Impact of Legal Operations
In his latest column for GC, David Burgess, Publishing Director at The Legal 500, considers the role of legal operations within the wider legal community.
For this quarter’s column, I’m going to take a look at legal operations, which appears to have replaced ‘innovation’ as the main buzzword in legal circles. I attended the third annual conference of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) recently and have had a little time to reflect on where the market is with legal ops. If you were in Las Vegas with me, you would be absolutely convinced from the passionate speeches being made that every lawyer in the world is aware of this brave new world. The reality is somewhat different, as many people I have spoken to around the world have pretty much shrugged their shoulders with disinterest at the mention of it. But for those who are involved, it seems the revolution is coming.
Briefly, for those who haven’t stumbled across it, legal operations aims to drive greater efficiencies within corporate legal departments through strategic planning, financial management, vendor management, outside counsel management, technology management, and legal data analytics. Some say that the head of legal ops is the chief executive or chief of staff of the legal department – not the finest description, but I guess we will go with that for now.
