One recurring challenge for legal teams in legal matter management is finding effective ways to train and inform the broader business on common issues.

The goal is to reduce the volume of enquiries and requests that flood the legal team, allowing the team to focus only on queries that truly require their expertise.

While certain legal matter management solutions offer functionality in this area, SharePoint stands out as a powerful tool for this purpose, given that it is already used by most legal teams and their business customers and has so many relevant features.

With its extensive range of features, SharePoint empowers legal teams to create flexible and intuitive resources, guiding the business towards the information they need when needed.

This post is part of a series of posts aimed at providing practical options for organisations that don’t want, can’t use, or cannot obtain a full legal matter management solution and are looking for guidance on what they can do with the tools they have and some reasonably priced add-ons. For more background and context, please see this introductory post.

Empowering Business Users through SharePoint:

SharePoint offers a plethora of functionalities that enable legal teams to equip the broader business with the knowledge to handle common queries independently. Here are some features that can be utilised:

1  Written Guides:

Legal teams can create easily searchable written guides that provide comprehensive information on key issues. These guides become accessible resources for business users, allowing them to find answers quickly and efficiently. SharePoint has a robust search capability, even before impending new Microsoft Co-Pilot AI enhancements are considered.

2  Instructional Videos:

Legal teams can engage business users by offering instructional videos demonstrating how to carry out specific tasks or understand legal concepts.

You can literally show them how to do the thing they need help with. A straightforward way to do this is to set up a Teams meeting with yourself as the only attendee and then record it. We currently use Camtasia for editing, though Microsoft ClipChamp may be another option to consider.

One of our most popular videos is 1 hour and 50 minutes long, but it’s chaptered up so users can quickly go straight to the section they want, but many also watch the whole thing as they find it informative and valuable.

If you don’t like being in front of the camera, you don’t have to. We use screen capture recordings via Camtasia a lot at LawHawk and get great feedback on them from customers.

3  Dynamic Web Forms:

Dynamic web forms can be implemented to guide users through logical steps and help them find answers or clarify the nature of their enquiries. An example could be a tool that works out if variation disclosure is required for a consumer credit loan, where a scenario sits in the organisation’s health and safety framework, or if a customer is entitled to a refund or credit under the organisation’s policies.

You can display an answer on the screen or in a follow-up email that can be auto-generated on submission. A form might also link to another SharePoint page or external site with the necessary information.

Cognito Forms – discussed in this separate post on matter intake - is an excellent option for creating intuitive forms that facilitate user navigation and answers in these ways.

If you already have flow charts, you can create new tools that are easier to follow and update while also keeping a record of when and how they are being used, what decisions are being taken and why.

4  Webinar Recordings:

Instead of relying solely on costly and quickly forgotten "just in case" training sessions, you can record training webinars that employees can access whenever needed.

This on-demand approach ensures that training is available precisely when it is most relevant and convenient for users.

Looking Ahead with Microsoft’s AI Co-Pilot:

The imminent release of Microsoft's AI Co-Pilot functionality is an exciting development with promise in this area. If you want to get a feel for what is likely to be possible, you can see several videos and other resources here: https://news.microsoft.com/reinventing-productivity/

As this technology becomes available, we will closely monitor how it can further enhance self-service capabilities and user support in a Microsoft environment.

Getting started

Conclusion:

There are many ways in-house legal teams can empower business users by equipping them with the knowledge and resources to answer common queries independently and immediately without investing in a separate matter management system that offers some functionality as an add-on.

Leveraging SharePoint's extensive functionality, legal teams can create flexible and intuitive materials such as written guides, instructional videos, dynamic web forms, and webinar recordings.

By fostering self-service capabilities, legal teams can significantly reduce the volume of enquiries, allowing them to focus on matters that genuinely require their expertise. Queries that still come through are likely to be better informed about the true nature of the issue and the help required.

The business can otherwise get on with what they need to be doing without the delays of waiting for the legal team’s response.

As we anticipate the release of Microsoft's AI Co-Pilot, we are excited about the potential for further empowering business users and fostering collaboration between legal and non-legal teams using tools already widely available and in use.

If you want better legal matter management outcomes and want to look at your options and get a practical assessment of which options will best suit you, get in touch. We can recommend and introduce you to full matter management solutions or help with more targeted interventions, depending on your needs.

Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it are different things. We would love to work with you to help you achieve the best outcomes, with certainty of costs and delivery.