"Legal ops" is a shortened term for "legal operations," which refers to the management and improvement of processes and technology within a legal department or law firm. It involves implementing efficient systems, strategies, and automation to streamline legal work and increase productivity.
Full definition
Legal Ops leaders must make difficult choices with limited funds, weighing the pros and cons of competing options.
The recent surge of interest in the
corporate Legal Ops discipline should be a big clue that efficiency is a top - of - mind issue and will be for the foreseeable future.
Belying this widespread optimism about the legal function's ability to drive innovation and change, 76 %
of legal ops professionals believe that the pesky billable hour will survive the next 5 years.
In October, I wrote about the newly hired
legal ops role at Air Canada, but I hadn't investigated it much beyond that.
Outside counsel is increasingly aware of the need to work with
legal ops departments and to provide value to clients, and technology is the key to being able to do that.
I would recommend anyone, whether interested
in legal ops profession or not, get a business background and understand the numbers.
Mon Jun 5, 2:30 - 3:30 pm 602 — Basic metrics for every law department Elevate Services with
ACC Legal Ops Metrics & Analysis Interest Group Topic: Discovery, Metrics Audience: Early Stage Format: Expert - led Roundtable This provides a baseline reference to law departments that are early stage on tracking specific metrics and providing their leadership information that enables fact based decision making.
With legal ops functions managing and directing hundreds of billions of dollars in spend under a mandate to run their departments like a business, a lot more change is on the horizon.
Discover insights on how process and technology are being used by
legal ops function to ensure quality service delivery.
Legal Business David Burgess (February 13, 2018) Client Intelligence Report: Data view — Big talk
on legal ops fails to change buying habits
Denis, whose current role consists of managing the department's strategic plan, budget and outsourcing strategies as well as finding ways to better enable the corporation's legal counsel through the addition of new technologies and processes improvement, says he's noticed a lot of
legal ops people are not lawyers — large corporations have moved to procurement - background types for the job, which he calls unfortunate.
CMO SIG members are invited to attend a webinar this Wednesday, Feb. 28, to explore the idea of
using legal ops as an effective, timely business development tool.
This explosive growth reflects ACC's own experience with the special membership division formed for legal operations professionals, which has grown by about 52 per cent — to almost 400 members from 258 different companies — since last June when the division launched its inaugural ACC
Legal Ops Conference.
One driving force for change in the legal industry is the advent of
legal ops groups inside corporate legal departments.
Priori sat down with Shmuli Goldberg, VP of Marketing at LawGeex, the award winning contract review automation software startup, and discussed how LawGeex is
acing legal ops and why the future of the legal industry will be shaped by a metric - driven approach.
As more and more technology have added in -
house legal ops departments, that will help spur the growth and adoption of legal tech, which will trickle down to smaller companies.
One of the most surprising findings given all the talk
about legal ops and technologically related savings: «The most commonly used technique for minimizing legal spend is negotiated rates / discounts while the most effective technique is e-billing enforcement of guidelines.»
Tue Jun 6, 9:30 - 10:30 am 903 — Meaningful Law Department Metrics: Contract Analytics and AI In Today's Law Departments Elevate Services with ACC
Legal Ops Metrics & Analysis Interest Group Topic: Metrics Audience: Advanced Format: Panel This session will build upon the first Metrics session and dive deeper specifically into use and case studies of contract - related analytics and AI.
CLOC's unique accomplishment has been to focus on
helping legal ops professionals make connections where none existed before.
These new and existing
legal ops personnel fill an increasingly important role within the legal department, implementing the legal department strategy and helping organize and meet goals and deadlines.
Indeed, many of these managed - service relationships get moved
under legal ops.
When looking at
implementing legal ops software, in - house legal departments need to examine what their goals are as a department and ask whether they align with what the company goals are, as well as asking why they're looking to implement software and what they are hoping to accomplish with it.
The key of
successful legal ops is being able to influence other senior leaders and create buy - in.
Legal ops usually have a financial background and look for ways to lower costs and optimize the delivery of legal services to a business.
Unless You Ask: A Guide For Law Departments To Get More From External Relationships is sponsored by the ACC
Legal Ops External Resources Interest Group.
Looking forward to the discussion with
legal ops specialists from Wells Fargo and Walmart when we are at the Wolters Kluwer ELM User conference on November 15, 2017 in Orlando
For corporate legal departments that have a fully
defined legal ops function, that department is a natural partner for us.
There is already a trend
towards legal ops departments and corporate legal teams that are isolated into their own entity, and greater emphasis on shifting some functions previously performed by lawyers to other areas in order to free up attorneys to advise clients.
Changes can be initiated and processed in the LOBs via Word using approved language,
meaning Legal Ops resources are used more efficiently and cost effectively.
Now more and more legal operations executives are reporting in to the GC, which is good because an
empowered legal ops professional is an impactful legal operations professional.
Late last year, CLOC, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, released the results of its first annual State of the Industry Survey, looking at such metrics as legal spend; legal department and
legal ops headcounts; commonly used e-billing vendors, contract management systems and alternative service providers; and law firm evaluation priorities.
This five - person team of individuals from NetApp and Elevate want to transform the profession through the Millennial T - Shaped Lawyer Incubator, which is intended to partner with law firms, companies, law schools and tech providers to devise a standardised legal operations training course in collaboration with the Corporate
Legal Ops Consortium.
In this session, Pratik Patel of Elevate Services, Kevin Clem of HBR Consulting, and Jeffrey Franke of Yahoo! Inc. and the CLOC Leadership Team will walk attendees through the organizational requirements and focus areas critical to creating and developing a best - in -
class legal ops function.
Legal ops consists of improving the interface and execution of services including pricing, data analytics, tech support, knowledge management, litigation support and communications.
With a hypothetical budget to invest in
legal ops projects / initiatives drawn from real - world examples, small groups must decide how to allocate their funds, rationalizing how they use their funds and why, drawing practical conclusions that can be applied to their real world legal departments.
Yet it's a strategic one, whether you're in private practice or reinventing
digital legal ops.
For 10 years now, the Blickstein Group, in cooperation with Consilio, has been
surveying Legal Ops and other law department professionals, focusing solely on the operations function and seeks to provide benchmarks that are useful to the largest law departments.
Since then, the total firm count of Shell's global panel firms has been reduced by more than 50 %, the majority of its matters have been transitioned to AFA's, external legal spend has been cut by more than 20 percent, and the ROI has been so significant that Shell has already created an
additional legal ops support role.