A business user should not need to know your legal department’s reporting structure to ask for help. They need to recognize their request and understand what happens after they send it. Legal service delivery design starts there. The department can then assign the work according to the expertise and level of review it requires.
Understand the Requests Reaching Legal
CLOC’s Service Delivery Models guidance connects resource choices to the work, volume, risk, and cost involved. It does not prescribe one model for every legal department. Sample recent requests and identify what the requester needed to accomplish. Separate the legal decision from the document collection, coordination, or reporting around it. Keep the responsible lawyers involved in defining the boundary.
Compare Four Routes
For a worked example, a U.S. manufacturer receives requests for contract status, supplier onboarding, new commercial terms, and specialist advice. Different routes may serve those requests, provided each route has an owner and a clear escalation path. A requester should be able to recognize a familiar situation without knowing legal’s internal team structure.
| Route | A Suitable Starting Point | What Must Be Clear |
|---|---|---|
| Approved Self-Service | Find a current approved instruction or status record. | What the material covers and when to ask a person. |
| Administrative Delivery | Collect records or coordinate a defined process. | Scope, inputs, completion evidence, and reviewer. |
| In-House Lawyer | Assess a legal question within the team’s remit. | Business facts, urgency, and decision needed. |
| Outside Provider | Use expertise or capacity the department has chosen to obtain. | Instruction owner, authorized scope, budget, and review. |
Decide What the Requester Will Experience
A short form is only the entry point. Define how the person learns who owns the request, what information is missing, and whether the work is waiting on another team. Avoid promising a completion date based only on acknowledgment speed. If a request changes route, transfer its relevant history and tell the requester where it went.
For the manufacturer, a status question may be answered from a maintained record. A change to commercial terms may require new business instructions and lawyer review. The route should preserve that distinction even if both begin in the same front door.
Trial the Route Before Setting a Service Promise
Trial one request type with a named receiving team. Include an incomplete submission and a request whose facts change after assignment. Check whether the requester can find the route and whether the receiving team gets enough information to begin. A fast acknowledgment is useful, but a request still needs an owner when the original recipient is unavailable.
Before publishing a service promise, examine the trial’s actual waiting points. If business instructions routinely arrive late, make that dependency visible in the service description. Agree who will update the instructions and review exceptions. Expand the route only when the people maintaining it can explain what they will do when the normal sequence breaks.