As head of ops at a major legal department and chair of the Association of Corporate Counsel's Legal Operations Group, Reese Arrowsmith has a pretty unique vantage point on how law departments are evolving to grow more efficient and spend conscious.

Arrowsmith, who has been vice president and head of legal operations at Camden, New Jersey-based Campbell Soup Co. since 2016 and was formerly ops director at Lincoln Financial Group in Radnor, Pennsylvania, believes the relatively young legal ops field still has plenty of room to grow. He says those in legal ops have to learn from their past successes and mistakes to usher the function into the future.

Arrowsmith spoke with Corporate Counsel about collaboration, technology and where the ops function is headed next. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Corporate Counsel: How did you get started in legal operations?

Reese Arrowsmith: I started working as a consultant at a software company implementing legal software in the late 90s. I went on to do broader corporate legal strategic consulting in the mid-2000s for a large management consulting firm, Duff & Phelps. In 2011, I moved to an in-house position and I've been in-house ever since. My consulting career gives me an interesting background because I've been in dozens of legal departments in multiple industries.

Have you ever been brought in to build your own legal ops function from the ground up?

I've been in-house at two companies now. Both had at least one legal ops person. I've been told by colleagues that in each of the companies, I've changed the role. I'm not the kind of person who just keeps the lights on and I generally don't settle. I try to advance the department and challenge thinking. One of the things I focus on is measuring total case cost and law firm win rates to insure the department is mitigating risk in both the short term and long term. In short, my goal is to spend as little as possible with the best outcomes.

Could you take me through what an average day looks like for you?

If there is one thing I've learned, it doesn't matter how big or small your legal department is, all legal departments struggle with the same things. From AIG to Campbell, no two days are the same and no day is average. On a typical day I deal with internal staffing issues, external firm engagement management items, resource constraints and needs. A large amount of my time is spent on tracking budgets and actuals and redeploying resources to where they're actually needed at any given point in time, and of course a big chunk of my time is spent on technology issues.

What strategies have you used to cut legal spend on outside counsel while still getting quality results?

Different companies have had different techniques.  A larger company that has more data gives you the ability to analyze outside counsel spend and settlements by firm and geography.  If you take a single matter type and break it down by firm and geography, you can start to see trends. It's really kind of big data mining to determine which firms are giving you the best results. … In my experience you can often get good results at lower total spend with smaller regional firms, but it really depends on the matter.

What kind of technology is your office using for legal operations that you're finding helpful on a day-to-day basis?

We have the table stakes: matter management, e-billing, document management and contract life cycle management. We're investigating artificial intelligence and machine learning software to make efficiency gains in our contracting team. We're not using artificial intelligence or machine learning today, but we are starting to investigate it and hope to start using some in the future.

What are your thoughts on AI in legal ops?

We know new technologies have proven themselves helpful in e-discovery. The question is, when we will see efficiency gains and cost savings broadly in legal tied to these technologies? Last year, I set out to find peers in other legal departments who have used cases that prove real efficiency gains or cost savings tied to AI, machine learning or data mining on large volumes of routine matters. In general, the gains still seem to be tied to very large insignificant matters or large transactions with a large volume of documents. I have yet to hear of any real quantifiable cost savings tied to these technologies on more routine matters. I'm waiting for that and I'm anxious to see it. I think there are efficiency gains coming, but it is not happening as fast as some futurists predicted.

Tell me more about your role with the ACC. 

I lead the strategic planning for the group for the year with a co-chair, an executive leadership team and a broader steering committee. The ACC Legal Ops Group is by members, for members, so we reach out to hear what members are interested in and then put a strategic plan in place to deliver against that for the coming year.

What are some challenges the legal ops field is facing now?

I agreed to chair the ACC Legal Ops Group because I wanted to impact the industry and launch it forward. In the past year, ACC legal ops members and partner companies created the first ever maturity model tool kit and webinar series to provide law department leaders the ability to benchmark maturity, gain alignment on department priorities and enhance the operations of legal departments.

The maturity model and tool kit helps in-house counsel and legal operations professionals advance from early to intermediate and advanced stages in 14 areas, which include everything from financial management, internal and external resource management, to strategic planning and technology management. I've had numerous GCs and head of operations tell me that they used the maturity model and are starting to use the tool kit series in their senior leadership team meetings to benchmark where they are and develop a strategic plan.

Do you believe that outsourcing sections of legal departments to providers like UnitedLex is good for the industry?

That remains to be seen. I think the industry is ripe for disruption and I think companies like UnitedLex are starting to finally push the envelope.  I hope new service providers will experiment, aggregate and mine data, measure outcomes and document successes and failures, so the industry can learn as a whole.