Legal KPIs: how to select, track and manage them

Sanaa Siddiqui: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. It's nice to see a huge crowd forming to hear about KPIs and how to create and track them. Briefly, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Sanaa. I'm the content editor and one of the team involved in this community at Juro. There’s been a huge demand for this topic. So, I'm going to stop talking in a second and go on mute, and let one of our community members, Zeno, take over. Zeno is the GC at Doc Planner and will be leading this conversation alongside Alexia, who is the VP of Legal at Quanto, and Nika, who is the GC at PLEO. So, yeah, please take it away with some brief introductions. Thank you.

Zeno Capucci: Thank you, Sanaa. And hi, everyone. Thank you for joining. If everyone could mute their microphones, we can all hear each other clearly. As Sanaa mentioned, today’s session is about one of the most challenging topics for in-house lawyers when discussing objectives with senior management: KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators.

KPIs are meant to measure success—essentially, to find out and measure whether you're doing a good job or not within the business. Many of us, coming from private practice, are used to a single KPI that defines success: billable hours. However, in an in-house role, where we are business enablers and a support function, things are different. We need to find meaningful ways to measure our contribution and success.

In a business, goals are often tied to measurable metrics like net promoter score, revenue generation, and lead conversion. How do we align with these metrics? How do we show the value we bring to the business? Today, we’ll explore how we can create meaningful KPIs to demonstrate our value.

Let's start with a poll to see how many people in this room currently work with KPIs. This will help us gauge where everyone stands on this topic. While we wait for the poll results, I’ll hand over the floor to Nika and Alexia for their introductions.

Nika: Yes, I'm happy to join. So, my name is Nika, and I'm the General Counsel for PLEO. PLEO is a fintech company with the vision of creating an expense management solution. We’re headquartered in Copenhagen with offices in six locations, present in eight markets in Europe, and aiming to be in at least 20 markets by the end of the year. As you can imagine, there’s a lot to do from the legal side. My approach to KPIs is very much aligned with our overall company objectives and figuring out how we can enable these ambitious targets.

Alexia: Hi, everyone. My name is Alexia de la Housse. I’m the VP Legal at Quanto, a French neobank founded four years ago. We sell business accounts to freelancers and SMBs in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. We’re already nearly 700 employees and hiring rapidly, including in the legal team. I founded the legal team three years ago, and now we have 12 lawyers. We’re big fans of data, legal tech, and KPIs. My message is straightforward: implement legal tech to monitor data as early as possible. With this data, you can set effective KPIs to align with the business.

Zeno: Thank you, Alexia and Nika. Let’s look at the results from the poll. Interestingly, 64% of our audience don’t work with KPIs. This indicates that many people may not know how to implement KPIs or haven’t found them necessary so far. Let’s discuss what types of KPIs can be relevant for small legal teams. Alexia, would you like to start?

Alexia: Yes, sure. For those who don’t use KPIs, it’s crucial to understand their importance. KPIs help demonstrate the efficiency of the legal team, manage and engage your team towards measurable improvement, and speak the same language as your company and other teams. This aligns the legal team as a strategic leader and business partner rather than just a support function. KPIs also help build a case for resources, whether it’s hiring new people or using legal tech.

In terms of specific KPIs, you have internal ones, such as tracking requests from different teams or countries. These are useful for internal management and prioritization.

Zeno: Interesting. Nika, when do you think is the best time to implement KPIs?

Nika: It depends on what you want the KPI for. At PLEO, we use KPIs to prioritize our tasks and ensure alignment with company objectives. I joined PLEO as the first legal hire and now have a team of seven. We use KPIs to demonstrate our value and prioritize our work. My KPIs are aligned with our overall company objectives and are broken down into team and individual contributor KPIs. For example, we focus on strategic transactions and operational efficiency.

Zeno: That’s very insightful. Would you mind sharing some of the KPIs you use?

Nika: Sure. Let me share my screen. Here are some slides that outline how we approach KPIs at PLEO. Our problem space involves supporting business as usual while enabling hyper growth. Our vision is to empower the organization to make smart decisions. We have overall objectives like maintaining good dialogue with domain leads and supporting strategic transactions. This structured approach helps us align our work with the company’s goals and demonstrate our value effectively.

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