The rise of legal ops
What have a legal department and a Swiss watch got in common? They both run like clockwork – as long as legal operations are involved. GC finds out how a new brand of in-house professionals are delivering up-to-the-minute efficiency to legal departments.
No longer gifted a limitless budget for outside spend, GCs are under pressure to deliver the smooth running of all moving parts in the department (and beyond), plus timely and watertight legal advice. General counsel must therefore fine-tune their mechanisms with a discerning eye for both quality and economy.
It’s a far cry from years ago, when the in-house lawyer, a general superintendent of sorts, leveraged outside counsel to do much of the hard legal graft. In 2018, it’s becoming increasingly common to see corporate general counsel running an in-house army similar in size to a top-tier law firm – with some legal departments stretching to as many as 1,000 lawyers, others even more.
