How implementing in-house legal software works
Four steps to implementing the LawVu legal workspace
At LawVu, we’re cognizant that most teams implementing legal technology are doing so alongside an already busy day job.
This is why we’ve made the LawVu legal workspace easy to implement, simple and intuitive to use, and purpose-designed for in-house legal teams. The implementation process is also as linear and simple as possible, with just four steps — initiation, configuration, go live, and success planning.
In this article, Alex Smith, LawVu’s VP of Customer Success, talks about the importance of implementation as part of your LawVu journey, and outlines the four stages of implementation to enable you and your team to get up and running with your legal workspace — and finding value — in the shortest time possible.
Why is the implementation process so important?
There are three key reasons why implementation, when done well, is such an important part of your legal tech journey:
- it delivers value quickly;
- it facilitates adoption by your team so they can enjoy using the platform and drive the change you were seeking when you first invested in new legal technology; and
- it ensures no barriers are blocking you from moving forward through the implementation process and beyond, meaning there’s little or no reliance on the IT team or any decision-makers who could potentially slow down the process.
Let’s look at the four stages of implementing your legal workspace and what’s involved in each part of the process.
Stage One: Initiation
Initiation — or kick-off — is where you meet the dedicated team who will support you on your LawVu journey. It includes:
- clarification of outcomes and objectives
- discussion of the onboarding process
- defining roles and responsibilities
During the first stage of implementation, we work with you to understand the demands and pressures your legal team is facing within the organization. Common challenges include rapid growth and expansion, entering a new territory or region, increased regulation, competition, or compliance, or the ever-present expectation to deliver more, but with fewer resources.
Often, these challenges drive the need for changes in how you operate. Yet, the answer is not simply to have more people; instead, technology is very often an enabler for improvements.
As the implementation project kicks off, having clearly defined roles and responsibilities, such as Project Sponsor, Project Lead, Subject Matter Experts, and IT Contacts can ensure that decisions are made and tasks are completed in an efficient manner. Consistent feedback from the key stakeholders will impact the readiness of the platform and the speed at which you realize first value.
When we have a solid understanding of your team’s challenges, we can better focus the implementation and setup of LawVu to meet your organization’s specific needs.
“LawVu works by listening to customers, understanding their needs, and seeking solutions and resolutions. The team is flexible, responsive, and has great communication, which leads to things getting done quickly.”
Andrew Hay — Head of Operations, Legal & Secretariat, Co-op
Stage Two: Configuration
During the Configuration stage, we:
- configure your LawVu account with content
- clarify preferred ways of working
- complete key user training
- have regular check-in meetings
At this stage of implementation, we work with you to set up desired matter and contract types, fields, and forms to shape how your team interacts with the platform. We want to understand:
- how lawyers will use LawVu daily to record, structure, and track their work;
- what areas of the business are driving work to the legal team;
- how the business users will submit requests to LawVu, self-serve information or contracts, and the workflows around it; and
- how legal operations leaders, general counsels, team leaders, and senior lawyers will access aggregate-level reporting and
- insights to learn how the department operates.
Flexibility in configuring the platform is one of the elements that sets LawVu’s implementation process apart from others.
At LawVu we follow best practice principles and advice, so we can expertly guide you through implementation. Some customers may be going through this process for the first time and look to us for advice on how to set up LawVu. Some want to utilize existing setup templates, and others want to understand more about how other customers have enjoyed success with LawVu.
Conversely, some customers have unique ways of working, and know exactly what they want from LawVu. We often find this is the case with customers with an existing system with more established processes and reporting needs.
One of the great features of LawVu is that the configuration stage takes shape depending on your specific needs. For example:
- Some of our customers like to jump straight into LawVu and begin configuring the platform independently, leaning on the implementation team for advice and direction when needed.
- Others prefer to utilize our planning sheets to get all of their thoughts down in one clean space and then configure LawVu to reflect their needs.
- Starting small and dreaming big is another option for some, who enjoy iterating as they go, gathering feedback from the legal and business users, before settling on the most appropriate design.
It’s also important to assess the resource and capacity you have to dedicate to implementing LawVu. As a legal professional, you’re extremely busy, so we work with you to determine the support you’ll need. As part of the implementation process, we train you on the basic principles of LawVu so that you can iterate and tweak the configurations.
“LawVu had the right balance of customization and ease of use. This meant we could get our team up and running quickly.”
Danielle Mann — Senior Director of Legal and Compliance, Ovid Therapeutics
Account setup and sub-projects
During account setup, we also manage:
- single sign-on enabling the wider organization to log-in and access LawVu easily, safely, and securely;
- data and contract import and migration into LawVu for when you come from other platforms and wish to import historical data found in different solutions and tools across the business, such as emails and folders in Outlook, and documents or contracts in shared networks and personal drives; and
- the setup of integrations with existing tools such as Outlook or Gmail, or with enterprise solutions used by other functions in the business, such as Salesforce, Slack, and MS Teams.
Whenever there is a need, we run more specific projects concurrently with the core configuration of the LawVu platform.
Stage Three: Go live!
The Go Live stage involves:
- user training
- iterative configuration
- regular check-in meetings
- adoption mapping, with user/feature adoption phases (eg. by teams, regions, modules or features)
During the Go Live stage of implementation, we make the final tweaks to the configuration of LawVu, structuring the rollout, communications, and training of user groups to meet your specific needs.
Some of our customers begin with a small subset of internal users, perhaps introducing a single self-service workflow such as generating NDAs. Other customers prefer to rollout LawVu to regions, countries, and territories, while others adopt modules or features of the legal workspace over time and in line with the needs of the business, for example by firstly enabling the business to submit requests before rolling out access to self-serve contracts.
Throughout the implementation process, the LawVu team is on hand to support you through rollout and adoption.
“One thing we liked about LawVu is its intuitiveness. I could just get in there and play around with what we needed to do, and if I needed something, LawVu was there to help.”
Matt Pentz — Assistant Town Attorney, Cary, NC
Stage Four: Success Planning
Success Planning involves:
- iterative configuration
- expanded adoption
- live support
- success reviews
The Success Planning stage sees a transition from working with an implementation services manager to your long-term customer success manager. Your customer success manager works with you to define your long-term outcomes and objectives, and to develop a plan to execute the strategy.
“Having a strong partner relationship with a vendor is just as important as good software – and we have both with LawVu.”
Andrew Hay — Head of Operations, Legal & Secretariat, Co-op
