Legal Ops is the Flight Crew to the Modern GC
Enjoyed presenting for the ChIPs Network last Thursday with the amazing and articulate Frances Pomposo on behalf of CLOC. Thank you Nicole Zafian for organizing and introducing the session.
Frances asserted that the legal industry is experiencing significant disruption driven by growing complexity and risk and by technology and innovation. The GC role has evolved in this context and the role of legal operations has evolved alongside the GC, providing the necessary support to elevate the GC's impact on the organization. "Legal operations provide opportunities to enhance efficiency, implement automation, and develop advanced service delivery models," she noted.
If you've followed me, you probably know I'm a HUGE fan of Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto in which he discusses professions from air force pilots to surgeons, and from lawyers to financial managers. "Multiple fields, have become too much airplane for one person to fly,” he says. That is exactly why the modern GC needs a flight crew, and that squadron of wingmen is the legal ops squad.
Frances turned it over to me to speak to the evolution of legal operations and the GC role from the 1980s to mid 2000s, then walked through the CLOC Core 12 competencies model. She emphasized that one size does not fit all. A Legal Operations team should be tailored to the company's stage, priorities, and maturity level.
- 🔭Optimizer within Legal focused on day-to-day operations, establishing baseline processes and systems and creating basic metrics.
- 🌍 Accelerator working with Legal and Internal Business Clients focused on transparency and efficiency for stakeholders, self-services and low-touch initiatives and data analysis, and finally -
- 💪The Wayfinder serving the CEO and Executive Team focused on achieving company goals, helping leadership look around corners and surface new ways to meet those goals, using data for insight, decisions and storytelling to drive the business narrative.
CLOC President Jenn McCarron recently outlined Legal Ops 3.0 emphasizing the integration of technology and data to drive efficiency and create impactful business narratives. You can hear directly from her via the CLOC Podcast on Legal Ops 3.0 or her Legal Ops 3.0 LinkedIn article.
The future will see a greater reliance on data analytics and technology to streamline processes and improve decision-making. And legal ops crews will be there, keeping companies' legal planes in the air.