A productivity revolution is afoot in the legal industry. The field of legal operations, which is tasked with cultivating in-house efficiency with a variety of techniques, has recently begun to enter the spotlight as the deservedly vital role it has been for quite some time.
According to the Association of Corporate Counsel, nearly half of CLOs reported having legal operations staff, a figure that is more than double the number the ACC reported last year.
Organizations such as the freshly minted Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) are doing excellent work in raising awareness for the importance of legal operations, but many corporate law departments nationwide remain slow in allocating more resources toward these roles. As the legal landscape continues to transform, it is more important than ever that law departments embrace legal operations.
Here are five reasons why legal operations is leading the legal industry revolution.
1. Law Departments Must Be More Efficient
Time and spend savings are becoming increasingly important for legal departments as the industry contracts and resources become more scarce. Elite law firms are pulling back on bonuses, while at the same time businesses are encouraging their in-house legal departments to focus on efficiency and to conserve resources while delivering value.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, an investment in legal operations specialists, who take on tempering legal costs as a primary part of their work, will allow legal departments to better weather the current turbulence. They will also ensure a leaner, better-equipped organization for the long run, when the industry picks up again.
2. Outside Counsel Use Is Becoming More Strategic
As funding for internal legal department processes has begun to exceed external legal spend, legal departments will need to be more selective in deciding what work to outsource. Legal operations, charged with maximizing efficiency, will be an integral voice for law departments in making these decisions, as they are chiefly concerned with reducing operational waste.
Legal operations can also be helpful with implementing initiatives as simple as an emphasis on self-sufficiency and collaboration tools to make the most out of this increased corporate trust.
3. Legal Departments Must Adopt Analytics to Keep Up
A plethora of analytics can be useful to any legal department. These include pricing analytics for determining the profitability of a case type and predictive analytics for keeping tabs on the legal field overall. These applications are not widely used, but their effectiveness only ensures that it’s just a matter of time before legal departments will need to adopt them in order to compete.
Legal operations teams are tasked with using these technologies to maximum effect to support the same volume of legal work while budgets stagnate. After all, a great many legal operations managers are not lawyers at all; they’re e-billing specialists, accountants and technologists. Their talents allow them to integrate useful metrics into even the least tech-savvy legal departments.
4. Law Departments Must Embrace New Technologies
There is a legal tech movement happening in law right now. We are seeing a wide variety of technologies emerging in our industry that are designed to enable law departments to do more with less, save time and maximize their resources. A key component of the role of legal operations staff is to evaluate, introduce and monitor new technologies. The right technologies, deployed at the right time, can be major time- and cost-savers. Legal operations teams are leading the charge by ushering in a new way of practicing law and managing legal departments with these new resources.
5. Employee Morale Cannot Be Ignored
Another responsibility of the legal operations role is to ensure that employees are happy and fulfilled, which can involve planning retreats, professional development programs, continuing legal education and more. Having individuals in legal operations dedicated to well-being is ideal for legal department morale, which, in turn, strengthens the department’s connections with the rest of the organization. Legal operations staffs have become very creative with some of the options for their teams: from retreats, to perks such as neck and shoulder massages, periodic ergonomic reviews and tai chi sessions during the workday. Happy employees have been found to be 12 percent more productive in their roles, so if you think that this aspect of the legal operations job is unrelated to efficiency and the bottom line, you’re mistaken.
The Bottom Line
With an increased focus on legal operations, legal departments can become leaner and more productive to better demonstrate their value to the company. By prioritizing efficiency, helping strategize on outside counsel and bringing analytics and new technologies into the fold, legal operations is boosting employee morale and proving integral to in-house law departments at a time when resources are particularly scarce.
This piece was originally published in Corporate Counsel.
Monica Zent is the founder and CEO of Foxwordy, the private social network for lawyers and founder of ZentLaw, a leading alternative law firm.
This article was originally published on Medium.com