Guidelines and Procedures

Establishing Quality Control And Maximising Productivity

Market participants have finite resources to employ in the management of their legal documentation requirements. It is essential that those resources are utilised as effectively as possible. Two key tools in promoting effectiveness are:

• negotiation guidelines; and
• document management procedures.

DRS can assist clients in either the review of existing guidelines and procedures, or their creation and implementation.

Negotiation guidelines

Written guidelines, incorporating a detailed commentary on standard terms and preferred legal and/or commercial positions, can promote efficiency and risk management in a wide variety of ways:

• establishing a consistent approach to key issues;
• minimising the requirement to escalate issues to senior legal staff or other risk functions;
• allowing new and/or junior staff to be trained and integrated with minimal effort and
• helping to facilitate the effective outsourcing/off-shoring of workflow.

Document management procedures

A comprehensive document management process ensures that all stakeholders in the negotiation process are properly aligned and work together in a consistent and constructive manner.

The main motivations for seeking to negotiate documentation tend to be counterparty risk management and revenue generation - as a result it is likely that, amongst others, both the credit risk management and sales/distribution teams will be heavily involved in any documentation process.

It is therefore important that any document management process does not simply focus on the internal operations of the legal/documentation team, but also encompasses the day-to-day interaction with other functions.

This can assist in ensuring that non-legal issues are resolved as quickly as possible to maintain momentum in the negotiation process. It can also contribute to effective prioritisation of workflow, to ensure that the efforts of the document negotiation team are focused on those items that will deliver the greatest benefit in terms of risk mitigation and/or revenue creation.

Please contact us for more information