When looking at legal operations it is usually defined in a way that focuses on in-house corporate legal teams. However, other settings such as consultancies and law firms also work in legal operations. If you’re working in a law firm you can expect to do the following types of work:
Business Intelligence
The right data is incredibly useful for business decision-making – allowing the firm’s leadership to make quicker, better decisions. This ultimately allows firms to take better advantage of opportunities and resist headwinds. People working in this space analyse and surface key information from firm data and lay it out in easy to digest reports or dashboards.
Information Governance
Lawyers and their clients have a sacred and confidential bond. The information passed between them needs to be protected – not only their matter-related information but their personal information too. People in this space reduce risk for the law firm by creating safeguards and policies, enforcing data protection and understanding what is required of the firm in case of a data breach.
Knowledge Management
Reviewing and improving knowledge processes to make it easier for lawyers to utilise it at the point of need. The creation, maintenance and collation of knowledge is critical to the success of a law firm. This could be research, how info is laid out on intranets or DMS’, practice notes, and legal document templates.
Case and Matter Management
Each work unit of a law firm will be either a case or matter (depending on whether it relates to dispute resolution or transactional/advisory work). Those that work in this space review current processes, and recommend and implement improvements. This could be quicker onboarding, better resource allocation, better reporting or accelerated case/matter lifecycle.
Technology (Procurement and Implementation)
People working in this space are interested in people, process, tech. They analyse the issue at hand and who is involved, as well as analysing and improving existing processes. Once they’ve laid the ground work – understood the issue and refined the current processes as much as possible, they can look at how tech can amplify those efficiency gains. They find the right fit tech for the problem being faced, procure it and implement it.
Legal Project Management
Each legal matter in itself is a mini-project with a start and end, deliverables, tasks and required resources. LPM includes looking at a given matter e.g. a company acquisition, scoping the project and disaggregating the tasks; determining who is best suited to carrying them out and making sure that all the tasks are done by the right people at the right time to get the matter completed (e.g. company acquired and paid for).
Program Management
Program management delivers process improvement as per the strategic direction of the law firm. This could include managing the delivery of a new legal ops function within the law firm (e.g. LPM) by bringing stakeholders together to drive towards a vision and realise that vision by providing the right tools, processes and resources to deliver the innovation program.
Strategic Planning
Law is a competitive space and strategising for the future is important to maintain a service offering that outcompetes the firm’s peers. This could be determining what the technology focus should be, whether there are opportunities to build better relationships with clients through better processes, or effectively managing change to deliver results.
Vendor Management
Picking the right technology is just the first step in the journey. Once the technology has gone live and is in use then the relationships with these vendors need to be managed. This is to make sure that the requisite support is available, the product performs as contractually agreed, and ultimately that the law firm is getting value for money.
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