In this episode of CLOC Talk, recorded live from CGI 2024 in Las Vegas, Jenn sits down with  Pepe Toriello, from CLOC’s LATAM regional group whose based in Mexico City, and Gui Tocci, leader of CLOC’s Brazil Legal Ops regional chapter.

They discuss the nuances and challenges of implementing Legal Operations in their regions. Pepe highlights that in Mexico, Legal Ops is often perceived narrowly as technology-focused, specifically on contracts, with general counsels yet to fully adopt it.

Gui shares that in Brazil, Legal Ops is often mistaken for paralegal work without strategic involvement, and roles blend with other duties due to a lack of dedicated headcount.

Both emphasize the importance of technology in gaining initial interest and the critical need for a ‘translator’ role to bridge gaps between legal, IT, and business teams.

The conversation underscores the foundational stage of Legal Ops in Latin America and the efforts to evolve it toward a more strategic and integrated function.

So, get ready to travel to LATAM, via Las Vegas, and hear a lively discussion packed with actionable insights. Enjoy!

In today’s episode of CLOC Talk, recorded in person at CGI 2024 in Las Vegas, Jenn sits down for an in-depth conversation with Travis Zimbelman, a legal ops and tech in-house professional with a diverse career background from international business consultancy to roles in Google and Meta. His most recent role had him leading Meta’s legal and compliance central services team.

They discussed the evolution of Travis’ last role and team which included project management, technology, legal operations, and elements of community and connection.

The conversation is a story of growth, going from a team of five to dozens of employees.  A story of integration of the technology component, and a reminder of the importance of project management, learning and development within legal operations.

Travis elaborates on the impact of generative AI and how we should all consider the proof of concept first before adopting in our workflows.

Working at a FAANG company and legal department is a learning experience in itself. Want to find out what it’s like inside the likes of Netflix, Google, or Meta? Look no further!

Enjoy this fascinating conversation and uncover strategies for embracing change, curiosity, and partnerships while maintaining human-centered change management!

In this episode of CLOC Talk, recorded at the 2024 APAC Summit in Sydney, Australia, Jenn sits down with Craig Emery, the head of the legal chapter and chief compliance officer at Telstra. Craig highlights his roles and responsibilities at Telstra, including his transition to the group company secretary role.

Jenn and Craig discuss Telstra’s implementation of an agile legal chapter structure, innovative use of AI for compliance, and the benefits of a central legal front door system. Craig shares insights on creating efficient legal services, leveraging technology, and fostering an innovative mindset within legal teams.

Enjoy this impactful conversation as Craig emphasizes the importance of balancing compassion with the challenge of leadership. It’s also full of advice for legal ops professionals on how to start small and build upon digital transformation efforts!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming knowledge-based professions, and legal operations are no exception. As legal departments grapple with increasing workloads and tight budgets, AI offers a way to enhance efficiency and effectiveness without the need for additional human resources. 

This blog post explores the implications of AI for legal teams, careers in legal operations, and the essential skills needed to thrive in this evolving landscape. 

What Does AI Mean for Legal Teams? 

Legal teams are increasingly required to do more with less. In-house counsel manages everything from corporate transactions, to litigation, to regulatory compliance, and they regularly interface with teams around the business including sales, procurement, finance, IT, and more. That breadth of scope means that legal teams need not only to manage a high volume of work, but also to switch rapidly between several different areas of expertise on a day-to-day basis. That requires organization, agility, and ready access to crucial business information — in short, impeccable legal operations. 

Despite ever-burgeoning workloads, however, hiring budgets for legal operations remain constrained. In fact, eighty-seven percent of surveyed legal departments in 2020 expected their total number of in-house, full-time employees to stay the same or decrease. This scenario necessitates innovative solutions to scale up operations efficiently. AI is poised to fill this gap by automating routine tasks, enhancing document review processes, and providing data-driven insights that enable teams to operate leanly while managing higher volumes of work. By leveraging AI, legal departments can optimize their resources, allowing human professionals to focus on more complex, value-added activities. 

What Does AI Mean for Careers and Job Skills? 

The integration of AI in legal operations is reshaping the skill sets required for success in the field. Professionals who can work effectively across functional silos and drive collaboration on multidisciplinary projects will be highly prized. These individuals will drive significant value for large organizations by bridging gaps between different departments and enhancing overall operational efficiency. 

To that end, tech-savvy individuals who embrace, leverage, and champion new technologies will thrive. The ability to adapt to and utilize AI tools to augment productivity — and enable co-workers to do so as well — will become a critical competency in the legal operations landscape. 

Getting Ahead in the New World of AI-Powered Jobs 

In a recent survey, 62% of respondents said that the effective use of generative AI will separate successful law firms from unsuccessful firms within the next five years. However, success is not as simple as just picking any AI platform and calling it a day. 

To excel in AI-powered legal operations, professionals must focus on (1) choosing the right technology, and then (2) providing what technology cannot: human intelligence and experience. Choosing the right technology entails understanding what AI can and can’t do, and which platforms offer the capabilities that the team truly needs. The human element includes making connections between different disciplines, understanding nuance and context, and fostering human relationships. 

Legal ops professionals must also recognize and value factual accuracy, ensuring that they’re using AI they can trust and avoiding decisions based solely on AI-generated information, which can sometimes be flawed or misleading when it comes from the wrong source. Furthermore, making value-based judgments about goals, costs, benefits, and strategies will remain a uniquely human responsibility. 

By combining AI capabilities with human expertise, legal ops professionals can navigate the complexities of their roles more effectively. 

Conclusion 

AI is revolutionizing legal operations by enabling teams to manage increasing workloads without expanding their headcount. As AI becomes more integrated into legal workflows, the demand for multidisciplinary, tech-enabled professionals will rise. Those who can provide human intelligence, understand nuance, and make strategic, value-based decisions will lead the way in this new era. Embracing AI while honing these essential skills will be key to thriving in the future of legal operations.

CLOC ReCharge Webinar Series – Optimization & Efficiency

Unable to source budget to invest in a market CLM tool, but still need to optimize your contract management process?  

Join Nigel Schilling, alongside Tom Orrison from Microsoft and Jake Fogel from HEARST, as they dive into the case study on how HEARST transformed its independent contract management process using a custom, cost-effective CLM application built on the Microsoft Power Platform. HEARST has since begun to clone the app for additional use cases. 

Hear insights from Jake Fogel on the developer’s perspective and Nigel Schilling on the business angle of custom CLM development and low-code digital transformation. This exclusive webinar, moderated by Tom Orrison from Microsoft, expands on HEARST’s practical approach to CLM, originally showcased at this year’s CLOC Global Institute. Don’t miss the chance to learn how you can optimize workflows and be inspired by the HEARST success story. Secure your spot for this enriching discussion by registering now!

Strategies and insights from our white paper partnership with CLOC 

Legal technology is an increasingly important factor for corporate legal departments’ spending priorities. According to a recent report, 78% of legal departments say that “legal technology is a ‘must-have.’” 

We recently partnered with CLOC on a white paper, “Turning Legal Into a Value Center,” that shares best practices around cost-saving strategies from legal operations leaders. It was no surprise that one of the most important ways legal departments are reducing cost and optimizing their spend is through efficiencies created by technology. 

Below you’ll find an overview of five of the most common types of legal technology the legal ops teams we spoke to are using, and how they impact cost savings. To learn more, download the full white paper. 

Optimizing Spend With Legal Technology 

Rather than providing a comprehensive overview of types of legal technology (which could fill an entire white paper on its own, if not a book), in this section we’re highlighting five technologies that the legal operations professionals we spoke to found useful, particularly for optimizing legal spend and achieving cost savings.  

#1 Understanding Internal Requests – Intake Platforms 

Several of the legal operations professionals we talked to recommended intake platforms as a good starting point for legal operations initiatives. They can be thought of as a “legal front door” and help your team gather information about internal requests for legal services. You can determine which business partners are requesting work, who is requesting the most work, what that work looks like, who is doing the work and much more. This can be extremely helpful for making resourcing decisions. While off-the-shelf products exist for this function, it can also be built using project management tools that many companies already use for other business functions, or even common tools like spreadsheets.  

#2 External Spend Overview – E-billing Systems 

When it comes to legal spend, e-billing may be the most common type of legal technology. In addition to managing ongoing billing, it’s also a key source of historical data about the money you’re spending on outside counsel and other external resources: What types of matters your company is spending the most on, the vendors those matters are going to, trends in practice areas, timekeeper rates, hours spent on projects and much more. Looking at this data gives you a picture of your external legal spend and can help you identify places where you may be able to shift resources to save costs. 

#3 Tracking Tasks Efficiently – Matter Management 

Matter management tools are extremely powerful, but they also are most useful for larger companies that manage many different projects going to outside counsel or other alternative providers. Often, they are integrated with the e-billing systems discussed above. For legal departments whose outside spend is limited, it might make more sense to track matters using tools the company already has access to, like project management software or spreadsheets. However, for large legal departments, off-the-shelf matter management software can greatly enhance efficiency, storing key information about matters and giving the necessary attorneys, paralegals and other staff the ability to easily collaborate and keep track of statuses. 

#4 Doing Business Faster – Contract Lifecycle Management 

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools are very popular and for great reason. One of the most visible ways legal impacts other business units (and has a direct line to revenue) is by way of contracts. CLM systems track the life of a contract as it’s touched by people throughout the organization and, ideally, drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for legal to review and approve contracts. In some cases, through automation or features of particular CLMs, legal can be removed from the loop entirely, especially for low-complexity contracts. Contract management is also a space where artificial intelligence and generative AI are creating efficiencies—one company we spoke to said that leveraging AI for standard contracts like vendor agreements and Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs) cut their review times down from as high as an hour to 5 to 10 minutes.  

#5 Self-Service Solutions – Knowledge Management 

For just about all of the legal operations professionals we talked to, knowledge management was a priority (one referred to it as the legal department “white whale” because of its huge potential and the difficulty of doing it well). Why it’s a priority is clear: When your business partners can self-serve information they would otherwise go to the legal department for, it’s a huge win. Not only does your department save that time but it also enables your business partner to get their work done faster, increasing efficiency at both ends. Organizations often use internal hub sites (e.g., wikis or FAQs) to track reference materials but more and more companies are experimenting with chatbots to surface the right information to the right people at the right time.  

For Sake of Comparison – RFPs & Decision-Making 

For many of the organizations we talked to, one of the most important aspects of evaluating legal technology is sending out requests for proposals (RFPs) to potential vendors. Usually, this comes at a stage where you’re close to making a decision and have narrowed your sights to a few options, although the process can still be helpful even if you’re just evaluating one solution and the question is whether to buy it or not. It’s likely larger companies will have an RFP process for technology procurement that you can leverage and tweak to meet your legal department’s needs. That process involves sharing your company’s current position, what you would like to achieve with the technology, the specific deliverables and timeline for the project, the budget (if possible) and other details that are relevant to the project. From there, you collect and compare the information you received and use that to inform your decision-making process.  

For more cost-savings best practices, strategies and insights, download the white paper, “Turning Legal Into a Value Center.”  

Calling all Ironclad users. A CLOC Huddle has been scheduled to explore Ironclad’s AI features in response to this Community Connect discussion thread.

Please join peer members as they share their experiences and gather insights from each other on this topic.

CLOC Huddles are live, virtual roundtables initiated from active discussion threads in Community Connect.

Deciding to invest in legal technology and picking the right solutions are only pieces of the puzzle. What comes before and after each purchase is what determines whether your implementation will be a long-term success.  

From justifying initial spend to leadership, driving excitement for a new process among peers, proving ROI, showcasing accomplishments, and driving continuous user adoption, join us for this expert perspective on building a sustainable legal tech stack. We’re bringing together two industry leaders who have learned from years of trial, error, and success in legal technology program development and longevity.  

After operating off of a homegrown solution for eight years, TD SYNNEX transitioned to Mitratech’s Matter Management and Workflow Automation platform (that now automates 600+ legal contract requests monthly). Meanwhile, after an unsuccessful IT-led program, the legal team at YUM! Brands are rolling out workflows to achieve cross-functional automation and collaboration. 

Join this webinar and learn firsthand how they have navigated the landscape of 

1. Building a compelling business case 

2. Fostering buy-in at all levels of the organization 

3. Strategically pinpointing where to begin their automation journey 

4. Nurturing user adoption through effective change management strategies 

5. Refining, measuring, and optimizing their investment