Making Room For DEI: The Legal Ops Perspective
As the demand for DEI initiatives grows, so does the need for a capable leader to take charge.
I recently spoke with a new general counsel who, like so many others, wants to build diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives into the company culture.
“Torts, contracts, civil procedure, constitutional law,” she listed. “None of my law school courses mentioned DEI! And the law firm I came from merely paid lip service to it.”
As the demand for DEI initiatives grows, so does the need for a capable leader to take charge. In many organizations, the GC is the go-to person.
Legal Knowledge Management To Drive Dealmaking
“But how can you make DEI a priority,” I asked my friend, “when you have so many other pressing matters on your plate?”
- Around 60% of corporate law departments have recently seen a rise in the number of matters to manage. Yet, budgets haven’t risen at the same rate.
- CLOs/GCs report increases in numerous types of matters such as fraud, misconduct, data privacy violations, class action litigation, contract management demands, internal investigations, and more. Meanwhile, legal departments are hiring and outsourcing less.
- 65% of decisions are now more complex (involving more stakeholders or choices) than before.
- The variety of regulations cited in 10-Ks tripled and the total volume of citations to regulations quadrupled over a recent 20-year period.
Legal departments are biz-eeee, y’all. It’s tough to go it alone. That’s one reason six in 10 legal departments now have at least one dedicated legal operations professional, and 70% of chief legal officers listed legal operations as the top strategic initiative last year.
The Legal Ops Expanded View
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Legal Knowledge Management To Drive Dealmaking
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Legal ops specialists cultivate a comprehensive perspective of how an entire organization functions. By pairing deep institutional knowledge with their multidisciplinary expertise, legal ops pros bring an informed and many-sided outlook to the table that significantly expands both your vision and influence.
Legal ops teams help design purposeful strategies for collaboration, process efficiency, and operational excellence, often incorporating the optimal technology solutions to do so. GCs and CLOs can rely on them to connect actions to results as they:
- Provide detailed context to understand fundamental DEI issues and target specific areas to improve.
- Define specific goal-oriented success metrics and set initial benchmarks.
- Consistently track and report progress with the efficiency of automated analytics.
- Ensure the company’s commitment is genuine and leaders are fully accountable.
Meet DEI Challenges
In other words, legal ops pros have the skills to implement the five common DEI factors McKinsey’s DEI Lighthouses 2023 Report says yield the most significant impact for underrepresented groups:
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- A nuanced understanding of the root causes
- A meaningful definition of success
- Accountable and invested business leaders
- A solution designed for its specific context
- Rigorous tracking and course correction.
Through partnering with a legal ops pro, my friend’s DEI initiatives can flourish while she focuses on the legal functions that bring value to the business.
Do you work with a legal ops team or specialist? How does your company empower them to drive needed changes?
Olga V. Mack is the VP at LexisNexis and CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat, Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security, and Blockchain Value: Transforming Business Models, Society, and Communities. She is working on Visual IQ for Lawyers, her next book (ABA 2023). You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.
