For professionals just entering legal operations, or attempting to build a new ops program in an established department, getting started can be the hardest part.

That's why Cisco Systems Inc.'s vice president and deputy general counsel, Steve Harmon, and Gap Inc.'s senior director, AGC, and head of legal operations, Mike Haven, led a discussion at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's annual institute on Monday about how to go from a legal operations “zero to hero.” The two have both faced the challenge of building a legal ops function from scratch.

Haven took on the legal operations role at Gap two years ago.