How to Build an Effective Legal Operations Strategy and High-Performing Team
Like all organizations, in-house legal teams are on a mission: balancing cost-effectiveness with operational efficiency while aligning with the organization’s larger efforts. There are several ways to do this. In October, we explored one: setting goals and measurement metrics. Now, let’s take a look at another: building a high-performing legal operations team.
We all talk about running corporate legal departments as “businesses within the business,” but that’s difficult to achieve without a legal operations team that understands the nuances and needs of the organization. The legal operations function bridges the gap between the law department and the rest of the organization and serves as a crucial advocate for the legal team. Legal operations professionals understand the larger corporate picture and how to push the legal department toward a true business focus that will yield financial dividends and help advance their organizations.
Let’s take a look at some of the key factors that define legal operations today, and three steps organizations can take to build their own effective legal operations teams.
Flexibility and Adaptability Leads to High Performance
Adapting to change is a crucial component of effective legal operations teams. Legal issues are different for each industry, and the way a legal operations team works needs to reflect those differences. For example, in a technology company, the legal department might need to be more open to trying new things and focusing on the biggest risks while strategically deprioritizing smaller ones. In a more conservative industry like insurance, the typically low risk tolerance of the legal function might more naturally align with the culture of the larger organization.
High performance legal operations work requires nuance and flexibility. In effect, the team must serve as a conduit between legal and the parent organization, and have a deep understanding of the work being done in both areas. They must understand overall business goals and help legal teams match their work to meet those goals. This is particularly important as those goals evolve—an evolution that the company’s legal professionals may not be privy to immediately.
A successful legal operations division also requires professionals to possess several intangible, yet no less important, qualities. Patience, creativity, and a good deal of emotional intelligence—particularly when navigating the personalities and politics inherent to every organization—are all defining factors of a high performing legal operations team.
Strategic Thinking Melds Legal and Business Objectives
Solid legal operations teams also possess good strategic acumen. Remember, legal operations is as much about aligning with a corporation’s business objectives as it is about the law. The department must maintain an entrepreneurial focus where success is defined by the client not by the legal department. High-performing legal operations teams can best support this with a clear strategy that resonates with their primary stakeholders.
Here are three steps legal operations teams can take to ensure that they are adding true strategic value to their businesses:
1. Think big but keep things simple: Strategy should be big and bold, yet easy to comprehend. Strategy that extends beyond roughly three bullet points can get messy and difficult to understand, and can lead teams to lose focus. Ideally, the strategy should be so thoughtful that everyone in the department can recite each bullet point, but also have a deeper understanding of what the bullet points stand for, and how success will be measured. Needless to say, the strategy should support the goals of the larger organization, and certainly not conflict with them.
2. Watch out for mission creep and continually monitor for and subtract the unimportant: Once you formulate your initial strategy, you will start to notice that certain activity in the legal department does not align with that strategy. You will also notice factions within the department who want to initiate new efforts that are not aligned, either because they do not “get” the strategy or do not understand that investing elsewhere takes away from it. Ask yourself what would happen if the department just dropped nonaligned activity and reinvested that time and energy back into more strategic goals? Answer: usually something pretty awesome. The only hard part is, helping people see that which underscores the importance of effective communication.
3. Understand the difference between excellent and ‘good enough’: Legal operations teams manage cost, risk, time, delivery of services, and a variety of other aspects of work within the law department. The reality is that sometimes being 80 percent there is enough—as long as each of these areas meet expectations. Don’t make the mistake of spending the majority of time on one thing while neglecting all other areas. Get to ‘good enough’ and move on.
These three points help clarify an effective strategy, positioning a legal operations team for ultimate success. With a focused strategy, legal operations can add incredible value to a department. This strategy can help legal operations professionals prove their worth and help their organizations meet their financial goals.
But even with a great team and a great strategy, law department goals cannot be met without the right tools and technologies. Next month we’ll explore how to design user-friendly legal operations software that helps teams maximize their productivity and show tangible value to their companies.
Nathan Cemenska, JD/MBA, is the Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights at Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions. He previously worked in management consultancy helping GC’s improve law department performance and has prior experience as a legal operations business analyst. In past lives, Nathan owned and operated a small law firm and wrote two books about election law. He holds degrees from Northwestern University, Ohio State University and Cleveland State University.
