How Legal Operations Drives Efficiency and How You Can Sell It to Your CEO

Colin Levy’s column “The Evolution of Legal Ops: Unlocking Tangible Value” cogently defined legal operations, its key domains, and the duties of legal operations professionals. A Thomson Reuters blog post takes this discussion in another direction: how legal operations drives efficiency and how you can sell it to your CEO, making the business case for implementing a legal operations function.

Legal operations enhances efficiency across several categories:

• Strategic: Working with the general counsel on goal-setting, creating key performance indicators (KPIs), succession planning, and strategic plans to guide operations of the legal department.
• Financial: Managing the legal department budgets, including e-billing systems, forecasting, alternative fee arrangements, and reporting.
• Operational: Ensuring that the department runs smoothly with regard to staffing, data analytics and metrics, and contract management. Handling program, knowledge, and records management, along with regulatory compliance and technology implementation.

Implementing a legal operations function faces hurdles such as conservative attitudes within legal departments, budget constraints, skepticism about its value, and the general counsel’s reluctance to delegate. However, the benefits — efficiency, productivity, and economic savings — justify the effort.

To convince CFOs and CEOs, it’s crucial to demonstrate the necessity for legal operations, its impact on service delivery, and its potential to pay for itself through cost savings and technology adoption. Small legal departments can also benefit, even with part-time legal operations roles. To establish a legal operations function:

• Research resources from organizations like CLOC and ACC Legal Operations.
• Prepare a compelling case for business leadership.
• Secure the budget and create a blueprint for the function.
• Find a qualified individual to lead, ideally with a background in finance and technology.
• Identify quick wins to demonstrate immediate value, such as implementing e-signature technology or improving a workflow process.

If your goal is to deliver high-quality legal services at a lower cost and with better results, setting up a legal operations function is the fastest and best way to reach it. The efficiencies produced tie directly to a company’s primary goal of driving profitability.