Organizations like the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium and the legal operations arm of the Association of Corporate Counsel have made it possible for the speedy evolution of the function, according to a white paper recently published by Onit and SimpleLegal.

The paper states a legal operations survey in 2008 only had responses from 34 individuals and the only organized events for legal operations professionals were informal roundtables. However, since that time, the role has become more mainstream with the efforts of groups such as CLOC and the ACC.

The goal of both CLOC and the ACC's legal operations arm is to provide networking opportunities and make sure legal operations across all industries have access to the latest work processes and innovations.

"As we've grown, we want to share and make sure people don't struggle," Christine Coats, chief financial officer at CLOC and vice president of legal operations at Oracle, said.

"We want to help each other get to a more mature level of legal operations so that we can start innovating and taking things to the next level," Mary O'Carroll, president and board member of CLOC and the director of legal operations at Google, said.

Catherine J. Moynihan, the assistant vice president of legal management service at the ACC, said over the past 20 years the ACC had legal operations roundtables in most major cities. The events were for experts to share best practices because legal operations had not become a mainstay in legal departments throughout different industries.

"To some extent, there were people in this role who didn't know it was a thing. They had emerged organically in the legal department," Moynihan said.

In 2015 the ACC formally launched its legal operations arm and began to better connect legal operations professionals to learn from each other.

"It is a function that learns from others to an extraordinary extent," Moynihan said.

Both Moynihan and O'Carroll said, their respective groups have helped legal operations grow is because of the awareness it has brought to general counsel and chief legal officers about the efficiencies the function brings. Moynihan said the ACC has directly advocated to those communities about legal operations.

"What we're doing is identifying and disseminating best practices and how the role is structured and leveraged," Moynihan explained. "I think that's another important piece; because legal ops leaders, no matter how effective they are, vary tremendously based on how the GC leverages the function and sets it up for success."

O'Carroll said CLOC has not advocated directly to general counsel and chief legal officers about the benefits of having a legal operations function, however, she said CLOC has created a standard definition of legal operations for the industry and that individuals in the role have shown how important it is.

"With that, GCs and CLOs are talking amongst themselves and sharing their stories. I guess you can say it's easy to sell a role that is really selling itself," O'Carroll said.

As a way to further the legal operations conversation, in July CLOC began allowing law firm staff to apply for CLOC membership.

"We've been really happy with the level of openness and dialogue to date and are excited to see what the future brings when we are working together," O'Carroll said.