What Is Legal Ops? Why Every Legal Department Needs It Now
Gone are the days when in-house legal teams could operate in isolation, focusing solely on traditional legal work. Today's legal departments are strategic business partners, deeply involved in cross-functional projects and expected to deliver measurable value while managing tighter budgets and faster timelines.
Enter legal operations, a discipline that's transforming how legal departments function. Legal operations encompasses the business processes, analytics, and strategic planning that enable legal teams to work more efficiently and effectively. From vendor management and financial management to data analytics and project management, legal operations provides the operational backbone that modern legal departments need to thrive.
But what exactly is legal operations, and why has it become so critical? As general counsel and in-house legal teams face increasing pressure to reduce costs while expanding their strategic impact, legal operations offers a solution. In a recent Axiom webinar, Legal as a Project Manager – Driving Efficiency & Business Outcomes for In-House Counsel, Ryan Alvarez, General Counsel at Gensler, Michelle Gall, Global Legal Programs Director - Privacy, Security, Responsible AI at Booking Holdings, and Ken Leppert, Legal Team Lead at Axiom, explored how legal departments can better manage legal spend, improve collaboration with business stakeholders, and demonstrate clear value through measurable outcomes by implementing structured legal operations functions.
Whether you're a legal operations manager looking to optimize your current processes or a general counsel considering how to build legal operations capabilities, understanding this discipline is no longer optional; it's essential for any legal department that wants to remain competitive and valuable to their organization.
From Reactive to Strategic: The New Legal Landscape
The transformation of legal departments from reactive back-office functions to strategic business partners represents one of the most significant shifts in modern corporate governance. This evolution has created an urgent need for legal operations, the operational backbone that enables in-house legal departments to scale effectively and deliver measurable value.
Legal departments can no longer afford to operate as isolated advisory functions, waiting to be consulted after business decisions have already been made. Today's regulatory environment, particularly in rapidly evolving areas like privacy and cybersecurity, demands that legal operations teams take a more proactive, programmatic approach to managing legal work.
This shift is driven by several factors that legal operations professionals must navigate daily. Global companies operating across multiple jurisdictions face differing regulatory expectations and cultural requirements, making traditional case-by-case legal approaches inefficient and unsustainable. Legal operations provides the systematic framework needed to manage this complexity while reducing costs and improving outcomes.
💡Watch the full conversation on demand.
The Rise of Legal Operations Teams
Legal operations has emerged as the solution to scaling legal capabilities without proportionally scaling legal spend. The momentum is undeniable, according to recent research: 87% of general counsel increased their legal operations budgets by an average of 11% in 2025, with 40% of organizations already having established legal operations teams and another 40% actively implementing them.
Rather than relying solely on traditional law firms or expanding internal legal headcount, legal operations teams create systematic approaches to vendor management, project management, and resource allocation. The most successful legal operations functions combine legal expertise with specialized skills from other disciplines. Today's legal operations teams reflect this multidisciplinary approach, with legal professionals comprising 47% of teams, IT specialists representing 44%, and finance experts making up 36% of legal operations professionals.
💡Start building your legal ops team today and stay ahead of the curve.
Strategic Integration: Beyond Administrative Support
What distinguishes effective legal operations from simple administrative support is its integration with strategic business objectives. Legal operations managers don't just manage processes; they enable legal departments to become first-line participants in business strategy and risk management.
This strategic positioning requires legal operations teams to think beyond traditional legal services delivery. They must understand enterprise risk management frameworks, align legal operations functions with business goals, and demonstrate measurable value through data analytics and performance metrics. The most successful legal operations professionals serve as business enablers, helping general counsel and in-house legal teams transition from reactive advisors to proactive strategic partners.
💡Watch the full conversation on demand.
Project Management: Applying Structure to Legal Work
To operate as a true strategic partner to the business, legal departments need to shift away from being reactive and instead embrace a more programmatic, business-like approach to legal work. That’s where project management methodologies come in.
By treating ongoing initiatives like formalized programs with defined objectives, resource planning, and even service-level expectations, legal teams can create consistency and predictability in how they support the organization. This kind of structure helps foster trust, enabling business partners to see legal not as a bottleneck, but as an integrated, responsive ally.
Rather than inserting legal late in the process to “dot i’s and cross t’s,” legal operations professionals are helping establish more proactive, collaborative workflows. Think of processes like privacy impact assessments, AI risk reviews, or complex contract negotiations. With the right frameworks in place, whether inspired by NIST, ISO, or another standard, legal can engage earlier and more meaningfully, without derailing timelines.
It’s not about ticketing systems (which often feel too transactional and impersonal in a legal context). Instead, successful legal teams are implementing processes like horizon scanning for regulatory changes. These efforts move legal away from a reactive model and toward strategic planning that keeps pace with emerging legal requirements, whether that’s data privacy, cybersecurity, or AI governance.
The question isn't whether your legal department needs legal operations. It's whether you can afford to operate without it. Three critical business realities make legal operations essential for any competitive legal department.
💡Start building your legal ops team to boost efficiency.
The Partnership Imperative
Today's business environment also demands that legal departments embed themselves as strategic partners rather than waiting to be consulted after decisions are made. Legal operations enables this transformation by creating systematic approaches to cross-functional collaboration and strategic planning.
The most effective legal operations functions help general counsel and their teams move beyond the traditional "slide your paperwork across the desk" model. Instead, legal operations teams create frameworks that position legal professionals at the decision-making table from the outset, particularly in areas where legal expertise directly impacts business strategy and risk management.
This partnership approach requires more than good intentions. It demands operational excellence. Legal operations professionals provide the structure and processes that enable in-house legal teams to consistently deliver strategic value while managing day-to-day legal work efficiently.
💡Watch the full conversation on demand.
The Efficiency and Cost Management Reality
Legal spend continues to rise while business expectations for legal services grow more demanding. Legal operations addresses this challenge by creating systematic approaches to financial management and resource optimization that traditional legal service models cannot match.
The results speak for themselves: organizations investing in legal operations are seeing measurable returns. Recent research also shows that among legal departments with established legal operations teams, 36% have successfully implemented new internal processes driving significant efficiency gains, 36% have strategically shifted in-house legal work to flexible legal talent providers to boost capacity and achieve cost savings, and 33% have adopted new legal technologies to enhance capabilities.
Legal operations managers excel at vendor management, creating strategic relationships with legal services providers that deliver better outcomes at lower costs. This systematic approach to reducing costs doesn't compromise quality; it optimizes resource allocation to ensure the right expertise addresses the right challenges at the right time.
💡Start building a cost-effective legal operations function.
The Technology and Data Advantage
Modern legal departments generate vast amounts of data, but few leverage this information strategically. Legal operations teams bridge this gap by implementing data analytics capabilities that transform legal work from reactive to predictive.
Legal operations professionals understand that technology implementation isn't just about efficiency. It's about enabling better decision-making through better information. They create systems that provide general counsel and legal leadership with actionable insights about legal spend, matter outcomes, and resource utilization.
This data-driven approach enables continuous improvement in legal operations functions, creating competitive advantages that compound over time. Legal departments with strong legal operations capabilities can demonstrate measurable value to business leadership while continuously optimizing their own performance.
💡Watch the full conversation on demand.
Key Roles and Responsibilities
As legal departments evolve, the role of the legal operations manager becomes increasingly critical. But defining that role isn’t always straightforward. Many teams want a jack-of-all-trades: someone curious, proactive, and strategic but also operationally sharp. It’s taken some organizations years of learning, experimenting, and collaborating with consultants to arrive at the right job description.
The most effective legal operations teams bring a blend of project management, vendor management, and financial oversight to the table. They integrate with the in-house legal team to ensure lawyers are focused on high-value work, while operational professionals handle workflow design, intake processes, and systems implementation.
In short, the legal ops role is about enabling lawyers to be lawyers and ensuring the operational engine behind them runs smoothly and cost-effectively. Whether that’s overseeing legal spend, introducing new tools, or supporting data analytics efforts, legal ops is essential to scaling legal functions without adding inefficiencies.
Legal departments navigating periods of uncertainty, like regulatory shifts, internal change, or sudden spikes in workload, can gain agility and scale through strategic partnerships with alternative legal services providers (ALSPs).
Rather than disrupting internal workflows or launching lengthy hiring processes, legal leaders can spin up a specialized project team quickly. These professionals bring targeted expertise, such as experience with specific contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools or regulatory frameworks, and can ramp up or down based on project demands.
The value goes beyond temporary headcount. Sophisticated ALSPs now offer full-service solutions that combine talent, legal project management, technology platforms, and repeatable processes. This enables legal departments to deliver outcomes faster without compromising quality or overburdening internal teams.
To get the most from external partners, legal teams must lay the groundwork:
- Provide structured onboarding: Ensure access to systems, SMEs, and documentation from day one.
- Build knowledge assets: Develop playbooks, templates, and how-to guides that accelerate alignment.
- Invest in collaboration: Treat external contributors as part of the team. Build relationships, clarify expectations, and embed them in key workflows.
When thoughtfully integrated, alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) can function as a seamless extension of legal operations, bringing in-demand skills and scalable support exactly when and where it’s needed.
Legal operations has evolved from a nice-to-have function to an absolute necessity for modern legal departments. The legal operations professionals who excel in this space understand that success isn't just about reducing costs or managing legal spend more effectively but about transforming how legal work gets done, enabling in-house legal teams to focus on high-value activities while ensuring operational excellence across all legal operations functions.
For legal departments ready to embrace this transformation, the question isn't whether to invest in legal operations but how to build these capabilities effectively. Whether you're looking to hire legal operations talent to strengthen your team or seeking experienced legal operations professionals to lead strategic initiatives, having the right expertise is crucial.
Ready to elevate your legal operations? Axiom connects legal departments with top-tier legal operations professionals who understand the complexities of modern legal service delivery. From legal operations managers who can optimize your vendor management processes to strategic advisors who can implement comprehensive legal operations functions, we help you build the operational excellence your legal department needs.
For legal operations professionals seeking their next opportunity, Axiom offers access to innovative legal departments that value operational expertise and strategic thinking. Join a network where your legal operations skills can make a real impact.
