How in-house legal teams can boost efficiency and provide top-notch service by taking charge of legal requests

In the fast-paced world of enterprise business, in-house legal teams juggle overflowing inboxes and a constant stream of legal requests in a variety forms across a plethora of departments and systems. With everyone wanting things done right now, it can be hard to prioritize – let alone assign, track and collaborate across the legal team or with stakeholders.

And with so much legal work locked in personal email, siloed spreadsheets and documents, lack of visibility leads to duplication, missed deadlines and lost matters when lawyers take breaks or leave. It’s a daily challenge to stay ahead, and this is often a source of friction between legal and the wider organization. The result: subpar service, continuity risk, and stress.

With everyone trying to do more with less, the need for efficiency and scalable processes is paramount. Enter LawVu – a secure, all-in-one legal workspace designed specifically to help legal teams tame legal requests, gain insights and effortlessly collaborate with the wider business to boost productivity.

This article explores how managing intake with LawVu empowers legal teams to quickly transform their legal operations and delight stakeholders – eliminating intake pain points to optimize workflows and deliver a more effective service to propel their business forward.

Reducing manual “legal waste” is essential for effective legal teams

We know improving efficiency is the number one priority for corporate legal teams, but the 2024 In-house Legal Technology Report shows that 70% spend more than an hour per day jumping between systems to gain a complete overview of work and to determine priorities, and that high administrative burden and limited resources remain top concerns.

With this in mind, eliminating the legal waste that comes with traditional intake methods (such as searching through emails and systems to gather information, and time spent tracking down answers or updating stakeholders) should be a top priority for modern in-house legal teams. Corporate legal teams commonly experience:

• High volume of requests: Confusion from attempting to manage requests without a centralized system
• Lack of visibility: Difficulty tracking the status, ownership and priority of legal requests
• Inefficient processes: Time wasted going back and forth with a plethora of stakeholder
• Miscommunication: Poor collaboration and silos between legal and other departments
• Perceived as a cost center: Limited data and outside counsel expenses fuel a negative view

Legal requests come from various departments, each with their own tools, personalities and ways of working, adding complexity to expectations and the intake process. For example:

• IT often need contracts negotiated with software vendors
• Sales might need urgent reviews of client agreements while they’re on the road
• HR may use different forms for employee contracts, share options and disputes
• Finance: often need help to draft and review complex funding agreements
• Marketing could require NDAs, advertising approvals or contracts for events

From managing a multitude of legal requests to ensuring compliance and mitigating risks, the in-house lawyer’s job is demanding, and often involves serving a large organization with limited resources. The primary goal is to handle these tasks efficiently while maintaining high standards of accuracy and professionalism. However, manual processes, generic tools and traditional legal technology fall short and slow things down. This leads to bottlenecks, miscommunication, and an exorbitant amount of low-value administration.

Move legal from the department of “no” to the department of “go”

LawVu is purpose-built around the way that legal teams interact with each other and the wider business, with flexible intake to meet a company’s specific needs, speed up and route requests effectively. From a self-service portal to out of the box integrations with email and enterprise business tools, the outcome is always more effective collaboration, faster cycle times, and a consolidated view of all legal work.

The business portal provides a legal front door which reduces email noise and empowers organizations with self-service legal advice, FAQs and reusable templates to accelerate and standardize routine requests such as contracts and NDAs. Real-time status updates, conversations and notifications are time-saving delights, with all the information accessible from a simple interface that everyone loves.

“The business portal gives our business units an easier, more user-friendly system where they know their requests will be seen and not just disappear into a black hole of emails.. This is extremely helpful in getting closer to a self-service model that gives our legal team more time to think.” Matt Brasch – Associate General Counsel, Buckle

LawVu also integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and Teams, Gmail, Salesforce, Slack and other popular enterprise software systems so that businesses can easily create legal requests, routine contracts and engage with the legal team through the tools that they already live in.

The result: By saving valuable time, capturing structured data upfront and gaining control with an automated, intake flow and a centralized, trackable view of all legal work, corporate legal teams can focus on the valuable, interesting work they came in-house to do. Intake with LawVu means:

• Centralized intake: All requests funnel through a single portal, ensuring nothing gets lost
• Easy self-service: taking low-risk, high-volume work away from legal to accelerate workflows without risk or delays
• Instant triage and automation: Assign appropriate work to the right team or individuals and grant appropriate access levels to retain privilege
• Improved collaboration: Effortless visibility and communication between legal and other departments
• Actionable insights: Monitor and report on intake by department (such as; who raised the request, volume and types of requests

“LawVu has helped the business engage with legal more. It’s produced an easy place for the teams to go to, to both ask us questions and give us all of the information that we need to do the work… It is simple to see who is doing what on our team. Work gets completed based on importance and submission order, not just according to who asks the loudest”. Rosanna Biggs – General Counsel, Linktree

How in-house legal teams are using LawVu’s enterprise software integrations to optimize intake and speed up processes

LawVu’s centralized workspace and seamless integrations with the systems your business relies on make improving legal intake fast and simple. It’s easy to start legal requests from your favorite app, with everything legal needs to turn it around efficiently.

There’s a myriad of ways that legal teams connect other systems with LawVu intake to optimize workflows, boost collaboration and ensure one source of truth. Here’s some popular examples to get you started:

• Outlook and Gmail: Ensure all legal requests and files from personal emails are seamlessly captured in your legal workspace. Automatically file and track further correspondence for greater efficiency and organization
• Salesforce: Let Sales stick to their primary tool. They can raise structured legal matter and contract requests and routine contracts based on templates from their Salesforce CRM, with instant visibility into the status of requests without the extra effort of sending an email or logging into another tool
• Slack and Microsoft Teams: Make it easy for your organization to create requests directly from conversation app messages, ensuring that structured legal requests land directly in LawVu. Tailored fields are configured based on request types for effortless collaboration, enhanced productivity and control
• Power Automate: Extend your legal workspace by utilizing LawVu’s connector for Microsoft Power Platform to connect systems and create custom workflows. With over 1000 connectors with platforms such as Airtable, ServiceNow and Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can automate intake processes in HR, procurement, or many other legal interactions
• APIs: For more advanced automations, the LawVu API unlocks endless possibilities for intake and sharing updates with external systems. If you’re concerned about resources or skills, we have a network of legal tech experts who can help.

One source of truth unlocks answers, insights and the full power of AI

You generate a wealth of valuable information and data with every legal workflow, and a centralized system of record is pivotal for harnessing the full power of AI. Once you’ve got your intake under control, you’ll reap the additional benefits of recording and managing all your legal work in one place – such as:

• Analyze patterns: Identify legal request trends and predict future needs
• Optimize workflows: Make efficiency improvements based on historical work and data
• Make better decisions: Provide insights and metrics for legal work and your organization
• Showcase value: Drive strategic discussions and make legal data a business advantage

Your complete legal repository becomes a wealth of data, information and historical work, and you leverage effortless, secure AI across the legal workspace to save time and turn your legal team into a highly productive, insightful business partner.

Getting started with LawVu intake

In-house legal teams in enterprise companies face unique challenges which require efficient operations and total visibility. LawVu offers an intuitive, comprehensive platform which centralizes intake, automates tasks, fosters positive collaboration, and provides valuable analytics. By adopting LawVu, legal teams can enhance their productivity, reduce errors, and ultimately provide better service to their organizations.

If you’re ready to transform your legal intake, optimize and scale your service, explore how LawVu can help. Learn more on the LawVu website then book a personalized demo with a LawVu expert who can answer all your questions.