Managing Internal Communications in Your Legal Department

Today’s General Counsel recently interviewed Joan Elizabeth Fox, Manager of U.S. Sales and Operations for Legal Suite. She discussed some of the biggest challenges in-house legal departments face in managing internal communications. She noted that the proliferation of emails is one of the biggest challenges for legal departments. Attorneys have to manage emails to accurately understand where something is in a workflow or an approval flow, bogging down the entire organization. The challenge of emails has become even more intensified because of organizational risk resulting from remote work.

Collaboration apps and other technical solutions can streamline communications and facilitate the management of multiple projects. Fox says that for a legal department, technology needs to be easy to use while enabling the sharing of documents and initiating a chat in the same space. Technology solutions can also help the legal department reach goals like lowering costs, while at the same time benefiting legal staff and reducing burnout. “That’s where you need an architected platform,” says Fox. “Ideally, you’d want a system designed by a lawyer for lawyers. You should be asking, what in this system is helping me immediately provide legal advice to my internal client? Can internal clients communicate without legal being aware? Is there a system tracking activity history, not only for legal department users but for internal clients as well?”