Re-engineering legal for business growth
Not all problems faced by legal departments are actually legal problems.
Housebuilder Heylo's business was booming, helping to alleviate the UK's housing shortage - but legal processes were becoming a constraint on its growth.
Pinsent Masons used a combination of people, process and technology fundamentally change how the legal work was done, applying insights from its software engineers and project management specialists to solve a business-critical problem.
The challenge
Heylo's housing business was booming, but legal matters were starting to act as a constraint on it's growth.
Legal work on the acquisition, management and sale of housing plots all needed to be undertaken meticulously and on a large scale.
The legal processes involved were inter-related, from the over-arching large scale land contracts down to the fine detail of the plot completions and the grant of the individual leases to plot purchasers.
Completing and tracking these tasks on the scale required was a major administrative burden and risk issue.
The platform provides long-term value in addition to short-term speed and efficiency.
The solution
Our 35-strong R&D team is composed of legal engineers, software programmers and project managers. Working with our legal specialists, they developed a solution that combines online instruction, matter management, workflow and contract automation processes across the ‘lifecyle’ of a house build.
The platform enables the client to:
- instruct us online, speeding up the engagement process
- have real time access to status of each transaction
- make key inputs during the lifecycle of each transaction, so the right data is captured at the right time
- access leases, contracts and other document content for each transaction
- produce live report data for management information purposes
This has involved integrating a range of proprietary and third party technologies on to one platform, combining workflow and document automation, checklists, case and matter management, contact details and document storage.
The result
Within a matter of weeks over 70 developments and 180 plots had been incorporated onto the platform, giving the client a full and transparent view of its portfolio and the detail of transactions.
The system gave them real-time reporting including the ability to dynamically interrogate the system at a very detailed level, with all transaction data stored in an online database. As such the platform provides long-term value in addition to short-term speed and efficiency.
The result is that a potential roadblock to Heylo's growth has been removed, allowing its legal and management teams to focus on the next phase of the company's development.