Setting Up A Legal Operations Team Structure

Behind every good law department is an equally good legal operations team, but what critical roles do they play? These silent partners to the legal team provide a plethora of roles and responsibilities, the most of which is to ensure that the legal department runs without a hitch. While this is not always possible, because hitches happen, becoming acquainted with the legal operations team structure, who’s on the team, and what they do makes for greater collaboration.

Regardless of the size and complexity of an organization, the legal operations team operates with a vision to support the legal team and corporation, to reduce legal spend into acceptable range, to implement technology that creates efficiencies, and to ensure a smooth-running department.

What is Legal Operations

Legal operations optimize legal services delivery to organizations, combining business practices, technology solutions, and process management to help legal departments run more efficiently and effectively. Here are the various responsibilities and core functions of legal operations professionals:

• Strategic planning and financial management
• Vendor and outside counsel management
• Technology implementation and optimization
• Data analytics and metrics tracking
• Process improvement and workflow optimization
• Knowledge management and training
• Contract management and automation

The legal operations team is charged with myriad functions that center on reduction in legal spend, budget management and targeted focus on outside counsel negotiations and relationships. In addition, procuring the right technology solution, such as enterprise legal management software, and implementing it to advance and standardize processes is an important aspect of the legal operations director role.

Once appropriate technology is implemented, the chief of staff, vice president of legal operations and the director set up analytics and metrics to capture data on performance, KPIs, legal spend and cost-cutting measures, for example. These data-driven insights improve department performance and provide analytical reporting to leadership.

Setting Up a Legal Operations Team Structure

The size of a legal department depends on the legal operations team structure. An assistant to the legal operations manager may be included on the team. Or the legal operations director may take on the role of the vice president of legal operations, depending on the overall size of the department, the volume of litigation and other matters, the number of lawyers, and the size of the company.

• Chief of Staff: This position holds top rank among the legal operations team structure. She delegates administrative responsibilities to others in the department and reports to the leadership team about legal spend management, budgets, performance, and matter status, among other critical issues.

• Vice President of Legal Operations: In the largest corporations, a vice president of legal operations absorbs the role of executing transformative strategy and developing legal operations KPIs for each role on the team. They work closely with the general counsel and the chief legal officer. Part of the vice president of legal operations role is managing resources and relationships. Internal resources are key focal points, while outside counsel relationship development is also critical.

• Legal Operations Director: The legal operations director holds a senior position in the law department and manages multiple positions when the operations team is larger. As a strategic position, a legal operations director analyzes the department's maturity and seeks areas for improvement. They set objectives that match the corporation and procure the right technology solutions to ensure a smooth operating, focused machine in the legal department. To showcase value, the legal operations director uses business intelligence data to drive decision-making, change management, and overall department operations. A director level is expected to monitor and maintain legal spend and create a successful program. Everything the director of legal operations does synchronizes with the corporation and the chief legal officer’s vision for the law department. Managing legal spend is a high-level priority for the legal operations director. 
• Legal Operations Manager: A legal operations manager reports to a director of legal operations or the general counsel if the director position is unfilled. In the law department, a legal operations manager holds the respected position of managing budgets and ensuring the right technology is available to streamline legal operations and legal team workflow. This person seeks ways to improve and suggests solutions on the best way to implement such improvements.
• Legal Operations Analyst: The analyst, sometimes called a data analyst, understands how to extrapolate data from technology solutions to make informed business intelligence recommendations. These data-driven insights help optimize existing and new processes while improving efficiency.
• Legal Operations Specialist: A specialist’s role is to ensure uninterrupted workflow automation. As the title suggests, a specialist specializes in understanding all aspects of legal software to ensure that the technology runs efficiently. For example, a legal operations director would enlist the help of a legal operations specialist to deploy and implement enterprise legal management software across the law department. The specialist would look for bottlenecks in automation that prohibit efficiencies.
• The Technology Specialist helps select and implement legal software that improves productivity and seamlessly integrates into the law department workflow. This dual expertise in software and legal operations is helpful for overall visibility into department needs. Complementing a tech specialist is an API expert. They continually focus on how each application connects and integrates to create a streamlined workflow. The API technician watches for bottlenecks and disrupted communication and troubleshoots the issues to keep the legal department running smoothly.
• The Data Analyst. Having a data analyst in the legal operations team structure is a bonus. When advanced enterprise legal management software is implemented, for example, a data analyst can utilize new analytics and data to track metrics and provide valuable and actionable insights for strategic decision-making. Many of these data-driven insights include legal spend management, vendor performance, legal operations KPIs, the contract life cycle, and matter management.
• Knowledge Manager: The knowledge manager focuses on organizing and maintaining the capture of legal knowledge for the entire legal operations department. This includes creating a centralized repository of case management files, use of templates for contract management and matters; development of systems to preserve legal documents, such as with legal holds; document management systems including labeling, filing, and accessibility; implementing streamlined processes for the team; and much more. This role is particularly important because it maximize the value of the department's collective expertise while reducing time spent recreating existing work.

The legal operations team structure also depends on whether external resources can be utilized to assist with certain functions. Often, a technology provider can help with data management, especially if a professional services team is available. Contact us to learn more about professional services.