Legal Dept. Services Charter.

The Legal Department Service Charter (“LDSC”) is a formal document that defines the mandate, scope, and protocols governing how the legal team delivers services within the organisation.

It outlines service parameters, including the types of legal support available, engagement protocols, and any service level commitments (where applicable).

The LDSC, along with Legal Department Operation Authority and Legal Dept SLA is the one of the 3 “apex” policy assets that determine the overall mandate, function and operations of the legal department. 

The LDSC is an important asset in that it provides the terms of engagement that exist between the legal department and the Business – making it clear for all concerned how it works.

The LDSC provides clarity on roles, responsibilities, and expectations, ensuring that internal stakeholders understand how and when to engage the legal team.

It serves as a service governance framework, reducing friction in legal service delivery and enabling efficient allocation of legal resources.

By defining the “who, why, and what” of the legal function, it helps to manage client expectations, improve response times, and promote operational efficiency.

The LDSC helps prevent service bottlenecks and misalignment, ensuring that legal support is strategic, responsive, and aligned with business needs.

A well-defined LDSC is foundational to achieving a high-functioning legal department that delivers value consistently and predictably.

Legal teams operating without an LDSC asset frequently operate on a first in first out resourcing basis, or worse still, whoever is most senior gets served first basis – neither of which permits optimised resourcing.

As with any relationship, rules that govern the relationship are needed, and in this sense, the LDSC asset can be inclusive of whatever guidance is required for “healthy” internal client relatinoships to emerge.

At GLS we tend to retreat the Legal Dept SLA as a distinct resource asset as for many teams they more likely to launch that asset first, as opposed to an appropriate LDSC asset.

We note for good order, that the Legal Dept SLA could quite appropriately reside inside the LDSC asset and in many cases – it does so. 

The content of the LDSC should cover whatever is necessary to create conditions for a healthy, responsive and transparent relationship with thee internal client, and allows for optimal legal team resourcing. 

The LDSC can obviously be dynamically adjusted as a team evolves in terms of headcount, offering, etc but the basic infrastructure of the LDSC will include chapters on:

◼️ Legal Dept. Mission Statement:   the teams mission statement and role in the organisation 

◼️ Legal Team Mandate:  defining the role, purpose, and objectives of the legal function within the organisation.

◼️ Legal Dept. Management: how the team is managed and organisational structure 

◼️ Reporting Lines: permitted reporting structure within the legal team and to the owner/board

◼️ Legal Dept Overview: an overview of how the team is structured + key contacts

◼️ Roles & Responsibilities: what each member of the legal team does and contact details

◼️ Business Coverage: how departments, business units, countries, etc are covered 

◼️ Services Offered: clear articulation of the range of services offered by the legal team

◼️ Services Not Offered: what services the legal team does not offer

◼️ Instruction Protocols: how instructions are accepted by the legal team

◼️ Service Delivery Standards: usually a separate document – but relevant work type SLAs

◼️ Escalation Procedures: procedures in the event escalation is required 

◼️ Client Responsibilities:  specifying the obligations of internal clients when engaging with legal (e.g., providing complete information, timely responses, etc.).

◼️ Client Resources: an overview of client self help resources, if available

◼️ Risk Management:  an overview of the legal team's role around organisational risk management

◼️ Decision-Making Authority: a clear statement of the legal department's decision-making authority that reflects the key aspect of the Legal Dept. Operating Authority asset

◼️ Metrics & Reporting: what kind of department reporting and metrics are maintained

◼️ Strategic Involvement:  which areas of the business are the legal team strategically involved

◼️ Continuous Feedback & Improvement: how continued improvement can be achieved

◼️ Internal Legal Costs: relevant protocols around charging and recharging practices for legal support (where relevant)

◼️ Use of External Counsel:  who may instruct, in what circumstances and how it is funded

◼️ Training & Awareness: initiatives offered by the legal team and in which the internal client can participate 

◼️ Technology & Tools: describing any legal tech solutions (e.g., contract management systems) that support legal service delivery.

◼️ Continuous Improvement Measures: mechanisms for updating the Charter to reflect evolving business and legal needs.

In GLS legal ops speak – the LDSC is considered both a “Foundational” and “Repeater” resource within the process ecosystem of an in-house legal team.

The Foundational Resource is a CRE that is responsible for determining the overall performance capabilities of a “critical” legal function. If it is not optimised, the function can never be optimised. 

A Repeater Resources is a CRE that is common to two or more “critical legal dept. functions”. Once optimised, this CRE can improve all critical legal functions in which it is comprised. 

The LDSC is omnipresent across all in-house legal team core processes. 

The best practice features of the LDSC are as follows: 

◼️ Sales: the LDSC must “sell” the legal team internally 

◼️ 80% Rule: the LDSC should only seek to define what happens 80% of the time, not every time

◼️ Written: the LDSC must be documented – if it isn’t – then it is not a LDSC

◼️ Efficacy: the LDC need not cover every conceivable issue before it can be efficiently deployed

◼️ Access: the LDSC should be available to the entire in-house legal team user audience

◼️ Endorsed: the Board should endorse the LDSC giving it authority within the Business

◼️ Compliance: compliance with the LDSC must be monitored by the legal team

◼️ Development: the LDSC should be continuously updated (eg. Restructuring, headcount movements, etc)

◼️ Clear Purpose: well-articulated objectives and scope of legal services.

◼️ Concise & Accessible: written in a way that is easy to understand for all business stakeholders.

◼️ Standardised Processes: ensuring consistency in service delivery across all engagements.

◼️ Alignment with Business Strategy: ensuring legal support meets business priorities efficiently.

◼️ Regular Updates: reviewed periodically to reflect changing legal, regulatory, and business requirements.

◼️ Feedback Mechanism:  enabling internal clients to provide input for continuous improvement.

◼️ Integration with Legal Technology: ensuring service requests can be tracked, prioritised, and managed efficiently.

◼️ Training & Awareness: must be supported by educating internal clients on how to interact effectively with the legal function.

The LDSC delivers the following value to the Business: 

◼️ Biz Enablement: the LDSC will help enable a transparent and responsive legal function 

◼️ Expectations: client expectations will be transparently and clearly managed

◼️ Operational Clarity: helps deliver legal and compliance operational clarity

◼️ Productivity: structured engagement with the legal team will help drive productivity

◼️ Board Duties: helps the board discharge their duty to act in the best interests of the company

◼️ Profitability: helps preserve profitability by mitigating dispute/regulatory non-compliance

◼️ Corporate Conduct: drives the highest levels of corporate governance and conduct

◼️ Legal Empowerment: the LDSC ensures the role of the legal team is empowered within the business

◼️ Improved Efficiency: streamlines engagement with the legal team, reducing delays and confusion.

◼️ Optimised Resource Allocation: ensures legal resources are used where they are most needed.

◼️ Reduced Internal Friction: minimises unnecessary back-and-forth in service requests.

◼️ Strategic Alignment: ensures legal services are structured to support business objectives.

◼️ Faster Decision-Making: enables quicker access to legal guidance when needed.

◼️ Increased Accountability: clarifies roles and responsibilities for both legal and business teams.

◼️ Operational Scalability: provides a structured framework to handle growing legal service demands efficiently.

◼️ Enhanced Business-Legal Collaboration: strengthens relationships between legal and business teams.

◼️ Risk Reduction: ensures legal issues are escalated and handled appropriately.

The LDSC delivers the following value for the Legal Department:

◼️ Streamlined Workflows: ensures legal requests are properly structured and prioritised.

◼️ Reduced Disruptions: minimises ad hoc, unstructured, and inefficient engagement with legal.

◼️ Efficient Service Delivery: allows legal teams to operate with clear guidelines and protocols.

◼️ Improved Workload Management: prevents legal teams from being overwhelmed with low-priority or improperly scoped requests.

◼️ Better Stakeholder Relationships: fosters mutual understanding and smoother interactions between legal and business units.

◼️ Consistent Application of Legal Advice: ensures that legal guidance is delivered uniformly across the organisation.

◼️ Enhanced Compliance & Governance: strengthens legal oversight and accountability in the business.

◼️ Faster Response Times: enables quicker turnaround for legal support requests.

◼️ More Effective Legal Resource Utilisation: ensures legal resources are deployed strategically.

◼️ Data-Driven Improvement:– enables tracking of legal service performance through metrics and feedback.

◼️ Policy Shield: the LDSC is a “shield” against out-of-scope and non-urgent work requests

◼️ Mandate: the LDSC clarifies the contours of the legal team's operational mandate

◼️ Role Recognition: clarifies the role of the legal department within the Business

◼️ Empowerment: the LDSC empower the legal within the Business through clear roles and authority 

◼️ Resourcing: the LDSC helps the legal team to accept instructions against work-type SLAs – not who shouts the loudest 

◼️ Morale: the LDSC drives team morale and clear role recognitions and procedures are respective 

◼️ BU Co-operation: helps to clearly set legal department boundaries 

The Legal Department Services Charter is essential for:

◼️ All Businesses: every business with a legal team 

◼️ Legal Teams: ensuring structured, predictable, and efficient service delivery.

◼️ Business Unit Leaders: needing clear protocols for engaging with legal support.

◼️ Procurement Teams: streamlining contract review and approval processes.

◼️ Compliance & Risk Officers: ensuring legal services align with regulatory requirements.

◼️ HR Departments: understanding employment-related legal service guidelines.

◼️ Finance & Tax Teams: ensuring smooth legal support in financial and tax matters.

◼️ Corporate Executives: managing legal risks at a strategic level.

◼️ Operational Managers: knowing when and how to engage legal for operational issues.

◼️ Training & Development Teams: educating staff on engaging with the legal function.

◼️ Legal Operations Teams: Given efficient expression to the LDSC is a key legal ops mandate 

◼️ Senior Management: The LDSC is where management defines the legal risk profile of the business. 

A legal team operating without an LDSC will face a wide range of inefficiencies including:

◼️ Inconsistent Service Delivery: unclear service protocols lead to delays and confusion.

◼️ Increased Workload: legal teams waste time handling unstructured and low-value queries.

◼️ Slower Response Times:  lack of prioritisation delays legal support for critical business issues.

◼️ Higher Friction with Business Units: misaligned expectations create frustration and inefficiencies.

◼️ Resource Misallocation: legal teams spend time on the wrong tasks instead of focusing on strategic legal work.

◼️ Compliance Risks: lack of clear engagement processes increases regulatory and legal exposure.

◼️ Lack of Performance Tracking:  no structured way to measure and improve legal service effectiveness.

◼️ Fragmented Communication: business teams remain unclear on how and when to engage legal.

◼️ Difficulty in Scaling Operations: inefficient service models cannot support business growth.

◼️ Reduced Strategic Impact: legal teams remain reactive rather than proactive.

◼️ Resourcing: an impaired ability to resource plan according to work types and SLAs

◼️ Engagement Chaos: unstructured engagement channels adversely impact instructions, KPI and reporting performance

◼️ Value Recognition: an impaired ability to report on overall legal team performance as vital metrics are obscured

◼️ Unrealistic expectations: client turnaround expectations are not as efficiently managed 

◼️ Costs: costs are harder to mitigate and manage (e.g. – external counsel, inability to delegate, etc) 

◼️ Turf Wars: increased disputes/friction over legal team authority within the business

◼️ Process Adoption: an inability to delegate workflows to established and approved processes

◼️ Training & Development: an impaired ability to train in relation to required positions 

◼️ Morale: deteriorating team morale due to unstructured engagement with the internal client  

◼️ Bottlenecking: increased risks of workflow bottlenecking with senior team members 

◼️ Budgeting: a properly articulated LDSC drives more accurate legal dept budget assessment

◼️ Workflow Automation: integration with legal request management systems.

◼️ Document Management: ensuring easy access to the Charter and related materials.

◼️ Performance Tracking: using analytics dashboards to measure legal service efficiency.

◼️ Collaboration Tools: streamlining business-legal interactions through digital tools.

◼️ Housing: the LDSC should be accessible electronically to all those that need it  – ideally on an intranet

◼️ Legal Service Requests:  in time most internal clients will be required to engage with their legal team via an online legal services front door 

◼️ Self-Help Resources: client-facing self-help resources should be hosted in a centrally accessible area

◼️ Tech Policies: the LDSC will contain policies around information management, cyber security and Data protection, amongst other tech-enabled/related domains

The GLS Knowledge Centre has a wealth of resources available for learning more about the importance of the Group Legal Policy and how you can effectively implement one - check out a few on the right.

The GLS Legal Operations Centre contains everything you need to effectively implement your own tailored Group Legal Policy in a cost-effective and timely manner. Check out the resources linked on the right. 

Also, feel free to contact GLS to book a consult to discuss your Group Legal Policy needs right here.