As all legal departments face pressure to be more efficient with fewer resources, legal operations can offer relief when it comes to managing costs. Christine Coats, vice president of legal operations at Oracle Corp., offered Corporate Counsel tips on how an ops team can cut spend, in some cases by millions of dollars.

“Your legal team is always asked to do more with less,” said Coats, who joined Oracle in 2015 and is also part of the executive leadership team at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, an organization with legal ops leaders as members who aim to optimize legal services delivery models and share knowledge. And whether the mandate is to reduce spending or head count, she said, a legal ops team focused on, for instance, process improvements, cost management of outside counsel and department budget can help tremendously.

As an example, Coats pointed to the cost savings departments can achieve by focusing on e-billing, where typically “you're going to get the biggest bang for the buck,” she said.