Appreciating legal ops: What CLOs know, and lawyers should      

Mention “legal ops” to any in-house legal department and you’ll probably get a couple of differing opinions: the ones who understand the effect that legal operations can have on an entire organization – and specifically a legal department – and those who do not.   

The growth of legal operations 

The growth of the legal operations function has been exponential. This can be seen in the double-digit growth of The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) membership for the past few years, from 579 members in 2016 to more than 6,000 across 60 countries worldwide in 2023. Further evidence is in the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2023 Chief Legal Officers Survey, which found investing in legal operations is the top strategic initiative for 70% of law departments surveyed. This was by far the largest number, with right-sourcing legal services and cost minimization coming in second and third, respectively.    

All the feelings

Interestingly, in that same study, CLOs strongly agreed that 77% of the time, the internal legal team understood the value that legal ops contribute to the organization. However, only 27% of legal ops professionals felt valued.   

This discrepancy may be due to the way CLOs view legal ops versus the way the rest of the legal department may view them. Legal ops teams are often the trusted advisors to CLOs when data is needed for executives or board members regarding regulations, policies, or risks. The reason for this trust is because of contract data. Legal ops professionals are at the center of the universe in terms of contract data.  

So, how did this come about? Legal ops had been a sideline player for years in the legal department, chasing down documents and making sure that the workflow wasn’t running into any hiccups. The evolution of legal ops can be traced back to the technological advancements in legal tech. With more power to do their job efficiently and effectively, the possibilities became endless. Legal ops professionals can do their job better through technology and take more of the administrative load off lawyers. But do they feel appreciated? The ACC study says they do not.   

Legal ops: Misconceptions and the truth  

These feelings of underappreciation probably come down to misconceptions. So, what do the lawyers need to know about legal ops that the CLOs have already figured out?  

Legal ops will never replace the lawyers on in-house teams. That said, they are also invaluable to the legal team, no matter the size. Some would argue that the smaller the team, the more necessary the legal ops’ role becomes. The non-legal work of any legal department is no small feat, and this is exactly what legal ops takes care of. In-house lawyers should realize what it takes to ferret a contract through the labyrinth of intake, triage, drafting, negotiations, and approvals. If a lawyer only needed to concern themselves with drafting and negotiations and not the other critical operational minutia, they have legal ops to thank.   

Without legal ops, lawyers could be asked to run around and look for a summarization of data from all the contracts within their organization or their level of risk exposure. Or maybe lawyers could be asked about the predicted spend for outside legal next quarter.  Again – thank legal ops if none of these needs are faced by your in-house lawyers.  

But the legal ops’ role is much bigger than fact-finding, administrative duties, and helping lawyers escort contracts through their lifecycle. If you think about it, all business operations success stems from having access to contract data — not necessarily the contracts themselves, but the data that they hold. As the keeper, organizer, and maintainer of these contracts, legal ops can enable the entire organization to reap the benefits of contract data.  

The possibilities: Legal ops and beyond 

Legal operations’ reach can extend even beyond the legal team. What if everyone else in the organization, like Finance, Procurement, Marketing, Legal, and even executives, could run reports based on contract data using their everyday systems?   

For example, imagine a completely data-driven organization that relies on a single source of truth for its operations. Everyone would be working from the same data set. Imagine:   

• Procurement integrates its performance tracking systems into the CLM to deliver up-to-the-second comparisons between contractually obligated and actual results.  

• Sales integrates its customer relationship management systems into the CLM so that they always have access to the most current information about the contractual relationships they are seeking to maintain and expand.  

• Finance integrates its enterprise resource planning systems into the CLM to ensure that volume discounts are leveraged when earned, and that payment terms are used to optimize cash flow.  

By integrating those systems into a CLM where contract data can live and breathe, the company would enjoy even more efficiencies found not only for legal ops, but also for the company at large. Legal ops would then be free to be even more effective for the legal team, as well as the entire organization, by safeguarding and optimizing contract data flow into and out of the legal department.  

Conclusion

The legal department should easily see that legal ops are a function that will empower the legal team and the entire organization. They’re not job-stealing, administrative-focused, lawyer wannabes – they are a critical part of the organizational eco-system that brings the entire legal team into focus as a major player with a strategic seat at the company table.