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Vicky Wells, Operations Director at talent investor and venture capital fund Entrepreneur First, shares how their in-house legal team have embraced the importance of creating value and collaboration across their legal team, as well as the steps they took to do this successfully.

One approach in-house teams use when creating value is the Value Framework. This framework shows the five key activities that organisations should use to truly create value in their business.

Entrepreneur First’s in-house legal team created value across their organisation by identifying multiple stages of inefficiencies in processes, not just within their team but across the organisation, and addressing these challenges head on. Vicky Wells discusses this further in the video below:

How have Entrepreneur First’s in-house legal team added value?

• Saved their organisation hundreds of hours of work
• Improved efficiency across the whole organisation
• Enhanced the previous clunky and dated processes into a smooth and fast route for companies to get funded

What are 5 steps your in-house legal team can take to create value?

1. Align with organisational strategy: The first step that needs to be taken is to align with the organisation’s strategy. This will ensure that you understand where the organisation is headed and what you can do to help it function better.
2. Identify the pain points: Exploring the organisations objectives, identifying obstacles it is faced with and coming up with solutions can be a good way to create value as well as learn more about the organisation.
3. Drive collaboration: With Matrixed project management becoming more common, driving cross collaboration is not only a great way to create value but also encourage open behaviour and showcase the unique view of the legal team across the business.
4. Use metrics: Once you have a plan in place to address the pain points of the business, being able to narrow down on “what” and “why” you want to measure so you can work out the best metrics to use to achieve your goals.
5. Monitor skills and competencies: The requirements of the team will always be shifting and changing so, it is imperative that the organisation is able to monitor this. Being able to stay ahead of the curve and monitor the team for any skills and competency gaps. These can then be fixed either by training or hiring and can be a great way to create value. 

Read: practical guidance on how to create value across your legal team 

Can legal technology help create value?

In-house legal teams have transitioned into high-functioning, commercial-savvy legal assets, there to help propel the business forward. This transition is accelerating – driven by technology. Using legal technology has been proven to increase productivity and create value. This is why we are now seeing a new type of lawyer emerge who demonstrate the following value-creating characteristics:

1. Agility
2. Collaboration
3. Innovation
4. Resilience
5. Growth mindset

To find out more on how your legal team can create value across the whole organisation, download the latest report here.