What is Legal Operations (Legal Ops)?

According to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), the most authoritative source on Legal Operations (Legal Ops), it is defined as a set of business processes, activities, and professionals that enable legal departments to serve their clients more effectively by applying business and technical practices to the delivery of legal services. 

Legal Ops provides expertise in strategic planning, financial management, project management, and technology, allowing legal professionals to focus on providing legal advice. In essence, the Legal Ops team handles the business of law, while attorneys focus on the practice of law. 

By combining legal and business activities, processes, and people, Legal Ops empowers in-house legal teams to address their company’s legal needs using a strategic, business-oriented approach. Unlike standard legal roles that focus on day-to-day corporate tasks, Legal Ops teams support in-house counsel with capabilities such as: 

• Planning and strategic management 
• Financial and vendor management 
• Matter management and technology oversight 
• Legal data analytics  

The core purpose of Legal Operations can be summarized by its two universal goals: maximize efficiency and reduce costs, ensuring that legal teams deliver high-value, cost-effective services. 

What Legal Operations is has Changed Over Time 

The Evolution of In-House Legal Departments and Legal Operations 

Initially, in-house legal departments focused primarily on managing and mitigating risks for the business and its employees. Over time, however, legal teams were tasked with much more than corporate governance, IP protection, litigation, and outside counsel management. 

After the mid-2000s, a significant shift occurred: legal departments required new skill sets to optimize their work across areas like human resources, corporate governance, and internal processes. This evolution enabled the creation of more powerful, versatile legal teams with a broader and more diverse skill set. 

As the role of Legal Ops emerged, it became clear that managing legal functions with a business-oriented mindset offered tangible benefits: 

• Increased efficiency 
• Greater transparency 
• Reduced costs  

This new perspective demonstrated how Legal Operations teams add value to the entire business, moving beyond traditional risk protection. Instead of merely advising and defending the company, Legal Ops professionals began strategizing, improving processes, and driving innovation, positioning legal departments as proactive business partners rather than reactive support functions. 

Source: ACC 2022 CLO Report

According to the 2022 ACC CLO report, 60% of legal departments have added at least one Legal Operations role. Analysis of the Ascent ELM client base shows that Legal Operations managers can be found even in legal departments with as few as five employees, and sometimes in even smaller teams. 

This represents a 13% growth since 2018, highlighting the expanding importance of Legal Ops. On average, Legal Operations teams consist of around four employees, demonstrating that even small legal departments recognize the value of dedicated Legal Ops functions. 

“What is Legal Operations?” – Defined by CLOC’s 12 Key Competencies 

As Legal Operations became more mainstream, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) “core 12” competencies list, updating the original framework of essential Legal Ops functions. These competencies define the skills, processes, and responsibilities that enable Legal Ops teams to maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and strategically support in-house legal departments. 

Source: cloc.org

Financial Management (Foundational Level) 
Manage the departmental budget, track accruals and forecasting, and collaborate with Finance to identify spending trends, potential cost savings, and efficiency opportunities. 

Firm and Vendor Management (Foundational Level) 
Develop a vendor management program to ensure quality outside counsel support at the right rates and under optimal fee arrangements. Conduct regular business reviews, negotiate fee agreements, and govern billing guidelines. 

Cross-Functional Alignment (Foundational Level) 
Build and maintain relationships with other key company functions, such as HR, IT, Finance, and Workplace Resources. Represent the Legal organization at CLOC events and initiatives. 

Technology & Process Support (Foundational Level) 
Design a long-term technology roadmap incorporating tools like e-billing/matter management, contract management, content management, IP management, business process management, e-signature, board management, compliance management, legal hold, and subsidiary management. 

Service Delivery & Alternative Support Models (Advanced Level) 
Enhance departmental efficiency by matching the right resources to the right matters, leveraging managed services, LPOs, and appropriate technology solutions. 

Organizational Design, Support & Management (Advanced Level) 
Drive GC staff performance and overall team effectiveness by globalizing the team, fostering a culture of growth, development, collaboration, and accountability. 

Communication (Advanced Level) 
Collaborate across the legal ecosystem to standardize global processes, from onboarding to complex project management. Manage departmental communications and plan all-hands meetings. 

Data Analytics (Advanced Level) 
Collect and analyze relevant data from departmental tools and industry sources. Define objectives and develop metrics and dashboards that drive efficiency, optimize spend, and improve decision-making. 

Litigation Support & IP Management (Mature Level) 
Provide support for e-discovery, legal hold, and document review, ensuring legal and IP matters are managed efficiently. 

Knowledge Management (Mature Level) 
Enable operational efficiency by creating seamless access to legal and departmental knowledge. Organize and centralize templates, policies, processes, memos, and other key learnings to support consistent practice. 

Information Governance & Records Management (Foundational Level of Maturity) 
Establish a comprehensive records management program, including retention schedules, policies, and processes. Support Intellectual Property matters and ensure compliance across the organization. 

Strategic Planning (Mature Level) 
Develop a long-term strategy, aligning annual goals with corresponding metrics to drive the legal department’s effectiveness and impact. 

CLOC uses maturity levels to help legal departments assess their capabilities and measure progress. These levels reflect how many of the core functions a legal team can handle effectively. An advanced Legal Ops department can implement and manage most of these functions, improving efficiency, processes, and team performance. 

As the maturity level increases, the Legal Ops team becomes better equipped to manage the business side of law, freeing attorneys to focus on their core task: practicing law. By combining strategic Legal Ops management with expert legal practice, the organization as a whole becomes more efficient, agile, and successful. 

Building an Effective Legal Operations Team 

According to the latest Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Law Department Management Benchmarking Report, 54% of legal departments have allocated budget for a formal Legal Operations team. As the economic and business landscapes become increasingly volatile, the need for Legal Ops is no longer an “if” but a “when” decision. The question, “What is Legal Operations?”, is often linked to the roles and responsibilities included within the team. 

Assembling an effective Legal Ops team requires bringing in personnel with the right skill set to manage tasks and responsibilities efficiently. The first step is understanding the business issues and needs. Placing the best staff member in any role is critical for success—but equally important is ensuring they are properly equipped to excel in that position. 

To succeed, team members must have access to the right technology tools, training, and support. With these resources in place, a Legal Ops team can deliver efficiency, cost savings, and strategic value to the broader legal department and the organization as a whole. 

Levels of Legal Operations Roles 

There are three levels of Legal Operations, each with distinct responsibilities: 

• Admin – Focuses on the daily management of tasks, including vendor management, invoice payments, compliance, and reporting. 
• Optimizer – Concentrates on improving processes and workflows to increase departmental efficiency. 
• Strategizer – Aims to maximize outcomes and results, aligning operations with broader business goals.  

Understanding your legal department’s maturity level, as defined by the CLOC core competencies, helps you assess where your team currently stands. This insight can guide you in deciding which role or position to add next to strengthen your Legal Ops team. 

Choose the Next Role to Hire Based on Needs 

Building a complete Legal Ops team from scratch can feel overwhelming and drain internal resources. If your team is just starting out at the Admin level, a manager is often a higher priority than an analyst to ensure structure and oversight. 

Empower Your Team with Powerful Technology 

Answering “What is Legal Operations?” isn’t complete without highlighting the importance of LegalTech tools. Legal Operations provides tremendous value to the organization, but with the right technology, teams become even more effective and efficient. 

Industry research shows that Legal Ops teams achieve significant time and cost savings when supported by technology. Corporate decision-makers are increasingly budgeting for LegalTech, including solutions such as Enterprise Legal Management (ELM), Intellectual Property (IP) Management, Translation, eDiscovery, and Blockchain. These tools provide data, resources, and workflow support to streamline operations and empower strategic decision-making. 

According to Gartner, the pandemic prompted a reevaluation of legal technology, encouraging many businesses to adopt tools that offer transparent data, cross-functional collaboration, and data-driven insights. Legal Ops professionals recognize that technology is a game-changer, enabling them to achieve corporate objectives more efficiently. Among the most feature-rich solutions, ELM software stands out by integrating data across business units and providing collaborative analytics. Many clients rely on these insights to make business-critical strategic decisions with confidence. 

Embracing advanced ELM technology enables process automation, allows Legal Ops teams to break down legal expenses by matter line items, and evaluate outside counsel and legal vendors based on past performance. A key feature of ELM programs, “Vendor Scorecards,” measures tasks completed across multiple matters to rank performance and cost-effectiveness. This provides the data needed for rate negotiations, vendor consolidation, and vendor selection, enabling teams to intelligently assign tasks based on historical data analytics. 

Questel’s Legal Ops technology solutions and services empower teams to automate manual legal tasks, streamline vendor management, and simplify data analytics and reporting. By leveraging advanced technology to handle routine processes, Legal Ops can better manage the increasing responsibilities faced by modern legal departments. 

Most Legal Ops solutions focused on efficiency and cost reduction are known as Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) solutions, which typically include eBilling, Matter Management, and Legal Holds. With these tools, Legal Ops can utilize advanced features such as automated invoice review, vendor communication, Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), forecasting, reporting on matter data, vendor performance tracking, and real-time matter management. 

While Legal Ops ensures the efficient operation of the legal team, it also generates valuable insights for the wider business. Integrating ELM data across the organization allows Legal Ops to deliver timely, actionable insights where they have the greatest impact, helping legal departments demonstrate strategic value and enabling the broader business ecosystem to make more informed, data-driven decisions. 

This is how Legal Ops teams use legal technology to increase transparency and create measurable value across the entire organization. 

When is the Best Time to Answer “What is Legal Operations?” 

When exploring “What is Legal Operations?”, companies are looking to their Legal departments not only to protect business interests and mitigate risk but also to play a strategic role in business growth. The earlier a business positions Legal as a business partner, the greater the return on investment. While Legal keeps a close eye on budgets, it faces increasing pressure to do more with less each year. This is precisely why Legal Operations teams were created—to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver greater value across the organization. 

According to CLOC, legal technology is a foundational element in their Legal Ops Maturity Model. legal technology is key to business success, but it must be carefully implemented to meet the specific needs of your team. Questel is ready to demonstrate how our tools and services can help your Legal Ops team become highly effective, value-driven business partners. 

Our advanced, user-friendly software and services enable teams to quickly increase productivity, but their true value is unlocked when combined with ongoing training and expert support. Questel provides both software and training at no extra charge. As a leader in Legal Tech solutions, we deliver efficiency, cost savings, and measurable ROI within the first year. 

Schedule a meeting with Questel to explore how dedicated Legal Operations technology can optimize your team and maximize value across your business.