(Author) Head of Legal Operations:
What's your unique perspective on advancing the role of legal operations within the legal department and within the organization?

Legal Operations Manager Responses:

• I don't know how unique this perspective is, but I'll give it a go. Our company is pretty small -- we have 320 employees, and Legal has nine people. Because we're tiny and also need to be mighty, my short-term focus has been on two things: streamlining the way we do work in Legal and establishing and growing Legal's relationships with the rest of the company. - I started in December, and my long-term goals are for Legal never to be referred to as ”The Department of No'' or “The Place Where Deals Go to Die” and for our colleagues across the company never to be afraid to ask us a question.

• I agree it’s critical to build better relationships between the business functions/legal department. Easier said than done right…In my experience, the legal department/legal operations team is naturally put in the position to say “NO”. By example, a new deal, task, or project may have varying business stakeholder groups which are primarily concerned with their own business deliverables and/or dedicated timelines. Legal or Legal Operations is not always at the top of the list when completing a task or project specific initiative - instead only considered as the final step in a “Go / No go” decision. While simple, the successful solution is to get legal involved from the onset; allow the business teams to provide the prospective plan/business outline, and give legal the opportunity to assess, and provide input from a legal perspective proactively. While this does not mean the answer will be always be “YES” from now on - it reduces the late in the game position for both parties leading to a “NO” from Legal. - Again, easier said than done. You may see some growing pains and it does require legal insertion into varying workflows. It does become that organic stepping stone to building relationships within the organization. Also, it allows both parties, business stakeholders and legal or legal operations to gain a better understanding of each other's requirements, expectations, and considerations proactively.

• I think this is all a matter of mindset. If the GC is integral to the business and starts from the position of wanting to empower the business, wanting to say “Yes”, it's more likely that the rest of the team will also interact from that standpoint. If the GC perceives herself as an enabler and not as a blocker, she will approach issues from the standpoint of “How can I help?”, when it comes to looking at ways to mitigate risk and get things done, rather than avoid risk altogether. I have worked with a number of GCs and none of them wanted to be perceived as the blocker. One GC I know told me about how he “got himself invited to meetings” so that he'd be better positioned to anticipate issues from the business. He also made a significant effort early on in his tenure at one large organization to establish strong relationships with various divisional and regional managers such that they eventually started coming to him for advice early on - oftentimes before they sought their own supervisors' approval for initiatives - they trusted him to be a good sounding board and advise them of potential issues. This ended-up serving him really well, as not only did he get the heads-up on things before they became an issue, but it also ensured that he was 'in the process' and was trusted to be a problem-solver rather than a blocker.

• Here, our legal team works closely with each of the business units - they're fairly well embedded and are in the loop on initiatives. We're also looking at where we can change policies and processes to further empower the business to do more themselves, providing guidance and workflows that they can follow to understand risk positions and whether they even require legal review for various things. With regard to our current CLM project, this will also impact how we try to provide as many pre-approved templates as possible so that we can be assured that people have the resources to do their jobs and know that we've already made the risk-based decisions for much of them.

• It's a journey. Start by creating a legal operations strategy roadmap, based on key priorities identified by your GC, and shout it from the rooftop whenever you have a chance. Build credibility.

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