The graphic above is a breakdown of the 76 sessions at the 2017 CLOC Institute. Since there were seven concurrent tracks, it was impossible to attend more than a small fraction of the total programs.  Nonetheless, if one wants to understand the mindset and priorities of corporate legal departments, there is hardly a better window than a careful review of the various problems that the CLOC sessions are trying to solve.

The sessions are grouped into eleven subject matter categories (HT to research assistant Seth Saler for his help).  The numbers inside each unit reflect specific sessions (session titles can be accessed here). Below is a brief discussion of the content of the top categories.

Inside the Client’s Head

The biggest category is Legal Department Design, which suggests that the top priority of legal ops professionals is designing, building, and upgrading the legal department of the future.  It is both high-level and strategic in orientation.  Topics in this category include legal department budgeting, KPIs, using metrics to calculate ROI, data analytics, workflow design, and building and deploying internal dashboards. A common theme in all of this is doing more with less.

Continuing this theme, the second biggest category is Outside Counsel Management.  This includes convergence, AFAs, e-billing systems, legal project management, applied technology, outside counsel guidelines, rate evaluations and benchmarking [internal methodologies and tools, not sharing of industry data], litigation budgeting, outside counsel selection, client/law firm collaboration, using metrics to drive alignment, and law firm scorecards and evaluation. At most law firms, strategic planning takes the form of annual revenue targets by practice group. Judging from the CLOC sessions, it’s going to take some innovative thinking to get greater wallet share from these clients.

Professional Development and Tools & Technology tie for the third biggest category, with nine sessions each. Professional Development focuses on personality assessments (overview plus an applied workshop), improving teamwork and collaboration, workplace generational shifts, and networking. Tools & Technology includes technology platform selection, workflow automation, data security, technology roadmaps, how to create dashboards, and process design.

Note that Artificial Intelligence in its various forms appears in several session titles, but always as part of specific use cases. At least at CLOC, AI is no longer an introductory, freestanding topic.

The Professionalization Project

One relatively large category that I was not expecting to create was Legal Ops Professionalization. Instead, it emerged from the data.  The six sessions in this group focus on legal ops core competencies [click on CLOC figure to the right to enlarge], creating a legal ops function in your company, review of the legal operations maturity model {detailed multi-level model created by CLOC members], and salary negotiations for legal ops professionals.  Session title 62 says it all: “Control Your Destiny: How to Assess and Develop Your Legal Ops Skills.”

History is replete with examples of workers coming together to “professionalize” their craft through the creation of a common language and set of standards. This same process is now fully in motion in the emerging field of legal operations.  Although still a few years away, it will eventually culminate in a system of credentials and certifications to help the market identify and allocate legal operations talent. Such a system helps organizations hire the right person for a very important, high-stakes role.  As a second order effect, it also helps legal ops professionals increase their economic power and influence.

It is my view that legal ops is not, strictly speaking, a career path within legal departments.  Instead, legal operations is field that focuses on systems and controls for managing legal problems and complexity.  Under this broader definition, there are legal ops professionals inside progressive law firms, see Post 021 (categorizing law firms based on innovations in people, process, and technology), and legal managed service providers, see Post 010 (noting how managed service model requires “remarkably tight systems for project management and process improvement”). Although buyers and suppliers of legal inputs will always have slightly different perspectives, their underlying knowledge and skills are on a convergence path.

We are still very much in the early days of the legal operations movement.  This is a key part of solving the lagging legal productivity problem.  See What is Legal Evolution? (001) (discussing importance of solving lagging legal productivity); see also Six Types of Law Firm Clients (005) (discussing rise of CLOC).

What’s next? See Public Event: Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer (023)