The modern General Counsel is equal parts lawyer and business executive, striving to manage the law department in ways that create value and strategic advantage for the company instead of operating primarily as a cost center. This poses a serious challenge for most GCs however, as many have only enough time and energy to focus on short- to mid-range planning.

Elevate helps GCs map the future and then chart a course to get there from the present. Collectively, the members of the Elevate team have helped over 80 corporations to design, implement and manage legal operations, including some of the most innovative and award-winning solutions in the legal industry. We bring this experience to bear in advising law department leaders on big-picture planning, including strategic goal-setting and priorities, operational innovation, technology strategy, and management information systems that ensure the ability to “measure what you manage.”

With assistance and guidance from Elevate, General Counsel can build best-in-class law departments with more forward-looking strategies.

Law Departments are under pressure to do more with less, but how exactly are they doing it? What strategies are most effective for controlling legal spend while improving legal results and building more efficient internal and external legal service delivery models? Elevate helps law departments answer these questions based on their specific operational goals.

The Elevate Legal Operations consulting team has over 20 years of combined law department operations experience helping General Counsel and Law Department Operations Managers achieve operational success. We provide innovative, cost-effective solutions for reducing total legal spend, increasing legal staff efficiency and driving more favorable legal outcomes. We help law departments use technology and build information-driven operations that run smarter and do more with less.

Elevate Support Services

In addition to providing operational consulting, Elevate’s global team also provides a full range of legal and other support services, including:

For many years, the Lean approach has helped the business world increase the value of its work product and streamline processes to reduce waste. Now, corporate law departments have begun to take advantage of the same Lean principles to do more with less and accelerate delivery without sacrificing quality. The result is a heightened focus on the value provided to – and perceived by – business peers and end users.

Lean provides proven, specific techniques that can be used to:

• Help diagnose the root causes of complex problems
• Quickly address issues with corrective actions through rapid improvement events
• Improve culture overall, fostering an environment of collaboration, engaged leadership, and empowered front-line staff

Elevate’s Lean team helps our clients learn, master, and apply Lean methodologies in the context of the legal world. We bring Lean best practices to wide range of areas, such as contract services, due diligence, litigation support, legal billing and legal operations.

Real-world examples of Lean improvements include:

• Removing bottlenecks, such as redesigning contract approval processes
• Reducing errors, such as tracking compliance data more accurately
• Reducing complexity, such as end-to-end improvement of M&A matter processing
• Updating systems, such as transitioning from paper to electronic signatures
• Increasing visibility, such as improving utilization reporting
• Removing waste, such as streamlining administrative support functions in legal