How Legal Ops Can Build A Collaborative Culture In Legal Departments

Crucial to the overall success of the legal department is the relationship between the general counsel (GC) and Legal Ops. In a session at the CLOC Global Institute in early May 2024, Cindy Kaneshiro, Director of Legal Operations and Chief of Staff at software company Nutanix, shared how the GC and Legal Ops can work together and meet cultural challenges in creating an open collaborative culture in legal departments. 

Legal Ops is inherently collaborative. It is a hub within the business working with every single function and having exact knowledge of what the business is doing. The heart of that collaboration is communication to and from the legal team, the GC, and the business itself. 

Of primary importance is communication about the company’s business plan. Kaneshiro said that “figuring out how to tie legal to that 12-18-month business plan, that’s critical. If you can be that kind of person to help your GC make that tie and then send it downward to your legal team, you are going to be hugely impactful.” 

To connect and communicate with everyone on the team, once a year her team does an informal assessment with every person in legal. This determines where the pain points are, and helps her understand the needs of the team and how Legal Ops will be able to address them as the business needs shift. 

Although Kaneshiro uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to measure the legal department and demonstrate success, she says that “where we’ve steered currently with our data journey is that we’ve let it be driven more by practice area.” Once a quarter each practice area reports out, closing information silos and reporting out data. 

Because demands haven’t resulted in a budget increase, Kaneshiro’s team is trying different technologies and doing things incrementally. For example, they have spent time this past year working on choosing and implementing a new contracting tool. Next year will be focused on bringing in the right resources for growth, such as working with ALSPs.

Kaneshiro said that “when you’re looking to the future and thinking about whether you need to resist budget cuts that may be coming or ask for investment, the  ability to measure against OKRs ends up becoming extremely important to be able to demonstrate that need for the investment in legal.”

Interested in learning more about CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) and the 2024 edition of the Global Institute?  Read our coverage:

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