Jeff Isaacs has given much thought to the evolution of legal services over his 30-plus year career in the industry, both in legal operations and as an attorney acting as both outside and in-house counsel. I recently had the opportunity to catch up with him on his career and his decision to join KPMG LLP as Director, Global Legal Managed Services. Click here to read more.
In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, a team of researchers showed that 78% of transformations fail. Their analysis showed that “people are the catalysts of successful transformation.” Check out this article to find out how to move beyond working in silos, incremental improvement, and isolated innovation to achieve transformation and why it’s important to have a structured process to engage leadership in setting objectives and guiding transformational change.
The number of legal ops roles was exploding. More positions were being given more responsibility and being empowered to run departments and make impactful change. Legal ops leaders were being asked to do this without tools. The ACC Legal Ops group set out to create the first of its kind maturity model, toolkit and Legal Ops 101 (the bootcamp) to really jumpstart the industry.
Suzanne Hawkins has seen legal operations from every angle, as a practicing attorney, legal operations head, consultant, and law firm leader. An Trotter, Senior Director of Operations, Office of the General Counsel, Hearst, had the good fortune to speak with Suzanne about her career and get her insights on the emergence and evolution of legal operations. Click here to read the full article.
Legal ops truly shines when bringing together lawyers, allied professionals, and the tools that serve them best to meet their myriad, unique needs. In a world of complicated implementations, it’s crucial that lawyers are engaged in decision-making before and during the project. This article provides tips and best practices to that end.
Covid-19 has profoundly rewritten the rules and beliefs of what the workspace should be before the pandemic hit the entire nation. "Pandemic Life" has forever changed the way we think, how we travel, personal interactions and of course, how we work. The impact Covid has had on today's workforce has brought many changes in the way employers and employees interact with one another. Something that started as a temporary work-from-home scenario quickly changed into a two-year mandatory remote work situation.
Savings is not a strategy. Imagine a CEO opening an earnings call by celebrating the money the company “saved” on deal counsel and due diligence by not moving forward with an otherwise strategically vital acquisition. The stock would crater because leadership would rightly be judged as majoring in the minors.
As a line item, legal spend is a minor consideration. Rather, legal spend is better characterized as a relatively small investment that enables the business to execute on what matters.
Legal spend should be dictated by business needs. Those business needs are only escalating with the explosion in legal complexity. The increasingly law-thick environment in which businesses operate is having a profound impact on corporate top lines, bottom lines, valuations, and strategic opportunities. Trying to save money on legal is myopic—and excruciatingly common.
This report provides a summary of the use of technology within legal departments, based on a survey conducted in autumn 2020 at the behest of the Tools & Technology Interest Group of ACC Legal Operations.
There is a growing focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in today’s boardrooms. As companies grapple with developing ESG programs, legal operations have an important role. From preparing ESG disclosures and managing risks to collecting, validating, and reporting data, firms can leverage core legal operations functions to build an ESG program that drives improvement over time.
Legal Operations is a multi-disciplinary field, requiring aptitude in finance, technology, vendor management, workforce strategy, data analysis, communications, and so much more. Professionals can develop substantive acumen in any of these areas sufficient to allow them to determine “what” the focus of the corporate legal department. However, the culture of the “how” we execute is rarely discussed with the same type of rigor and it requires just as much planning and care to deliver the desired business outcomes.