Legal departments have always faced a common challenge, regardless of industry. Legal work distribution is one of those enduring issues that continues to follow teams, and it’s no surprise. These professionals are highly in demand, yet resources often fail to match that demand. While many in-house teams rely on external counsel to address this gap, the real question remains: is your legal work distributed efficiently within your team?
When legal tasks are allocated thoughtfully and supported by the right technology, teams can gain greater autonomy and respond more effectively to workload pressures. Let’s dive into the topic and explore how to overcome the legal work distribution challenge.
Dangers and Obstacles of Legal Work Distribution
Legal work distribution is more than assigning tasks equally to all team members. In fact, we must talk about equity in this context, because yes, not all projects are equal and have the same requirements. When thinking about uneven work allocation, team leads in charge must keep this factor in mind.
When work isn’t distributed fairly, the consequences don’t take long to install, it can lead to:
An efficient distribution ensures legal professionals focus on high-value work while maximizing the use of in-house expertise. The picture is clear, but the question now is, what causes such poor work distribution?
Common Obstacles to Efficiency
There are some general common denominators to poor work distribution. We can break them down to four.
1. Lack of Visibility
Visibility and not any kind of visibility, but GOOD visibility over projects and ownership is the staple of success. More often than not, team members tend to miss information, or struggle finding documentation that can be valuable for their projects. Without a clear overview of who does what, managers and sometimes team members themselves end up overloading colleagues while underutilizing others.
2. Limited Progress Tracking
This challenge is particularly present for team lacking automated processes. Without a proper system to track progress it’s difficult to assess what is urgent and what isn’t. Ultimately, not only teams can get frustrated feeling their contributions aren’t speeding matters, but it can carry real financial stress over the business. For instance, when a deadline isn’t met, or a document wasn’t sent on time as proof regarding a matter.
3. Bad Work Delegation
Without structured allocation, assignments often happen reactively rather than strategically.
This creates overlap, leaves key responsibilities unattended, and increases the risk of burnout for certain team members while others remain underutilized. Without clear delegation processes, managers lose visibility into accountability, and teams waste time re-clarifying ownership rather than moving projects forward. Ultimately, poor delegation slows execution and erodes trust within the group.
4. Over-dependence on External Counsel
Routine matters are frequently outsourced, even though they could be resolved in-house with better organization.
These obstacles make it difficult for teams to operate at full capacity and to demonstrate their value within the business. Luckily, there are ways to solve both problems as long as the right tool is implemented.
How a to Overcome the Challenge
A robust matter management solution can answer all the issues above. Why so? Because it allows for a centralized, unified global view of open matters and projects. A good tool will enable tasks and project allocation, whilst allowing the necessary parties access to view progress and bottlenecks.
The Impact of Matter Management
With matter management, legal teams gain:
These core features of matter management drive real benefits for both managers and in-house legal teams.
The Benefits of Smarter Work Distribution
Legal teams tend to see benefits ranging from reduced legal spend to improved efficiency. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of those benefits:
1. Reduced Legal Spend
By reducing the number of routine legal tasks outsourced, organizations can significantly cut external fees. As a result, legal leaders can demonstrate a clear ROI on the tool or use this argument to persuade stakeholders to adopt the change. Some success stories even project savings of more than $15 million through effective matter management.
2. Boost on Team Morale
Thanks to a fairer distributed workload, employees will feel more engaged and valued. This lowers the risk of burnout and strengthens overall teamwork.
3. Improved Efficiency
A well-organized team responds faster to business needs. Internal legal experts can work more efficiently without compromising quality or compliance, thanks to automation and a transparent overview of ongoing matters. This approach significantly reduces the time spent searching for documents or even identifying the right stakeholder to resolve bottlenecks.
4. Strategy-First Mindset
The right tool provides teams with clear dashboards and granular access rights, enabling leaders to ensure high-value matters receive the attention they deserve. This creates room to focus on strategic projects while reprioritizing routine tasks more effectively.
A Smarter Path to Legal Work Distribution
The question to ask is simple: does your current approach to legal work distribution empower your team, or does it hold them back? If you have the feeling the answer is the latter, it may be the right time to evaluate how matter management solutions could help your department work smarter.
Ultimately, adopting a matter management solution to balance legal work fairly, will have a positive impact on the business and the team. By showing cost saving opportunities, and efficiency gains, the legal team gets one step closer to demonstrating its strategic value. This reinforces their position as partners more than task executers.
