The Influence of Legal Ops 3.0 After the 2024 CLOC CGI Conference

Although the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium held its annual Global Institute in May 2024, its learnings still hold sway. In particular, the influence of Legal Ops 3.0 stands out, emphasizing a shift toward innovative technologies, data-driven decision-making, storytelling, and transformative leadership, as reported in a JD Supra article. 

Mary O’Carroll urged attendees to be more strategic, challenging them to work on meaningful initiatives, and Catherine Moynihan answered the challenge by introducing an Epiq methodology for legal transformation:

1. Decide on objectives, prioritizing goals to measure decisions and progress against corporate strategic priorities.
2. Assess the current state, gathering facts to understand necessary changes.
3. Align on priorities, using a structured approach to drive consensus.
4. Design a roadmap, prioritizing business impact.
5. Communicate, building credibility with transparency and ensuring the acceptance and adoption of changes.

Based on the influence of Legal Ops 3.0, legal operations professionals will need to lead a change management process that translates into practical expectations and compromises. In addition, they should understand the concept of “readiness,” which reflects the importance of managing expectations and converting aspirations into practical outcomes. These are the three focus areas.

Contract Lifecycle Management Readiness:

• Establish proper governance and stakeholder alignment.
• Determine the necessary data for managing risk and addressing corporate goals.
• Assemble best-practice contract templates, and prepare and cleanse data for legacy contract migration.
• Assemble playbooks to implement workflows.

Microsoft Copilot for Enterprise Readiness:

• Identify opportunities to enhance efficiency.
• Develop AI applications that provide insights for advisement.  
• Create a usage policy to ensure responsible and effective use of Copilot.

Generative AI for Legal Readiness:

• Start with clean data sets or data ponds.
• Generate and sift use cases, selecting one as a pilot.
• Collaborate with internal subject matter experts and partners to structure data and test prompts.

The understanding of how to harness data is key to Legal Ops 3.0. According to Epiq’s Ziad Mantoura, “When you’re talking data, you’re talking the language of the business.”