Abstract

Gone are the days when company lawyers were isolated in their ivory tower. In our fast-paced competitive environment, the aspiration of in-house counsels is to go beyond their specialist role and become relevant business advisors aligned with the company strategy and committed in bringing value to the business.

In many corporate functions, performance is measured to ensure that teams contribute to the business objectives and strategy. Incidentally, one can question whether it is appropriate to measure intellectual outcomes such as the results of legal services. Yet, it certainly seems critical for legal departments to under­stand why they need to assess their performance, what should be measured, and how.

Legal KPIs are often defined without sufficient consideration of what they are supposed to demonstrate, and to whom. It is necessary to start from the vision statement of the legal department, thereby identifying the objectives that support this vision, before defining the relevant indicators, which help to monitor the achievement of these objectives. By doing this, the Legal of the future should not measure everything it does, but simply demonstrate to what extent it contributes to business and strategic objectives. The execution of a “program” will actually

C. Pauleau (*)

Radio Frequency Systems (RFS), Nokia, Route de Villejust, Centre de Villarceaux, 91620 Nozay, France

e-mail: christine.pauleau@rfsworld.com

C. Collard • C. Roquilly

EDHEC Business School, 24 Avenue Gustave Delory, CS 50411, F-59057 Roubaix Cedex 1, France

e-mail: christophe.collard@edhec.edu; christophe.roquilly@edhec.edu

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 111

K. Jacob et al. (eds.), Liquid Legal, Management for Professionals,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45868-7_8

help the successful implementation of legal KPIs and ultimately facilitate the transition to running legal departments like real Business Units.

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