Consolidating Legal Technology Starts With Redesigning How Legal Works

As legal departments acquire new disconnected legal technology tools to address immediate needs, the fragmentation of these systems can result in duplicated data and limited visibility. Consolidating legal technology starts with redesigning how your legal department works, writes Michaelle Noble of LawVu.

Consolidation should begin with an audit of the technology landscape, including tools such as spreadsheets, shared drives, and email inboxes. From there, legal ops teams can trace workflows to identify friction points. That diagnosis sets up the central concept that technology should enable the department’s operating model, not define it. 

Noble recommends designing the future operating model around how matters and contracts are managed, what information should be shared, which activities can be automated, and where AI can add value. The goal is a connected legal function rather than an aggregation of individual tools. 

Operational transformation should be phased in. Noble outlines three phases to this transformation: assessment and alignment, configuration and piloting, and expansion and optimization. Governance remains essential, with clear ownership for administration, workflow design, AI governance, reporting, and ongoing improvement.

Deployment alone does not deliver operational transformation, however. Adoption requires executive support, designated change champions, role-based training, and ongoing communication. Success results in less fragmentation, more integrated workflows, and improved visibility. 

While consolidating legal technology starts with redesigning how legal works, it is also an opportunity to rethink how the legal department operates. Bringing disconnected applications together on a unified legal operating system is only part of the process. The greater part is to improve how work comes into legal, how information moves between teams, how decisions are supported, and how the department functions as a strategic business partner.