Hi there,
Is legal ops at a troubling crossroads? Will it rise as a position of strategic importance within the in-house legal team, or be relegated to a tactical function, or even be swallowed up by the larger business entirely?
It’s a question that was asked — and answered quite profusely — in a recent LinkedIn thread (courtesy of the illustrious Mary O’Carroll).
This left me asking what I believe is a far more important question.
What is the takeaway here for enterprise legal leaders?
If there is truly a contraction occurring in the extent and scope of the legal ops role, I might be unpopular for saying it, but the blame falls squarely on legal leaders.
For a long time, legal has marched to its own beat.
But today, corporate austerity rules and every CEO wants to know how each function’s spend stacks up relative to their bottom line.
Legal is no exception.
It’s only a matter of time before the corporate efficiency committee comes for your legal ops headcount (or any other, for that matter). Legal leaders must have a plan for how they will defend their team.
Like one of our PERSUIT customers who recently shared their own win on this front.
When confronted with a proposed cut, the argument was simple.
Rather than cite utilization or efficiency gains, this legal leader cut straight to what matters — when measured in savings driven by a more transparent and competitive process for buying legal services, that position was adding real dollars back into the business.
Are you proactively telling the right narrative of how you’re leveraging your legal spend to create more value for the business — and partnering with your firms to do this?
Better yet, can you show it?
Like this dashboard example that's not far from what many of our real PERSUIT customers are achieving (and showing to the rest of the business) with our platform:
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