What are legal operations?

Legal operations are the essence of every corporation. The legal industry is evolving with increased demand for legal services that continue to be trending in any form of business. It is responsible for producing efficient plans for in-house legal teams and enhances their work proficiency with better decision strategies. The set of activities are much broader comprising intra- and inter-functional collaboration, innovative legal solutions to the clients, managing financial matters, technology, vendor management, data analysis to maximize the effective delivery of legal services. CLOC's model is based on twelve core competencies that are divided into 3 layers, specifically foundational, advanced, and mature level competencies. In other words, legal operations have turned down the concept of in-house legal from "cost center" to "value-creator".

Meet Jessica. She leads the legal team at a popular real estate firm. Her team is hardworking and dedicated - but she’s noted their performance has been faltering as of late. With heavier workloads, the team clearly wasn’t working as efficiently as they could be.

Each day they’d spend hours drafting complex contracts by hand, tediously copying and pasting clauses and explaining contracts to different parties. There were communication breakdowns due to poor collaboration between colleagues - and even some contract errors. For Jessica, it was evident: the legal team was placing all their energy into drafting legal documents, instead of supporting the real estate firm to really thrive.

In the world of legal team management, it's important to ensure that the legal professionals working for you are doing their best at all times. This is imperative not just from a profitability standpoint, though your bottom line is, of course, important.

The truth is that well-motivated lawyers, legal assistants, and any other legal professionals do their best, most valuable work, and that makes a real difference in the lives and livelihoods of their clients.

The move from traditional filing systems to cloud-based document management software has been not just the trend but the standard for most law firms. This has rendered firms who still keep a substantial amount of paper files obsolete in their practices. But in 2020 there have been additional challenges due to recent global office closures and new social distancing rules.

The legal industry isn’t what it used to be - and yes, that’s a good thing! The market has been revolutionized by the advent of legal technology and innovative tools. These new products have empowered law professionals to increase efficiency, save money, and work faster all around - whether they’re deep in e-discovery, conducting legal research, or managing contracts, etc.

But how is legal technology being received by firms and companies around the world? And how big of a splash is the industry really making?

Recently, GQ magazine published a group photo featuring popular Silicon Valley tech executives on a trip to Italy. The photo included 15 men and two women - however something in the photo looked off. As Buzzfeed News discovered, the female CEOs had actually been photoshopped in - and consequently, people on Twitter weren’t very happy about it.

There’s no doubt that transparency is key for building trust in today’s business environment. And not telling the whole truth is not only a big faux pas for the brand, but also damaging to the group(s) that aren’t privy to what’s going on behind the curtain.

With extensive working hours, stressful cases and plenty of pressure to succeed, it seems only natural that many lawyers find their job difficult. In fact, a 2016 study by The American Bar Association (ABA), which questioned almost 13,000 working attorneys, showed that lawyers are the most unhappy professionals in the world.

Even after long years at Law School, the education of a legal professional is never over. In fact, lawyers are on a constant learning curve, seeking knowledge from various sources in order to better their careers and win more cases. At the same time, it is also key to find a good balance between your personal life and career goals and learn to manage this equilibrium effectively.

When you find yourself working 60-hour weeks with a towering pile of casework, it can seem impossible to achieve any form of work-life balance. In fact, a 2017 survey by The Bar Council revealed that half of participating lawyers felt unable to sustain lifestyle equilibrium.

Yet there are many routes towards a better work-life-balance – but could the simplest solution be the way we approach our workloads?

Life as a lawyer tends to be fast-paced, diverse and full of exciting challenges, which is why the profession has become the subject of plenty of awesome movies, books and jokes! Here, we explore the greatest media about lawyers, from must-read books and funny memes to the most popular law-based TV shows around.