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At the heart of this transformation is the field of legal operations, also known as legal ops. At the InView Connect London conference, Adam Becker, Director of Legal Operations at Cockroach Labs and a board member of CLOC, spoke about its importance.
Despite the fact that legal ops has been around for more than ten years, and with a significant proportion of companies now having some sort of legal ops function, many who work in law still struggle to make sense of what it actually is. The oft-asked question is: what do business operations have to do with delivering legal advice?
The answer, says Adam, is that the way we deliver legal services has become an integral part of the profession. “At the most basic level, legal ops is simply operations – just as you would find in any other department. There is a distinction however, and it lies in the nuances of how legal manoeuvres throughout a company or law firm.”
A textbook explanation might describe legal ops as a multidisciplinary function within a company’s legal department, dedicated to optimizing the delivery of legal services to the organization. Its goal, ultimately, is to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and value of the legal function by leveraging innovation practices, strategic planning, technology, and data.
“Legal ops is about maximizing the legal department’s productivity by shaping focus areas, introducing metrics, and looking at benchmarking and performance.”
“Legal ops is about maximizing the legal department’s productivity by shaping focus areas, introducing metrics, and looking at benchmarking and performance,” says Adam. “Critically, this means investigating both short- and long-term improvements: creating planning roadmaps, whether they be technology-oriented or not, and really starting to measure what’s happening in the department.”
For Adam, a central focus of legal ops should be efficiency – streamlining the “business of law” in a way which empowers lawyers to better support mission-critical business objectives. Cost saving, including budgeting and negotiating fee arrangements, is another focus area, as well as monitoring spend and highlighting opportunities for outsourcing, insourcing, or overhauling.
Then there’s what Adam regards as the most important function of legal ops within a modern legal function: alignment. “This means ensuring that the legal department is aligned with the company’s wider business goals and values, so it becomes an integral part of what drives the company forward and not just a support function.”
Adam regards legal ops as a vital helping hand for in-house teams, and particularly for individuals new to the in-house environment. “As in-house counsel, you are part of a company – not a revenue generator at a law firm. Your client is also your employer, so legal advice is only one element of your role. You’re also going to have to align with your business’ corporate values, HR processes and matrix reporting – these are all operational elements of the job.”
Adam goes on to count off the list of issues an in-house function has to deal with: overseeing what outside counsel is working on, engaging with company initiatives, learning to be a manager (or to work with one) while also coming to grips with the fact that your clients are repeat customers who work with you and your co-employees.
“With all of that going on, where do you get to operationalize? The reality is that there isn’t a lot of time left to focus on simplification, analyzing process and process improvement, learning systems, conducting repeated training (whether to the department or to the outside business) or negotiating with outside providers. It never ends.”
With this in mind, Adam poses an important question: why does a legal department exist in a company in the first place? Over two decades, the role of in-house legal has undergone big changes. Initially, the idea was for in-house teams to handle routine work more cheaply than outside counsel – and to act primarily as risk mitigators for the business. More recently, though, as legal is expected to join every other department in accelerating the business, they’ve been elevated to the role of trustworthy business advisors to the company.
“Legal has become more ingrained in the business, and with that we get the same edicts and mandates as other departments. The idea that legal is somehow different and special is falling away. Reality is coming our way,” he warns. “And what happens when your company starts expecting more from you? You have to get better at efficiency, operationalizing and prioritizing, because you’re not going to get more budget or head count just because there’s more work and you’re not up to speed, you’re inefficient, or in the very worst case, just not organized.”
The speed with which the commercial landscape is shifting demands strong decision-making from legal teams around prioritization, productivity, and budgeting. All of this can be driven and informed by one of the key functions of legal ops – measuring data.
“Measuring data is a lot of what we do, and it’s going to be a major focus going forward,” says Adam. “If a lawyer comes to me and says, ‘I think we’re spending too much time doing a certain type of work,’ my response is, ‘let’s see what we can find – let’s dig in and see what’s really happening, rather than relying on feelings or anecdotes.”
“Start off with whatever data you have. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
The mention of data can sometimes make legal professionals uneasy. It’s natural to equate the word with tech, which until recently has been a sticking point for many legal functions. According to Adam, though, while tech usually becomes essential at some stage, to really make the most of your data, what is more important is simply to start somewhere. “My advice is to start with whatever you can. Data will continue to be a big theme going forward. Any data you can get is useful. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
But make no mistake, warns Adam, tech is the way of the future. “We all need it, and that’s not going to change,” he says. He acknowledges, however, the importance of being aware that the introduction of tech to a department marks a cultural change. Legal advisors and legal ops play different, but equally critical, roles in a successful in-house legal function, and understanding and empathy from both sides will go a long way as the two come together.
When it comes to the issue of timing, Adam says there’s never a right or wrong time to bring legal ops into an in-house team. It’s unusual, but not unknown, for legal ops to be a GC’s first hire. A more common scenario is that legal operations is only introduced as a dedicated role when the legal department has grown to a headcount of between five and ten.
“When you’re developing a legal ops function, your ultimate goal should be to get the right work done by the right people, maintain current and efficient processes, and ensure alignment with wider company values for cross-functional success. You want to continually update legacy processes, remove unnecessary administrative tasks from lawyers’ plates, and find ways to collect and use data to help make strategic, data-driven decisions that serve wider business objectives. That is where the success is. Cross-functional alignment will lead to a successful legal department across the board.”
