For many in-house legal teams, the main challenge they face when implementing new technology is a lack of structure.
Work comes in through multiple channels – email, messages and informal conversations, and without a consistent way to capture, track, or prioritise it – it can make it difficult to see what’s happening across the team, who owns which matters, or where the real priorities sit at any given time.
Simultaneously, legal teams are being asked to provide more visibility and clearer reporting on how their work supports the organisation. Without defined and structured ways of working, this is impossible to sustain.
When flexibility becomes complexity
Legal teams will often turn to technology to bring in structure required and while the technology platforms are often highly configurable, the way these platforms are implemented can introduce a different kind of challenge.
One of the things I see regularly in my work as an implementation success partner is that there are often multiple ways to configure the same outcome. From a technical perspective, that flexibility is valuable. But for customers, it can feel overwhelming quickly. Particularly for smaller legal teams without the time or resources to manage a complex setup.
A common response I hear is: “Can you just tell us the best way to do this?”
This important signal that tells us that what customers are looking for isn’t more options, it’s more clarity.
Operational control, without the overhaul.
Matter Management Foundations gives your legal team structured visibility from day one. See how it works →
A shift in what teams are asking for
There’s been a shift in how legal teams are thinking about these problems.
It’s become less about solving everything at once, and more about addressing a specific, high-impact use case and building from there, and this shift influences how we approach our solution design and delivery.
Starting with a defined use case
The Matter Management Foundations out-of-the-box solution for HighQ is what the team have built in response to this more focused response.
Matter Management Foundations provides pre-configured, end-to-end workflows to manage incoming legal work, introducing structured intake, clearer ownership, and visibility across matters.
I believe the key difference is that it removes the need to design everything from nothing. Teams aren’t starting with an blank system and trying to figure out how it should work. They’re starting with something that reflects a recommended, best practice approach.
By narrowing the initial scope to a single use case, teams are able to make progress more quickly, without getting caught up in broader system design decisions. It doesn’t reduce the importance of the problem, but it makes it easier to get started.
Built from what we see in practice
A lot of that recommended, best practice approach comes from working with our customers.
Across different implementations, you start to notice the same challenges coming up – how work is captured, how it’s prioritised, how ownership is assigned, and how teams need to report on it. You also see what tends to work well, and what tends to cause friction.
Matter Management Foundations’ design draws on direct implementation experience, customer feedback, and hands-on legal practice knowledge – bringing together what we already know works.
The idea is to take what we already know works in practice and to package that knowledge in a way that makes it easier for others to adopt.
Reducing the path to value
One of the most noticeable benefits of this approach is the speed at which teams can get started.
Because most of the structure is already in place, implementation becomes less about designing processes and more about aligning existing processes to the needs of the team. That changes the nature of the project quite significantly.
In practical terms, that means timelines are shorter, and value is realised earlier.
For a lot of legal teams, that makes a meaningful difference, particularly when time and capacity are already constrained.
What adoption looks like in practice
From an implementation perspective, the experience is more structured and predictable for the teams using the technology.
There’s a defined pathway to follow, supported by guidance and training from the professional services team, and a clear understanding of what the solution does and doesn’t include. This additionallyremoves a level of uncertainty that often comes with more open-ended projects.
Teams don’t have to expected to design their processes from scratch. They work within a framework that’s already been shaped by previous experience.
That tends to give people more confidence, both in how they approach the implementation project, and in how the system will work once it’s live.
Starting small doesn’t limit what comes next
One question that comes up quite often is whether starting with a single use case limits what a team can do in the future.
In practice, I’ve found the opposite. Taking a more focused approach initially doesn’t limit what comes next.
Matter management is often a good place to begin because it addresses core operational challenges such as visibility and control, and can be implemented relatively quickly. Once that structure is in place, it becomes much easier to extend into other areas, whether that’s a new contract management use case or additional workflows added to the out-of-the-box solution.
It’s not about restricting scope. It’s about building momentum in a way that feels manageable.
A more practical path to control
For me, the key takeaway is that gaining more control doesn’t have to start with a large transformation project.
Legal teams don’t need to redesign everything all at once. Start with a specific problem, apply a structured, best practice approach that focusses on immediate needs, reduces complexity and allows value to be realised early. Then, build from there.
As I often say : You don’t need to do everything all at once. You just need to start in the right place.
