In-house legal teams are under increasing pressure to deliver more value with fewer resources. Business leaders expect faster response times, cost control, and strategic insight, while legal departments juggle compliance, risk management, and complex workflows.
Legal operations (or “legal ops”) is the key to unlocking efficiency and driving meaningful improvements. But where do you start?
This is a practical, step-by-step guide for your team, whether it is new to legal ops or looking to refine its approach.
Understand Your Current Legal Operations Maturity
Before making improvements, assess where you currently stand. Legal ops maturity models can help map out your progress using such frameworks such as:
- Technology – Are you using legal tech effectively?
- Financial Management – Do you track and optimise legal spend?
- Data Analytics – Are decisions driven by meaningful insights?
- Knowledge Management – Can teams access the information they need?
- Process Improvement – Are workflows streamlined or creating bottlenecks?
A quick internal audit will highlight gaps and opportunities. Speak to your team and key stakeholders to identify pain points and inefficiencies.
Tip: CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) provides a helpful maturity assessment playbook with a framework for evaluating the maturity of your legal operations.
Set Clear Objectives
What does success look like for your legal team? Setting clear objectives will help prioritise improvements.
Some common goals include:
- Improving visibility on legal spend
- Reduce or eliminate manual handling of invoices
- Automating routine legal tasks
- Reducing contract turnaround times
- Enhancing collaboration between legal and the wider business
Align these goals with broader business priorities. This ensures that improvements in legal operations contribute directly to commercial success.
Map Out Your Key Processes
Many inefficiencies stem from legal teams relying on outdated or inconsistent processes.
Start by mapping out key workflows such as:
- Legal Intake & Triage – How do business teams request legal support, and how are these requests prioritised?
- Matter Management – What systems and workflows are in place to manage matter details, deadlines, access and document storage?
- Spend Management – How do you track external legal costs and manage law firm relationships?
- Contract Lifecycle Management – How are contracts created, reviewed, approved, and stored?
Identify common pain points. Are there unnecessary approval steps, duplicated efforts, or delays due to manual processes?
Prioritise Quick Wins
Legal ops transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Identify quick wins that deliver impact with minimal disruption.
Some examples:
- Implement a centralised legal request system to avoid legal requests being lost in emails or instant messages.
- Create contract playbooks, therefore standardising contract clauses to speed up negotiations.
- Automate NDAs or routine agreements. Self-service templates reduce legal workload.
- Introduce legal spend tracking, simple dashboards can improve visibility over external legal costs.
These small changes build momentum and demonstrate the value of legal ops improvements.
Leverage Legal Technology
Legal tech is a game-changer, but only if implemented strategically. Start by identifying areas where tech could replace repetitive manual tasks.
Common solutions include:
- eBilling and Spend Management Tools – Improves cost control and law firm management.
- Matter Management Systems – Centralises legal work for better collaboration.
- Document Automation – Saves time on routine legal drafting.
- Contract Management Software – Streamlines contract creation, approvals, and storage.
- Document Management – Increased security and a single source of truth for all matters and documents.
Avoid the temptation to adopt tech for its own sake. Instead, focus on solutions that address specific pain points or replace existing legacy systems.
Measure and Report Progress
Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) ensures legal ops improvements are delivering value.
Useful metrics include:
- Time spent on legal requests – Are response times improving?
- Contract cycle times – Has automation reduced bottlenecks?
- External legal spend – Are costs more predictable and controlled?
- Business satisfaction – Is the legal team seen as a strategic enabler rather than a bottleneck?
Regularly reviewing these metrics helps refine processes and secure ongoing stakeholder buy-in.
Utilise a business case savings calculator to help you quantify the value and savings the legal tech platform can bring to your in-house legal team.
Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Legal operations are not a one-off project—they’re an ongoing process. Encourage a culture where efficiency and innovation are prioritised.
By embedding continuous improvement into your legal team’s mindset, you ensure that operational enhancements become part of your long-term strategy.
Conclusion
Improving legal operations isn’t about radical overhauls. It’s about making targeted, practical changes that boost efficiency, cut costs, and free up legal teams to focus on higher-value work. Start small, prioritise the biggest pain points, and build from there.
With the right approach, in-house legal teams can transform from reactive service providers into proactive strategic partners to the business.
