Legal departments in most companies had been doing the work of legal operations for decades, but just not giving it a name. However, in 1995 with a new general counsel, First Bank System, now U.S. Bank, brought on its first director of legal operations. Mary Baker has helped grow the legal department and expand the scope of legal operations to other parts of the business.

At the time, Baker had spent 16 years in an administrative leadership role at Dorsey & Whitney when a senior partner at the firm, Lee Mitau, was tapped to be general counsel at First Bank System. Baker switched jobs with him and had been made the director of legal operations. Her first initiative was to grow the law division.

"We came in at a time when it was First Bank System and there were 10 legal professionals in the law division and compliance reported to the general counsel's office," Baker explained.

In the past 24 years, following a series of acquisitions including that of U.S. Bancorp in 1997, the law division went from 10 full-time employees to 250. Baker added she has 10 employees solely dedicated to legal operations. She said that growth, largely taking place between 2005 and 2010, was a rewarding challenge.

"Each time the company would grow in size, we had the opportunity to step back and staff to accommodate what the new client's needs were," Baker said.

The second goal of legal operations at the Minneapolis-based bank, Baker said, was expanding its scope to other divisions of the bank.

"We are viewed as their business partners," Baker explained. "We are consistently providing metrics and data around outside counsel spend to show them where we can be leveraging internal resources."

Legal operations at U.S. Bank oversees strategy, communication, legal expense, outside counsel and data management within the legal department. She also said she made it a goal to let the more business-facing departments at the bank know what the legal department can do for them.

"If I were to step back and say what the biggest change is it would be that our goal which is to continually look at how we can align ourselves with the business lines," Baker explained.

U.S. Bank's general counsel, Jim Chosy, said legal operations plays a large part in law firm selection. He explained in years past the law division would just go to a Big Law firm for the majority of its work.

"I think that our lawyers, being as busy as they are, would be much more prone to go to their friendly neighborhood Big Law firm," Chosy said. "Without legal operations, we wouldn't have a basis for doing otherwise."

Now, the selection of outside counsel is much more methodical and scientific because of the dedicated legal operations function at the bank. Chosy explained they use firms of all sizes and specialties, with the law division's preferred firm list a collection of the bank's biggest providers based on spend. But more importantly, he said, they keep issues in-house when they can.

Baker said a majority of the work the legal operations function is doing now surrounds technology and innovation. The function sponsors different academies and avenues for employees from all parts of the business to learn how to use the available technology most effectively.

"The law division truly reaches everywhere," Baker said.