Why complexity, not capability, is the biggest problem for legal ops + tech

Legal teams aren't failing because they can't keep up. They're failing because their tools can't keep up with them.  

For in-house lawyers, the goal is to help the business move confidently and make smarter decisions, by turning legal complexity into clear advice, managing risk, and supporting commercial outcomes. Achieving that requires efficient workflows, simple processes, clear communications, reliable document management and strong security. Without these, legal teams can easily become overwhelmed by complexity and administrative noise.

So how can legal teams cut through the clutter and refocus on deep work?

The hidden costs of complexity in legal tech  

There’s a tech solution for almost every legal task, but many in-house teams end up juggling a growing list of tools—covering everything from legal intake and research to document automation, time tracking, and contract lifecycle management. While technology was meant to ease this burden, it often creates the opposite effect, leading to fragmented systems and disjointed processes that add complexity rather than simplifying work.

“Nirvana would be having all those tools seamlessly integrated into a single workflow, but that’s rarely the reality,” says Nam Truong, Head of Product at Cubed by Law Squared. “Excessive complexity erodes efficiency, diverting time and energy away from the work that truly matters.”

Too often, legal tech platforms operate in silos, lacking integration and forcing teams to jump between systems and search for information. Worse, many tools are overengineered, designed without a clear understanding of how legal teams actually work. “Unnecessary complexity is often built into tools that should be making life easier,” says Nam.

The cost of distractions  

A crowded tech stack creates constant distraction. Each task in the workflow can require users to switch platforms or track down information across multiple systems - disruptions that add up and take a real toll on focus and productivity.

A study from the University of California at Irvine found that it takes roughly 23 minutes for workers to get back on task after being interrupted. In Australia, it’s been found that the average employee loses 600 hours annually to lost focus. Interestingly, the most common distraction for employees lies in work-related chat messages. Unfortunately, those chat messages and notifications are increasingly coming from multiple sources, creating a chaotic environment.  

For in-house legal teams, these distractions are compounded by the need to manage a high volume of routine, manual tasks like filing emails, tracking approvals, or logging contract versions, in order to maintain a defensible record. These admin-heavy duties not only eat into time better spent on strategic legal work but also increase the risk of errors or gaps in documentation.

Layers of tools and admin lead to distraction, tech fatigue, and underperformance. Many teams find themselves sucked into legal minutiae and admin tasks rather than being able to dedicate their time and energy to complex problem solving or higher value tasks.

Technology was meant to alleviate this burden, but more often it introduces a steep learning curve. Teams must spend significant time upskilling just to use the tools effectively, and in many cases, these platforms end up underutilised. The result: wasted effort, poor adoption, and tools that fail to deliver their promised return on investment.

“I think most in-house legal teams are doing pretty remarkable work – in spite of their systems, not because of them,” jokes Nam.

Rethinking legal ops from within  

In a landscape crowded with niche legal tech tools, how can in-house legal teams make better use of the technology they already have to streamline workflows, standardise processes and centralise communication—without getting lost in a maze of disconnected tools and workarounds?

One promising solution is to build legal tools directly within the core platform in-house legal teams (and their business stakeholders) already use every day – Microsoft 365.

“Solutions developed within Microsoft 365 are inherently intuitive and integrated with the tools legal teams are already familiar with, for example, Outlook, Sharepoint, PowerBI, CoPilot and DocuSign,” says Nam. “This eliminates the need for multiple logins, reduces security risks, and avoids the fragmentation that comes from juggling multiple platforms.”

Nam adds: “A solution built entirely within Microsoft 365 also looks and feels familiar, which significantly lowers the training burden - a key barrier to adoption. Instead of adding complexity, the tech fits naturally into how the team already works.”

Cubed is the first legal tech solution of its kind that is capable of out-of-the-box deployment in just one day. With no requirement for new systems, or complex deployments, Cubed is a powerful, intuitive legal operations solution that works where legal teams, and their business users already work - inside Microsoft.

From chaos to consistency   

Most legal teams know that adopting more and more tech doesn’t lead to better results. Instead, a ‘less-is-more’ approach, emphasising trusted technologies that work where legal teams, and their business stakeholders already work, is needed.

“Lawyers shouldn’t have to become technologists, endlessly learning new tools and platforms, only to wind up stuck in the administrative weeds,” says Nam.

For most legal tech, the implementation process can also be a lengthy process, involving months of complex configurations and integrations that demand significant time and IT resources. In-house lawyers are often tasked with overseeing these technology projects, sometimes lasting six months or more, on top of their regular legal responsibilities. It’s easy to see why many platforms fail to meet expectations and wind up underutilised.

“We built Cubed to eliminate the friction that legal teams experience with traditional legal tech,” says Nam, “It’s legal tech without the tech burden; familiar, secure and scalable so in-house teams can focus less on technology, and more on what matters.”

So, where to from here?

If you’re curious about how this thinking translates into practice, we’ve built something different. In a landscape crowded with niche platforms, Cubed by Law Squared stands out by doing less - on purpose.

“We’ve designed Cubed to reflect the way legal teams already work; integrating integrates seamlessly with familiar Microsoft tools to manage intake, matters, contracts and approvals, in a unified platform,” says Nam.

To see Cubed in Action and find out how you could be up and running by EOFY, book a demo here