Peer to Peer Magazine

47 WWW.ILTANET.ORG The Evolving Business of Law FEATURES » The legal marketplace, particularly the unpredictable nature of litigation, involved so many variables that it was considered unmanageable. » Predicting costs and adhering to budgets were not important given the legal risks to the company. » Many in-house aorneys came from law firms where they had been given carte blanche to solve their clients' problems. » Controlling costs and creating budgets was seen as a job for the accounting department. Change came in two ways: Soware was created that gave corporate businesses the ability to bring many services in-house that had been performed by outside counsel. The cost to process cases had a serious effect on profitability. As a result, corporate leadership invested in the technology and resources needed to manage legal work previously done by law firms. This opened the door for efforts to drive operational legal costs down and reshaped how legal departments operate. Running Legal Like a Business As business practices change, businesses must maintain control over operational spend, reduce overage and mitigate risks. In this environment, legal departments should be well-managed in order to add value and be sustainable, especially as they have oen been considered drains on their organizations. To run like a business unit, the entire legal department must have a culture of collaboration and an understanding of the organization's business and strategic vision for progress. Establishing a legal operations function is a major step toward helping the law department run like a business. While departments in larger organizations 1 2 have had such resources for 15-20 years, only in the last half-dozen years has this become the standard. Most organizations utilize legal operations in a variety of capacities, such as technology management, fiduciary reporting, subject maer expertise in transactions or litigation support and relationship management with both external business partners (outside counsel and other service providers) and internal cross-functional areas (IT, finance, marketing, research and development, information management, procurement, etc.). The general counsel typically charges legal operations to operate like a business with defined goals, budgets, metrics and processes conforming to the company's business objectives. At the same time, legal operations is tasked with supporting and preserving the workflow sustainability of internal associates managing legal strategy and organizational transactions. Legal operations manages a daily continuous improvement process and provides support for long- term continuous improvement for the organization. It uses the standardization of processes as a solution to drive efficiency, reduce costs, manage relationships and form strategy for the next challenge. Similar tasks are standardized using the most cost-effective model available, with solid operating procedures to ensure consistency and quality. Evolution to Modern Day These days, senior leaders expect the legal department to operate like a business and manage a detailed budget, just like any other department. Forward- thinking general counsel are embracing financial accountability in several ways, including forging closer ties with chief financial officers. Internal organizational requirements rely heavily on legal for governance and policy management, which fosters greater demand for business operations to manage projects sponsored by the legal department in collaboration with areas such as IT, marketing, regulatory, and research and development. Legal operations professionals are learning the language and principles of accounting, finance and IT management and are managing the company's legal maers with a beer understanding of the larger organization's scope and goals. This is transforming the way legal operates, the way lawyers MIKE RUSSELL A widely recognized legal technology professional, author and speaker — currently leading legal operational excellence for the Ingersoll Rand global legal department — Mike Russell provides expertise managing in-house and outside counsel through Lean business process improvement and technology automation. He has earned numerous vendor and industry recognitions, including Cisco, Citrix, EMC, iManage, Lean Bronze, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Six Sigma. Mike received an ILTA Distinguished Peer Award in 2011 for Law Department Champion and is a frequent contributor to ILTA, the ACC and Legaltech. Contact him at michael.russell@irco.com. JACK THOMPSON John (Jack) Thompson, Senior Manager of Litigation Support/ Legal Operations, has over 12 years of experience providing program and project management leadership for various initiatives related to operations, data analytics, information governance and intellectual property portfolio management. He has worked primarily as a program manager within the IT legal operations and e-discovery group, acting in multiple capacities for the legal, finance and IT groups at Purdue and UPS. Jack is an active member of ILTA and AIIM in the areas of information governance, data analytics methodologies and outcome management. Contact him at jack. thompson@sanofi.com.

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