3 Steps for Playbook Creation for In-House Legal Teams

In-house legal teams have a tough job – providing reliable guidance while enabling business objectives and growth is complex. With so many areas to cover and potential risks to mitigate, how can legal departments operate efficiently and consistently? 

The answer? Creating comprehensive playbooks for your in-house legal team. These playbooks can be a game-changer because they empower your legal team to make consistent and autonomous decisions aligned with your company’s business objectives and risk tolerance. Whether it’s a playbook for reviewing vendor agreements, approving marketing collateral, or conducting privacy risk assessments, a well-structured playbook provides a framework for your legal team to manage their work efficiently.

But playbooks don’t just benefit the legal team. Implementing legal playbooks streamlines processes, fosters collaboration, and ultimately enhances the overall effectiveness of your legal team's operations. It serves as a valuable resource, enabling your team to navigate complex legal matters with confidence and deliver reliable support to your organization. 

So how can you create effective legal playbooks? Follow these three steps: 

Step 1: Define the playbook's purpose and scope

The first step in creating an effective playbook is to establish the core objectives and desired outcome for the playbook, including the audience it covers and what team’s roles and responsibilities will be documented. This may vary depending on the purpose of the playbook, such as whether it’s for contract review or privacy impact assessments.

Action points:

• Identify the purpose of the playbook: Evaluate what legal tasks are ripe for a playbook, and define the scope of your playbook. Since many tasks inherently cover a broad landscape, set priorities and clearly articulate what is in or out of scope for the first version. For example, legal teams review many types of vendor agreements, ranging from technology providers to influencer agreements. It's important to define what the playbook will cover when initially released, and you should clearly document this scope, including explicitly identifying what is out of scope, in your playbook.
• Determine who you will share this playbook with, and who it applies to: Figuring out what individual(s) and/or team(s) will have access to the playbook will help determine who it applies to and what it needs to cover. Once you know who will have access to your completed playbook, you can align on how to structure the content and determine what team(s) responsibilities and tasks will be covered in it. For example, how you structure a playbook for contract review and what steps you document may change depending on if it's intended to cover the legal review portion of the process or entire sales cycle, or the contract clause options and fall-backs. 
  
  

Step 2: Understand your process and positioning, and document it

With a clear understanding of the scope of the playbook, the next step is to map out the core processes and positioning and document this in the playbook. 

Action Points:

• Understand your processes and positioning: This mapping exercise ensures that the playbook provides clear frameworks for decision-making and consistent pathways for executing tasks efficiently. For each process step, develop detailed guidelines that address how to proceed through various stages, including any approvals needed and how to escalate issues. As part of this, consider what triggers the process, where you have decision points, and what stakeholders need to be involved. 
• Document your processes and positioning: The approach you take for documenting your processes and positioning may vary depending on the scope of the playbook. For example, playbooks to identify the high-level tasks to take when triaging a request for marketing collateral approval may be well suited to a checklist format while playbooks that detail how to review and negotiate sales agreements may not. Once you have it documented, reach out to cross-functional stakeholders to align and ensure there are no additional areas for you to add steps or context. 

Step 3: Launch, assess, and iterate 

A playbook is only as good as its adoption by the team. Ensuring your impacted team members are fully trained on the playbook and understand how to use it effectively is crucial. However, launching a playbook isn’t a one-and-done activity - you should identify success criteria to help you evaluate the effectiveness of the playbook and where there is an opportunity to improve. Also, it’s important to remember that your playbook is a living document that should be reviewed and updated regularly as the legal landscape and internal company policies evolve, so part of your roll-out should include identifying a playbook owner and a process for periodically reviewing the content. 

Action Points:

• Identify a roll-out plan and launch the playbook: While the scope and audience for your playbook may dictate how you roll out the playbook internally, one key component is a detailed implementation plan in place to execute. You must ensure you have a plan regardless of whether you’re sending Slack and/or email communications to relevant stakeholders, implementing a comprehensive training program, or sharing the playbook individually with folks. It’s helpful to approach the launch with a multi-pronged strategy and follow-up communications. 
• Have a plan to obtain feedback and measure success: As part of the roll-out of the playbook, provide an outlet for feedback - whether it's a person to reach out to or a form to be completed, it’s important to receive input from stakeholders so you can iterate as needed. It’s also a good idea to identify what success measures look like so you can evaluate them, providing another avenue to identify potential opportunities to improve the playbook based on where there are gaps. 
• Schedule regular reviews: Establish a playbook owner and a schedule for reviewing and updating the playbook. This should involve assessing the relevance of existing guidelines, adding new sections as needed, and refining templates and checklists based on feedback and changes in legal requirements or business operations.

Creating a playbook for your in-house legal team is a strategic initiative that can significantly improve efficiency, consistency, and compliance across your organization. By identifying key areas, developing detailed guidelines and templates, and implementing effective training and update mechanisms, your legal department can become a more cohesive and proactive unit. With these three steps, you’re well on your way to empowering your in-house legal team with a resource that not only guides them through day-to-day operations but equips them to handle complex issues with greater ease and confidence.

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