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Strategic Legal Management Innovative Method to Improve Legal Services

Strategic Legal Management Innovative Method to Improve Legal Services

The Indian legal field is in need for strategic quality enhancement of its resources to foster a sense of reality and trust. Read on to know more

INTRODUCTION

The strategic legal management is a new, yet to emerge and nascent area of management that facilitates and promotes quality law services and legal environment in the conduct of drafting, implementation and evaluation of cross functional decisions of negotiation, litigation, IP management, and policy and statute amendments contributing to the vision and mission focus of the legal fraternity. The article is an attempt to create awareness on the requirement for strategic quality management in the legal arena, that can be considered as a service industry from the functional view point highlighting the innovative trends in quality legal management through strategies of IP value creation, licensing and technology commercialization, IP enforcement, IP acquisition and inbound licensing, marketing of ideas, brands and capabilities and not just products and ICT strategic services.

CONCEPTS IN STRATEGIC LEGAL MANAGEMENT

In the global economy, enhancement of the capacity for development in presentation, communication and technology simultaneously promoting innovation, continuous creation of additional value for clients, lawyers and judges become quintessential.

The Indian judiciary is in need for strategic quality enhancement of its resources to foster a sense of reality and trust in the institution and thereby the introduction of various aspects becomes important. They are as follows;

  • Awareness on the importance of justice
  • Creation of viable and quality resources for enhancing the skills of the judicial components
  • Management of the databases for faster retrieval and documentation
  • Utilisation of the advances in technology for the development of innovative, productive and customized platforms to facilitate faster judgments
  • Creation of competitive trends in creation of new products and services
  • The management of legal technology that aim to maximize the cost-effectiveness of investments contributing to the legal enterprise value.
  • Strategic
    • IP Value Creation
    • Licensing and Technology Commercialization
    • IP Enforcement o IP Acquisition and Inbound Licensing
    • Marketing of Ideas, Brands and Capabilities
    • Quality analysis using a balanced scorecard

    Active investment in the new legal technology and its advancement is the key factor for success and many developed nations have succeeded in generating new technologies and innovative strategies to deliver some rather distinct and landmark judgments, create value and importance to the judicial proceedings thereby promoting law as a distinguished and much soughtafter profession.

    Research suggests that the relative R&D performance of legal firms is on a rise and strategic legal management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the different aspects of the legal process by assessing its international competitors, setting goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential and reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly to determine the success rate of implementation, calling for a replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, technology, competitors, economic ,social, financial, or political environment.

    The value of legal research is an effort to create something that has not existed andthus when shared with the society its achievements ought to present to society as a new beneficial product. A researcher’s “will” and “strategy” allow accomplishment of this task. Such “will” is the sense of what each researcher can accomplish and match the value of that accomplishment with societal needs. No matter how deeply the researchers pursue a technology, especially in the legal perspective, if this technology does not become a commercial product, the achievement does not have any value. And the “strategy” is how each researcher overcomes a lot of hurdles and obstacles in order to achieve the “will”.

    A combination of the right research and experimental design is needed to reach effective, realistic and just conclusions. Various risk factors complicate interactions and result in different combinations of exposure and deliverance of justice. Actively proactive checks are an essential pre-requisite for the efficient functioning of the judiciary and any miscalculation in the legal process and product during development is bound to have disastrous results.

STRATEGIC QUALITY LAWYERING: DRIVING VALUE AND MANAGING RISKS IN THE INNOVATION ECONOMY

In the “high risk high return” innovationdriven technology economy (“bio-nano-info” trilogy), high risk exposure is accentuated with highuncertainty in the returns on investment. The deliverance of strategic value to avert or mitigate strategic legal risks, lawyering cannot be restricted to quality legal analysis and tight document drafting but the businesses must understand strategic legal risk issues in order to deliver strategic value and to protect its assets, especially intellectual property (IP) rights like patents and copyrights.

Focusing on the ICT, e-Security and biomedical industries, strategic legal risk management, intellectual property value extraction, technology strategy development and innovation management with a global focus are being necessitated.

STRATEGIC IP VALUE CREATION
  • Creation of an innovative and intensive Strategic Management of IP Assets Program aimed at industry players and policy makers as a tool for competitive advantage for enterprises and nations;
  • Identification of key economic, legal and business issues in the design, development and management of strategic IP policy at the both the corporate and national levels;
  • Introduction to key legal concepts in the protection of digital IP assets including auditing of P assets in e-government projects; outline key legal and business risk management principles that organizations should adopt
STRATEGIC LICENSING & TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION

Strategic licensing is the key to successful commercialization strategies and legal assistance to governments and organizations to address end to end issues in technology commercialization, from R & D to create a large scope for value creation in strategic licensing and commercialization in industries such as electronics, computing, telecommunications, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to develop strategies for:

  • Technology commercialization
  • IP management
  • Licensing
STRATEGIC IP ENFORCEMENT

The Strategic IP Enforcement services include:

  • Development for IP enforcement including intelligence, communication and prevention
  • Government engagement in IP enforcement
  • Third party advocacy programs
  • Development of software asset management programs
  • Market study of piracy losses
  • Review of legal framework with a view to strengthen the IP protection
  • Tracking, investigating, and dismantling counterfeiting operations focusing on manufacturers, suppliers and financiers
  • Leading major investigations and prosecutions against internet-related offenders, across a series of threats related to counterfeiting, spam, viruses, worms and other malicious software code
IP ACQUISITION AND INBOUND LICENSING

Acquiring IP and technology ramp up an organization’s IP value creation program requiring careful study of technology and IP acquisition by

  • Building relationships with research group, university technology transfer groups, start-ups, to source advancedtechnology IP opportunities.
  • Finding and evaluating patent acquisition opportunities that could help fill potential future product gaps.
  • Planning and prioritization of intellectual property technology acquisition areas.
  • Evaluating candidate technologies for acquisition, licensing and investment.
  • Working with the client company’s IP business for transaction
STRATEGIC MARKETING OF IDEAS, BRANDS AND CAPABILITIES AND NOT JUST PRODUCTS

Strategic legal planning and strategic marketing services for companies, government and organizations help conceptualize, develop and implement strategic outreach campaigns for their ideas, brands and capabilities of public interest:

  • Government Engagement Programs
  • Industry affairs programs
  • Development of the plans, policies, communications tools and strategies supporting the government and industry affairs mission –
    • Issues management
    • Outreach activities on policy issues to help oversee outreach efforts with policymakers, staff, advocacy organizations, trade associations, multi-lateral organizations and industry partners
    • PR team association to develop an effective communication program amongst the company, government and public
ICT STRATEGIC SERVICES

Driven by new and defining issues like software-related patents and business methods patents, patent issues are redefining strategic value creation in the ICT sector through legal risk management program focusing on value creation through strategic licensing and risk management with an emphasis on security and legal liability risk management.

CONCLUSION

The essence of “strategy” lies in the capacity for “intelligent trial and error” rather than linear adherence to finely honed and detailed strategic plans. Strategic management is a question of interpreting and reinterpreting, the possibilities presented by shifting circumstances for advancing an organization’s objectives that requires strategists to think simultaneously about desired objectives, the best approach for achieving them and the resources implied by the chosen approach- “a frame of mind that admits of no boundary between means and ends”.

About Author

Dr. Lakshmi Priya Vinjamuri

The author is Technology & Legal Analyst & Faculty of Law, COLS, UPES, Dehradun, India