Scaling Governance With a Small Team? Here's How to Make It Work

As businesses grow, legal and compliance demands often multiply at a pace that leaves teams scrambling to keep up. More entities to track. More jurisdictions to navigate. More filings, more risk and more complexity.

Meanwhile, most legal teams stay the same size, with the same resources. Legal doesn’t just get busier, it gets buried. The classic challenge to do more with less is familiar, but the stakes are higher. The expectation is to do more, but faster, cleaner and without dropping the ball. 

The Strain of Scaling

Legal and compliance teams are quietly carrying a lot. Regulatory timelines are getting tighter, organizational structures are getting messier, plus questions from finance, tax, ops and execs, just keep coming.

Incredibly, most teams continue to manage all of this while staying lean. A Deloitte study found that 68% of companies have just 1 to 3 people handling entity management. At the same time, 67% are managing entities across three or more regions. 

When such a small team is tasked with keeping a global compliance strategy intact, using a handful of spreadsheets and one overworked legal lead, it won’t be long before the cracks start to show.

Start with a Stress Test of Existing Processes

Before diving into new tools or completely overhauling your workflows, it's best to assess where your team currently stands. A stress test of existing processes can help identify weak spots and highlight areas for improvement. Ask yourself:

• Do you know how many active entities you manage without having to check a spreadsheet?
  
• Can finance or audit securely access ownership data without going through legal?
  
• Are the next 60 days of filing deadlines already calendared and assigned?
  
• Can you locate the latest board minutes for any entity in under five minutes?
  
• Is your entity data consistent across departments or are there conflicting versions?
  
• Could you securely access critical records online if your systems went down or you needed documents urgently?
  
• Are your minute books current and available online?
  
• Do your entity processes follow a consistent path across teams or vary on a case-by-case basis?
  
• Is there a single reliable source of truth for entity data?
  
• Have you completed all filings without missing any deadlines in the past year?

How to Read Your Score

• 8-10 ‘yes’ answers: Strong foundation. You’re managing well.
  
• 5-7 ‘yes’ answers: Gaps are emerging. It’s time to shore up some areas.
  
• 0-4 ‘yes’ answers: Risk is rising. You may be close to critical breakdowns.
  

If you scored lower than you'd like, you’re not alone. With such a disproportionate ratio between team size and the complexity of governance tasks, it’s no surprise that many legal teams feel like they’re constantly putting out fires.

“Everyone’s coming to the legal department for the right document. Finance needs something for a tender. Accounting needs dividend details. That all lives with the legal team and if you’re not organized, it’s chaos,” says Stephanie Williams-Quinn, Senior Director of Compliance, HSP Group.

Most legal teams are juggling a lot with very little. The upside? You don’t need fancy tools to make things easier. A few simple systems can go a long way.

Build Your Foundations of Scalable Governance

The teams that scale smoothly usually have a few key structures in place. Not fancy tools or complicated frameworks, just simple systems that make it easier to move fast without losing control. They’re worth putting in early, especially if your team is small.

Here are three foundational pillars that can help scale lean teams with a lot less friction:

1. Centralized entity data: Your filings, charts and audit logs are only as reliable as the data behind them. Putting everything in one place, whether that’s a dedicated platform or a well-maintained internal setup, gives you a clean, reliable source of truth. It also means finance, tax, and anyone else who needs that information isn’t always waiting on legal to send it over. 

If you’re still using spreadsheets, that’s okay but just be disciplined. Use version history, set access controls and make sure there’s only one master file. 

2. Consistent, Documented Processes: Things often break when your go-to person is on leave or leaves altogether. That’s why having consistent processes matters. Renewals, org charts, filings, reporting — every core task should follow the same basic steps, no matter who’s doing it.

Record these processes on checklists, quick videos or short guides — whatever works best for your team. It makes onboarding smoother and keeps the whole team (and cross-functional partners) aligned.

3. Role-Based Visibility: When legal is the only team with access to entity data, progress slows down. Requests stack up, legal gets swamped and other teams end up creating their own systems just to move faster. A better approach is to share access based on what each team actually needs. Finance might need shareholder info, tax might need loan data, ops might just want a read-only view of org charts.

Figure out what makes sense, set clear permission levels and make it easy for people to get what they need without going through legal every time. It lightens your load, improves cross-departmental collaboration and keep processes moving.

Quick Wins to Get You Moving

Even if you’re not ready for a full platform or major automation shift, there are smaller steps you can take now to make things easier. These are simple, low-lift habits — ones that legal and compliance pros shared during the State of Entity Management webinar and other conversations.

Run monthly “micro-audits” of entities: Pick a handful of your riskiest or busiest entities and do a quick 30-minute check each month. Are they in good standing? Anything due soon? Missing documents? You don’t need to review everything all at once but just rotate through the list over time. It’s an easy way to catch issues before they snowball.

Set up a shared compliance calendar: Move those key compliance dates — filings, renewals, board meetings — into a shared calendar your whole team can see. Google Calendar works fine. Assign owners and set reminders to make tracking easy. Review it once a month in a team check-in. It’s one of the easiest ways to stay aligned without more meetings or status updates.

Map out “who owns what”: Entity management touches a lot of teams. Make a simple list of who’s responsible for what: finance handles dividend history, tax tracks intercompany loans, legal updates directors. Share it around then check in monthly to ensure it’s accurate. It helps everyone know where to go and saves you from chasing things down.

Automate just one thing: You don’t need to overhaul everything. Just pick one repetitive task and make it easier. Maybe that’s setting filing reminders in Slack. Maybe it’s using a resolution template instead of rewriting from scratch. Start with one. If it works, build from there.

Build What Works Best for You

Scaling governance with a small team doesn’t mean doing everything at once or doing more with less forever. It’s about putting the right building blocks in place so you’re not constantly playing catch-up.

Start with the basics: get your data in one place, document your key workflows (even if it’s just a checklist) and make sure the right people know what they’re responsible for. Then layer in small habits that take pressure off your team like shared calendars, quick monthly check-ins and better folder naming. 

When the time comes to automate or invest in a bigger system, you’ll be ready. But until then, small wins can go a long way in keeping things manageable.

Want to see how other teams are navigating governance challenges? Download the State of Entity Management Report for real-world insights, benchmarks, and strategies that show how small teams are scaling with confidence.