1. What An Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman: A review of the new science on owls.
2. When Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams: A legal thriller by Georgia activist Stacey Abrams (seriously, how does she find time to do all the other things that she does?)
3. Big Bets by Rajiv Shah: The President of The Rockefeller Foundation's insight into how large scale change happens within a global institutional framework.
However, all shared the theme JUSTICE, as well as being in the good fight, persisting against incredible odds, and making a meaningful difference.
I needed that message. Having been in legal operations for 15 years, I joined enticed by the siren song of making a meaningful difference in the practice of law for the 21st century. The transformation I was expecting within the first decade is still out of reach, and - as is not atypical following the year-end financial close - I was questioning my career choice. However, as 2024 launches I am feeling significantly rejuvenated once again by legal ops' potential to have positive impact on the legal industry.
But back to books. Let's start with the owls. As the companion to a 31-year-old parrot, I have been inculcated into the amazing world of birds. Birds, evolved from the dinosaurs and many eons more evolved than humans have been worshipped for as long as human history is documented. Owls from Athena's (goddess of wisdom) constant companion to Hedwig in Harry Potter hold our imagination. Ackerman's book covers the lore of owls in cultures around the world spurred by their round human-reminiscent faces, silent flight and inscrutability.
Last year a vandal slashed the enclosures of a number of animals at the Central Park Zoo. All of the escapees were recaptured except Flaco, a Euarasian eagle owl about the size of a bulldog. Photos from his time in the zoo show him looking quite forlorn. After years in captivity there were concerns about his adapting to the wild, but he took over Central Park and was soon feasting on rodentcide-free rats with the silent swoops and aim that only an owl can hone until he devastatingly died in a building collision this past weekend. Ackerman shares the efforts of a great many researchers and owl aficianados, who endure natural and human obstacles, to study and protect owls.
Corruption at high levels of government is a blockbuster theme this year from Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning to While Justice Sleeps. And no wonder. From an insurrectionist former president to corruption within the Supreme Court, one does not have to have an overactive imagination to sweat over the possibilities. I have not read a legal thriller quite so, well, thrilling, as While Justice Sleeps since John Grisham's The Pelican Brief. The novel follows supreme court clerk Avery Keene, who unwittingly becomes the legal guardian of an ailing Supreme Court Justice who's razor sharp mind has concocted a path to outwit the machinations or a morally bankrupt President, his murderous aide and an unethical multi-national pharmaceutical company. REALLY looking forward to the upcoming tv adaptation by Working Title Television. After finishing the book, for a reality check you may wish to take a peek at Transparency.org's Corruption Perception Index for a reminder that the US still ranks a relatively high #24.
Finally, in Big Bets Rajiv Shah challenges the reader to take on global issues, mindful but not fearful of potential failure. In the context of his own impressive experience he clearly articulates skills and approaches to think bigger, take risks without fear of failure and retain an optimistic outlook. Rarely, does a table of contents advertise the themes so clearly: 1. Ask a simple question; 2. Jump first; 3. Open the turnstiles; 4. Make it personal; 5. Know who you are betting on; 6. Keep experimenting; 7. Give up control, and 8. Pivot. While quite honestly, the book left me a bit depressed with the modest scale of my accomplishments such as they are, it did also give me a renewed sense of what levers have most contributed to the successes I've had and renewed my determination to persist. At the moment, I'm particularly digging the following quote:
"Fast data is better than perfect data that comes too late. Fast data (even with caveats) can help you experiment and scale much more quickly."- Rajiv Shah, Big Bets, p.152
From a legal ops perspective, if you are lookin to be inspired in your work start with Big Bets; look to What An Owl Knows for how persistence and data can make the opaque more clear, and for a refreshing romp through the eyes of a legal superhero read While Justice Sleeps.
What books have you read recently that inspired you? Let's compile our booklists for 2024.
]]>All appreciation to Epiq for inviting me to join the LegalWeek panel expertly moderated by Kayleigh Bedolla. Came away with great food for thought from my fellow panelists Jason Chancellor, Chief Information Officer from B A L (a US-based immigration law firm); Kate Orr, Global Head of Practice Innovation at Orrick, and Jardanian Josephs, Global Director of Legal Operations at Reed Smith.
Last week in Part 1 we reviewed the change management role, what change management looks like in an organizational context and what attributes or skills are needed for change management.
This post will cover resistance to change, facing down failure and lessons learned.
How do you deal with resistance to change?
Jardanian noted there is productivity paradox in context of creating workflow efficiencies. First, additional investment is required before the workflow is improved. Second, in a law firm context some timekeepers may be concerned by the impact on billable hours. Kate added that is why one has to focus on freeing timekeepers from lower level work to perform at the top of their practice capacity.
Kate added one should start with those who want or need the support. For tough customers who say “That’s nice but not relevant to me,” make the change process as easy as possible, engage with someone on their team, focus on client demand and hard numbers. If you can win over your tough customer, then you often have a champion to take the initiative forward successfully.
Jason noted that at the outset of a project the value is often not understood. One has to manage through stakeholders' fear of personal impact, as well as general fear of change vs. the familiar.
When starting a legal ops change management function, I often describe the trajectory as a smile. Initially folks are excited to have the help, but may feel they are too busy for change and what you to "do it for them." However lasting change requires partnership and an investment of time from subject matter experts. This naturally leads to some disappointment and decline in initial support, but once you start to deliver value you begin to win support and the downward arc turns back up, resulting in a graph that resembles a smile.
What differentiates a successful and failed business process transformation initiative?
Jason noted people have to expect failure during the change management process. Because you do not have all the answers up front, you have to experiment, change course and push forward. Set an expectation that giving up is not an option.
I completely concur. In my experience “failure” is defined as running out of time. You may have to regroup, learn from what did not go well and change tack, but there is no such thing as failure when you are persistent. To reduce opportunities for failure surround yourself with people with different skill sets and perspectives. I've pulled back from the brink of failure many times by a colleague asking "did you consider x?"
Kate observed that a team can set itself up for initial failure by rushing to build because of perceived market demand without actually measuring the market and ROI. Though there may always be outliers, once can increase opportunity for success through requires discipline and willingness to push back to achieve clarity.
Jardanian added that data should help with decisions, but should not create “decision paralysis.” When trying something new, data will be imperfect. Collecting and analyzing data helps you recover if you "fail quickly".
"Fast data is better than perfect data that comes too late. Fast data (even with caveats) can help you experiment and scale much more quickly." - Rajiv Shah, Big Bets
The panel wrapped with lessons learned. Pointers included:
Most fundamentally, as the practice of law as a profession has evolved into the business of law, success is a team sport. The legal team has to work together to meet the moving target of client expectations.
]]>Thank you, Epiq for inviting me to join the LegalWeek panel expertly moderated by Kayleigh Bedolla. Came away with great food for thought from my fellow panelists Jason Chancellor, Chief Information Officer from B A L (a US-based immigration law firm); Kate Orr, Global Head of Practice Innovation at Orrick, and Jardanian Josephs, Global Director of Legal Operations at Reed Smith.
How do you drive business operations transformation in your organization?
Jason noted our role is to be a coach, guiding teams through what successful change management looks like and focusing on fundamentals: Goal setting, measurement establishment, progress tracking, and continuous improvement.
Kate added that her team leverages a trifecta of smart people, process and technology in practice innovation working groups and with clients.
Another way to think about it is that change management leaders advise client advisors on how they can leverage resources to stay at the top of their practice in efficiently generating advice and other work product, surfacing and championing ideas from both the client and legal professional side.
What does change management look like at your organization?
Kate noted that top down support is critical and the approach is robust and standard processes driving change but fluid and focused on customized experience for the end user.
With respect to IT projects, Jason noted a business or legal leader is assigned as the change management owner partnered with an experienced program manager from IT to help guide them through what good change management looks like. The firm looks for business change owners to be process oriented, strategic, and influential in the firm.
In my case we typically partner a legal ops project manager to work in close collaboration with an IT-side project manager. Depending on the project the IT partner may be the Projects Management Office, Enterprise Applications or the UX team. Legal ops helps the project owner or sponsor to document business requirements and serves as a translator between legal and IT to generate technical requirements,
If building the function, who do the people need to be? What key skills/attributes do you look for in these roles?
"Change managers need to be the sea cow, both kind and fearless." - Kate Orr
Jason had raised the coach analogy. Coaches focus on individualized communications, leaning into motivation. They listen well and show empathy, provide "feedforward" (as opposed to feedback, provide information to help behavior on a forward-going basis), are goal-oriented and honest.
Communications encompasses listening well, able to tell a story that sells the vision and able to translate between legal practice and the client, as well as key partners such as those in technology, finance and human resources. It also helps to be close observer of detail, including non-verbal behavior as well as the ability to document those details clearly.
Part 2 will cover resistance to change, facing down failure and lessons learned.
For the Thanksgiving season my goal this year has been to complete a post on the book THANKS for the FEEDBACK. Among the many things for which I am grateful this season is the opportunity to get coaching and 360-feedback at work.
A confession: A kind and well meaning HR professional suggested I read the book many moons ago. For the most part in a work context I am not a procrastinator, but this book is a BIG exception. When the Cowen Book group read it earlier this year, I finally completed the read.
Why did it take me so long? First, the timing of the initial suggestion struck me at the time as evaluative, instead of coaching, feedback. Plus the title seemed to be an admonition to be more gracious for feedback, in the words of the Post-it graphic on the cover, "Even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered and, frankly, you're not in mood." Having now read the book, I understand the admonition I imputed has a lot to do with baggage - and the book discusses the "last straw" dynamic that may have been in play.
By constitution a life-long learner, I gained new tools for hearing feedback. It was fortuitous to have finally read the book at the right time.
The authors are Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen of the same group of thinkers who produced Difficult Conversations, a book that was very useful to a group of employees at The Rockefeller Foundation in the era I was there. A lot of that book is seen in the approach to recognizing contributions to conflict. Typical to their work, you will find strategies for difference spotting and building out the puzzle from different pieces by asking clarifying questions, such as "Why do we see this differently? What data do you have that I don't have?" The book provides plenty of examples, so you can see those strategies in context.*
From the outset the book acknowledges that most people feel conflicted when receiving feedback and are not good at delivering feedback. The book asserts that we have to find strategies to learn from the feedback anyway.
What I take away from the book is that feedback is not about who you are in a vacuum, it is about how you encounter a specific culture of interrelationships. The book has helped me to put back on my cultural anthropology hat and think about "What can I learn about the culture and how to navigate successfully from this?" instead of getting stuck in feedback "accuracy."
Top 10 take-aways for me:
In my 20+ years of work experience, I've found, as the book describes, that each workplace has different implicit rules. Each of us will find some contexts more transparent and others more opaque. In particular when a culture feels opaque to you feedback can become the compass you need to navigate successfully.
The book provides the advice “don’t decide, experiment – try it out.” And that’s my recommendation with respect to this book. Got feedback? Comments welcome!
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*Among the examples is a story about Dr. Atul Gawande trying a coach, because there did not seem to be a downside and in doing so and discovering an upside both for himself and his colleagues who saw him as being open to experimentation (if you’re a Gwande fan, as I am, see p. 124).
Kate Orr's expert moderation of the panel "Legal Ops as a Business Enhancer" as part of the the Practising Law Institute (PLI)’s Legal Operations 2023 Symposium yielded a lot for me to think and act upon. In last week's post I focused on take-aways organized by 3 quotes from the panel. This week I focus on 5 questions Kate posed in the second half of the session.
In house how do you measure value?
As Katie notes, the bottom line is revenue generation. For example, during the pandemic rolling out an electronic signature solution we were able to see the contract volume getting across the finish line to deliver revenue to the company in a difficult period. Or recently with HearstLab, which is led by our CLO and very much embedded within the department, the market value of the 62 investments we've made has recently reached 2.4b. It has contributed to the bottom line of the company, and contributes to our diversification and innovation in service delivery. Our department has dozens of examples along these lines that are well-socialized within the company.
"To understand the business means getting under the hood to understand the business strategy for winning new revenue or growing revenue, understanding how clients are compensated, and - if a public company - what they are telling shareholders and what are their stated objectives for the year." - Katie DeBord
What types of technology do you define as must haves?
Any technology that helps the attorney, paralegals or other professionals focus their time at the top of their practice and which they will actually use to take repeatable, ministerial or administrative work off their plate.
A measured approach is advisable in buying a new tool. Take a stop back to determine what makes sense, including change appetite of the team. Can you beg borrow and steal to make it work at an initial stage?
When you use the tech, you already have you are working where your clients and stakeholders already live and spend their business day. Meeting them where they live*, and where they are working already, makes the journey much easier than forcing clients or partners to navigate to some other channel to find you.
And work with your outside counsel on the tech side. The traditional dynamic is the company attorney calls the relationship partner at the firm who has behind the scenes conversations and serves the response back to the relationship attorney at the company who then gives it at the client. Platforms that allow the client to connect on their timetable directly to the service provider while keeping other stakeholders informed is a model closer to current client expectations in many cases. It also takes relationship partners, and their high hourly rates, out of the job of being traffic cops and back to their core role of advice and counsel. Kate also noted the importance of after action or retrospective reviews, and learning from your law firm what technologies were used with quantifiable impact measures.
How is your company approaching generative AI?
There was consensus that there is huge potential that is generally positive but nuanced with respect to risk. Legal departments can mitigate risk in part by doing deals to bring generative AI behind their fire wall.
In terms of legal, generative AI can help with basic research, compiling information, formatting documents, and in some cases initial drafts. Frances noted that if you can optimize what a junior associate is doing, not only are you saving time and creating repeatable processes and consistency, but you are also changing the trajectory of that associate's career by allowing them to focus on more impactful and strategic things. More grunt work becomes just a starting point. Obviously you still have to review and fact check, but there's huge potential there.
Another obvious use is to point the tool to a specific internal curated data set. As Katie noted, you can then get answers to the "tell me what has happened when..." question.
Generative AI has been attracting more interest than is typical for a technology tool and presents an opportunity to engage. At my company we recently held a meeting where an attorney representative for each of our AI tools demonstrated how they use the tool to makes their work easier. It was truly remarkable afterwards how many people that had been resistant signed up for a license and training. We've explicitly asked people to brainstorm potential use cases for our department. In addition, each year we participate in pilots or POCs to test market tools, which gives us insight in how we can apply these tools to our work and results in these tools incorporating our needs into their product design. This ensures we'll be able to find a tool that works for us.
Legal can also provide support for the company reach alignment, on allowed use of the tool. For example, at a media company copyright is paramount, both defending our copyright and making sure we're not infringing others' copyright. For this reason, our guidelines address use cases to preserve copyright.
How do you go about prioritizing projects?
We sit down with our individual clients groups annually then every two years we do a survey to prioritize. We also produce quarterly reports and invite feedback. Our survey last year resulted in 5 pillar projects. We're about that time of year where we need to collect feedback and regroup for next year. We're also about to implement a new tool where people can upvote ideas so we can be more nimble in adjusting our plans.
Frances described her legal ops group, which includes a three-person project management team. Legal Ops has strategic projects and commitments at a department and team level. Priorities are set via alignment to OKRs. They use Agile program management. To be most effective they are upfront and specific about commitments on both sides. They are also clear about what constitutes a discrete project versus a program of ongoing enhancements and maintenance.
"We are a finite resource. To use our services, the teams we are supporting need to come ready to play… We will allocate resources during the specific period, but this requires you to also allocate the time to work with us. If you can't allocate the time to work with us, then we will put it in the backlog… We have clear and transparent guidelines about what needs to be true to work with us." – Frances Pomposo
To sum up, what is the one essential "must-have" for change management?
1. An ability to listen and to reflect what the client is asking for with potential solutions.
2. Empathy and hearing people where they are. Give your client space to say "I'm frustrated, this sucks, I have a lot on my plate and you are asking me to do more." Use that to build good will to move forward.
3. Copious communication including a communication-dedicated resource.
Footnote
* Except email; don't let things get lost in email. Use another tool that if needed sends a notification via email.
Thank you to Kate Orr of Orrick for inviting me to return to the Practising Law Institute (PLI)’s Legal Operations 2023 Symposium. I was joined on the first panel by legal ops veterans Frances Pomposo and Katie DeBord. Our topic was "Legal Ops as a Business Enhancer."
This is part one of two on key take-aways:
💡 "It's easy to take a one size approach but it's not going to land well." - Frances Pomposo
Facetime and telling stories well is a big part of change management and legal operations. It's about people knowing us as individuals, as colleagues partnering to meet client objectives in a way with which they are comfortable.
Think about what hat you are wearing as a business partner and who you are interacting with. Your modes of operating should be curated based on audience. Focus on customer service to be considered a value add from the outset.
An advantage that legal has in-house is that we know the stakeholders really well and so are uniquely placed to bring them together around a table to resolve differences and build consensus. A lot of the time we are helping to unpack pros/cons and tradeoffs in a way that resonates with the business.
💡 "By using OKRs we can be nimble and focus on the objectives of our company and make that alignment visible to our business partners and internal teams." - Frances Pomposo
OKR stands for objectives and key results. The objective is a high level statement or commitment or guiding principle that is motivating inspiring and clear. Key results are the tactical commitments that contribute to you achieving that objective. By sharing OKRs clients see that the legal or legal ops function is not a black box. Everyone can see the objectives were aiming for. We can realign as needed.
💡 "Data-driven decision making is using statistics to understand what is more likely to happen in the future." - Katie DeBord
Start with common sense. Gather the data that will answer the questions your clients are asking. That tends to be questions along the lines of -
Take baby steps, recognize and reward success. As you work your way down you'll get to more nuanced questions that require more data crunching and sophisticated models. If the people who need to input data trust you, they will do that even if they find the exercise annoying. Also, put the onus on your Law Firms to collect data on your behalf.
Be opportunistic. Work with a person who sees the value, create a small project, then present it. Slowly you will accumulate a coalition of the willing. Those who started slower out of the gate eventually catch up, and you develop a full program.
"It is easy to get caught up in the narrative that because I am serving the client I don't have control and I'm just keeping the lights on so me investing time in data capture isn't on the top of my list. And that's a normal response we get from people. You really need to set the tone from the top that the GC needs to be able to have data driven conversations as any other C-suite conversation would be." - Frances Pomposo
]]>Attention Clients: The revised job descriptions are now available in your digital kit.
A few additional highlights:
Candidate Submission: Consider adding an accommodations request and accessibility assistance options to the company career site; for good example see Microsoft's Inclusive Hiring for People with Disabilities. Be clear about the steps in your application process; for a good example see Salesforce's career site. Also if your EEOC is a strictly-legal statement, consider warming it up with language regarding your company values with respect to diversity.
Resume Review: It takes anyone years to hone their resume writing skills learning from experience what works and does not. And when faced with a large volume of resumes recruiters and hiring managers typically spend less than 10 seconds per resume on initial review (my average is closer to 90 seconds). The best advice: Slow down. Before you dismiss a resume that is not well-formatted, pause and consider whether it may come from a neurodiverse applicant. Some signs that it may be from a neurodiverse applicant include:
1. Job experience that is more junior than their academic credentials suggest (neurodiverse candidates often have a more difficult time landing jobs they are qualified for);
2. More volunteer experience or job hopping (neurodiverse individuals have to rely more on volunteer opportunities to gain experience and without support often have shorter job tenure);
3. A laundry list of experience with far too much detail (neurodiverse applicants are used to dismissive treatment in interviews so often strive to get all of their potential credentials up front in writing), or
4. A resume with insufficient specifics (may not understand that in a competitive world an impressive credential does not speak for itself).
Interviews: In conducting an interview if you sense some difficulty responding to traditional questions, you can also re-frame a question in more concrete terms. A few examples:
Common Questions |
Rephrased |
Tell me about yourself |
|
What are your greatest strengths? |
|
Describe a time you had to work on a team to accomplish a common goal. |
Tell me about a time you worked on a project with a group of people to accomplish a common goal. Please describe the project, your responsibilities within the project team, and the results of the overall project. |
Where do you see yourself in five years? |
Have you thought about career goals beyond this position? If so, what are your longer-term career goals? |
Why should I hire you? |
What skills do you have that make you the right candidate for the job? |
For a full list of examples, see The Neurodivergent Job Candidate by Marcia Scheiner.
With a big THANK YOU to the initiative sponsor, Hearst SVP of public affairs and communications, and internal initiative manager, Isabel Fields for including me.
And last, but certainly not least, thought-leader Krysta Johnson, Head of Legal Ops @Lexion, is offering a #CLOC Workshop "Thinking Differently: Supporting Neurodiverse Employees on In-House Legal Teams" this coming Thursday at 2 PM ET. If you're a CLOC member register today!
]]>In Part 2 of this conversation in the ACC Legal Operations Observer, August 2023 issue, Cambria looks back at his maverick career thus far that has shaped his well-worth weighing perspective on legal ops future.
Want to get inspired or update your Legal Ops history knowledge? Give it a read!
]]>In creating Ops in a Box, Legal Edition, I harked back to my experience at the outset of my legal ops career in the ALA NYC chapter and the help received from the ALA NYC Education Committee, guiding my studies for the ALA Certified Legal Manager (CLM) exam. They provided a number of study aids, including a CD-ROM with study notes. The information was invaluable to me in preparing for the exam and in jump starting my legal ops career. Inspired by that experience, I pulled together Ops in a Box, Legal Edition to share what I have learned from others with the community.
Looking at the distribution of Ops in a Box, Legal Edition kits, I am happy to see them in 27 US states, Canada and several overseas destinations. The Goal: All 50 US states,10 Canadian provinces, and wherever else English language materials can be useful. Know someone who would benefit from the kit? Please point them to https://opsinaboxlegal.com! Thank you.
]]>This conversation with David Cambria on the future of #legaloperations felt particularly timely.
In Part 1 Cambria shares where he envisions the greatest opportunities in legal operations today. Next month, in Part 2 we'll take a look at his maverick career that has shaped his well-worth weighing perspective.
I hope you will check out the article in the ACC Legal Operations Observer, July 2023 issue.
]]>
Last fall I had a blog post on the concept When Adaptability Outperforms Efficiency from Team of Teams, a book by Gen. McChrystal et al that focuses on achieving organizational change. In this post, I'd like to focus on his concept of decentralized decision making, in which the direct report keeps the supervisor informed instead of asking permission.
The two concepts go hand-in hand. The authors cite Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, a pioneer in the study of workplace empowerment and the business imperative to extend authority downwards. They note "Kanter foresaw that increased disruption and unpredictability would necessitate increased agility and adaptability, which could be achieved only by loosening control."
Under Naval command, the concept allows a subordinate officer the freedom to operate as he or she thinks best, keeping authorities informed of actions taken, until or unless the senior overrides the decision. The acronym is UNODIR; e.g. UNless Otherwise DIRected. The concept pre-dates wireless communication when ships were at sea and out of communication range for extended periods of time. However, the concept remains relevant in modern context in which new information flows in quickly and voluminously and at times requires quick action.
Gen. McChrystal notes, "I came to realize that, in normal cases, I did not add tremendous value, so I changed the process. I communicated across the command my thought processes on decisions like airstrikes, and told them to make the call. Whoever made the decision, I was always ultimately responsible, and more often than not those below me reached the same decision I would have, but this way our team would be empowered to do what was needed." He uses the analogy of a manager to a gardener. A traditional gardener cannot grow vegetables. S/he can only foster an environment in which the plants grow the vegetables.
With a lot on our operations team plates, and in an effort to improve my own management skills, I have been seeking to bring this concept into our legal ops team.
I was attracted by the outcomes as described by Gen. McChrystal: "I found that by...containing my desire to micromanage, I flipped a switch in my subordinates... It is one thing to look at a situation and make a recommendation to a senior officer...Psychologically, it is an entirely different experience to be charged with making the decision...Eventually, a rule of thumb emerged: 'If something supports our effort, as long as it is not immoral or illegal,' you could do it. Soon, I found that the question I most often asked my force was 'What do you need?'....We had decentralized on the belief that the 70 percent solution today would be better than a 90 percent solution tomorrow. But we found our estimates were backward - we were getting the 90 percent solution today instead of the 70 percent solution tomorrow."
Along the way, however, working in a somewhat traditional office culture (as is not unexpected in a 136-year-old company), I’ve realized the nuance makes implementation more complicated than it seems on the face. First and foremost, the extent to which I can delegate runs up close to but does not exceed my own limited decision-making authority. In working towards finding the right balance within the ops team, issues I've run up against can be organized roughly as follows:
1. "Keep Informed" Timing: What is the right timing for keeping informed up the chain? I've adopted the mantra "No surprises." The manager and leadership team should not be taken by surprise by a question about a course of action or activity, or have insufficient knowledge to respond. Towards that end ops has become better at keeping a cadence of updates in our weekly one-on-ones and maintaining project status notes. Asynchronous communication channels help. In my own communications up, I text brief updates noting the project, stakeholder, concern and solution. I'll then provide the date and time of our next scheduled conversation for a touchbase or note I've reached out to schedule a touchbase before then.
2. Experience and Expertise: Gen. McChrystal is at the top of a food chain in which his direct chain of command already has considerable experience and field training. By comparison, legal operations is only about 30 years old. Legal operations managers also have functional area expertise but frequently in more narrow lanes with fewer years of documented industry process to build on. While it is possible to learn from others' experience through well-established legal departments and professional organizations, it is safe to say there is as of yet nowhere near the field training and body of knowledge there for military operations.
Also, good business judgement is contextual to your company. If you work at a company where cultural norms are largely tacit and undocumented, unlike the military, exposure and conscious recognition of cultural norms is needed. One change I've made is to regularly invite team members to sit in my weekly meeting with the leadership team to get leadership exposure, as well as a better sense of the guidance I receive, and leadership questions I field about our team's work.
And to some extent we learn more from doing than from others' experience. In a business context we are surrounded by colleagues with different perspectives. By drawing on those perspectives heavily we minimize mistakes. In a military context a gate is the call is needed to create action. In a business, once the budget has been approved, the path to deployment, particularly in a service environment, can be a lot more decentralized and informal. When the supervisor is removed from the immediate decision as a second set of eyes, the manager needs to ensure s/he still leaves room to gather additional perspectives to avoid mis-steps. The Nordstrom One Rule applies well: "Use good judgement in all situations. Please feel free to ask your dept. manager, store manager or HR officer any question at any time."
3. Asking the Right Questions: Gen. McChrystal notes there is an art to asking questions to provoke long-view perspective. He recommends asking broad questions, along the lines of "Why are you thinking x?" instead of data point questions like "How many x do you need?" He also stresses the importance of not overpacking meeting schedules in order to leave enough time to get answers to the questions you ask.
One of his recommendations I struggle with is to ask questions before the group to allow team members "to see problems being solved in real time and to understand the perspective of the senior leadership team." In my experience team members prefer being asked questions in one-on-ones so as not to be put on the spot, and some tend to multi-task when the agenda is not focused on their project so not always absorbing the information. Where possible I preview updates in one-on-ones then have the team member recap in the ops group meeting, then -where merited- present in the leadership meeting.
Team of Teams is a great book. It focuses on how to achieve organizational change in a dynamic environment in which one is required to process a large volume of information quickly to take decisive action. Military culture transfers imperfectly to most business environments and may run counter to the interpersonal dynamic one is fostering. At the same time in my experience there is a lot that is transferable to the business environments of most large well-established companies. While one could argue the lessons are most applicable when there are well-established processes that need to change, as opposed to a start up where a defined process is not yet established, I suspect newer companies can learn from the practice of defining processes and pitfalls to avoid.
If you have read Team of Teams, I'd welcome your comments on what you have found most useful. Is there another book you draw on for organizational change? Would love to hear about it.
The Cowen Cafe conversation this afternoon was AMAZINGLY helpful to me. A BIG THANK YOU to -
🙏 Becky Newnam of Onsemi (and OBL client) for joining me to discuss Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit
🙏 David Cowen and Abby Rosenbloom for hosting us, and to the
🙏 Full Cowen Cafe Cabal for your insights and ideas.
A few of my key take-aways are:
1. Many of the core tasks to #legalops apply to any service department within a company or law firm, from job description writing to creating any annual budget.
2. What it takes to be successful includes setting policies and processes to ensure consistent service delivery.
3. #Legaloperations often brings a pro-active approach to a sometimes (but not always) reactive department. That said never let a good crisis be wasted as an opportunity to precipitate change.
4. There is still plenty of room for more "think tanking" on how we can raise the baseline for legal operations. Its an all legal ecosystem hands-on-deck task.
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit addresses 6 functional areas and the approach to those areas is strongly grounded in a 7th - project management. That said, there are gaps. For example, discovery and records management are not addressed in the current kit. If this is your strength area please consider developing a small set of checklists and / or templates. Happy to partner with a subject matter expert on either of these topics. Feel free to DM me.
❤️ MY LEGAL OPS PEEPS - It's a great ecosystem to live in. As always, THANK YOU! 🙏
#legalinnovation #legalservices
]]>The Legal Operations Department of Tomorrow...Today. David is a thoughtful and super-active idea generator/amplifier in the Legal Ops ecosystem. I enjoyed having the opportunity to join his podcast to discuss Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit and all things magical in legal ops.
We discussed how Ops in a Box, Legal Edition - A Magical Kit is a grab and go kit that allows you to get the nutrition you need and move on with your day.
On May 11th, I'm looking forward to be joined by Becky Newman, Manager of Legal Operations at Onsemi to continue the conversation at the Cowen Cafe.
Following are excerpts (partial transcript) from our conversation.
Increasingly there is a two-tier structure in legal operations:
1, Mature departments that have gone through multiple iterations of legal operations, refined what they do and they know what they're doing.
2. Brand new or, frankly, late to the party departments with work to do to catch up.
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition is focused on raising the baseline, allowing people who do not have a legal ops background to jump from 0 to 60 within 48-72 hours for any common legal ops task that crosses your desk.
There are 2 principle target users:
1. Brand new to legal operations, such as:
3. Seasoned folks ito help jump start the knowledge of their new team members, most often business analysts in legal ops consulting.
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition gives you the ability to get across the finish line with a project you have due today or tomorrow so that you can get some breathing room to step back and have coffee with a Cowen Cafe member, or browse the library of a legal operations professional association to look for additional information. You'll do so knowing you met your deadline with a serviceable product that meets the market standard for legal operations today.
I'm proud that ALL of my prior bosses have had their new legal operations person buy the kit. They in essence are saying, "this is a proven commodity of what has worked for me in the past and I'd like my new person to start from this baseline."
We were all new to legal ops at some juncture. Legal operations is the very definition of a growing profession, and for everyone it is relatively new so we're all learning together.
Technology is changing very quickly. The landscape is shifting very quickly. You need someone with the dedicated attention and focus to think through "what does this mean for the legal industry and how does this apply to me?" And that is what legal operations professionals do - they serve as the buffer between people practicing law and all of these things going on to set you up for success. As Cowen says, "There is a big difference between the practice and business of law."
He noted that HR and financial platforms are no longer questioned. First you have to cover the basics. We don't have enough staff to cover those things fully, so we cover the minimum to keep the plane in the air and moving forward. Then as we grow more sophisticated and get a few fundamental structures in place, we can take a more winding path to fill out the picture and develop more robust and adaptive systems that are going to improve our productivity over the long term, and not just the immediate emergency in front of us.
Most of our companies are not in the business of legal services. Law departments have been built up to address a market problem, which is law firms don't know the (specific) core business, they are too expensive, and they don't deliver product efficiently. The question for me is "Are we likely to have large law departments in the future?" Probably not.
The business model is changing. We've seen some law companies take the legal function out of the company and deliver it back as managed services. I think there's going to be a lot more of that and we don't know where it is going to lead. There are going to be a lot more changes over the next 10-20 years that we cannot see yet on the order of Chat GPT in the legal service delivery space.
With respect to the future, the cocktail conversation right now is Generative AI and to what extent it may stand in for some of the things we do not consider ministerial today, but may consider ministerial tomorrow. The OGC Ops Squad has been asked by our lawyers to do a better job of exposing them to these emerging technologies and use cases for these technologies so we are planning a few demo days where we can help them get a better understanding of what the scope of the market is. We want more of a conversation and because they don't have a lot of time to life their heads up and look around the way we do we need to find ways to train them and bring them up to speed quickly.
And to go back to Ops in a Box, Legal Edition a little bit, a lot of the people I see are not junior people in their careers. A lot of them are seasoned attorneys asked to step outside a role they are used to and take on something new. Ops in a Box helps them come up to speed quickly on an ops topic. And I think I need to do a better job of that with my team using all of the mechanisms available to us, whether it's improving our news feed or offering demo days or ...we're brainstorming about it right now so I'll have to come back to you in 6 months with what we've come up with.
Advice: This is not a pre-arranged product plug. Cowen Cafe is a great place to start because you get to know a wide range of professionals and David Cowen does a great job of encouraging people to connect off line for a cup of coffee or lunch. Obviously, some of the other professional associations offer great opportunities. The CLOC Institute is a lot of fun - 24/7 fun, networking and learning. It's a great conference and there are other good conferences. As well some of the informal networks, run by the tools, the consulting organizations also do a good job. Take advantage of the opportunities to meet people, and to ask each other questions, and to have a cup of coffee or lunch with a colleague.
Advice you would give your younger self: I think I would have gotten a law degree. Legal Operators recently came out with comp survey results that say a legal ops professional with a law degree makes $1.30 for every dollar a legal ops professional w/o a law degree makes. And if you have a law degree and a business degree you are set to be the CEO of your own company and there are a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities. I might have suggested to my younger self to take a stint with a younger company when I had fewer family obligations to get that experience under my belt.
What are you reading? Right now I'm reading Thanks for the Feedback and I'm reading that because of the Cowen Cafe Book Club. In a few weeks, I have a blog post on that coming out. I've actually been procrastinating on reading this book since 2014 and the Cowen book club helped me break that procrastination streak and get it read so thank you.
]]>Ops in a Box, Legal Edition is a magical kit to help jump start your legal operations journey. With 30 templates and over 195 pages of content, it is a grab-and-go tool kit for legal professionals seeking to get the job done and won. Whether you are launching a strategic plan, need operations help aids or seeking to fine tune existing tools. accomplish your goals with Ops in a Box, Legal Edition.
Customers can also access on their website profile their Digital Copy of Ops in a Box, Legal Edition, as well as the digital-download only manual and 23 videos for supplemental guidance. Simply use the email you used to submit your order. If your email has changed let me know and I can update that for you.
If you have a question, suggestion for an update or an additional template you would like to see, please feel free to reach out to me via email at info@opsinaboxlegal.com.
]]>
Very much appreciated being invited to participate in Legal.io Community Spotlight, a series in which CEO Pieter Gunst highlights the careers and experiences of legal and legal operations professionals working in-house.
In our conversation we covered:
The key challenge at any organization is understanding the culture of your department, and helping them see a vision of what the future look of the department is going to be, and communicating that to them so that you're working together. And that's hard. It's particularly hard because legal operations professionals tend to be planners, whereas lawyers tend to test very high in urgency and lower in planning. So you have to reconcile two very different ways of working.
It's good to draw from the well of legal operations professionals who are in the trenches with you. The community a very warm, open and supportive. By seeking out advice and listening to what those who've come before you have done makes the job a lot easier to manage.
If you know what your weaknesses are, and you compensate for those by surrounding yourself with people who have those [as] strengths, it helps you to maintain perspective and to take different approaches with your clientele. And in my experience, when you do that, there's no failure except for running out of time. So as long as you have the time and you have the people to back you up, eventually you will meet with success on whatever project you take on.
For the full podcast and transcript visit the Legal.io Community Spotlight.
]]>As the small but mighty OGC Ops Squad gears up to take on our new 2023-2024 strategic plan, we also reflect on what we accomplished in 2022.
In many respects, 2022 was more difficult than 2021. In 2020 we were at the ready to shift our department over to remote work. 2021 was a banner year. From our desks at home with greater control of our schedules we got an enormous amount done.
During 2022, a hybrid work schedule meant supporting team members both in our shared office and home offices with different equipment and internet providers. In the NYC area it meant a commute that was more fraught, as well as more time. Seeing folks in person again was reaffirming that we are indeed social animals, but also brought more frequent interruptions during the work day and less focused concentration.
Our team time spent supporting outside legal service providers increased 43%. In large part that was due to bringing our company's international legal teams and a large recent acquisition onto our matter management system. Completing cybersecurity reviews, and initial deployment of Priori Legal's Scout also played a role. Finally, law firms hiring back legal billing personnel and leaving their clients to train them was a factor.
On the other hand we spent about an equal amount less in tech support issues, as a result of having coached the technology services organization more in how best to support our department and up-skilling our administrative team to provide tier 1 support to attorneys.
We reduced our time a bit on legal-facing tools, despite a significant DMS upgrade and deployment of a discovery tool, but increased our time significantly on client-facing tools, in particular on self-service, intake and contracts related apps.
We spent 36% less time on human resources tasks. In large part this was due to corporate having built a strong HR function, but also due to training the admin team to take on a large portion of the department on and off boarding tasks. This enabled us to invest 30% more time on building a stronger ops function, focusing on refining and documenting our core project management tasks as well as integrating a new team member and shifting some work to best deploy our collective strengths.
For 2023, our priorities are process optimization, metrics, continued adoption and extension of tools we've rolled out over the past few years, and talent development. Looking forward to the challenge! What challenges are you taking on this year?
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition is a magical grab-and-go kit for key legal ops assignments related to strategic planning, financial management, human resources starts and departures, vendor management, technology management, and project & change management. With an OBL template in hand, you can get a draft document done on day one and meet those tight deadlines!
To focus on the future, you first have to be able to manage your work portfolio. This is where Ops in a Box, Legal Edition comes in. Let me know how OBL can help!
Best wishes for success in all that you do for 2023!
"Bob, you've worked for me for a good long time. You've always turned in your column on time and we've never had to change a word. What is your dream?" he asked.
Lund was astonished. He realized providence was staring him the face, but he was afraid to ask for what he really wanted: A museum.
When Bob Lund explained to Hearst that he had accumulated one of the largest collections of magic ephemera extant, Hearst smiled. His father was a prodigious collector himself.
"Bob, you've got your museum," he replied. "I now understand your attention to detail. Consider it done."
The American Museum of Magic opened in the spring of 1978. Hearst endowed a fund to support the museum in tribute of Bob and Elaine Lund's lifelong passion.
This Thanksgiving I'm grateful to work with an employer that supports its employees, with colleagues both in Hearst and in the legal ops community and beyond, who treat each other with kindness and respect, and for family and friends.
Wishing you a MAGICAL Thanksgiving and winter holidays!
And if you are looking for your next great job, check out the following:
Photo Courtesy: The American Museum of Magic, Marshall, MI
]]>In particular the authors note that the power in new connectivity - the Internet, proliferation of cell phones and social media networks - "lies in their emergent, nonlinear behaviors, not in the sum of their nodes. This technology produced complex problems-the kind of challenge that, as Warren Weaver observed seventy years ago, refuse to yield to reductionist analysis."
Is there anyone who coming out of the past two years does not feel this in your bones? When I worked at The Rockefeller Foundation, where Warren Weaver had served as an officer, a number of strategies focused on resiliency. Resiliency is the ability to recover from a setback or adapt quickly to a challenge. A core quality of resiliency is having a reserve or redundancy so at the moment of emergency resources remain available. McChrystal and team touch on "resilience thinking." He quotes Nassim Taleb, "Fragile systems are those that are damaged by shocks; robust systems weather shocks; and anti-fragile systems, like immune systems, can benefit from shocks."
There is a point past which increased efficiency detracts from adaptability and resiliency. In agriculture, for example, mono-cropping reduces soil quality and makes crops more vulnerable to catastrophe. Recently, we've seen supply chain disruptions, perhaps in part due to just in time materials delivery that fell apart when labor and transportation conditions deteriorated. Adaptability requires an ability to respond to challenges effectively without knowing in advance what will be required.
This is NOT to say that legal operations can forego process optimization. At the same time running lean is not in and of itself sufficient. You must build in some redundancy or reserves. Reserves should include internal cross training and holding up to 20% of resource hours in reserve to handle unexpected contingencies. Tested and dependable external on-demand resources can also help. Importantly, simply throwing additional people into a behind schedule project "has no better chance of working...than would a scheme to produce a baby quickly by assigning nine women to be pregnant for one month each." (McChrystal p.128) Adding manpower to a late project most frequently simply makes it later.
Another core operations area impacted by complexity is data analytics. In Team of Teams, McChrystal notes, "Data-rich records can be wonderful for explaining how complex phenomena happened and how they might happen, but they cannot tell us when and where they will happen...a hallmark of complexity is that small, occasional deviations can have massive impact."
So what do we need to focus on going forward? I tend to agree with Gen. McChrystal that "We will need to confront complex problems in ways that are discerning, real-time, responsive and adaptive. We will need systems capable of doing things that no single designer, however masterful, could envision-things far beyond an individual planner's capacity to comprehend and control." Two key take-aways:
In Team of Teams Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his co-authors build a strong case for how the rules of engagement have changed in a complex world. Because legal, as an industry, exists to reduce risk and create order and shared understanding in how we interact with another, this shift is felt keenly. I was particularly struck by his opening salvo that "...the constantly changing, entirely unforgiving environment in which we all now operates denies the satisfaction of a permanent fix...the organization we crafted, the processes we refined, and the relationships we forged and nurtured are no more enduring than the physical conditioning that kept our soldiers fit: an organization must be constantly led or, if necessary, pushed uphill towards what it must be. Stop pushing and it doesn't continue, or even rest in place; it rolls backward."
This is our new challenge for legal operations.
]]>At the program, I expected to come away inspired by cool initiatives, best practices, solutions, and techniques that law departments and law firms are using to drive efficiencies and bring meaningful change to businesses. The event did not disappoint.
I joined a Telling Stories with Data panel, moderated by Basha Rubin of Priori Legal with co-panelists Ameen Haddad of Oracle and Bryan Parker of Legal Innovators. Jessica joined a panel on Legal Operations Projects, moderated by Kate Orr of Orrick.
Jessica and I focused on a key Hearst OGC project this year to implement Priori Scout. I focused on how Hearst uses data with respect to experience, diversity and price to drive law firm selection processes. That said, since that project won a Buying Legal Council Collaboration Award two weeks ago, I'm going to refer you to last week's blog post for more information and focus on a few key take-aways:
Data analytics generates conversation.Putting a data analytics program in place is iterative. Start simple with counting: incidents, time and percentages. See below for some common categories. Think of it as a “5 whys?” exercise. When you provide data in response to a first set of questions it will generate a 2nd round of questions. Keep following that winding road. It is a fallacy that you have to have a clean data set before having a conversation. It is precisely those conversations that lead to a clean data set. Of course, before sharing, you should review the dataset and make a strong first pass to remove mistakes, identify outliers and flag an initial set of questions. That said, getting some initial hypotheses wrong is on the path to getting it right.
Slay Assumptions. Sometimes it is better to ask forgiveness than permission.
When you launch a process it is almost always fraught with some degree of closely held assumptions that turn out not to be accurate and therefore takes someone by surprise. Those assumptions not infrequently involve blaming someone else for a problem. Data often has the effect of depersonalizing the issue and allowing everyone to come together to a solution taking a fact-based practical approach.
On more than one occasion I’ve been told not to take up a project because the facts are known, but when I ask for the data set there is none. This type of project has almost always come when I’ve attended an industry event where I hear experienced expert professionals say something that does not align with a beloved assumption where I work. In this case, I try to identify an intern or other underutilized resource to do a quick, small exploratory data review in the area. Often that produces data that challenges the assumption and gains the permission I need to take a project forward. Have I heard, “I thought I told you not to take this on?” Absolutely. Have I almost always also heard, “I’m glad you did.” Yes. So long as you adhere to the spirit of the directive not to invest significant resources and time to the issue.
"Know when to speed up or slow down" - Tara Sarnoff, American Express
Personally, I have a tendency to push the speed and have to remind myself that sometimes slow is the fastest way to get the job done right. That said, you cannot allow naysayers to set the pace either. You need to incorporate concerns into the plan, regroup, and go straight back into the ring. Perseverance is an important character trait in legal ops professionals. Sometimes it is a matter of having the stamina to outlast the “what ifs?” and always be leading towards “let’s give it a try and see….”:
Data Categories: A few common metrics to get you started are:
Finance:
For more metrics ideas, visit LegalOps.com for a comprehensive Legal Metrics Catalog.
With special thanks to Tara Sarnoff and Kay Kim!
]]>Woo-hoo! Happy to share that Priori Scout and Hearst earned the Buying Legal Council Collaboration Award for 2022! HEARST colleague Jessica Williams and I look forward to speaking more on this project at the upcoming PLI Legal Ops Conference (October 26th) in participation on panels regarding successful projects management and using data to tell stories.
In 2021, Priori approached Hearst with a concept of how its superior search and granular data-surfacing ability could help in-house teams access supercharged insights about their existing, trusted firm relationships. Hearst was first to sign up (soon joined by Zimmer Biomet, Marsh McLennan, and Orrick).
A decision-enabling platform, Scout reduces friction in the procurement process by creating data-driven purpose-built search linked to your matter management system in a user-friendly interface. A two-sided ecosystem provides law department buyers with comprehensive transparency and the information to make sound decisions and enables law firms to showcase their expertise, experience and diversity to clients when clients are actively seeking that info. In a panel yesterday, Wendy Butler Curtis, CIO at Orrick drew the apt analogy to a patient portal facilitating the relationship between doctor and patient
On Scout, Hearst is empowered to make more informed outside counsel staffing decisions while saving an anticipated 325 hours annually. We're excited to see how this tool continues to develop in the coming year.
]]>Looking forward to the jam-packed Buying Legal Council Conference in NYC on October 19th. Focus topics include data analytics, law firm rates and staffing trends, contracts management strategy, tech selection processes, the DEI journey, and of course the annual BLC Awards.
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition excels in the Procurement area with the following resources:
The kit also includes information on matter budgets and alternative fee arrangements.
Why do I like this topic? Procurement is often the issue that galvanizes legal department leadership to staff the department's first legal ops role.
In my experience, Legal Procurement is closely aligned with but operates independently from the company's Strategic Procurement, and Information Security, teams.
To foster alignment, in legal procurement we use the company's templates and processes with adaptations appropriate to a legal market. We report out to Finance and Strategic Procurement the anticipated cost savings when we file a new contract with them.
Also we often collaborate with Strategic Procurement and co-project manage RFPs for business-facing providers in that interstitial space between legal services and everything else. Examples that come to mind include WCAG audit and Escheatment management providers.
For more posts on this topic, navigate to the Ops Spot and filter for legal procurement. And register for the conference! Hearst Ops Squad Sr. Manager and BLC Americas Board member, Jessica Williams, will be presenting and I'll be there to hear what's new and emerging in legal procurement.
]]>Dewey decimal classification is a method of assigning relative location based on discipline then topic. Law is classification 340 within the Social Sciences (300). First copyrighted in 1875 by Melvil Dewey after receiving input to his concept from many librarians (despite his notoriously difficult personality), by the 1920s the classification system was ubiquitous in the United States and remains in force today.
In 2009 Jun Wang, Department of Information Management at Peking University, published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology [60(11):2269-2286] a human-assisted algorithm approach incorporating Dewey that allowed 90% accuracy within 3 interactions. An Internet search shows additional published research on incorporating Dewey into algorithms through 2019. I am not aware whether any legal technologies leveraging AI are taking advantage of the Dewey Decimal Classification system for the topical assignment portion and would welcome intel on that subject.
In every legal operations position I have been asked to solve a long-standing debate on a document (or contract) management taxonomy. I understand the siren song but know better than to take it on. Any legal tech company addressing the taxonomy issue needs to come up with standardization.
The Dewey Decimal Classification has withstood 140 years. It is the system every living professional was born into and accepts as part of the natural order, like gravity. The framework is pervasive. One still has to come up with a secondary classification for document type (agreement, brief, memo, etc.) or better yet, a tagging approach to accommodate the fact that many documents contain layers (a master agreement with a digital processing addendum or a personal services contract with an embedded NDA, for example). However, following the Dewey Decimal System for topic is a good bet for industry adoption.
]]>Ops in a Box, Legal Edition excels in the Finance area with the following resources:
The kit also includes Dashboard & Metrics guidance, a Legal Billing Policy and Rate Submission or Review Guidelines.
For your budget tracker I recommend your Excel follows the top-line outline provided by your FP&A team. In most cases this is going to typically look like: People (Salary & benefits), External Legal Services Providers, Travel and Office Operations (aka everything else). Below these headers you will want to itemize spend in most cases by vendor with line items grouped in most cases by vendor (and in the case of legal matters grouped by practice area). As Mark Burdman noted, grouping legal matter spend by practice area aid conversation with the CEO, CLO and CFO regarding your spend story and holds practice area leads accountable.
Throughout a consistent thread was the importance of building your relationship with finance. Adam Becker and Stacy spoke to the importance of regular meetings with your finance team (monthly or quarterly). Align the reports in your legal billing system with the back end system and give your finance folks secure access to their business' legal matter data to entirely eliminate the angst of reconciling the two data sets. Educate your finance team with stories to help them understand what the numbers mean for the business. They want you to reduce your trademarks spend? Walk them through their options in where your trusted intellectual property would enter the public domain or the unfettered counterfeits that would result. Have a key litigation for which the prognosis is uncertain? Make sure they understand the lifecycle of a litigation and when different scenarios would kick in.
Why do I love this topic? Because it presents one of the most meaningful ways legal ops can make a difference. For more information, please also see posts: