Digitizing legal functions is a big deal, but one that can be very poorly understood and implemented.
We are witnessing a revolution: the rise of all kinds of standardization and global regulations such as compliance, ESG/RSE, anti-corruption, etc. is having systemic consequences: everything is becoming legal! All behavior is analyzed in terms of compliance; all processed data is called upon to be qualified; all company processes and production lines are evaluated against multiple risk matrices, informed by ad hoc policies and framed by rules.
The organization of the company, its governance, its business models, its financial and extra-financial performance, its impacts of all kinds, the conditions under which decisions are made, and even the handling of the "diversity" of its employees... Everything must be available and auditable.
And this is undoubtedly a fundamental inflection point in the understanding of legal functions and in their organization. Under the influence of these provisions, which systematically require mapping, evaluation, action plans, transparency and auditability, etc., everything becomes data and all data becomes "legal.
This means that legal functions are no longer "expert" functions, which are used as little as possible. These functions become universal functions that irrigate and are irrigated by all dimensions of the company.
In other words, legal functions are becoming "commodities" that are accessible to everyone, everywhere, all the time, at all levels of the organization. In this context, it is urgent to "scale up", both in terms of accessibility and collaboration, and in terms of data collection, processing and reporting capabilities.
In a digital economy where data has become a strategic asset and its control, governance and processing speed have become competitive assets, legal functions 3.0 are sources of a particularly valuable data that will force to rethink the place of the legal department both in terms of information system and positioning in the governance of the company.
This article is an excerpt from the upcoming white paper "Legal and Compliance Functions Facing the Challenges of Sustainable Growth Strategies". To receive it, sign up here