At the start of 2020, in-house legal teams were under more pressure than ever to do more with less: increased regulatory requirements, increased shareholder activism, hiring freezes and pressures to reduce external legal spend. And then the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having navigated teams through a turbulent year, 2021 will see general counsels tasked with operating their in-house legal teams like never before: advising their businesses and organisations in an ever-changing environment, reduced headcount, even more regulatory requirements, increased effort in managing mental wellbeing and remote workforces, and greater scrutiny from shareholders and the public on the way their organisations conduct business.
In this environment, transformation – be it through improved processes, by leveraging technology, or improved ways of working- has become essential for legal teams and law firms to succeed and thrive.
Designing for legal transformation in 2021
To help legal teams design for the future we have created a design thinking workshop and canvas that helps corporate counsel and law firms identify challenges, explore opportunities and design solutions to meet the growing operational demands of the modern legal function.
Lawcadia is experienced in facilitating design sessions with their clients (both in-house legal teams and law firms) and attendees get to experience this first hand.
“The legal team at Virgin Australia found the design thinking workshops with Lawcadia to be invaluable as they helped us to identify and clarify our pain points and then explore new ways to solve problems using technology,” Susan Schneider, General Manager, Legal & Compliance, Virgin Australia.
Watch this practical video with Warwick Walsh, CEO & Founder of Lawcadia, and in less than 13 minutes you will have everything you need to know to get started on running your own design session and develop strategy and plans for 2021.
Note: this was presented at the Lawyers Weekly Corporate Counsel Summit in November 2020.
Design thinking canvas
Having a structure and process is essential to a good design session and we have crafted our own canvas which you can view here. To download a PDF of the canvas simply click on the 1st image below. To access a “sandbox” and have a “play” in the virtual workshop environment, click on the 2nd image.
From designing to planning
Following your design thinking session it is important to take those insights, ideas and solutions and craft them into a strategic plan that capture your objectives, goals, and a more detailed plan about how you are going to deliver.
One of our most popular resources is our our customiseable PowerPoint template that gives you some suggestions on how to pull it all together and present your 2021 Legal Department Plan. Download 2021 Planning Template for Legal Teams.
To get started, you can do-it-yourself
If you are going to do-it-yourself than a great software tool to use is Mural which is a virtual workshop application which is free for the first 30 days.
Or, we can run a design session with you!
We love facilitating design sessions and this is something we routinely do with in-house legal teams and law firms. There are no strings attached, only that we have a limitation on how many we can do given the time involved.