Survey: Legal Departments Are Investing in Legal Operations
The addition of full-time legal operations employees also shows that majority of companies are making it a full-time job rather than a secondary job for an associate or deputy general counsel.
July 19, 2019 at 04:00 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Corporate Counsel
Legal operations functions have grown steadily in the past year, and legal departments are placing a greater importance on legal operations, according to the results of a survey published Thursday by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium.
“It's a very exciting time and we're all driving a lot of change and innovation and are curious to see where it all lands,” Mary O'Carroll, CLOC's president and director of legal operations at Google, said in an interview Friday.
The report shows that legal departments have an average of six full-time legal operations employees. Companies with revenues of $10 billion or more have an average 12 attorneys for every one legal operations professional. Midsize companies, with revenues of $1 billion to $9.9 billion, have 13 attorneys for every one legal operations professional, and small companies with less than $1 billion in revenue have six attorneys for every one legal operations professional.
“We also asked how many have you have grown your team and 39% of the respondents said they have grown their legal ops team in 2018,” O'Carroll said.
The addition of full-time legal operations employees also shows that majority of companies are making it a full-time job rather than a secondary job for an associate or deputy general counsel. The majority of respondents indicated that the person leading legal operations has a title of legal operations manager or director of legal operations. Only 5% of respondents said the general counsel is in charge of legal operations and only 2% of respondents said the associate general counsel is in charge of legal operations.
“You need a person to be dedicated to this if you want to really get the return on your investment. This is not something you can do on the side,” O'Carroll said.
The majority of legal operations professionals are reporting directly to the general counsel or the chief legal officer, according to the report. Twenty-one percent of respondents indicated legal operations reports to the deputy or associate general counsel. Sixty-five percent of respondents said legal operations reports to the general counsel. O'Carroll said reporting to the top of the legal department is critical.
“The legal operations lead is in a lot of ways executing and delivering on the vision and strategy of your GC or CLO,” O'Carroll said.
The data for the 2019 State of the Industry Report was collected from CLOC members at 213 companies spanning industries across 18 countries. This is the second year CLOC has published the survey.
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