CFO: Managing legal matters without a General Counsel

Ideally, the CFO and GC work together in the best interest of  the company, fighting against legal and financial disaster. Coordinating their efforts, the GC and CFO identify areas of risk and areas of value, ensuring that legal concerns are communicated and budgets are respected.

But, what if you don’t have a GC?

For many start-ups and small organizations, surviving on paper-thin margins means keeping support staff as lean as possible. This means that many CFOs find themselves picking up the bits no one else in the company can take on, be it finance, IT, insurance and, of course, legal.  

The role of the CFO is evolving

According to Deloitte, today CFOs are expected take on four diverse and challenging roles. In addition to the traditional responsibilities of preserving the company’s assets by minimising risk and running an efficient finance operation, CFOs are increasingly asked to help shape overall strategy and instill financial-savvy throughout the business to boost accountability to creating value. These new roles, which Deloitte defines as “strategist” and “catalyst”, make the CFOs job more complex. And that’s not to mention when there is no legal function in the business.

Managing legal matters as the CFO

In order to assume the for diverse roles – without coordinated efforts from in-house counsel – CFOs need to equip themselves with the right tools to give them the oversight of contracts and legal risks they require. They need a tool to help them establish governance on legal matters and find a structured way to collaborate with colleagues in Sales, Accounting, Marketing, etc.. . And, they need to be able to communicate areas of risk and value to executives to inform strategic business decisions.

A simple, powerful dashboard like Legisway can make it easy to manage your legal information without a legal function. Here’s how Legisway can help you assume the role of:

Steward

You need to ensure compliance with legal requirements and regulations, and mitigate risk across the business. Without the help of a legal function, you’d be forgiven for having sleepless nights: not seeing all the contracts in time, not knowing if everyone’s using the right contract template, not having a full picture of the key conditions your business has agreed to. With Legisway, you can set up governance with standard contract templates, tasks and workflows, and get an immediate overview of all your key contract terms (and risk!) in a second’s notice. Plus, Legisway will ensure the right people are alerts to ensure you keep on top of key obligations such as contract notice periods or automatic increases.

Operator

Being able to drive efficiency and effectiveness of operations depends on your ability understand the details of your business’ finances – but you can only measure what you can track.  If you need to find a contract or business registration in seconds, Legisway allows you to search like Google. With a complete overview of all your legal matters, you can better determining how to allocate scarce or limited finance resources to drive the greatest return on investment while managing risk.

Strategist

Aligning financial and business strategies such as M&A, the investments and capitalization of the company falls squarely on the shoulders of CFOs. With Legisway, you can quickly provide report on the contracts or any legal matter in your business to your board or investors. If you’re preparing for due diligence for an M&A or the next round of funding, Legisway will give you the company information you need instantly. With insightful reporting capabilities, CFOs can rest assured that they have the right data at hand to make decisions to enhance business performance and shareholder value.

Catalyst 

If your small team is under strain and your current legal filing system is ineffective, then you need to empower your organisation to be responsible for the legal implications of their actions. You need a company-wide process and tool to be your eyes and ears on the ground, making sure everything is done properly. But you also need to be a strategic partner to other department heads and orchestrate focus on the achievement strategic objectives. With Legisway, not only can you enforce the right processes, but with insights you can track key performance indicators and foster accountability for legal risk and finance across the organisation.

In summary, equipping yourself with a tool that gives you visibility on the company’s legal matters, permits you to establish better governance as the company grows, and helps you keep your budget lean, is key to assuming the complex and challenging role of a CFO with a company without a GC.

With Legisway, not only do you get a flexible, powerful dashboard that gives you oversight of legal risks, but that will empower you to act more strategically and can scale as your business grows.