Outsourcing low-value legal can boost intrinsic motivation, improve performance and have a positive impact on the overall health of employees.
Removing low-value, repetitive work will undoubtedly have a number of potential benefits for the team; improving morale should lead to increased productivity, higher retention rates and therefore decreased recruitment costs from lower staff turnover. That in turn should lead to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, better performance and a positive impact on the overall health of employees. Coupled with the potential cost and efficiency drivers, that is reason enough to seriously consider reallocating such work. But there are other advantages as well. GCs and Legal COOs are also increasingly concerned with demonstrating the real value they deliver to the business. Taking away the routine and low-value work allows their teams to focus on the high-impact and high-value work. That, almost by definition, is likely to be more interesting and satisfying work. It’s a win-win situation, with better motivated employees delivering higher-value work to the business.
Until now, efficiency, risk management and cost reduction were the driving forces behind GCs and Legal COOs’ interest in legal managed services as a way to outsource low-value, repetitive and routine work. But the survey indicates other potential benefits. The potential boost to employee morale – alongside all the traditional benefits – should make legal managed services an attractive option for any in-house legal team seeking to optimise their legal function.
How EY can help
Legal Managed Services
Legal departments under growing pressure are re-thinking how work is done and by whom. The EY legal managed services team customizes and supports technology and data-driven processes designed to control costs, better mitigate risk, and deliver value to the business.
Read moreWhile large companies have long since been able to outsource low-value and repetitive legal services in this way, smaller fast-growth companies, traditionally, have not. The costing structures of legal managed services – usually a combination of volume and multi-year contracts – have, until now, precluded use by smaller companies.
EY Law decided to address this issue by launching a new service designed to give smaller and mid-market fast-growth companies access to legal managed services and the associated benefits. EY Core Law is designed to give fast-growth companies the benefits of trialing legal managed services without committing to large volumes of work or multi-year contracts.
EY Core Law is a flexible single entry point for routine legal work conducted on a managed service basis. Companies get support with the increasing day-to-day legal tasks that come from growing quickly: from expanding into new markets and jurisdictions, to bringing new people into the business. Services include contract management, regulatory research and corporate governance provided on a managed service basis to maximize efficiency, cost savings and risk management. Clients can mix and match services depending on their legal need at any one time and can choose flexible, transparent and upfront pricing options, from pay-as-you-go to a yearly minimum commitment. This unique offering means everyone benefits – not least the employees whose morale improves as they focus on high-value strategic legal work.
Summary
The pandemic has brought the wellbeing of everyone, including our workforce, into sharp focus. Using legal managed services is not only a way of addressing the drive to reduce costs and improve efficiency, it can also be part of a sustainable people strategy. The legal version of the production assembly line should be something we consign to the past.
