Law Department Operations: Driving Organizational Efficiency With People And Technology

Legal department operations have shifted over the last decade to reflect a broader, global drive toward more efficiency. In-house legal teams are taking a multi-pronged approach to accomplish this goal of becoming more efficient to contribute to overall organizational profitability: They are onboarding specific people as well as technology solutions. 

Improving Efficiencies with People and Technology

According to the 2018 Legal Department Operations Survey, nearly 15 percent of respondents reported having zero full-time employees on the legal operations team. In 2019, the survey shows that almost 95 percent of respondents now have at least one full-time employee dedicated to legal operations, demonstrating the growing focus on this function of the legal department. And the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) has cited the benefits of legal ops professionals specifically in establishing operational strategy and overseeing the department’s technology roadmap. 

Emerging technologies are the second major force impacting legal departments, with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing at the core of many solutions-creating efficiencies. The 2019 Legal Department Operations Survey shows that half of the respondents plan to address their contract management technology over the next 12 months, and almost 60 percent plan to evaluate their document management technology. 

The Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Legal Operations Team

This blend of bringing on both humans and technology to make legal departments more efficient may come as a surprise to those who have listened to the rumors surrounding AI’s supposed replacement of human legal professionals. While technology won’t be replacing humans in the legal department any time soon, it will increasingly aid departments’ humans to be more productive. 

One of the most significant opportunities for legal departments to implement technology to improve operations is contract management. The International Association of Contract and Commercial Management issued research showing that improving contract management can increase corporate profitability by nearly 10 percent annually. Implementing a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system helps legal operations not only contribute to such an increase in revenue, but to streamline the management of each contract so volumes of vital contracts remain error- and risk-free. CLM software helps organizations integrate automation into the lifecycle of a contract so humans aren’t burdened with repetitive tasks, contracts are secure through software-based storage, and approvals happen more quickly. 

The Impact on General Counsel

The role of the general counsel is also shifting in the wake of expanding legal operations, and one of the effects is integrating the in-house legal team with the rest of the business to understand various issues faced by other departments. Overall, it’s clear that legal department expansion not only offers general counsel the ability to become a more strategic member of the business, but it intertwines legal into the rest of the business as a whole. 

To optimize your legal department for this change, bring the right people and the right technology into your business. Consider exploring technologies such as contract lifecycle management software to offload repetitive tasks and leverage automation. Your future legal operations team will be the most efficient it can be. 

For more, download Legal Department Operations: A Guide for General Counsel.