Are legal requests similar to IT requests? HR requests? Facilities requests? You bet. Everything as a Service.
The Fuji release of ServiceNow includes a useful Legal Service Management application that enables you to create trackable legal requests. Your legal department can organize, manage, and view the work they routinely do such as contracts, legal research, and policy questions. This automation can give the legal eagles more time to focus on strategic and thorny problems that can't be automated as easily.
Submitting a legal request:
The legal process starts when users submit a request through the Service Catalog.
- Navigate to Self-Service > Legal Catalog.
- Click an option such as Contract or Research. A menu of items appears.
- Click an item. For example, if you click Contract, you'll see items such as New NDA Creation Request, Vendor RFP Review, and External Contract Review:
- Fill in as many fields as possible. It is especially important to provide a detailed description of the request and set the priority appropriately.
- Click Submit.
Managing legal requests:
The base system legal work follows a life cycle:
- After a request is submitted, a legal staff member reviews the request, adds any additional work information, and marks the request as ready for approval
- A legal approver reviews the request
- If the request is approved, it is assigned to a group or an individual
- If the request is complex, requires people with different skills, or has steps that must be scheduled sequentially, you can create multiple tasks and assign them appropriately
- Work takes place - communication with the submitter can be done through the Additional Comments field and collaboration with others working on the request can be done in the Work Notes field
- The legal tasks and request are closed complete, closed incomplete, or cancelled
Tracking legal requests:
Similar to other ServiceNow applications, there is an up to date dashboard that displays information including requests by state, requests by month, and performance visually.
Several useful legal reports are also available:
Configuring the Legal Service Management application:
I have outlined the base system (out of box) process with the Legal Service Management application, but in true ServiceNow fashion, the application can be customized to suit your needs. You may want to start out using a simple request-driven process with minimal layers of approval and then make changes over time to add greater control and more sophisticated task assignment. For example:
- Switch from the default request-driven process for handling tasks to a task-driven process where multiple tasks must be done before requests are complete
- Make approvals required
- Automatically assign requests
- Automatically assign tasks
- Fine tune automatic assignment of tasks based on agent location and skills
For more information about Legal Service Management and the greater Service Management world, see the following:
Service Management for the Enterprise (informative videos)
Now on Now: Legal Management as a Service (great K15 legal session review by Morgan Hunter - thanks, Morgan!)
Service Management (overview of Service Management in the ServiceNow product documentation
