Contents
Understanding legal operations Evolution of legal operations Key functions of a legal operations team Building a strong legal operations team Career opportunities in legal operations Benefits of embracing legal operations
Legal operations is an umbrella term for all the activities and processes that support and empower a company’s in-house legal team. For many businesses, the legal department no longer consists of a general counsel overseeing all the company’s legal affairs. Now, there is an accelerating trend of legal operations teams taking charge of many of the key functions surrounding the company’s legal concerns.
Understanding legal operations
Before we delve into legal operations in depth, let’s try to understand some basics of legal operations: what it is, why it’s important, and what it seeks to accomplish.
Definition of legal operations
Legal operations (legal ops) combines business activities, processes, and professionals that enable in-house legal departments to serve their companies more effectively. It encompasses a variety of activities that do not require a license to practice law, such as strategic planning, project management, financial management, and technology implementation and management. This wide array of covered activities means that legal ops also covers many disciplines, including finance, analytics, marketing, and digital technology.
Why is legal operations important?
The ultimate goal of legal operations is to maximise the bottom-line positive impact of the company’s legal department. Not only does legal ops seek to free up in-house lawyers to focus on legal work, but it also allows for data-driven strategy and financial planning for the legal team as a whole.
Legal operations have become especially important over the last couple of decades due to the faster pace of business and increasing legal costs for companies. Since many areas of business have become more cost-conscious and data-driven, in-house legal teams are under pressure to do the same. In addition, legal ops teams take over duties that lawyers are not naturally inclined to handle (such as technology implementation and data analytics) that are nonetheless vital for success in the modern business world.
Evolution of legal operations
As long as there have been in-house legal teams, there has been a need for the tasks and responsibilities fulfilled by legal operations. However, legal operations has only been recognised as a discrete function since the early 2010s. To understand why, we must look at the history of in-house legal teams within three generally recognized historical periods: pre-1990, 1990 to the mid-2000s, and from the mid-2000s to the present day.
Pre-1990
Before 1990, most legal teams dealt with fewer complex legal issues and mainly focused on risk management and managing outside counsel. While legal teams would try to reduce outside legal costs, there was less cost pressure than today.
1990 to mid-2000s
Companies in this era had to deal with legal issues of increasing complexity, often due to regulatory and international issues. This resulted in even heavier use of outside counsel and an increasing emphasis on cost control.
Mid-2000s to today
Beginning in the mid-2000s, there was a sea of changes in legal operations that led to a focus on legal ops as a discrete function within the company. With the use of newer technology and aut