Legal Ops Should be a Strategic Player, Not Just a Firefighter

Legal ops should be a strategic player within organizations and not get caught up in a reactive cycle of solving problems one by one, or “putting out fires” as accounting company BDO writes on its website.

This transition to a more strategic and proactive role can be challenging. Expectations for legal ops professionals are not always defined and legal departments are historically resistant to change. Department budgets may prioritize cost reduction to an excessive degree, limiting the legal ops team’s ability to offer essential insights for informed decision-making. Most importantly, many organizations typically exclude legal ops from strategic decision making.

Organizations should integrate legal ops professionals into the department’s strategic planning process by doing the following:

• Providing legal ops with comprehensive insights for identifying and implementing innovative practices.
• Letting legal ops analyze step-by-step processes through detailed activity assessments.
• Giving legal ops permission to conduct feedback surveys with legal and business teams to align operations with strategic goals.
• Advancing efforts by legal ops to employ tools like activity mapping and KPI frameworks to focus on critical areas of impact.
• Encouraging collaboration between legal ops and other legal department teams to overcome resistance to change and promote the value of legal ops.
• Permitting legal ops to manage technology portfolios effectively to optimize resource utilization.
• Providing transparency on budgets for a comprehensive financial overview so legal ops can make objective analyses that support informed decision making and financial strategy.

Legal ops should be a strategic player within each organization. By embracing these strategies to redefine legal ops’ role, legal departments can transform their operations, enhancing performance and competitive advantage and ensuring a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.