The legal operations manager is a cross-functional role responsible for leveraging the investments made by the legal department. The role requires a wide-ranging skill set encompassing strategic planning, financial management, vendor management, technology management and legal data analytics. Legal operations managers help legal departments get the most out of their budgets, vendors and technology. They optimize the larger legal supply chain matching up a portfolio of supply (e.g., law firms, alternative service providers, consultants and in-house teams) to the company's portfolio of legal needs to meet strategic business objectives.

According to the 2018 Chief Legal Officer Survey, 73 percent of organizations cite hiring an administrator or legal ops manager as the most significant factor in driving legal department efficiency. By employing a results-driven approach to their work and continually prioritizing objective data over subjective hunches, legal ops professionals can have a huge financial impact. In fact, Cisco indicates that its legal ops team has saved the company a whopping $400 million over the past few years.

CLOC's Core Competencies Shape Legal Operations

Since its inception, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) has served as an invaluable resource for the legal ops industry. The group has identified 12 key areas on which legal ops professionals should focus their efforts, including financial management, vendor management, cross-functional alignment, technology and process support, service delivery and alternative support models, organizational design, support and management, communications, data analytics, litigation support and IP management, knowledge management, information governance and records management, and strategic planning.

CLOC also stresses the importance of legal ops professionals setting a distinct operational strategy for their legal departments. This can include automating and optimizing workflows, creating a clear technology road map, implementing relevant technologies and processes to save time and money (such as machine learning or cloud-based e-billing software), and maximizing departmental resources by tracking and managing external and internal spend to deliver the best value.

Four Best Practices for Long-Term Legal Operations Success

More specifically, there are tactical strategies legal teams (and their organizations) can incorporate to better support both new and existing legal ops teams. Consider implementing these four best practices to ensure long-term success for your legal ops efforts:

Establish a change management plan. For organizations introducing a new legal ops role or department for the first time, it's crucial to remember that people are inherently resistant to change. To overcome this obstacle, take the time to make sure everyone understands how the new role (or department) will work within the existing legal department. Create a cohesive vision for how legal ops will drive operational excellence for the legal department and other key stakeholders in the organization through more streamlined and standardized processes, new technologies and cross-functional collaboration.

Set clear expectations. Whether legal ops is a new, expanded or existing function, it's important to continually manage the expectations of both the legal department and the rest of the organization to ensure acceptance and ongoing support. Share clear efficiency outcomes to help disseminate the value of legal ops, rather than simply creating more bureaucracy, processes, rules, dashboards and the like.

Build a future-proof technology road map. There are many existing technologies that legal ops teams can leverage to optimize operational processes and gain greater transparency into current workflows. However maintaining and planning for future scenarios is just as important as implementing the latest technology and tools. To outline such a plan, consider how legal ops is defined, what standards will measure the department's maturity and how cost optimization will affect legal ops tactics. It's also important to consider legal ops' relationship with IT and adhere to relevant best practices to ensure the two teams work symbiotically to support technology road maps. Lastly, work to institutionalize any new technologies or best practices for future hires by incorporating them into training processes.

Engage in transparent pricing with outside counsel. Critical to the success of any legal ops department is acknowledging that the traditional model of relying on outside counsel to determine fee structures no longer aligns with legal operations' focus to manage costs and achieve spend predictability. Control costs by leveraging outside counsel billing guidelines to reduce billing errors and overhead charges, flat fee or alternative fee arrangements, and/or standard negotiation processes that can reduce friction.

Transparency and Empowerment Are Key

Legal ops is, and will continue to be, a fundamental component of any successful legal department. Whether you're hiring your first legal ops manager, expanding an established legal ops team or looking for new ways to make your existing department more efficient, remember that the success of legal ops depends on the willingness and support of everyone involved. Prioritize transparency above all else by continually communicating the goals and results of your legal ops department with the rest of your organization, and empower your legal ops professionals to incorporate any technologies and processes that best support their data-driven mandate. In doing so, any legal department—no matter its size or industry—can benefit from greater financial and operational efficiencies, as well as more informed and strategic decision-making.

Nathan Wenzel is the CEO and co-founder of SimpleLegal, which he launched with CTO Patrik Outericky. He brings more than 20 years of experience in business intelligence and analytic applications, as well as driving business success and growth. As CEO, Wenzel leads company strategy, product direction and adoption. Prior to SimpleLegal, he was a founding partner (with Patrik Outericky) of Edge Solutions, Inc., a business intelligence and analytics consulting firm. He oversaw the development of the CLVR suite of analytic applications for litigation management, corporate legal departments and insurance companies.