I have been struggling to write this post about KPIs. It’s taken way longer than it should have – with several starts and stops. First, should it be KPI or KPIs? Just like the debate over RBI and RBIs in baseball, passions run hot on this point. I think “KPIs” sounds better so I’m going with that. Second – and slightly more important than the KPI/KPIs controversy – KPIs don’t work particularly well for in-house legal departments. Actually, I had this eureka moment a long time ago when I was first asked as General Counsel to provide “SMART”[1] objectives for the legal department for an upcoming calendar year. I literally had no clue what they (HR) were talking about. And when I asked them for some examples, it was clear they had no clue either – at least when it came to developing SMART objectives for the legal department. For other parts of the business, SMART objectives seemed obvious and worked great. For legal, not so much. But, I (and my team) eventually figured it out and designed goals that were a little squishy – “SMART-ish” – but to which no one objected. You can see some examples of this in an older post titled “Setting Goals for the Legal Department.”
KPI legal department
Ten Things: Setting Goals for the Legal Department
The beginning of any calendar year is always busy with key administrative tasks for an in-house legal department. My next several posts will deal with such items. One of the more daunting tasks (whether you are general counsel or not) is setting useful goals for the upcoming year. Legal departments do not always lend themselves to neatly setting goals like the business units, i.e., it can be difficult to measure “success” in legal vs. measuring profits and sales or setting key performance indicators (“KPI’s”). That said, setting goals for the department or yourself is important and a fresh opportunity to take stock of many things. I always approached yearly goal setting as, among other things, an opportunity to market the department (i.e., all the great stuff we were doing), get a deeper understanding of what was important to the business, and gather feedback on how the department could improve in the upcoming year. Meaning, don’t shirk the opportunity and think of goal setting as some type of pain-in-the-neck HR exercise you have to muddle through. Embrace the process as the more thought and effort you put into goal setting, the bigger the payoff. And, there will be a payoff for you and your team if done properly and with some enthusiasm.
Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel® 