The Ultimate Guide to Legal Operations

There’s no doubt about it: legal departments are no longer just about the law. To the layman who has no experience in the field, this can sound ridiculous, akin to someone stating that the retail industry is no longer about sales, especially with the emergence of a legal operations manager.

 

But it’s true!

 

Law firms are now expected to be experts in everything, not just wearing a handful of different hats, but being experts in all sorts of spaces.

 

That is why Legal Operations and the legal operations team are so important. They modernize legal departments, working with in-house partners and counsel, the professionals overseeing operations, vendors, and so much more.

What is Legal Operations?

So, what are Legal Operations? Simply, they are the functions, usually with a program or application, that optimize the delivery of legal services and all that entails by streamlining efficiency, improving financially, and increasing the value of the firm or company, which is crucial for legal ops professionals .

Sure, you’re thinking that we have always had Legal Operations, and to a point, you are correct. At one point, we shepherded cases with the help of an in-house legal team, taking hours, if not days, only to be steered in the wrong direction and have to restart the process.

We used to have at least a handful of administrative assistants to keep up with our clients' emails and phone calls and ensure the timeliness of briefs and motions.

But now, with modern legal operations, most of those day-to-day activities can be done behind the scenes through technology implementation without the cost of too many employees, and not just promptly, but instantaneously. Working faster than even the fastest computer 10 years ago.

The Core Functions of Legal Operations

Those last ten years have seen unprecedented growth and change within the legal field to the point where so many emerging technologies that one would ordinarily not attribute to the legal process are now forever intertwined with it. For instance:

1. Financial Management

As finances are the purview of such a massive portion of the legal field, it is unsurprising that the planning and monitoring of the finances of a company or law firm are every bit as important as legal briefs and portfolios.

2. Vendor Management

With so many people diversifying their financial interests, is it any wonder that Legal Operations has now taken vendor management under its banner?

Legal matters evolve every day, and regulations fluctuate between stringent and loose. We have to make sure that the supply chain's day-to-day operations have the same legal representation regardless of where they fall on the spectrum.

3. Technology Management

Having recently worked with a technology firm from Austin, I am deeply familiar with the processes of integrated planning and design and optimization that helps this quickly growing field. We have to be able to work within the boundaries of the human workforce, along with the artificial intelligence and Litigation Management Software, to create the best balance between modernity and the best practices of the past.

4. Data Analytics

Many law firms now find it imperative to incorporate data analytics into their daily Legal Operations. With the ease and benefit of the raw data that we have at our fingertips from web traffic to our sites to phone calls or even foot traffic, it is so important that we have a place to factor in this information for financial management legal ops to more accurately gage where the company is going as well as avoiding pitfalls in the way.

5. Project Management

My father was a project manager for Johnson Controls, and while that was not my wheelhouse, I saw the struggles of a man working with limited data from his home office in the early 2000s to the boundless information of the internet when he retired in 2015.

His job became a different animal, and he was able to complete in days what would have taken weeks, not even factoring in travel time to inspect the sites himself. Law firms can use the same tool sets, in alignment with the general counsel, to advance their own company interests as well as those of the stakeholders by including law firm organizational tips.

6. Knowledge Management

Similar to the data analytics already addressed, Knowledge Management identifies the information of the goings on within the company in a more focused manner, creating worksheets and data capture to streamline the Legal Operations within your firm or company. This also reaches into Legal Document Management.

7. Strategic Planning

One way of strategic planning is to include virtual legal assistants for their speed and accuracy. We need to find ways of using emergent technology to improve and not hamper our law firms, creating a path to success.

8. Cross-Functional Alignment

In the modern world, being able to have teams effortlessly communicate and collaborate is as essential as any part of the legal process. Ensuring that each stage of the legal process does not switch on a dime is so important to communication between teams, especially when states or even countries separate them.

9. Service Delivery Models

The “service” here is everything that can be used to deliver services to the customer and for them to contact us. Many Legal Operations also include means to improve our contact with Clerks of Court, outside counsel, and federal or international agencies to ensure seamless transitions between conflicting software.

10. Organizational Design & Support

Instead of using an outside company to organize our design and provide support, we can use a Legal Operations program to take care of all of that for us. How many times can you remember having a support issue where you have to get in touch with someone far away when you need the solution immediately? Lots right? Well, Legal Operations eases the pain of this headache by doing all of the heavy lifting for you.

11. Training & Development

There is nothing as frustrating as having to retrain our employees every time there is an update in software, eating away at hours and costing us financially. Legal Operations can actually do the training, creating slideshows and videos without taking time from our day to day operations.

12. Change Management

This also aids in change management, pushing the boundaries of what is possible within our firms while mitigating the pain of those changes. This can come about through utilization of NEW best practices as well as training as addressed above.

Why Legal Ops Matters

The costs of legal billable hours have skyrocketed in recent years, creating an environment where people are apprehensive of spending their hard-earned money on our services.

There is also an increased need for transparency in legal work with the advent of social media creating a generation of technologically savvy and proficient people who know that they should be able to see anything whenever they need to. It is considered axiomatic that a firm can have all of their information readily available online.

That is why Legal Operations matter. They compartmentalize the different segments of your business, almost as if creating “business units,” to help keep people focused on what they do without chasing rabbits and reinventing the wheel every time a new project arises.

Legal Operations also ensures that the corporate goals are met and followed through, highlighting the legal operations role, since the applications and software can only do what they are instructed to do without an agenda.

Tools and Technology in Legal Operations

While it is undeniable that the water cooler conversation within law firms at the moment is artificial intelligence and what it can do to change their practices, it is also clear that it is not AI alone that is an up-and-coming tool in the legal field, ensuring law firm efficiency.

E-billing applications are becoming so widespread that it is rare to find a firm that does not utilize one, many of which moonlight as email posting platforms.

Reporting tools are now more and more required from stakeholders and partners given the depth of data that is now,  let’s face it, expected by both employees and customers both current and prospective. This is why matter management software is so important along with Contract Lifecycle Management for records and historical data.

Challenges Legal Ops Teams Face

The most difficult obstacle that a law firm will face when altering and augmenting Legal Operations is the resistance to change that is inherent in everyone. 

The arguments might be great ones, from budgetary concerns to integration hiccups with preexisting software, but the primary difficulty will always be getting everyone on the same page. This can take patience even when it does not feel warranted, but remember that those are growing pains that will ultimately increase clients and financial interests.

Best Practices for Building a Legal Ops Function

Like any new practice, you always want to start small. Make sure to laser focus your intentions on one or two items, for example, training or strategic development.

Have reports ready on how the Legal Operations function, without forgetting that you must include WHY the changes are necessary. It’s not enough to simply parrot the talking points to investors and partners. You have to SELL it, like you would do with any executive buy-in.

Be sure to work with the existing IT department or company you use, because there could be issues that seem small but can quickly snowball because of miscommunication in software. This will encourage a company devoted to improving their culture and workflow.

It’s also important to include clientele in these Legal Operations by at the very least including them in quarterly newsletters from the in house legal department addressing upcoming changes, making sure to frame those changes in the most positive and easy to digest ways possible.

The Future of Legal Operations

The legal field is changing quickly with the advent of AI as well as the modern expansions of the Legal Operations profession. Can we possibly know all that is coming? Obviously not. But we can know that artificial intelligence will lead the way in innovation. We can know that employee retention will change and evolve.

We can know that business functions will change due to improvements in best practices. But most importantly, we can know that without growing along with the technology we will be left behind both intellectually and financially.

Conclusion

Legal Operations, as we have seen, are game changers. The flow of modern innovation waits for no one, so why not consider hiring a Legal Operations professional after downloading our Legal Ops Starter Guide? This will give you the bones of the opportunities Legal Operations can build for you and help you on your first steps in this exciting new field.

Elevate your firm's CLE management and compliance with BeaconLive's comprehensive platform. Our solution seamlessly integrates with your legal operations framework, reducing administrative overhead while ensuring high-quality continuing education for your team. 

Contact us today to discover how we can help optimize your CLE program and strengthen your operational excellence.