Why In-House Teams Need a Dedicated Legal Management System

As organizations grow, so do the complexities of legal workflows—requiring teams to manage an increasing volume of intake requests, compliance obligations, and legal matters. General Counsels (GCs) and Chief Legal Officers (CLOs) are not only responsible for meeting these demands but also for demonstrating their value to the business in concrete, measurable ways.

However, without a dedicated legal management system, in-house legal teams often struggle to maintain visibility into workflows and balance workload distribution effectively. This can lead to inefficiencies that ripple through the organization, from missed deadlines to stalled contract negotiations.  

In this blog, we’ll discuss these challenges in more detail and show how a centralized platform like Checkbox can help legal teams boost efficiency, gain insights, and demonstrate value to leadership.

Problems Legal Teams Face Without a Dedicated System

A dedicated legal management system refers to a comprehensive software solution that centralizes and streamlines legal operations, including matter management and legal intake, to enhance efficiency and productivity for in-house legal departments. Without this system in place, legal professionals must track matters manually—whether through emails, spreadsheets, or disparate systems—which can increase the risk of missed deadlines, communication barriers, and an overwhelming number of unaddressed intake requests.

While this may not be as big of a problem for smaller organizations, this is not a sustainable practice for companies who are experiencing rapid growth and expansion. According to Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2024 Legal Department Operations Index report, 79% of in-house legal departments are facing increasing matter volumes. This highlights the growing pressure on legal teams to do more with less, emphasizing the need for efficient management systems.

What are the main challenges of managing matters manually?

• Disorganized processes

• Email overload

• Missed deadlines

• Lack of visibility into team performance

• Difficulty monitoring case status and progression

• Inefficient prioritization of requests

• Slow response times

• High risk of error and oversight

For GCs and CLOs, these challenges are more than just frustrating—they hinder the legal department’s ability to show its value and can lead to costly mistakes for the business. Leadership increasingly expects legal teams to provide transparent, measurable outcomes, tracking performance and workloads without a dedicated system becomes both time-consuming and error prone.

What Does a Dedicated Legal Management System Offer?  

A dedicated management system for legal teams can transform legal operations by providing a single source of truth for all requests, matters, and performance data. This centralization reduces the chaos of managing workflows through emails or spreadsheets, giving legal teams a streamlined way to oversee and handle all legal matters.  

Key Functions of Dedicated Legal Management System

• Automated Intake: Instead of manually sorting through requests, an AI-powered intake system automatically captures, prioritizes, and assigns incoming matters as they enter, acting as a legal ticketing system for all different types of inquiries. This ensures that high-priority requests are handled first and minimizes the risk of requests being overlooked. And by reducing administrative overhead, legal teams can spend more time on high-value work and less on sorting through emails, spreadsheets, and chat history.

• Matter Management: Centralized matter management provides legal teams with a real-time and comprehensive view of all active cases and their completion time frames. This allows legal professionals to monitor case progress, allocate tasks based on team capacity, and ensure deadlines are met—all in one place. This not only improves efficiency for matter management but also fosters collaboration within the team, as everyone can access up-to-date information at their convenience.

• Data and Reporting: Integrated reporting features track key metrics—such as matter completion rates, workload distribution, and response times—providing clear insights that simplify performance monitoring and data-driven decision-making. Reports that would take hours to compile can instead be generated instantly, enabling GCs and CLOs to show clear value to leadership.

With functions that reduce manual effort, boost visibility, and provide real-time reporting, legal management system software like Checkbox is essential for legal teams. It streamlines operations, makes tracking matters easier, and enables teams to support company goals more effectively.

The Impact of Technology and AI on Legal Teams

In response to growing demands for efficiency gains, in-house legal teams are leveraging technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify and accelerate legal operations. And according to LinkedIn’s Future of Work Report, the rise of AI tools is transforming workflows across industries, allowing professionals to accomplish more with less. Let’s look at some examples:  

1. Automation of Routine Tasks

AI-driven platforms such as Checkbox can handle repetitive tasks like intake, triage, and document generation, freeing up time for legal professionals to focus on higher-value work. By automating these processes, legal teams reduce hours spent on administration, minimize errors, and ensure prompt responses to business needs.

2. Data-Driven Decision-Making

Advanced AI capabilities can automatically capture and sort data to provide in-house legal teams with real-time insights into key metrics—such as response times, workload distribution, and matter status—empowering legal leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions. This is evident in the Future of Work Report on AI which highlights that data-driven tools are becoming more and more essential for monitoring productivity and optimizing resources effectively.

3. Increased Operational Transparency

With a centralized platform for tracking all legal matters, AI-powered management systems such as Checkbox offer greater visibility into workflows and performance metrics. Legal teams can quickly compile reports on key metrics like case status, response times, and departmental contributions, helping GCs and CLOs demonstrate their value to leadership.

Here is a table outlining the key differences between managing intake and matter workflows manually vs. with Checkbox’s platform:

By leveraging technology and AI, legal departments are moving beyond reactive roles and becoming proactive, strategic partners within their organizations. Solutions like Checkbox empower legal teams to operate efficiently, uncover actionable insights, and demonstrate their contributions with data that supports their decisions.

Case Study: Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP)

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), a major multinational bottling company, was looking for a solution to streamline and automate their legal workflows. With a large volume of legal requests and compliance tasks across regions, their in-house legal team needed a more efficient way to handle intake, triage matters, and deliver timely results to the business—all while reducing reliance on manual processes. So, they turned to Checkbox—a dedicated management system for in-house legal teams—to deliver a solution.

• Challenge: Managing complex workflows through emails and spreadsheets created inefficiencies for CCEP’s legal team, limiting their ability to scale or gain real-time visibility into matters.

• Solution: Implementing Checkbox’s AI-powered intake and matter management platform allowed CCEP to automate request intake, prioritize tasks, and access real-time performance metrics.

• Results: Automation and real-time tracking enabled faster responses, reduced manual tasks, and provided data-rich reports that demonstrated the legal team’s impact on organizational goals.

This case underscores the impact a dedicated legal management system like Checkbox can have on in-house teams—enabling them to scale effectively, reduce manual effort, and provide clear, measurable value to the organization.

Why Is Checkbox the Solution?

In-house legal teams face an increasing amount of pressure to manage complex workflows efficiently, provide real-time insights, and demonstrate their value to leadership. Without a management system for legal operations in place, these teams may struggle to maintain visibility, streamline processes, and meet the demands of a growing organization. This is where Checkbox comes in.

Checkbox’s AI-powered intake and matter management platform is purpose-built to address these challenges. By centralizing all legal workflows, automating routine tasks, and providing instant access to performance data, Checkbox empowers legal teams to operate more efficiently, deliver data-driven insights, and clearly demonstrate their positive impact.

Ready to take your legal team’s efficiency to the next level? Schedule a demo today and experience the Checkbox effect.