With Powerful Tools and Methodologies

Much efficiency today is derived from appropriate tools, good knowledge manage­ment, and processes, all of which are even more relevant in a virtual team environ­ment. Numerous legal initiatives and working groups were created within Capgemini’s legal department to enable the sharing of good practices and to seek opportunities for an ongoing, cost-effective improvement of the legal function.

Tools The Capgemini legal department uses a number of tools such as an “Elec­tronic Management System”, a “SharePoint” or a “Contract Management” solution. The decision to invest in a much-needed global Electronic Management System was made years ago to manage and file according to the same taxonomy, the vast amount of documents and information created or received every day within the legal department worldwide. The decision was to customize one of the readily available document management tools for Capgemini’s specific needs. Today, the Electronic Management System is used by the entire legal community, with the persistent goal to improve response time, security, and user experience within the legal department.

As communication and information sharing are critical within a global team, Legal also needed a tool to help local and headquarters’ legal departments to better interact with each other. One of the reasons that led to the creation of the Legal function’s SharePoint was the desire to allow each department (local and headquar­ters) to present its team and share its best practices freely. Such showcasing encourages the teams to see what other departments are doing, and to share knowledge. This tool is also the perfect place to promote initiatives such as the “Legal Practice Groups” and “Legal Initiatives” developed within the legal depart­ment.

Legal Technology Group Technology is not necessarily a natural area for lawyers, but a global department is bound to include team members with a passion for technology. Within the Capgemini legal department, it was proposed that a few team members gather in a dedicated work group (the “Legal Tech Group”). The five-member team, led by a local General Counsel, was mandated to regularly monitor all tools used by the department, and to make recommendations on how to keep them best suited to its needs. As Legal Tech Group members have a good understanding of technology as well as of the legal department’s needs, they can best evaluate tools capable of improving its efficiency. The legal department owns and has access to significant knowledge and data that could be valuable for other functions and should be made available to them through tool interconnection. As a consequence, the Legal Tech Group is also expected to focus on the legal department’s tools interactivity with those of other functions and departments.

Legal Practice Groups Strong expertise is necessary in a global legal department, and knowledge sharing and teamwork must be pushed continually. When budgets are constrained and resources scarce, one must leverage existing expertise and deploy it worldwide. Mapping of resources, capabilities and aspirations is key to locating and leveraging talent. Within the Capgemini legal department, cross­border networks of experts, the “Legal Practice Groups”, were created in 2011 to offer all members worldwide the opportunity to work together and develop their specific skills and expertise. The first Legal Practice Groups focused on subject matter expertise (Labor law, Intellectual Property, and Data Privacy), specific services lines (Financial Services, Cloud, and Outsourcing) or internal processes (Capgemini Group Contracting Principles). As success rests on the interest and desire to learn, participation to Legal Practice Groups is based on the willingness to join a group of lawyers and non-lawyers specialized in certain domains.

Legal Practice Groups' nimbleness helps bridge the resource shortage, as experts may not be available in every geography. Participating in a Legal Practice Group is an excellent opportunity for senior experts to lead the team as Chair or Co-Chair, and for lawyers in small jurisdictions to benefit from a network of specialists outside their own area of expertise and geography. For example, when Capgemini started doing business in a particular geography, it had a limited legal knowledge of the constraints to operate there and no business case for the creation of a dedicated legal department. The creation of a dedicated Legal Practice Group was the occasion to bring together the current and past experience of a number of lawyers who had worked on deals involving such geography, and to develop expertise in a very short time. Not all Legal Practice Groups will last, and some of them can evolve into a specialty, such as the Data Protection Legal Practice Group, which evolved into a network of Data Protection Officers. Innovation stems also from the opening of Legal Practice Groups to experts outside of the legal department when the subject requires Legal to rely on, for example, a specific technical expertise.

These initiatives allow all team members who wish to develop a capability to find the time and place to do so. Thinking outside of the box must be encouraged, and the Capgemini legal department allows its team members to develop ideas that positively contribute to the department, even if these ideas are not necessarily directly linked to their day-to-day assignment.

Webinars In addition to regular global messages, on-boarding sessions, e-learning and local training required for lawyers to maintain their local qualification to the bar, webinars are organized each semester, directed towards the entire legal com­munity.

Legal Forum Every year, the Legal Forum physically gathers for 3 days, all local General Counsels, as well as several of their team members. Legal Forums are a great opportunity to strengthen relationships between the different local Legal teams. Numerous presentations and workshops allow them to share knowledge as well as local innovations or initiatives and increase their legal skills. Moreover, the Legal Forum is an unrivaled occasion to bring team members closer while fostering the spirit of “One Team” within Legal. It is an occasion to ask to Group leaders to present their strategy and expectations for the legal department or to present an innovation or a new service offering.

The right team within the right organization, with clear goals and objectives and powerful methodologies and tools are the first conditions on which Capgemini legal department bases its innovation strategy.

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