Legal intranets are a huge benefit for in-house departments and should be used by more organisations, a legal adviser at HSBC told general counsel last week.

Meredith Gibson told delegates at an IT seminar arranged by the CLO programme, a management development scheme for general counsel and heads of legal, that a legal-specific intranet is the best way to stay in control of policies and the instruction of external lawyers.

She said: 'Most companies have intranets, but not all of them have specific legal intranets.

It is a valuable way of talking to our customers and informing them about who we are and what we are doing.'

Ms Gibson added that the HSBC legal intranet contains contact details of all panel law firms and their areas of expertise.

Individuals in the bank may only instruct featured firms.

It also holds all the bank's legal policies on copyright, patents, litigation procedure and inter-group service agreements, ensuring that there is only one version of each policy.

A separate, password-protected intranet containing the bank's precedents is also available to its 400-strong in-house legal team worldwide.

But Ms Gibson warned that a legal intranet could not work without someone working on it at least part time.

Rachel Rothwell