Identify the who and the how: Identify key stakeholders
in the legal processes and their roles. Map out a typical workflow to understand how various departments — such as real estate, construction, finance and legal — contribute and when they should be integrated.
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Don’t forget governance: Outline your internal document approval processes and decide how to integrate your service provider into these processes. Determine your level of involvement in the ongoing management of the outsourced tasks. If you prefer a less active role, establish clear standing instructions for the external counsel.
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Inventory and update your resources: Evaluate your existing resources, such as templates, guidelines, proforma schedules, and approval forms, to determine how they can be adapted for external use. This may be a good time to update documents. Ensure your information is stored and organized in a way that is easy to share with third parties.
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Scope your outsourcing:
Identify what aspects of your legal operations should be outsourced. You might consider delegating routine tasks — like assignments and changes of control — that are part of a single workstream and consume significant time but offer low strategic value. Alternatively, consider outsourcing all legal tasks within a specific geographical region. By identifying these tasks, you can start to define next steps.
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Assess your needs and determine your budget: Identify the scale of services you require. How many files per week? Per year? Of what type? What are your current annual legal expenses for these tasks? What is your budget for outsourcing? By consolidating your legal spending and optimizing processes, outsourcing to specialized providers should yield cost savings.
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