Introduction
Agility gets thrown around a lot, whether in marketing, management, or general business practices. Do we really know what it means? Real agility is more than being quick. It is working in ways that reduce friction, keep processes running smoothly, and above all, accurately. It is structure that enables speed not chaos disguised as efficiency. In the legal world, it plays an important role too: agile governance is a thing, but it may not be the first concept people associate to governance.
Governance often feels heavy slow and bound to endless steps. Yet the people most responsible for it, such as General Counsel, board secretaries, and senior legal leaders, need agility more than anyone else. They manage high stakes information, support executive decision making, and coordinate processes that only work when information is reliable and organized.
The question now is, how does agility transcribe into governance? What does it look like and what outcomes can legal leaders expect?
Three signs of agile governance
Better decisions, because information is clear
Clean and structured information is key in all aspects of business. When documents and data live in different places, or worse, just in someone’s mind, the outcome can be catastrophic. Agile governance comes with clear information, this means it is classified, centralized, structured, and organized in a way anyone, even newcomers, can understand.
It sounds obvious, but making it happen can be harder than it seems, especially for organizations with a long historical record but a short track record. Let us take the example of one of the most important and sometimes repetitive tasks: board meeting management.
With a strong board management strategy (role definitions, recurrence, setting priorities…) and the right tool, agility will naturally emerge. Centralized agendas, minutes, resolutions, and secure document sharing mean decisions are based on aligned and verified information. This removes the need to guess which version is final or not, what has been completed or not; in other words, it is easier to prioritize and set goals that ultimately lead to better decisions.
Less manual work and fewer repeated tasks
It has been proven that many legal teams waste hours on low value tasks. Our survey conducted with Above the Law in 2024 showed that nearly ninety percent of attorneys and legal professionals reported that their workday is burdened somewhat, heavily, or almost entirely by administrative tasks that detract from high level legal work.
Spending so much time on tedious tasks will not improve governance agility, but there are different ways to counter this common problem. Once information is structured and clean, it becomes easier to identify which activities are draining time and blocking more strategic work. These tasks are usually very easy to spot. They involve manual reviews, repeated contract approvals, information gathering, or updating documents that nobody enjoys maintaining.
Legal tech eliminates a large portion of this overhead. With contract management for example, automated workflows can route contracts for approval according to internal guidelines without anyone chasing signatures. In board management, automated minute transcripts remove the manual effort of producing these important documents after every meeting. Some tools even send minute recaps automatically to the relevant participants, removing yet another step from the legal team’s plate.
Efficiency is part of the infrastructure by choice, and reducing repetitive work creates space for true agility in governance
Accuracy prevails at all times
In governance, accuracy is not optional, and small inconsistencies can turn into real risks. As mentioned earlier, being agile does not mean speed at all costs. It means being accurate so fast that teams do not need to redo work. Accuracy accelerates everything and even more if it is a constant aspect of your governance data and information.
Once again, it all starts with a strong strategy supported by clean information. Clean information means updates happen in real time and are easy to track. As a result, there is no outdated data slowing teams down or forcing them to double check everything. When information is wrong or incomplete, everything slows to a crawl. When information is correct from the start, decisions move forward without hesitation.
Contract lifecycle tools enforce this accuracy by preventing outdated templates from circulating, ensuring mandatory clauses remain in place, and capturing the right metadata every time. Board portals do the same for governance materials. Accuracy becomes built in, not a favor someone remembers to do when they have time.
In conclusion, the more accurate the information, the more agile the organization.
Agile governance is at your reach
Agility in governance is not a trend or a buzzword, but a practical advantage. It means working with:
The legal function and leadership teams can incorporate agility into their governance practices with these principles. The right tech partner will enhance all the elements above, helping teams make the difference between reacting to problems and staying ahead of them.
Keep in mind, legaltech does not replace governance leadership. It only strengthens it by giving teams the structure that makes accurate, fast and high quality work possible every time.
