Best Practices for Legal Ops to Partner with GCs for Efficiency and Value

Dive into the mind of what your GC really wants and you’ll be better equipped to tackle the challenges that matter most to both of you.

How can a legal ops innovator spark change for their business while also addressing their GC’s prioritization of mitigating risk—all while staying within a tighter budget?

This guide is full of best practices for legal ops, discussing how the goals, challenges, and solutions for the GC and the legal operations professional can be addressed through an improved partnership and effective communication.

11%

was the average reduction in legal department budgets as reported by GCs

81%

of legal departments don’t have the necessary staffing resources in-house to do their jobs effectively

100%

of GCs said it’s difficult for their legal department to hire the right attorneys to address their needs

96%

of GCs have seen their legal department budgets cut

97%

of legal operations professionals said they anticipated a hiring freeze this year

99%%

of legal ops said they’ve had difficulty finding and hiring lawyers who had the expertise to meet the department’s needs

Shrinking Budget

Hiring Talent

Outsourcing

Technology

Shrinking Budget

Addressing the lack of budget and efficient resourcing is something crucial to both the GC and legal ops professional, but legal ops pros must put themselves in the GCs’ shoes to understand how to increase their partnerships’ success.

One of the often overlooked struggles a GC faces when forced to make budget cuts is their dedication to the company’s values and adherence to ethical standards. A full 97% of GCs reported to Wakefield Research that they see themselves as the primary steward of the company’s values. Yet every one of them (100%) acknowledged an intrinsic conflict in their roles: the balancing act of upholding legal department values while subjected to ever-worsening budget constraints.

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Hiring Talent

Legal departments aren't just under-resourced. They’re also facing a revolving door of talent.

Almost all of the departments Wakefield Research surveyed report an uptick in turnover in the last year. And with 80% of GCs anticipating a hiring freeze, it appears this talent turmoil isn't going to subside in the foreseeable future. Ensuring the legal operations team is appropriately staffed is also one of the biggest concerns for legal ops leaders. Legal departments tend to hire for the problems they have, not for the problems that might occur in the future.

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Outsourcing

Unfortunately, when it comes to hiring external vendors, not all provide the same quality for the cost. The traditional model of outsourcing to law firms when the in-house legal team needs support has become outdated in this rapidly evolving industry.

While outsourcing to law firms might be necessary for exceptional “bet the company” legal matters, over-reliance on law firms can be a double-edged sword, particularly for routine matters such as overflow work, the need for specific expertise, or the need to quickly assemble a large project team. As any legal ops professional knows, speed is of the essence. But conveying that importance to GCs is easier said than done.

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Technology

The wave of artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLMs), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) tools across industries is introducing immense complexity to the legal matters GCs typically face, not to mention how those tools can be used and governed within the in-house team.

In fact, GCs anticipate technology, data privacy, and AI to be three of the top areas in demand for their departments. But at the same time, they’re also among the top three areas to be outsourced to law firms, as most in-house teams lack the expertise required to deal with them as legal matters or to assess, procure, deploy, and govern them as internal tools.

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It’s no secret that GCs work in a risk-averse industry that’s historically been slow to embrace change. But by providing your GC with modern resourcing solutions in a way that makes sense to their specific needs, you’ll be better able to get them on board.

Today’s GCs and their in-house legal teams must adapt, evolve, and innovate to achieve a higher level of agility needed to succeed in light of ever-tighter budgets, increasing legal and regulatory complexity, and rapidly rising law firm rates and other costs. This is where legal operations partners can step in and help their GCs adapt to stay ahead.

GCs overwhelmingly report their teams lack resources across the board—the necessary budget, staffing, technology, expertise, and team structure—to accomplish their required tasks. As they continue struggling to do more with less, GCs face a succession of roadblocks, including an average 11% reduction in their legal department budgets.

Legal ops professionals can improve their relationship with their legal leaders by focusing on the following goals:

Control costs by increasing the efficiency of the legal department.
Increase alignment with the company’s strategic priorities.
Incorporate data analytics (both quantitatively and qualitatively) to identify ways to improve the legal department.
Create cross-functional relationships with other teams within the organization.
Use technology and workflow automation to track the ROI of the legal function.

But how can legal operations leaders meet these goals? Axiom’s research highlights the largest pain points among legal leaders and offers solutions legal ops can employ to mitigate these challenges.

As a savvy and forward-thinking legal leader, you’re the best (if not the ONLY) person to emphasize to your GC, CLO, and CFO that legal departments can no longer count on or afford to stick with the business strategies that worked in the past. Addressing outdated resourcing strategies requires adopting solutions such as new technologies, building out the operations professionals team, and rethinking how and when to partner with modern legal service providers.

Leaders of legal operations know they must find ways to optimize the already reduced legal budget, yet still increase efficiency across the legal department. Using a data-driven approach, legal ops professionals can (a) oversee the legal spend by setting budget targets and (b) optimize resource allocation by transparently managing internal and external costs, and regularly communicate this to the GC. Use data analytics to track costs, but also track the legal metrics (KPIs) you and your GC have pre-determined for measuring success. Together, you can quantitatively measure performance.

Today everyday legal table stakes can be addressed in modern, faster, less costly ways. But GCs appear largely unaware of many contemporary options for flipping the script from doing more with less to doing more for less.

How is it possible to ensure the legal ops team is taken care of when the rest of the legal team is also under-resourced? By working with your GC to show them what kind of internal and external resources are available to close the gaps in skillsets and keep employees across all the teams satisfied.

As the legal ops leader, you can provide a smooth-running process that’s both automated and efficient, all while keeping costs down—a win-win for everyone!

Even with new tools, the legal ops team should be providing various outsourcing options, particularly when it comes to streamlining and optimizing the hiring process, including both internal and external talent. Using a digital hiring platform enables legal ops to empower their in-house legal team to usher in a highly effective resourcing model which can mitigate risk while distributing legal work.

What does a GC want?

Legal ops professionals can improve their relationship with their legal leaders by focusing on the following goals:

Control costs by increasing the efficiency of the legal department.
Increase alignment with the company’s strategic priorities.
Incorporate data analytics (both quantitatively and qualitatively) to identify ways to improve the legal department.
Create cross-functional relationships with other teams within the organization.
Use technology and workflow automation to track the ROI of the legal function.

Solving the GC's challenges

Optimal resourcing solutions

As the legal ops leader, you can provide a smooth-running process that’s both automated and efficient, all while keeping costs down—a win-win for everyone!

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Best Practices for Legal Ops to Partner with GCs for Efficiency and Value