Legal Operations

Updated February 9, 2025 | Argopoint Consulting

what is legal ops? a modern definition

Legal operations is the strategic function (and often a dedicated group) within in-house legal departments that enhances legal department efficiency, reduces costs, and optimizes workflows. A basic legal operations function may manage the business and administrative aspects, while a more mature and highly effective legal operations is a strategic partner to the legal department leaders. Legal operations areas / responsibilities often include: 

• Resource management:  Legal department financial management (budgeting and forecasting, cost management, resource allocation), legal vendor and outside counsel management, reports, metrics, KPIs, paralegal and support staff management, workload analyses, training and CLEs, matter intake

• Processes and systems: legal technology solutions and accompanying protocols (e.g. matter management and others), Tracking and reports, document & knowledge management, process optimization, technology adoption and planning, and AI solutions

• Leadership and strategy: Strategic planning, roadmapping, workflow management, legal project management, legal analytics, change management, implementations & legal transformations, stakeholder management

It can be difficult for legal department leaders to manage the complexities of operational performance while also overseeing substantive practice areas and ongoing legal matters.  As such, legal operations has emerged as "the glue" that holds the various practice areas and functions of the department together, while freeing up attorneys to focus their (valuable!) time on substantive legal work.

THE NUMBER ONE MISTAKE IN LEGAL OPERATIONS

The initiatives that legal operations leaders face in todays legal market are increasingly complex a wrought with risks, conflicting information, and a preponderance of expensive technological and other solutions that are not as one-size-fits-all as they claim.  

It is crucial to get the right information to inform legal operations initiatives.  The number one mistake we see is a legal department spending a lot of money on an off-the-shelf solution, without the proper research and planning, and finding it creates more administrative burden for the attorneys. Benchmarking initiatives are often the quickest and most effective way to get targeted data to help inform the legal department decision making.

For over 20 years we have been working on these types of projects with legal departments of 100+ attorneys, and our expertise and experience enables teams to cut through the noise and get these crucial projects done the right way, the first time – clients of ours regularly report 10-20% overall savings. From performance, project and process management, to outside counsel, vendor and spend controls, to technology adoption and cross-functional collaboration, we have truly seen it all. 

Understanding where your legal department stands in its legal operations maturity journey is the first step. With Argopoint’s expertise in legal project management and business process improvement, we help leading legal departments implement best practices and accelerate progress toward operational excellence. 

legal operations capabilities (Examples)

We have helped clients identify and implement legal operations management best practices in a host of areas.  Our support for legal operations strategies can focus on:

• Selection process (request for proposals): outside counsel (law firm RFP), technology or systems (Legal tech RFP, matter management RFP), or legal service providers (ALSPs, E-billing, E-discovery) selection, a pivotal decision-making process legal department resource management 

• Performance management strategies (that drive meaningful, measurable improvements)

• Improved processes and management approaches (with enabling technology as appropriate) 

• Optimized workflow supported by guidelines and SOP's 

• Improved roles and responsibilities (with clarity around delineations) 

• Demand management disciplines (legal departments fail when they are order takers; they need to actively identify "customer needs" and prioritize stakeholder requests) 

• Optimized contract management (and appropriate, efficient support and collaboration of procurement functions) 

• Vendor (ancillary, non-law firm, legal services) management 

• Outside counsel management (with appropriate, disciplined tools and management processes) 

• Litigation support  

• Knowledge management (no longer the "nice to have" as legal departments are increasingly becoming repositories for the enterprise) 

• Technology support (that is focused on and finally "gets" the unique needs of legal) 

• Financial and budget management disciplines 

• Performance (KPI-driven) and cost dashboards  

• Data and legal analytics (leading departments have significantly upgraded capabilities in the past five years alone - adding new tools, processes, and staff) 

• Professional capability and resource development 

• Program management (traditionally a weak point of departments (and lawyers) - this is becoming increasingly important to drive widespread and lasting change) 

• Cross-departmental and cross-functional alignment