During this time of increased business uncertainty, it’s important for legal departments to adopt a Moneyball approach in running their legal teams. In case you did not know, Moneyball is a terrific book written several years ago by Michael Lewis and it became a popular movie starring Brad Pitt.

Moneyball is essentially a philosophy for running a professional baseball organization that was originated by the Oakland A’s baseball team where the A’s embrace cost efficacy and data analytics as part of how they run their baseball organization. Over the years, the A’s have had very good baseball success with its Moneyball approach.

In my latest 3 Strikes video which I recently posted on LinkedIn, I wore my “vintage” Oakland A’s baseball jersey and outlined this Moneyball mindset for in-house legal departments based on these 3 key areas:

⚾️ Cost Optimization: Look for opportunities to gain greater value from your third-party expenditures and seek to reduce your costs where possible.

⚾️ Data, Data, Data: Really understand what types of work and activities that you and your teams perform every day for your clients. Group such activities into two areas: (1) high-impact work; and (2) low-impact work.

⚾️ Operational Excellence & Relentless Prioritization: Once you have the specific data regarding the types of work that you do, spend more time delivering high-value work to your clients and less time delivering low-value work to your clients. Be sure to ruthlessly prioritize your work based upon its importance to your clients and to avoid potential legal/compliance risk.

Best of luck with this Moneyball mindset!