Corporate legal operations: Defining priorities for success has been saved
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Corporate legal operations: Defining priorities for success
The four faces of the legal operations executive
Today’s legal operations management executives are multidimensional, bridging the world of operational efficiency and legal services delivery. Given their expanded role, there are four critical “faces”—strategist, catalyst, steward, and operator—that should be considered as these professionals chart their path to success.
Changing legal operations management
Focused on strategy, process, budget, talent, and technology, the corporate legal operations executive is increasingly operating at the highest and most impactful level of the legal function. In fact, 68% of surveyed legal operations executives report directly to the general counsel/chief legal officer (CLO).
With the expansion of the role, responsibilities, and growth of the operations team, corporate legal operations executives may be challenged to remain focused on the most strategic initiatives. As legal operations professionals continue to chart the path forward for this critical role, it may be helpful to consider the allocation of time between four critical “faces”: strategist, catalyst, steward, and operator.
The four faces of corporate legal operations
The strategist is responsible for defining the legal operations management vision and clearly articulating the desired goals and outcomes. A relationship builder and proactive thinker, the strategist is always working toward alignment with both legal department and business objectives.
Some responsibilities that may be associated with the strategist role include:
• Align legal operations’ priorities and resources with legal and corporate strategies to optimize costs and create additional value to the business
• Anticipate and proactively develop a strategy to address operational, technological, and talent leading practices
• Design the appropriate department operating and service delivery model
• Articulate the value proposition of legal operations
• Develop a capital investment strategy/budget that includes technology investment and a plan for external spend and fee negotiation
• Build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and other legal operations professionals and industry groups
The catalyst drives for change with purpose and intentionality. For corporate legal operations executives, this role includes an emphasis on cultural change and the ability to lead others into new territory with a sense of enthusiasm and optimism. The catalyst is a sensible disrupter, both self-aware and possessing a high degree of emotional intelligence.
Some responsibilities that may be associated with the catalyst role include:
• Promote and cultivate a culture of innovation and lead change management efforts in the legal function
• Drive continuous improvement through process simplification, standardization
• Be a thought leader on innovation, technology, and leading practices for legal operations
• Drive engagement by providing tech enablement that allows legal department leaders to work more efficiently and deliver more forward-looking outcomes to their business clients
• Explore prototyping to develop and grow new ideas either internally or through ecosystem partners
• Demonstrate commitment to work-life balance and diversity, equality, and inclusion as a role model for the legal operations team and the legal department
The steward establishes trust through delivery excellence, working to protect the assets of the legal department, including both reputation and budget. A savvy steward leverages business intelligence to enable a deep understanding of how the legal function delivers value and works to support and enhance that value creation through adept project management and an eye toward cost management.
Some responsibilities that may be associated with the steward role include:
• Oversee legal project management to execute tasks on time, within budget, and with quality
• Develop a suite of standard program and project management approaches, playbooks, and tools for rapid delivery projects through large-scale programs
• Work with procurement to identify spending trends, potential cost savings, and efficiency opportunities
• Partner with finance to understand the value of legal spend and develop accurate forecasting and reporting
• Embed a data-driven mindset into the legal department; develop, monitor, and leverage KPIs to track success, demonstrate value, and enable the executive team’s informed decision-making
• Develop and implement an ongoing vendor management program, including a preferred provider list of outside counsel and relationships with legal technology service providers and alternative legal service providers, as well as a plan to serve as a liaison between all the providers to drive the most value
The operator is action-oriented, focused on enabling legal operations and legal department talent. The operator is also skilled in understanding how technology can better enable the legal function, leveraging technology to drive toward greater efficiency and effectiveness.
Some responsibilities that may be associated with the operator role include:
• Seek out the voice of the customer to assess the operational efficiency of the department
• Evaluate the technologies that support the legal function; identify and implement technology solutions for the legal department
• Identify whether technologies supporting legal are compatible and fully integrated with enterprise technologies, including ERP, CRM, third-party risk management, etc.
• Provide training for technology and process innovation
• Establish common understanding of expectations, roles, and responsibilities among the legal operations team and identify gaps
• Refine the legal talent strategy; work with legal HR partner to develop a talent strategy for legal that meets the future needs of the organization
Although it may be helpful to think of the legal operations management executive’s priorities in neat categories, priorities often have components that span more than one face. The four faces exist simultaneously, and the legal operations executive’s ability to navigate each is interconnected.
Your corporate legal operations critical resources
Deloitte’s research indicates that three resources underpin an executive’s success in navigating the four faces: time, talent, and relationships.
Time: Time is generally not a commodity that exists in abundance for corporate legal operations professionals. When being pulled in so many directions, it can be easy to get off track or neglect longer-term priorities. But determining your priorities in advance and allocating time accordingly can enable successful execution of those goals and set you apart as a leader.
Talent: Whether you are a small or solo operations team or a large team, assessing and properly leveraging talent is a critical factor for success in the legal operations management role. For legal operations functions that have the ability to hire and grow their departments, it may be important to consider a wide variety of skills sets. For smaller legal operations functions, leveraging talent is still important, but these leaders may need to be more creative.
Relationships: Exceptional relationship-building skills—the ability to aptly navigate relationships, build rapport, work effectively with a diverse group of others, and cultivate a strong team culture—can be fundamental to the success of any initiative. Corporate legal operations executives will need to work through their relationships to help others understand the value of the legal operations strategy.
The road to corporate legal operations success
The role of the legal operations executive continues to grow in importance with an increasing range of responsibility within the legal function. To stay on track, it may be helpful to assess your allocation of time and regularly evaluate and select your top priorities. To be successful in the role, understand the four faces and where you need to focus your time and energy, execute on your top priorities, and hone your critical resources.
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Jessica Day |
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