Examining the Purpose of the Legal Operations Professional
“Legal operations”, or the optimisation of legal services delivery, is an emerging field in many countries. Below we hear from Jerry Levine, Chief Evangelist and General Counsel at ContractPodAi®, who explains the role of legal operations professionals and how it is likely to change over time.
What is the role of a legal operations professional?
Before diving into the role of a legal operations professional, it is important to take a step back and look at legal operations as a field. Legal ops is characterised by strategic thinking and implementation plans around workflow systems. This is considered to be fairly progressive work for most legal departments, particularly in North America, and it is only growing in awareness and popularity. Legal ops is more of a philosophy for – or approach to – the practice of law. It is the perspective that the legal department can – and probably should – be an integral part of everyday business operations. The role of the legal operations professional put simply is focused on the end goal of how legal teams are operating and making lawyers work better.
What goals do these professionals help achieve?
Legal operations and the professionals in the legal operations space come into organisations to help the law department and GC achieve several goals:
- Strengthen cost controls and the financial performance of the legal team;
- Improve satisfaction among legal and business professionals in the organisation;
- Increase alignment with the company’s strategic priorities;
- Speed up the delivery of legal services;
- Implement, organise, and educate on technological tools for the legal department — and the company as a whole.
What backgrounds and skills should GCs look for in a legal ops professional?
First, some GCs look for legal operations professionals with a legal background, as they are often familiar with legal terminology, ethical obligations, client requirements and the professional pressures faced by lawyers. Others prefer legal operations professionals with a financial background, with the goal of focusing on budgeting, financial reporting and cost controls. A third focus area for GCs is technical expertise. They may seek legal operations professionals who are experienced in technical project management, systems implementation, troubleshooting, and the evaluation of technology solutions.
While these are three key areas that GCs typically focus on, there are other important proficiencies that a legal operations manager should have. In my experience, I tend to seek those with complementary technological skills and financial management experience. Think great teamwork, project and change management, problem-solving, communication, and business acumen, as well the ability to advocate for the department.
What are the benefits of legal ops professionals?
One thing we have seen at ContractPodAi is that having a legal operations professional on staff benefits GCs and legal teams. In my experience, I found that adding legal operations professionals provided me with several key benefits. As the senior legal executive, I am able to spend more time guiding the legal department and my team of lawyers in our activities, as well as provide strategic advice to other executives and senior leadership. The attorneys and allied professionals are then able to better drive the law department’s priorities, support other areas of the business, and focus more on day-to-day tasks. Legal ops professionals, meanwhile, bring their experience — whether financial, technical, or managerial — to address legal department issues and increase the entire team’s quality of service. Surprisingly enough, we saw that there was an increase in job satisfaction amongst the team as people were able to work on items for which they were best suited: legal, technical, management, strategic, and otherwise.
How do legal ops professionals fit into a company’s legal technology department?
Generally, legal operations professionals are involved in the selection and implementation of legal technology solutions. After adopting and implementing a legal management platform like ContractPodAi Cloud, they can help simplify and speed up the digital transformation process and improve overall usage. They can address process improvement, select solutions, integrate tools and manage technology, not to mention handle many other areas of law department operations.
What does the future of this role look like within the legal industry?
There are a few areas that are going to help define legal operations beyond the core technical and operational needs in the future. The goals for future legal departments will be agile, value-oriented and technology-enabled.
With that, what we will see more of is staff using the massive amounts of unstructured data within a legal department for significantly improved decision-making and cost containment. By tracking dollars and value, legal departments will be able to curtail unnecessary spending and decide where money needs to be used to achieve better results.
The ability to take the data we have and apply it to decision making is going to significantly drive adoption of technology in law departments and the need for experienced legal operations professionals who can be cross-functional in the role, whether they are coming from a legal background, a technical background, or financial background.
Jerry Levine, Chief Evangelist & General Counsel
ContractPodAi®
Address: 5 Merchant Square, 7th Floor, London W2 1AY
Tel: + 44 (0) 207 096 1401
Email: connect@contractpodai.com
Website: contractpodai.com
