Legal ops professionals continuously play a pivotal role in advancing how corporate legal departments function. On July 18 in New York City, LegalOps.com hosted an event for these crucial specialists, bringing together industry leaders and practitioners to share insights, tools, and strategies for addressing both operational challenges and opportunities. With the overarching goal of fostering collegiality and innovation, the event delivered actionable advice while shining a spotlight on areas where legal ops is still evolving.
Here, we break down the top takeaways from the event, along with the primary challenges attendees identified as they seek fresh solutions for their organizations.
Key discussion themes
Several key themes arose during the event’s roundtable discussion:
- Marketing the value of legal ops: While legal ops professionals excel at driving efficiency, many struggle to communicate their unique value to internal stakeholders. The need to "put on a marketing hat" resonated strongly during discussions. Attendees emphasized the importance of storytelling to demonstrate contributions clearly. For example, sharing success stories about cost savings, contract turnaround times, or streamlined workflows to illustrate measurable impact.
- Volume impact on rates: The dynamics between corporate legal departments and law firms was another discussion priority. While conventional thinking suggests that giving more work to a law firm leads to better rates, many attendees’ experiences suggest otherwise. The discussion revealed that relationship-building is just as crucial as volume.
- Artificial intelligence for productivity: AI has become synonymous with innovation in legal operations, but its perceived benefits vary. Most attendees viewed AI as a tool for improving productivity and turnaround times, rather than directly reducing costs. Specific uses include automating repetitive tasks, enabling attorneys to focus on high-value work, and generating valuable insights from spend data to improve decision-making.
Top challenges
In addition to shared insights, the conversation highlighted several ongoing challenges for legal ops teams as they pursue excellence:
- Overcoming attorney resistance: Resistance from attorneys to new processes, technologies, and workflows remains a core struggle. Legal ops professionals aim to prove that adopting these changes benefits attorneys by reducing workloads and inefficiencies. However, earning trust continues to be an uphill battle. One solution is to develop a COO-style mindset, framing legal ops as an essential business function, rather than a back-office team, shifting the focus to improved department performance.
- Defining and applying relevant KPIs: Finding standardized metrics across practice areas is no small feat. Teams need guidance in determining which metrics to track, how to track them, and how to align them with both legal and business goals. Areas like M&A, where standardized KPIs are less applicable, present a particularly difficult challenge. Tailored solutions based on practice area and company-specific goals are clearly necessary to move forward.
- Budget constraints: Legal departments are managing flat or reduced budgets while legal costs increase. Some feel that companies should focus more on the driving factors of costs to determine how to reduce spend. Many attendees expressed a desire for clear, actionable strategies that demonstrate technology’s potential to save money without compromising quality or compliance.
Moving forward
The July 18 LegalOps.com event provided thoughtful dialogue and insights that resonate deeply with legal ops professionals. Looking ahead, leveraging tools and platforms tailored to the legal ops function will be critical for continued success. Solutions from providers like Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions empower legal teams with industry-leading data analytics, powerful AI tools, and innovative benchmarking insights to address these challenges.
For legal ops professionals, the opportunity to drive meaningful change has never been greater. By staying informed and proactive, legal ops leaders can shape the future of legal departments – and the broader corporate ecosystem – in positive, lasting ways.
In September, I will be at LegalOps.com’s Running Legal Like a Business conference in Las Vegas. I’m excited to explore these topics in greater depth and engage in meaningful conversations about the innovations, challenges, and strategies driving our industry forward.
