Revolutionising legal processes

20 July 2023

The legal industry is one of the oldest professions operating today, but how can it leverage technology to improve productivity? The Link spoke with Kira Unger, CEO and Co-founder of SCC member company PocketLaw about how companies can optimise their workflow, through what they call “Lean Legal”. “I firmly believe it is crucial to pay attention to your legal processes in order to be able to improve and remove anything that might be blocking your ability to grow.”

PocketLaw has since its establishment back in 2018, continued its international expansion at a rapid pace to facilitate businesses’ legal processes. “We believe that having control of your legals, frees up resources, and can unlock all your business’ potential,” says Kira. She explains that legal touches on most aspects of the business, from engagement of customers, suppliers, and staff, to dealing with company admin and compliance. 

Revolutionising legal processes
To help businesses get on top of their legal processes, PocketLaw recently introduced its new framework, “Lean Legal”, that is set to revolutionise how businesses approach their day-to-day legal challenges. “Lean Legal aims to encourage a more strategic and data-driven way of optimising legal processes and to grow smarter.” 

Necessary measurements 
According to Kira, the time has come for legal functions to measure and follow-up on their performance, the same way any other business department would. “Sales have targets and KPIs, and so do marketing, customer success, and product – so why don’t we have similar targets when it comes to legal?” 

Without measurements like these, organisations risk failing to understand and identify which areas they need to improve. “By breaking down challenges and establishing clear expectations, including acceptable risk appetite, transparency and improvements will be inevitable.” This will, according to Kira, allow businesses to gain control while scaling, and thereby advancing growth. 

Legal – a facilitator of business and growth
“Legal is often seen as the bottleneck or ‘red tape’ of the company, instead of the facilitator of business and growth.” Kira believes it is crucial to pay close attention to a company’s legal process, to be able to improve it. “With our legal management platform, you are able to streamline legal processes to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and achieve better outcomes faster.”

Through Lean Legal’s data-driven approach, businesses can extract insights and use them to develop strategies going forward. “The cycle promotes the use of data obtained from legal, just like any other department, to align and support business goals as well as the long-term vision of the company.”

Legal thresholds when entering the UK market
When Swedish businesses expand to the UK, they are entering a different legal landscape, but according to Kira, the legal thresholds aren’t overwhelmingly many. “The legal content looks different in the UK, but you will have the same challenges as in Sweden when growing your business.” 

This includes keeping control of legal documents, implementing an appropriate standard in terms of employment contracts, GDPR and compliance as well as corporate matters. “Even if the legal content needs to be adapted to local regulations, the overall workflows are the same and companies can benefit from implementing scalable and uniformed processes.”

Growing in the UK
Since its UK launch in 2021, PocketLaw has grown its team to 15 full-time employees, with plans to expand even further. Today, 25% of its customers are based in the UK, and Kira is looking forward to continuing the expansion journey. Pocketlaw has once again proven that the platform is well-suited to businesses in every market with its successful launch in Germany in March 2023.  “Our ambition is to keep expanding and become a global company that helps organisations across the world to work smarter and better with legal.”