The CLOC Institute 2018 closed with a speech from Google’s head of legal operations Mary O’Carroll, who asked that attendees keep the momentum for change going by taking risks and trying new strategies and tools. Photo: Caroline Speizio/Corporate Counsel
Three takeaways from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) Institute in Las Vegas:
- If we are serious about operational excellence in legal service delivery, our law department will create a dedicated legal operations role.
- Even if we have a star performer in a dedicated legal operations role, the changes we aim to make in how we deliver legal services will still take two to three times longer than we anticipate.
- The technology to help us rapidly achieve operational excellence doesn’t exist (yet). There is useful tech. But it is either narrow point solutions or heavy installs requiring massive customization. There are no quick fixes.
These are not my takeaways. The observations come from an assistant general counsel attending CLOC on a fact-finding mission. The AGC was dispatched to determine whether this ‘legal operations stuff’ might be useful. While the AGC came away convinced, they requested anonymity due to the underlined portion in the first takeaway.
