Streamlining Legal Teams with Legal Operations & Tools

Legal operations is the backbone of efficiency within the legal team, taking care of processes that in-house counsel may overlook while managing contracts, risk, and compliance. By setting up workflows, coordinating cross-functional teams, and evaluating legal technology, legal operations ensure that lawyers can focus on strategic work while driving profitable outcomes for the business.

What is Legal Operations?

Vanessa Saffold, Manager of Global Legal Operations at LiveRamp, described it best in Cockpit Counsel: “Legal ops is the wheels that make the legal department turn.” In practice, legal operations enable collaboration between the legal team and the broader organization by implementing processes and technology that streamline work, reduce errors, and improve service delivery.

With legal operations in place, the legal team can not only protect the business but also contribute insights that inform strategic decisions. By adopting the right legal technology, legal ops teams ensure smoother, more efficient legal service delivery. For more on enabling enterprise teams with legal operations software, see our guide on how legal operations software empowers enterprise legal teams.

Why Legal Operations Matters

Legal operations drives operational efficiency and technology adoption within in-house legal departments. By automating tedious and time-consuming tasks, legal ops allows lawyers to focus on higher-value work while improving accuracy. This function helps the legal department move from being a perceived bottleneck to a strategic partner, using business intelligence to measure performance, streamline workflows, and accelerate processes.

As legal teams increasingly contribute to the bottom line, enterprise legal management becomes essential for managing budgets, tracking spend, and demonstrating impact across the business. For insights on prioritizing tools like Asana, Monday, Jira, and Zendesk for legal teams, explore this guide.

Core Competencies of Legal Operations

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) defines a set of “Core 12” competencies for legal ops teams, highlighting how they develop a mature legal operations function:

• Business intelligence: Track and analyze key metrics to inform strategic decisions.
• Financial management: Manage budgets effectively and connect spend to outcomes.
• Firm and vendor management: Build strategic relationships that deliver value.
• Information governance: Ensure proper handling of data and reduce risk.
• Knowledge management: Capture and scale organizational best practices.
• Organization optimization: Assemble skilled teams and provide strong leadership.
• Practice operations: Free up lawyers’ time for strategic work through process improvements.
• Project/program management: Execute initiatives successfully with structured change management.
• Service delivery models: Optimize vendor use and workflow efficiency.
• Strategic planning: Define goals and long-term vision for the legal team.
• Technology: Evaluate and onboard legal technology to improve workflows and accuracy.
• Training and development: Upskill teams through continuous learning and certifications.

What Legal Operations Does

At its core, legal operations exist to increase productivity and efficiency in the legal department while delivering value across the business. Legal ops teams use enterprise legal management and legal technology to automate tasks, support cross-functional collaboration, and improve decision-making.

Enabling Better Collaboration

Legal teams that work in silos often struggle to collaborate efficiently with other business units. Legal operations introduces legal project management systems and tools that improve visibility and ensure tasks are completed on time. For guidance on cross-team collaboration, check out our guide to cross-functional collaboration for legal teams.

Automating Routine Tasks

Legal ops identifies repetitive tasks, such as researching, drafting, and editing, and implements legal technology solutions that automate them. This ensures lawyers spend their time on strategic, high-value work rather than manual processes.

Leveraging Contract Data

By integrating contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools like LinkSquares CLM, legal teams can access real-time contract data. This enables better understanding of risks, customer health, and overall team performance, turning contracts into actionable business intelligence.

Legal Operations Software

Legal operations relies on a suite of enterprise legal management tools to streamline workflows, track metrics, and improve transparency across the business. Key types of software include:

• Legal project management: Organize and assign tasks, centralize requests, and track progress efficiently.
• Contract lifecycle management (CLM): Automate the contract process, streamline workflows, and leverage AI analytics for insights.
• eSignature: Collect signatures digitally to save time and reduce paper usage. For more, see LinkSquares Sign.

For a deeper dive into maximizing efficiency through legal ops, check out our Business Impact: Legal Operations Deep Dive event coverage.

Driving High Performance

Legal operations transforms in-house legal departments into strategic powerhouses. By implementing legal project management, leveraging legal technology, and tracking performance through business intelligence, legal ops helps teams reduce costs, lower risks, and improve collaboration. Coupled with enterprise legal management software, these tools empower the legal team to deliver measurable value to the business. For enterprise-level digital transformation strategies, see our guide on enterprise legal management at large companies.