LEGAL
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” – Rudyard Kipling
Storytelling evokes a strong neurological response in people. This is not a particular surprise; humans have been communicating through stories for upwards of 20,000 years – we’re hard-wired to respond to them. Research indicates that stories can cause our brains to produce the stress hormone cortisol, which allows us to focus, while happy endings and humor can create connection and empathy, releasing dopamine. This is why storytelling is such a powerful tool, these responses help create memory, whereas simple stats often produce only glazed eyes.
Telling your legal department story is no different, though making it as interesting as an Elmore Leonard novel can be a challenging task. Here are some tips on figuring out what story you should tell, and ways to go about telling it.
The first step in understanding how to tell your legal department’s story is understanding what the legal department’s stakeholders consider key performance indicators (KPIs). There is often a disconnect between what business leaders want in terms of KPIs and what the legal department considers KPIs. There can also be the question of whether the legal department has the capabilities to provide the KPIs business leadership is looking for. Speaking to each legal department stakeholder is vital to understanding what they want to see from the legal department (and how they want to see it). In those conversations, it’s good to bring suggestions about what KPIs you believe are important to the legal department as well – not all stakeholders will understand how a legal department works and will be looking for recommendations. Once there is a full understanding of what success for the legal department looks like to stakeholders, the legal department can begin to assess how to get that data, whether that means running new reports or putting a system in place that allows them to collect the necessary data.
Creating and distributing client satisfaction surveys to gather feedback about how your internal clients feel about the legal department and its performance accomplishes several things. First, it shows the legal department what they’re doing right and what they can improve on. Often times (and this is not specific to legal departments), if there is no feedback from clients, everyone assumes that they’re doing a great job. Meanwhile, clients may be complaining behind the scenes to others about your department’s performance. These types of survey’s can shed light on the legal department’s blind spots and help them constantly improve.
This also gives the legal department a powerful story to tell. To internal clients, it shows that the legal team cares about what they think, that they are always working to improve service, and that being a partner in the business, and not just a legal advisor, is a priority. To company management, it shows tangible data that the legal department has the support of internal clients and is aware and focused on improving any areas that need work.
The near-miss report – litigation avoided, claims avoided, money saved through legal department activities – tells a story that is seldom heard but is all important for a legal department: all the work the legal department does to avoid problems. It can be easier for in-house legal departments to talk about successful litigation wins than to explain how a heavily negotiated clause in a 2011 contract avoided a loss or lawsuit in 2016. When no problems arise due to diligent work in the legal department, it’s easy for the client to believe that there was no risk to begin with.
Admittedly, this can be difficult to quantify. One approach is to report the costs incurred in previous years or lifetimes of the matters for specific matter types or business units, and the reason for the expenditure. For example, arbitrations can be compared to similar matters that were actually litigated to not only come up with an arbitration strategy, but to provide an ROI on those types of arbitrations compared to litigated matters. Understanding where HR claims are coming from in the company and providing training to those business units can (ideally) yield a decrease in the amount of claims, with a result which can then be quantified in dollars. Some departments also proactively reaching out to those claimants that are threatening lawsuits (like slip and fall) and using soft skills (quickly paying for medical claims, sending flowers) avoid emotional litigation all together. Again, this avoided litigation can be compared to the cost of fully litigated matters to add to the “near miss” story.
Many years ago as a rather green employee, I walked into a meeting where I was to present to executives projections and data on our department. I was excited – I’d found a new way to look at the data that I thought was ingenious and would provide valuable new insight. I sat at my computer and pulled up on the big screen an Excel spreadsheet. It even had pivot tables. I began explaining my brilliant process of sorting and massaging the data. I discussed my assumptions and process for coming up with the numbers as I scrolled down the spreadsheet. Phones began whipping out, eyes started closing, audible sighs were heard. Finally one of them said, “Pat, I trust you know what you’re doing, I just want to see the final results. Do you have this in a graph that we can look at?” Alas, I did not.
While it’s important to know exactly how your stakeholders want to see the data, most of the time they do not want to see how the sausage was made. They want to see the story your trying to tell in pictures and graphs. For busy executive teams, they want to see the most relevant numbers in an easily digestible form. Now, you need the spreadsheet in case they want to drill down, but people don’t remember the spreadsheet, they remember the graphs – they remember the story. So make sure your reporting system, ebilling and matter management or otherwise, has the ability to create these types of powerful story-telling devices.
There is an ongoing trend over the last several years of bringing more work in-house across almost all industries. Why? In-house attorneys are realizing that this is a more cost-effective way to get certain types of legal work done, plain and simple. To do this analysis effectively, a department must track legal spend by matter type over the course of time, know the fully loaded cost of the type of attorney they need to hire in-house, and then get the headcount. Considered a cost center, getting headcount in the legal department isn’t always easy. But if the analysis is presented in story form, it becomes a no-brainer. Imagine, showing a graph to finance that the legal department spent over $400,000k in the last two years on IP litigation, when the fully loaded cost of a new attorney is $220,000k, not to mention that this attorney will be invested in the business and get to know the company in a way that will allow her to be more effective and efficient than any outside law firm attorney, for lower overall cost. This also demonstrates that the legal department is on top of its spending and is always looking for ways to be more cost effective and efficient. Not a bad story to tell.
Storytelling may seem like an old-fashioned tool, evoking images of grandfather telling scary stories around the campfire or going to see Shakespeare. Well, it is, but that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. If data ever persuades alone, it’s because somebody was paying close enough attention to see a story that wasn’t being told. Data is important in decision making, but alone it rarely inspires people to act. Learn to tell your legal department’s story using the data as a tool, and your company may see the department in a whole new light.
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