The challenge

A leading global energy company with operations across 40+ jurisdictions and a legal department of over 200 lawyers was struggling with fragmented legal operations that had evolved organically over two decades of growth.

Matter management was handled differently in every region. The London headquarters used a legacy instance of Legal Tracker that had not been upgraded in five years. The North American operations tracked matters in a combination of spreadsheets and a locally procured case management tool. The Middle East and Asia-Pacific teams used shared drives and email. No single system held a complete view of the legal department's work.

Outside counsel management was equally fragmented. The company retained over 80 law firms across its global operations. Rate cards were negotiated locally by regional legal directors with no central oversight. eBilling was manual in most jurisdictions: firms submitted invoices by email, legal assistants checked them against engagement letters, and finance processed them through the ERP with minimal validation.

The General Counsel had no reliable way to answer basic questions. How much are we spending on outside counsel globally? How many active matters do we have? What is our average matter cycle time? The answers required weeks of manual aggregation from regional teams.

Three specific problems had escalated the urgency. First, the board had requested a quarterly legal spend report that the legal department could not produce without a multi-week manual exercise. Second, two jurisdictions had experienced significant budget overruns on litigation matters because spend was not visible until invoices arrived in finance. Third, a new regulatory programme across European operations required the legal department to demonstrate how legal matters were managed, tracked and reported.

The General Counsel engaged Jalubro to design and implement a unified legal operations platform across the entire global operation.

What Jalubro delivered

Phase 1: Assessment and operating model design (12 weeks)

Jalubro conducted a comprehensive assessment of legal operations across all 40+ jurisdictions. A team of four consultants, led by a senior legal operations specialist, conducted workshops with regional legal directors, legal operations coordinators, finance business partners and procurement leads in each major region.

The assessment mapped every matter management process, every outside counsel engagement model, every eBilling workflow and every reporting mechanism in use. It identified 14 distinct matter management processes, 6 different eBilling approaches and no standardised reporting framework.

Jalubro designed a target operating model that defined a single global matter management process with regional configuration for jurisdictional requirements, standardised matter intake and triage, a unified outside counsel management framework with centralised rate governance, a global eBilling standard with automated guideline enforcement, and a reporting architecture giving the GC, regional directors and finance a single source of truth.

Jalubro facilitated three rounds of stakeholder workshops to address regional concerns and build alignment. The final model balanced global standardisation with the flexibility needed to operate across 40+ legal systems.

Phase 2: Platform implementation (9 months)

Jalubro led the implementation of Legal Tracker as the global matter management and eBilling platform, replacing the legacy instance in London, the standalone tools in North America and the spreadsheet-based processes everywhere else.

The implementation was delivered in four regional waves: London and Europe (16 jurisdictions), North America, Middle East and Africa (9 jurisdictions), and Asia-Pacific (12 jurisdictions).

Matter intake and triage. Jalubro designed an automated intake process replacing the email-based request system. Business stakeholders submit legal requests through a structured form. Requests are automatically categorised, prioritised and routed to the appropriate legal team.

Outside counsel management. Jalubro implemented a centralised panel management framework. All 80+ law firms were onboarded with standardised rate cards, matter staffing guidelines and performance metrics. Rate card compliance is enforced automatically during eBilling.

eBilling and guideline enforcement. Every outside counsel invoice is submitted electronically through Legal Tracker and validated automatically against billing guidelines. Common non-compliant billing practices are flagged automatically. Non-compliant line items are rejected with explanations.

Reporting and dashboards. Three-tier reporting: GC dashboard (global view), regional director dashboards (regional metrics), and finance dashboards (spend data for financial reporting and forecasting).

Phase 3: Integration with finance and procurement

Jalubro designed and implemented integrations between Legal Tracker and the company's ERP (SAP) and procurement platform.

The finance integration ensures approved outside counsel invoices flow directly from Legal Tracker into SAP for payment processing, eliminating manual re-keying. Spend data flows back from SAP into Legal Tracker's reporting layer.

The procurement integration connects Legal Tracker's outside counsel panel with the company's supplier management framework. When a new firm is added to the legal panel, the supplier onboarding process in procurement is triggered automatically.

Phase 4: Managed services (ongoing)

A dedicated Jalubro team of two consultants provides ongoing platform administration, configuration changes, reporting enhancements, template updates and user support. Quarterly optimisation reviews identify workflow improvements, adoption gaps and opportunities to extend the platform.

The results

60% reduction in average matter cycle time. Automated intake, structured triage and standardised workflows eliminated delays caused by email-based processes.

Full global spend visibility. The GC can see total outside counsel spend across all 40+ jurisdictions in a single dashboard, updated in real time. The quarterly board report is now produced in minutes.

23% reduction in outside counsel spend in year one. Centralised rate governance, automated guideline enforcement and firm performance benchmarking identified significant savings. Rate card compliance alone recovered over £1.2 million in the first twelve months.

Automated eBilling across all jurisdictions. Manual invoice review time reduced by over 70%.

Single platform across 40+ jurisdictions. The 14 distinct matter management processes were consolidated into a single global process with regional configuration.

Finance integration delivering upstream visibility. Finance now has real-time visibility of legal spend commitments as they are approved, not weeks later when invoices arrive.

Regulatory reporting capability. The European regulatory programme is now supported by structured, auditable matter records across all European jurisdictions.

What made the difference

Legal operations expertise, not just platform knowledge. Jalubro's consultants had worked inside legal operations teams at comparable organisations. Configuration decisions were informed by operational experience, not just platform capability.

Integration from day one. The integrations with SAP and the procurement platform were designed in Phase 1 and built in parallel with the platform implementation. The legal department did not go live with an isolated system.

Structured change management across regions. Regional training programmes tailored to each wave, local language support, regional champions trained as power users, and a dedicated adoption measurement framework.

To discuss how Jalubro can transform legal operations for your organisation, contact our team.