Finding perspective in a strange time

I am a planner. Like many people in legal operations, I am constantly thinking about what comes next and how to get there. The last few months, of course, have been a real blow to all of us planners. Sometimes life takes your carefully laid out plans, rips them up, and tosses the pieces in the air.

Almost overnight, our lives changed. My days used to kick off with a mad rush to get the kids to school and fight traffic to get to the office. I used to see my kids for a half hour each morning, then maybe an hour or two in the evening. In between, I was rushing from meeting to meeting, barely taking a break to get everything done by the end of the workday. It was a good life, but it felt chaotic and rushed, and I found myself wishing for more time with my family.

The hard turn my family took into a shelter-in-place, home schooling lifestyle was a shock for sure. It also came with some important gifts, the first of which is gratitude.

Unlike so many, my husband and I can keep working remotely. The pressures we face are nothing compared to what some families confront. This is not to say we don’t feel frustrated or anxious sometimes, but we realize how fortunate we are to be safe and whole at a time when so many are not. The problems we have – homeschooling three healthy, feisty young children while juggling our work commitments – are good problems.

Another important gift: the time we have been able to spend with our loved ones. My favorite part of each day was watching my five year-old doing her P.E. class. She goes at it with impressive intensity, concentrating hard during the yoga segment and huffing and puffing through jumping jacks and burpees. After months spent in the house together, I look at her, my other girls, and my husband in a new way. We are all learning so much about each other. 

This desire to connect, and appreciation for others, extends beyond the people in my house. I have thought more about, and reconnected with, old friends around the world more in the last few months. Instead of being so caught up in the whirlwind of my busy days, I have found myself making time to reach out and catch up.

A big change in life context can sometimes bring about a big shift in perspective. We have the physical space and time, and mental distance, to see our world with more clarity. We can see the things in front of us better and value them properly. This is the silver lining of this moment, I believe.

The power of purpose

We spend so much time preoccupied with the “what” and the “how” it can be easy to lose track of the “why.” When you strip away all the noise of our busy lives and crowded minds, what rises to the top?

What matters most? This simple question has been a huge focus for us at CLOC over the last few months.

It is a good time for reflection. Our little group, that I used to call a “book club,” has grown into a world-class organization. Once just a small gathering of contrarians trying to define a new space called “legal operations,” we are now active in leading companies across the globe. Representing major industries over many geographies, our members are pushing and testing the limits of what is possible. As a result, legal operations has moved from a fringe idea, to a back-burner initiative, to a strategic mandate for most companies.

So just what are we doing? Why are we here? When my fellow board members and I recently stepped back to ask ourselves this, the answer was simple: we are a global community focused on redefining the business of law.

We are taking one of the oldest, most tradition-bound industries, into the future. We are all different, carrying our own perspectives and needs, but all connected by the power of one bedrock principle: There must be a better way.

I am talking about changing systems and processes of an entire industry. And that can sound dry and academic to some, but those systems and processes are driven by people. So what we are really talking about is actually vital and deeply human. This is about reinventing one of the oldest industries in profound ways that affect many, many people.

This is a huge task, and one that will only be possible with the contributions of every part of the ecosystem. It will take a long time, and it will only happen with the help of many entities pulling together, but it is already underway.

A new direction

Getting clear on our vision and on what really matters has helped us think about where to take CLOC. Before it is anything else, CLOC is a community, a movement of like-minded people. As that community grew larger, more diverse, and more international, we realized that we needed to evolve.

We were at a crossroads. We had come a long way, but still had a long way still to go. To launch into our next stage, we realized, would require investing in our organization. There were so many things we wanted to do that demanded more resources and infrastructure. We realized that we needed to build a professional team equal to the energy and passion of our community.

That is why I was so excited to bring in our new Executive Director, Betsi Roach. In just a few months under her leadership, and with the support of the strong team she is putting in place, CLOC has already added scale and capabilities. We are working to improve the way we serve and reach members in deep ways. I am so excited for the future.

In some ways, the pandemic has forced us to accelerate our evolution in positive ways. As an organization founded in the U.S., we have long worked to extend our value and reach internationally. Canceling our in-person events has meant that we had to develop new ways to reach and serve global audiences. I am counting down the days until our Global Institute, a fully virtual conference scheduled for November 10th (Pacific Time). This is going to be a great opportunity for the community to come together in a new way. We are hard at work on the content and the curriculum, taking the results of the feedback we received from over 400 of you. I think people will really enjoy it.

We can do better

There is a phrase that I have been hearing a lot lately: “It’s time to get back to normal.” I understand why people say that, and the desire for a return to the familiar and comfortable. When it comes to the legal industry, however, I could not disagree more strongly. The very LAST thing we need is to go back to “normal.”

We can, and must, do so much better. I look around our industry and, for all the progress we have made, I see so many places we can improve. I see huge opportunities to make our industry more effective, efficient, and equitable. From the way we make decisions, to how we identify and hire talent, to how we create value chains, we are barely scratching the surface.

Our organization has always been a catalyst accelerating change, but current events have added fuel to the fire. After many years pushing a stubborn, static industry to transform, we have a historic opportunity to create real change. The COVID shutdown, the economic shock, and the rise of racial and social justice movements are all putting pressure on the legal industry to transform.

We have the chance to help shape that new direction for the betterment of all. We have the chance to create the future rather than react to it. Let’s seize that chance together.

We’ve met with more than 50 clients in the past 12 months and have enjoyed a front seat to the transformation happening across legal departments. Our meetings have reinforced that CLOC’s 12 core competencies are not stagnant and continue to evolve in their application and impact. Here is a taste of what we are seeing you all accomplish. You can use these to plan your next project, benchmark with your colleagues, and to continue to show the value that you bring to your legal departments and companies.

Financial Management: This has evolved into so much more than simply reporting on spend or managing to the budget. Legal departments are overlaying spend against key objectives of the company to ensure that the allocation of legal resources aligns with the strategic priorities of the company.

Vendor Management: We started with preferred vendors and negotiating favorable pricing. Legal departments are working with vendors to solve common challenges in technology, ediscovery, and more. They are also asking vendors for data dashboarding to spot trends and inform future action.

Cross-Functional Alignment: Legal operations roles are often filled with business professionals from within the company, including finance, products and IT. These hires bring with them relationships and institutional know-how, and allow companies to repurpose people, process, and technology used in the business for use in the legal department.

Technology & Process Support: Legal operations is changing the culture of legal departments by driving the adoption of technology and incorporating process-driven workflows into serving the business.

Service Delivery & Alternative Support Models: This is not just about insourcing versus outsourcing. It is about right sourcing the work to ensure that tasks are assigned to the right resource. This allows everyone on the team to focus on the high-impact and high-value work. Legal operations professionals are shining a light on churn and helping legal departments to stop doing tasks that don’t bring value.

Organizational Design, Support & Management: Legal operations departments are no longer behind the scenes. The groups are front and center within legal departments and the business. Legal operations professionals are increasingly leading pitch meetings, panel selection, fee negotiations, and outside counsel evaluations, and have more optics into organizational changes impacting their legal departments.

Communications: Together with their GCs, legal operations departments are helping accelerate change and are creating innovation fluency about the company’s business and legal industry. At legal department meetings, they are highlighting how technology is transforming their business, mapping legal goals to innovation objectives of the business, and are training on skills core to legal operations. At legal department retreats, they are changing the curriculum to include design thinking sessions, technology updates, and data metrics discussions. They are also bringing together outside counsel to share innovation success stories so that they may be replicated across all firms supporting the company.

Data Analytics: Using data, legal operations is changing the conversation about value. What is the business goal for the matter? How will success be measured? Are legal resources aligned to the business’s strategies? Legal operations departments are driving the creation of dashboards to spot trends, inform future action, and identify missed opportunities. They are also capturing knowledge about the performance and use of their outside counsel. This includes tracking who at what firms have done work in particular areas for the company, working toward a future where legal operations can provide predictive analytics on who is best suited to solve a specific problem for the business.

Litigation Support & IP Management: Legal departments are partnering with IT to bring even more of the ediscovery lifecycle in-house. Teams from information security, IT, internal investigations, and legal operations are working together to show how particular license offerings can reduce spend exponentially. They are using advanced features to identify risk before litigation and are reducing their digital footprint with their vendors by 50 to 90%.

Knowledge Management: In response to the needs of the business, especially during periods of rapid growth, legal operations departments are creating on-demand, self-service legal solutions for their internal customers. To do so, they scope what the business needs, how much of the need requires interaction with a lawyer, and what portion can be solved with automation and standardization. These solutions are driven by playbooks, AI and legal bots.

Information Governance & Records Management: Legal operations departments are creating programs that provide the business better access to information so that it can harness data for a strategic advantage and, in some cases, monetize that data. They are driving the creation of policy and procedure that is practical and enhances service to the business. They are also complying with emerging data privacy laws and protecting against data breach and the associated reputational damage.

Strategic Planning: Legal operations leaders are reporting directly to their general counsel and are helping set the strategy and goals for the legal department. They increasingly have a seat at the table and are measuring their achievement and performance against the established goals for the legal department.

 

In April 2018, as I closed out the Vegas Institute, I was simply blown away by the energy, the passion and the power of that event. I remember thinking at the time, “It just doesn’t get any better than this.” Well, I was wrong. Our 4th Annual CLOC Institute in Las Vegas last week was, as so many attendees pointed out, filled with an energy level and positivity that was off the charts. I returned home more energized and inspired than ever before!

In the past, I have written and posted my closing remarks from the CLOC Institutes, but this time, I will simply direct you to the video of my opening (too lazy to type it all up!). As you’ll see, we kicked things off with an inspiring welcome video featuring testimonials by GCs from some of the world’s leading companies. Each spoke on the positive impact of legal operations and of CLOC. And to think, just a few years ago, people didn’t even know what the term “legal ops” meant.

I’ve had a week to reflect upon the Institute and wanted to share some additional thoughts. First, I am so humbled to represent the CLOC community and this movement as your president. This year’s Institute, with over 2200 attendees, was the ultimate evidence of how far our once-small community has grown. Nowhere else will you find this many experts, drawn from all backgrounds, all perspectives, and all parts of the legal ecosystem, sharing their best ideas and practices, and collaborating on results.

So what’s next? As I mentioned in my opening, we’re more committed than ever to taking this community and movement forward. This year, we’re purpose driven by two major principles: 1. Focusing on the community and 2. Engaging across the ecosystem.

Focusing on the Community

First, we are returning the focus to what we believe makes this organization great — the community. The whole idea behind starting CLOC was to help Legal Ops professionals do their jobs better and to create and share best practices. We want to ensure we’re doing that by making it easier for you to interact, participate, and learn from each other. To support this principle, we’re launching a new member community platform that will allow us to create more subcommunities and topical discussions, to create more webinars and trainings, and work across the ecosystem to generate more relevant and useful content.

Engaging Across the Ecosystem (with a focus on Law Firms)

While there is more interest and belief than ever about legal operations from all the players in the ecosystem, there continues to be a significant divide in our perspectives and approaches. We believe that CLOC has a huge role to play in bridging these divides and driving real change in the industry. As such, we’re starting by actively focusing on getting law firms more involved with CLOC this year. In a couple of months, we will pilot a new membership type for law firm legal operations professionals. This will be separate from our existing in-house CLOC community, but will allow these law firm participants to network, share ideas, and actively communicate across the divide with each other and with in-house members. We foresee creating topical discussion forums like pricing, diversity and inclusion, knowledge management, and more, where individuals from both law firms and in house teams can collaborate and help each other. We believe that including the voice of the firms in our discussions is critical to better alignment and movement in our industry.

One of the concerns I expressed from the stage during my kick off at the Institute is whether or not law firms can “embrace the CLOC culture” which requires us to be courageous enough to be imperfect, to share openly, and to admit when we have no idea what we’re doing. We were afraid that we would launch this thing and no one would be willing to ask questions or contribute their experiences, learnings, or struggles. After all, law firms are used to being the expert on all things to their clients and have indicated to me in the past that they are uncomfortable admitting that they don’t have it all figured out yet. By the end of the three days, however, I feel very hopeful about what’s to come. I had so many meaningful conversations with law firm attendees who expressed excitement, initiative, and positivity about what we’ll be able to accomplish together. I feel like we’ve moved past the point of uncomfortable conversations to a new phase where we are ready to embrace the change, energy, and passion and where happily we find ourselves sharing the driver’s seat on this new adventure!

As I have said many times before, everything about legal operations is hard — every step of the way. We’ve come so far, but there is still far, far to go. This community we’ve created is full of passion and perseverance and when we have passion and perseverance, anything is possible. Just remember the quote I closed with: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”

Thank you for making the 2019 Institute a success and for being such an integral part of this movement. I can’t wait to see where this rocketship goes next. See you next year!