The legal operations manager is a cross-functional role responsible for leveraging the investments made by the legal department. The role requires a wide-ranging skill set encompassing strategic planning, financial management, vendor management, technology management and legal data analytics. Legal operations managers help legal departments get the most out of their budgets, vendors and technology. They optimize the larger legal supply chain matching up a portfolio of supply (e.g., law firms, alternative service providers, consultants and in-house teams) to the company’s portfolio of legal needs to meet strategic business objectives.
According to the 2018 Chief Legal Officer Survey, 73 percent of organizations cite hiring an administrator or legal ops manager as the most significant factor in driving legal department efficiency. By employing a results-driven approach to their work and continually prioritizing objective data over subjective hunches, legal ops professionals can have a huge financial impact. In fact, Cisco indicates that its legal ops team has saved the company a whopping $400 million over the past few years.
