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3 Uncommon Metrics to Evaluate Your Law Department

By George Khoury, Esq. on January 25, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

When companies evaluate their legal departments, generally, the most important metric involves cost: Did the lawyers save the company more money than they cost? However, this metric is incredibly elusive, as litigation/legal exposure is about as far from an exact science as it gets.

In addition to the various dollars and cents metrics that companies have used for years, there are quite a few metrics that go beyond the usual. Below you can read about three less common metrics you can use to evaluate your in house legal team.

1. Are the Lawyers Part of the Team?

It is rather common for in-house attorneys to be assigned to work as part of the "legal team" rather than as part of the business unit their actual work contributes to. However, while some lawyers may prefer to work among other legal professionals, there's very little doubt that assimilating attorneys into the business units can provide a higher quality of legal work product. The attorney will be more connected to the business team their role supports and thus will be able to provide better analysis of relevant issues.

2. Did You Go Viral?

In our modern times of TV on the internet and internet on our TVs, sometimes a legal team just has to go viral to protect their company's IP. And it's not just the singing and dancing lawyers that can aspire to 2 minutes and 15 seconds of YouTube fame; if you can write a great cease and desist, or response, letter, your legal team could actually be creating some excellent corporate good will. Stranger good things have happened.

3. Diversification

On a much more serious note, one metric that legal departments should not fail to review annually is the team's diversity. This metric may not be uncommon, but rather the minorities themselves are uncommon (poorly represented) in corporate law departments. And not just in terms of race, but gender diversity is incredibly important. A recent study explained that same-sex teams simply do not perform as well as teams with both genders.

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