk management. A Legal Front Door is used so that there is consistency in legal advice, legal advice is documented and delivered out safely.
5. Scalability
Because your business is going to be more and more successful, legal needs are going to be more and more necessary. A Legal Front Door will offer a solid ground to cope with the rising requests without driving your team and losing every control over the request.
Real-Life: Chaos to Control
Think of a rapidly-growing tech firm that has departments in multiple locations. Contact requests come in as emails, through Slack or even sticky notes, so their legal team can never get bored. They use half of their time just to go through requests in order to determine which ones are urgent.
As soon as they employ a Legal Front Door, everything becomes different. Employees use a short platform to input relevant information on the kind of contract, urgency level, and contacts. The system will automatically send requests to the proper lawyer and legal will be able to monitor everything from a central dashboard.