The Hidden Costs of Dispersed Intake & Matter Management

Recently, we ran a survey involving legal operations professionals from industry leaders like Equitable, Panasonic, Baxter and The New York Times, where it revealed a staggering reality: 79% of legal professionals are stuck in unstructured methods for managing legal matters. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a significant friction point that disrupts the entire business. Legal teams waste precious hours navigating disparate systems or engaging in inefficient 1:1 meetings with legal leadership.

Without visibility of tasks and workload in one place, and therefore a single source of truth, these inefficiencies cost the legal department more than just their relationships—they impact the bottom line. From wasted time to human error, working in manual and multiple systems like spreadsheets, Jira, emails, messages and more, is a drain on resources and efficiency. The adoption of a centralized, intake and matter management platform isn’t merely a step forward; it’s a necessity. The cost of inaction far outweighs the investment in a dedicated project management tool for legal.  

1. Understanding the Current Landscape

In many legal departments, having dispersed systems is the norm, with a combination of Jira, spreadsheets, emails and other ad-hoc tools being the preferred method of handing legal matters. While they may seem sufficient for managing different types of legal tasks and projects, they are ill-suited to the complex and time-sensitive nature of legal matters.  

Legal teams often turn to spreadsheets as their initial tool for tracking requests due to their accessibility and ease of use. Jira, another popular project management tool is also used in the interim for an intake and matter management system, as legal looks to their peers in IT in how they manage their work. Although these tools seem ‘workable’ or ‘right for our current legal team size,’ they were not built with the legal department in mind where they are missing critical legal-specific features for matter management, requester communication, collaboration, compliance, and more. Above all, the stand-out pain point lies in their limitations with manual intake, tracking and reporting, which without automation, consequently, creates more work and greater inefficiencies.

The Ineffectiveness of Spreadsheets

• Manual Intake and Triage: Spreadsheets are ineffective for legal matter management because they rely on manual intake, triage, and request assignment. This manual process can lead to errors, delays, and inconsistencies, making it challenging to manage and prioritize matters efficiently. The need for constant manual updates and the risk of delays and misassigning requests further exacerbate these issues.

• Lack of Integration: Spreadsheets operate in isolation, with individuals manually updating them either on time, with delays, or not at all. They are not easily integrated with other tools or systems, making it difficult to achieve a cohesive workflow. Additionally, when the legal team inputs data manually, it leads to inefficiencies and errors that can lead to missed deadlines and other pitfalls.

• Scalability Issues: As the business grows, the volume of legal matters also grows, making spreadsheets unwieldy and difficult to manage in the midst of an influx of legal requests. They lack the scalability needed to handle the increasing complexity of legal operations and the growing business.  

• Data Security Risks: Spreadsheets lack robust security features, making sensitive legal information from the company vulnerable to breaches. Legal departments handle confidential data that must be protected with strict and regulated security measures.

• No Real-time Updates: Spreadsheets lack real-time updates for matter tracking and reporting. Without real-time capabilities, tracking statuses and generating accurate reports become challenging, leading to outdated information, delays in decision-making, and increased risk of errors.

The Ineffectiveness of Jira

• Not Tailored for Legal: Jira is designed for software development and IT project management, not legal. Legal workflows require specific features such as intake, matter management, document tracking and more, which Jira does not provide.

• Complex Configuration: Customizing Jira to fit the needs of a legal department can be complex and time-consuming. Even with customization, it often falls short of delivering the specialized functionalities required for legal.

• User Adoption Challenges: Legal professionals may find Jira's interface and terminology confusing and cumbersome where together with its complex setup, features a steep learning curve, inhibiting onboarding and training.  

• Compliance/Security Measures: Legal matters involve highly sensitive and confidential information, which requires stringent compliance and security measures. Jira does not offer the compliance features to ensure that legal data is handled according to a company’s regulatory standards.

• Third Party Requirements: To stretch Jira’s capabilities to meet the needs of a legal department, extensive use of third-party plugins and robust API access is often required. Even then, these add-ons may not fully address the specialized needs of legal teams, leaving gaps in functionality.

2. Hidden Costs of Multiple Intake and Matter Management Systems

The use of unstructured, dispersed tools in legal operations might appear manageable and cost effective on the surface, but beneath this veneer lie significant hidden costs that manifest in various ways that are ultimately detrimental. From wasted time and inefficiencies to increased errors and reduced overall productivity, there are many factors that can affect the bottom line for not only legal, but the greater company.

Time Wastage

One of the greatest hidden costs of having legal operations work out of dispersed systems is the immense amount of time wasted. Legal professionals often spend an inordinate amount of their day searching for information scattered across emails, spreadsheets and messaging apps like Slack or Teams. This disorganized approach to managing legal matters means that instead of focusing on interesting and strategic legal work, time is lost navigating through multiple platforms to find the necessary data to perform their daily tasks.

• Finding Information: The average legal professional may spend hours each week just locating files and documents across different systems. This not only slows down the workflow but also delays critical legal processes.

• Inefficient Communication: Dispersed systems often lead to inefficient communication that is often siloed. Instead of having streamlined, centralized communication channels, legal professionals end up having countless 1:1 meetings or email threads to gather information, leading to further time loss.

Inconsistencies and Errors

Dispersed systems significantly increase the risk of inconsistencies and errors. When data is entered manually into multiple platforms, the likelihood of mistakes rises. These errors can have severe repercussions, particularly in legal operations where precision is paramount.

• Data Entry Mistakes: Each time data is manually entered into a system, there is a chance for error. When this process is repeated across various platforms, the cumulative effect can be substantial.

• Lack of Real-Time Updates: Dispersed systems often lack the capability to provide real-time updates. This can lead to decisions being made based on outdated or incorrect information, further compounding inefficiencies.

Reduced Productivity

The combined effect of these inefficiency costs leads to a noticeable drop in productivity across the legal department, where legal professionals find themselves bogged down by administrative tasks rather than focusing on work that excites and motivates them.

• Duplicate Work: Dispersed systems can lead to duplicate work as different team members might not be aware of ongoing efforts, leading to redundant tasks and wasted resources.

• Employee Frustration: The inefficiencies and frustrations stemming from disorganized systems can have a detrimental impact on employee morale, leading to potential burnout for lawyers on the team. Frustrated employees are less productive and more likely to make mistakes.

The hidden costs of leveraging dispersed systems in legal operations to manage legal work are extensive and multifaceted. These costs not only affect the efficiency and accuracy of the legal team but also have broader implications for the entire business.

Legal departments urgently need a more efficient, centralized solution to manage their operations effectively. Such a solution would provide the insights and tools necessary for seamless communication with leadership. By developing a clear overview of legal metrics, performance and department value, legal teams can present complex data in a more compelling manner.

3. The Impact on Legal Teams

Beyond mere inefficiencies, using dispersed systems can extend beyond the legal department and impact the greater business strategically and financially. These negative impacts can undermine the effectiveness of legal teams and compromise the overall business strategy, creating more bottlenecks in the long term.

The Solution? A Dedicated Project Management Tool for Legal Teams

The solution to these challenges lies in adopting a dedicated project management tool tailored for legal. Such a tool can centralize data, streamline workflows and provide real-time updates, transforming the way legal teams operate.

• Automated and Flexible Intake: This capability is crucial for not only managing high and growing volumes of requests, but also for meeting the needs of business teams who are in different tools. Legal teams can automatically capture and track all matters, no matter if it’s in email, Slack, Teams—reducing the need for manual data entry, misassignment and unnecessary back-and-forth with requesters. Automatically capture and track requests as they come in and gain a centralized view of their statuses and owners in real-time.

• Centralized Matters and Data: General counsels can spend less time looking in different systems or inefficient 1:1s, and gain a single source of truth. Instead, they can manage and track all legal work in one place, with a comprehensive and up-to-date view of all matters. With this, general counsels can gain the insights and tools to easily communicate and share with leadership by developing a clear overview into legal metrics, performance and department value.  

• Real-Time Updates and Reporting: Legal teams are working strategically no longer reactively by obtaining a tailored view into legal workload and trends for resourcing using real-time, customized reports. General counsels can get automatic reporting and actionable insights relevant to the team’s specific needs for quick identification and monitoring. Additionally, they can leverage visual dashboards to transform previously complex data into one cohesive view for seamless communication with leadership.

The impact of using dispersed tools not designed for legal can have a profound impact on operations, affecting both strategic and financial aspects of the business. By adopting a dedicated legal project management tool, like an in-house matter management software, legal teams can overcome these challenges, enhance their efficiency, and deliver greater value to the organization.  

How Does Checkbox Help?

Checkbox is the intake and matter management platform for General Counsels to manage and track all legal work for a single source of truth. Our AI-powered intake and reporting enables legal teams to gain automatic, real-time tracking all whilst still allowing lawyers to manage their work their own way. Trusted by legal teams from high-growth companies, we’ve helped customers including Pinterest, SAP and Xero spend less time on admin work, and more time growing together with the business.

To see how Checkbox can meet your team's needs, book a call with our legal technology consultants today.

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