Sydney, Australia. Shutterstock

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, one the leading organizations for in-house ops learning and collaboration, is bound for Australia.

On September 3 and 4, the group will hold its first institute in Asia Pacific, bringing ops professionals from Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and elsewhere in the region together in Sydney to share strategies and network.

It's no coincidence that CLOC has chosen to expand its institutes, which have became well known in the U.S. and Europe, to Australia. The event comes at a time of legal ops growth down under.

“Australia has been one of the early adopters of legal operations globally,” said Connie Brenton, CLOC chief executive officer and chief of staff. “The regional CLOC organization has been in existence for almost two years as well.”

Brenton, who is senior director of legal operations at NetApp, said CLOC Australia's leader Mick Sheehy reached out to her a few years ago, as the general counsel of Telstra, seeking to collaborate with legal ops leaders worldwide. Since then, he and U.S.-based CLOC leaders have worked together to grow a community in Australia. 

“[Sheehy] pulled together a very strong group of general counsel to start collaborating on what legal operations is and how could each of them could learn from one another so they weren't reinventing the wheel,” Brenton said.

Australia's legal operations community isn't identical to its American counterpart. CLOC was founded in the U.S., and has a larger, more established presence there. Both regions, however, are experiencing growth in legal ops.

There are also differences in Australian legal departments overall, which affect what the operations function looks like, CLOC leaders said.

According to Jeff Franke, Yahoo Inc. chief of staff and assistant general counsel, legal operations, and CLOC leadership team member, there tends to be less litigation for companies in Australia than in the U.S., so controlling outside counsel spend is somewhat less of a focus.

“It's also a very different marketplace,” Franke said. “You probably have about 20 percent of the market encompassing large legal departments, and 70 to 80 percent small legal departments, 50 people or less.”

Smaller legal departments often mean in-house lawyers playing multiple roles. Franke said it's not uncommon in Australia for GCs to hold the legal ops job too.

About five to seven years ago, he said American legal departments also often assigned legal ops roles to lawyers already at the company, versus dedicating an entire hire to the position.

There's also a heightened focus on technology use in Australia, compared to legal departments in the U.S. and elsewhere, with APAC often being ahead of the tech curve, according to Brenton.

CLOC's American leaders — four of whom will attend the Australian institute — said the content at September's institute will take into account the unique needs of legal ops leaders in the region, making it a bit different from what attendees have experienced at other regions' conferences.

But, of course, there will also be plenty that's applicable worldwide–as no matter what hemisphere a legal department is in, there are pain points in common.

“Australia is no different than the rest of the world in needing to address cost pressures associated with both internal costs, as well as external costs” Franke said. “Those pressures are driving them to make changes. There's also a fundamental interest in innovation.”