'There's an app for that'
When getting a tool to collect data is worth it, and when it isn't
A lot of tools on the market promise reporting:
“You’ll have all this data. Structured, easy, every day!”
Here’s a framework I use to decide when it makes sense to invest in a tool, or when we should gather data manually.
It boils down to this:
what question am I trying to answer with the data? (If no decision will be made with the data, try to not gather it in the first place!)
do I need to answer that question regularly or not?
If it’s a frequently recurring question then a tool may make sense, but if not, you’re better off doing it manually.
Here is an example of each category:
Internal escalations
In-house legal teams are often slowed down by internal escalations. It makes sense to get some data on the most frequent escalation topics, and then see whether you could change a playbook position to remove the need to escalate.
E.g. if you always find your team checking with the GC whether we can offer a data protection indemnity, perhaps a rule in your contract playbook that gives a rule as to when an indemnity can be given will remove a number of those escalations.
Now of course, you may want to check that again on a monthly basis. But you’ll gain most of the value of the exercise the first time. The most frequent offenders will be spotted. So it may not be worth buying a tool and doing it monthly. Maybe checking manually once a year is enough?
To create an overview manually you can either just have a notepad on your desk and for a month tally every time an escalation happens. Or you can go back in your inbox and spend 1 hour tallying that way.
Note: we’re adding an escalation feature to LexPlay (our contract playbook tool) to streamline those escalations, and it’ll also give you data. But I wouldn’t buy the tool just for that data piece!
Allocation of work
An example on the other end of the spectrum relates to allocating work within the team in a fair way. To do that, it’s useful to have a sense of what everyone is working on.
That question may pop up almost daily, so having a dashboard with allocated matters to each team member will likely give you a lot of value.
I’d love to hear any examples you may have of either category!
Thanks for being here,
Daniel