How a global corporate legal team mastered matter management with LawVu

Mastering matter management is critical for corporate legal teams today. To keep up with increasing complexity, global operations, and constant demands for efficiency, legal teams must adopt smarter tools, strategies, and workflows — and that’s exactly what matter management process improvement and technology are designed to help with.

At a recent webinar hosted by the In-house Connect Community, Bob Kanapka, Assistant General Counsel (AGC) at Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), highlighted the critical roles technology and a “legal operations mindset” played in creating a more impactful legal function. He shared how his globally dispersed legal team transformed their operations using LawVu’s matter management solution, advancing from chaotic workflows to streamlined processes, gaining efficiency, visibility, and better integration within the business.

Here is a deeper dive into how the team at Dun & Bradstreet mastered matter management — with key takeaways to help your legal team master matter management too.

Step 1: Identify your needs and gaps

Before implementing any new tool, it’s essential to evaluate where your legal operations stand. Bob’s team began by identifying their biggest challenges and opportunities, which included improving visibility, standardizing workflows, and tracking metrics.

The situation before LawVu:

• The US team used a document management system (DMS) for document storage, but there was no centralized tool for matter management
• Teams in Europe, India, and China operated independently without unified processes or systems
• There was little visibility into total workload or performance across the global team
• Key business goals, such as business continuity and comprehensive reporting, were hard to achieve

Bob emphasized the value of data and visibility for leadership as well: “ Our new General Counsel said he wanted more visibility into the work that was being done, more metrics, and the ability to hopefully use those metrics to establish KPIs and SLAs.”

The importance of an operational mindset for legal leaders 

When asked, the vast majority of webinar attendees said they did not have a formal legal operations role. Bob addressed this, saying that while many legal leaders are not trained legal operations professionals, a “legal operations mindset” is essential for modern legal departments, especially in complex and growing organizations. He explained that while specialists in areas like contracts, litigation, and compliance excel in their fields, the true value of legal operations lies in unifying these disciplines to ensure collaboration and continuity.

Takeaway for legal leaders: 

An internal audit is a good place to start. Where are the bottlenecks and inconsistent workflows? What are the must-haves for improving your legal team’s impact? Once you define your needs, the path to a solution becomes clear.

And to embrace a legal operations role, rely on your problem-solving and interpersonal skills. According to Bob, “You need to be really good at talking to people about what core problems they’re looking to solve and to also think creatively about how technology can be used to solve those problems.”

 

Step 2: Choose the right solution for your team 

When Bob’s team set out to find a dedicated matter management system, they skipped the lengthy RFP process. Instead, they conducted a practical evaluation of a few solutions, including LawVu. They prioritized ease of use, implementation capability, and flexibility for global teams.

Standout features of LawVu that appealed to Bob’s team:

• Intuitive document management and search features (critical for preserving historical knowledge at D&B)
• Easy customization and configuration without the need for heavy IT support
• Seamless email integration for Outlook
• Flexible workflows to support different regions and legal disciplines
• Strong reporting capabilities, including metadata exports for advanced Power BI dashboards

Using these and other LawVu features, Bob and his team were able to quickly optimize these key workflows:

1. IP management and patent pipeline: The team streamlined their intellectual property intake process, moving from offline forms to a more efficient digital solution. This enabled them to track year-over-year volumes and present the patent pipeline by stage, simplifying oversight for technology leaders.
2. Transactional work allocation: For one business unit that relied heavily on outside counsel for transactional work, the team used the software to centralize all legal tasks. This allowed them to evaluate which tasks could be handled in-house and which should remain with external counsel.
3. Litigation progress monitoring: The litigation team implemented task templates to monitor the progress of ongoing cases. This ensured clarity on completed and pending steps, and improved status reporting.

Takeaway for legal leaders: 

Invest in a tool that offers both scalability and flexibility. Your legal team needs a solution that addresses your challenges today and evolves with your future needs without expensive services, specialist skills, or heavy IT involvement.

Step 3: Implement with a plan (and start small) 

The rollout of any new technology can be daunting, but Bob’s team approached implementation systematically. They worked in phases, learning as they went, and tackled the three key workflows (mentioned above) early on — getting benefits and learnings through applied use of matter management software.

Their phased rollout approach: 

• Begin with a small proof of concept (POC) in the US, starting with a single team and a few key workflows that need improvement
• Roll out more widely, bringing on additional use cases and global teams as it makes sense
• Expand usage to business users supported by those teams/involved in the workflows

Tips for successful implementation: 

• Start small to identify early challenges and refine processes before scaling
• Secure senior-level sponsorship to drive adoption
• Engage users in the configuration process to ensure the tool meets their needs and fosters ownership
• Automate repetitive tasks where possible (e.g. intake forms and naming conventions)

“ Our experience in each of these rollouts has given us a lot to make the next rollout better,” Bob said. In addition, he noted that “having buy-in from our General Counsel (GC) and regional leaders was critical for motivating adoption”.

Takeaway for legal leaders: 

Take a phased approach to implementation. Focus on learning and improving before rolling the technology out to larger teams and regions, and ensure that there are champions among business and legal leaders who will reinforce the importance of adoption across the organization.

Step 4: Leverage data and optimize legal operations over time  

One of the biggest challenges for legal teams is becoming more data-driven. Without the right tools, capturing and analyzing meaningful data is nearly impossible.

Bob’s team uses LawVu to achieve better visibility into workloads, matter types, and turnaround times. They now generate insightful Power BI dashboards that help the team manage their workload and help leaders and stakeholders see where time is being spent and where resources are needed.

Key learnings from D&B’s approach: 

• Metrics tracking works best when you keep it simple. For example, Bob’s team transitioned from using a complexity scale (1-10) to a straightforward low/medium/high selection
• Reporting should focus on legal team needs and business alignment. Metrics demonstrating the team’s value, such as matter volumes and high-level time-tracking, can resonate with executives
• Business users appreciate the visibility into legal workflows. LawVu’s business portal allows stakeholders to check the status of their requests, reducing unnecessary back-and-forth

Takeaway for legal leaders: 

Data is invaluable, but it needs to be actionable. Start by defining a few key metrics that align with your business objectives, apply them to improve how your team works and engages with the business, and iterate over time.

Here, Bob details some of the dashboards his team uses to analyze workload:

Step 5: Continuously improve and expand 

Legal technology implementation isn’t a one-and-done project — it’s an ongoing process of refinement and growth. Bob’s team regularly revisit their workflows, categories, and configurations to ensure they remain optimized for current needs.

They’ve also begun exploring additional capabilities like contract and spend management for their workspace. Bob is encouraged about the potential of AI to further enhance knowledge management and contract analytics. “ We’re in the early stages of exploring how to utilize AI, but it’s exciting. By having that foundation in LawVu, we’re ripe to be able to utilize AI features on top of that.”

Takeaway for legal leaders: 

Don’t stop at implementation. Continuously look for ways to refine workflows, expand functionality, and explore emerging technologies like AI.

Real results for D&B’s legal team 

By mastering matter management with LawVu, Bob’s team has achieved real benefits, including:

• Improved efficiency: Repetitive processes are now streamlined and ways of working standardized, freeing up time for strategic work
• Enhanced visibility: Global teams and leadership now have access to consistent information to analyze workload, see work in progress, and understand trends over time
• Better business alignment: Business users have greater insight into legal workflows, improving communication and trust, and the business has continuity with the ability to store data and keep it over time

Bob said: “We are using reports to show the breadth and depth of what the legal team works on — and sometimes you just need stats. If you can tell [the business], they can appreciate why the legal department is the size it is and why we might need more resources. And  having that historical view into the legal work for both legal users and business users has been really well received.”

Final thoughts 

Bob left webinar attendees with two key pieces of advice for mastering matter management in their own organizations:

• Go live, then perfect: No system will be perfect at launch. Use initial experiences to guide ongoing improvements
• Build a network of champions: Engage users during rollout — they’ll become advocates who drive adoption and success.

If your legal team is ready to transform operations, achieve better results, and start leveraging data like never before, consider implementing a matter management solution like LawVu.

Get started today and take the first step toward mastering matter management!