Implementing a unified legal system to streamline legal operations achieving 100% adoption rate
After merging two heritage brands, Greater Bank and Newcastle Permanent Building Society, to form Newcastle Greater Mutual Group (NGM Group) in March 2023, the legal team faced a significant challenge. Fragmented systems, workflows, and cultures created hurdles for integration and a proactive solution was needed to bring everything together.
Enter Alyssa McKay, NGM Group’s newly appointed Legal Operations Specialist. Alyssa relished in the opportunity to research purpose-built legal operations technology, an opportunity Alyssa acknowledges was made possible thanks to the buy-in of General Counsel, Vera Corbett. “Vera has a passion for strategy and operational excellence,” Alyssa explains. “She has always acknowledged and prioritized the role that operational improvements make in not only helping our team better do their jobs but also, enabling us to better serve the business”. Together, Alyssa and Vera made the ultimate decision to onboard LawVu, seeing it as an opportunity to unite their team and address lingering inefficiencies. But success wasn’t just about rolling out a platform – it was bringing the entire business on the journey.
The team’s secret weapon? Interactive, tailored roadshows that transformed perceptions and drove adoption across the organization.
Vera Corbett and Alyssa McKay
“Our previous system wasn’t cutting it,” Alyssa says. “It was clunky and inefficient and kept us stuck working on repetitive, low-value work. I knew there had to be a better way.” Through her extensive research into legal operations tools, Alyssa in consultation with the legal team identified LawVu as the perfect fit. “LawVu stood out – it ticked every box on functionality, ease of use, and the potential to transform how we worked.”
In the first phase of implementing LawVu, the team focused on consolidating all legal work into the one system: the team at NGM Group is made up of 15 lawyers responsible for a large variety of legal requests that come in from across the entire business and so a single repository is crucial for organization and visibility.
LawVu’s matter management capability acts as a single source of truth for all legal requests so that information is quick to find and the team has visibility across others’ work.
“We have 100 percent adoption across the team – they love working in LawVu because it’s designed specifically for in-house legal.”
Once the team’s work was stored and managed in the one system, phase two commenced – a robust strategy to roll out LawVu to the wider business to change the way they engaged with legal.
Securing buy-in for using a new system in a post-merger environment was no small feat. The team understood that to make LawVu successful, the broader business needed to see legal as a partner, not a bottleneck. Which is where the concept of the roadshows came in.
“We didn’t just roll out LawVu and hope for the best. We actively went out to meet the business in their individual locations,” explains Alyssa.
Together with Vera and the team, Alyssa conducted nearly 20 in-person sessions, tailoring each of them to the unique needs of each department. The roadshows not only demonstrated the platform but also served as trust-building exercises. “We wanted to show them that legal wasn’t a hinderance, that we’re here to assist the businesss achieve its objectives,” says Vera.
The roadshows marked a fundamental shift in how the business engaged with legal services. With LawVu’s business portal at the center, all legal requests moved into a single, structured system, ending the reliance on brand-specific legal email inboxes..
“It wasn’t just about selling the idea of LawVu to the business,” Vera explains. “We used the roadshows to reintroduce legal as a function. We showed them how we could align with their strategies and work proactively to help them succeed.”
Business users quickly embraced the intake portal, which offered clear status updates, answers to frequently asked questions, and self-service tools like automated NDAs. “The portal feels personal,” says Alyssa. “This wasn’t about using a one-size-fits-all solution. LawVu’s customization has allowed us to design the experience to meet each sections unique needs.”
The feedback from the business has been extremely positive. For business users, it has meant faster turnarounds and fewer bottlenecks. For legal, when work comes in it’s now triaged and assigned to a lawyer who has capacity. “And we can see this capacity because of LawVu,” says Alyssa.
“Our approach was to be human-first. We wanted people to feel like these changes were for them, not happening to them,” she concludes.
The roadshows didn’t just sell LawVu – they also set the stage for the legal team’s role as strategic partners to the business. The legal and governance team recently combined with the strategy team reporting to the Chief Strategy and Governance Officer. “This means we now have even earlier insight into the strategic initiatives of the business and get upstream of any potential legal risk in a proactive and value-add manner,” says Vera.
Using LawVu’s robust reporting capabilities, Vera is able to gain insights into how her team’s work impacts these business objectives. “We have two particular metrics that management is interested in around the categorization of where we are spending our time: are we spending more time on the higher risk/higher impact matters or the lower risk/lower impact matters, and does the activity align with our strategic objectives? LawVu allows me to review the data instantly to respond to these questions.” This has helped secure credibility and reinforce legal’s role as a proactive, value-adding function.
Alyssa adds that LawVu’s reporting also looks good. “This may seem like a small thing, but as someone who used to have to do it manually, it’s great to now be able to just copy-paste directly into a management report.”
Metrics also enable real-time adjustments. “By tracking how much time we spent on BAU versus complex strategic matters, we identified areas for improvement and innovation,” says Alyssa.
“For example, automating template contracts wasn’t an arbitrary decision – it was informed by the data.”
As the team continues to tap into the potential of insights and reporting, they’re looking to begin tracking quotes received from their external panel against the actual spend. “We’ve got a whole new dataset, so when it comes to reviewing our external panel we can identify who’s met our expectations and who hasn’t, and use that to refine and speed up the process,” explains Alyssa.
For the NGM Group legal team, the roadshows were the linchpin in their legal transformation. The impact of the roadshows have extended beyond immediate adoption. They have set the tone for a more collaborative partnership between legal and the business. “LawVu wasn’t just a technology implementation – it was a cultural shift,” says Vera. The roadshows created an opportunity for legal to step out of their lane and actively connect with every corner of the business.
“LawVu unified more than just our processes – it promoted unification of our business,” says Alyssa. “This was one of the first projects post-merger that brought teams from both heritage brands together, and it showed us what we could achieve as an integrated team.”
Looking ahead, the legal team continues to explore new efficiencies, from advanced reporting to emerging AI capabilities. “It’s an exciting time to be a part of the organization because post-merger, now that we’ve figured out our groove, we’re ready for whatever’s next,” concludes Alyssa.
LawVu isn’t just a tool for NGM Group – it’s become a catalyst for collaboration, demonstrating that when technology and people align, the possibilities are endless.
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