Elizabeth Bourlet

This key contracts risk management guide identifies five key priorities in relation to contract management and concentrates on the activities which need to be undertaken after a contract has been awarded and the service provision has commenced. It includes a series of mini action lists that suggest action points for each priority area, encourage you to record your organisation’s current level of compliance and signpost relevant Precedents in LexisNexis®.

This Practice Note is designed to assist you to devise suitable performance measurement metrics to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of your contract management framework and process.

This Practice note provides suggestions as to how to conduct an audit of contract management processes together with an indication of the topics you should investigate during your audit.

This Practice Note is intended for in-house lawyers of commercial organisations based in the UK. It aims to help you to understand what is meant by legal risk and the different types of legal risk and provides practical guidance on how to manage legal risk.

This Practice Note discusses ways for the legal department to manage contracts, the challenges of legal contract management, and why it is important for the legal department to develop and implement a contract management process. It covers developing and implementing a process and the extent to which technology can make legal contract management easier.

This Practice Note suggests some strategic ideas you could adopt to ensure that your human resources are aligned to provide efficient and high-quality legal services at the appropriate cost.

This Practice Note considers some fundamental areas of knowledge that your legal department should manage: regulatory compliance, contract compliance, organisational risk and compliance monitoring, together with how to ensure such knowledge remains accessible to emerging working methods.

This Practice Note suggests some practical ways in which you could measure a legal department’s performance and demonstrate how the legal department contributes value to your organisation.

This Practice Note defines the term ‘legal operations’ and explains the scope of the term.

This Practice Note suggests some initiatives to help in-house teams to understand the broader business goals of your organisation and to deliver legal services in alignment with them.

This Practice Note suggests some methods you could consider to demonstrate the value that increased use of appropriate technology in an in-house legal team could provide to your organisation.

This Precedent Contract audit meeting with director/head of function—agenda will enable you to ensure all the important topics you need to discuss with each of the organisation’s directors/heads of functions are covered. It is designed to enable you to capture as much information as possible to assist you to understand all the different procurement processes used in your organisation, understand the ways in which contracts are managed across your organisation, understand how the legal department can best support your organisation’s contract management processes, and enable the legal department to create an effective legal process to support your organisation’s contract management process.

This Precedent Contract audit process meeting with line manager—agenda will enable you to ensure all the important topics you need to discuss with your line manager are covered. It is designed to assist you to agree: the best method of conducting the audit, how your line manager can best support you, timescales for the audit, any further support needed, the means of communication of the findings of the audit and of the resulting legal contract management process, the need for a recurring review of contract management processes, and the most appropriate way for the legal department to create an effective legal process to support the organisation’s contract management process.

This step plan suggests some tasks you could consider to demonstrate and document that your department is managed in a financially rigorous manner and that it contributes value to your organisation.

This Precedent allows you to document tasks to ensure that your human resources are aligned to provide efficient and high-quality legal services at the appropriate cost.

This Precedent details some fundamental areas of knowledge that your legal department should manage and suggests a way to document tasks related to this. Areas covered are: regulatory compliance, contract compliance, organisational risk and compliance monitoring and how to ensure such knowledge remains accessible to emerging working methods.

This Precedent Legal contract management process is designed to sit alongside your legal work process to explain to staff how to request the legal department drafts or reviews a contract. It is intended to ensure all the important topics you need to establish your contract management methods within your organisation are captured.

This Precedent Legal metrics and analytics—step plan suggests tasks you could undertake to measure the legal department’s performance and demonstrate how the legal department contributes value to your organisation. It suggests how to action and document these tasks.

This step plan sets out tasks you could undertake to better manage the legal department’s processes.

This Precedent is intended for general commercial organisations. It describes the scope and limits to signing and spending authority in an organisation and can be annexed to your procurement policy. In this example, authority to commit an organisation to make a procurement, whether by physically or electronically signing orders or contracts or by any other means, is differentiated by grade and a ceiling is placed on signing/authorisation limits.