Your value as a GC or CLO is best measured as a trusted advisor to the CEO and board, addressing challenges and opportunities with legal expertise and business acumen that avoids risk and generates profit. You also need to advise the executive leadership team, manage your legal department, and stay within budget.
Why is it, then, that so many senior legal executives are spending more time managing administrative matters than they spend practicing the craft they were trained and hired to do?
Faced with this dilemma, a growing number of GCs are appointing a full-time executive Chief Operating Officer for their department, to handle all the administrative and operational responsibilities that prevent them from focusing on adding tangible value to the company’s success, and on advancing their career.
The law department COO serves as a strategic internal partner, who can handle a broad range of necessary tasks, including:
Process Improvement
- Obtaining and implementing template systems for your department
- Improving processes so that the legal team is as productive as possible and ensures the business appreciates expeditious service
Resource Management
- Conducting due diligence on alternative service providers
- Negotiating with all outside legal department vendors
- Working with your company’s IT, Finance, and HR teams to collaborate on the most effective way to utilize their skills
Financial Matters
- Managing and tracking the law department budget
- Overseeing outside counsel billing and administration
- Running your department’s pro bono program
Employee-Related Issues
- Designing and leading department retreats
- Defining team roles and responsibilities and suggesting organizational improvements
- Managing important activities, such as performance review timelines
- Directing and tracking internal risk and compliance training for the business
“COOs are essential for the effective management of a law department,” according to Marta Carreira-Slabe, Vice President and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer of Southern California Edison. “They have the ability to optimize operational excellence, technology, talent development, and the management of outside counsel. The best COOs enhance the law department’s capacity to serve the business in a risk-managed, cost-efficient manner by utilizing their legal, business, procurement, organizational, and interpersonal skills. Law departments without COOs fail to recognize their value.”
If a COO would benefit your legal department, but you aren’t sure how to fit that role into your budget, consider the real-life example of a COO who – based solely on careful selection and oversight of outside counsel – saved 10% of the GC’s budget for that expenditure.
Another illustration is the COO who created a low-cost legal hub for the department to handle a reduced number of complex contracts, thereby freeing up more expensive and experienced lawyers to handle more complex and important matters. This legal hub solution supported team engagement, allowed for faster turn-around time of the contracts, generated company revenue more quickly, and saved 75% of the expense for outside counsel and highly paid in-house lawyers.
In short, a COO who performs the dozens of routine (and unexpected) tasks that need to be accomplished saves time and headaches, reduces tension and “hair-on-fire” days, and adds a level of professionalism that’s well worth the investment.
It’s estimated that an effective COO can save a minimum of 40 hours a week of the legal department’s lawyers’ time on operations and administrative matters. There are additional savings to be realized if your COO has the business and financial acumen to communicate effectively with the company’s other business teams and can reliably translate that information to you and your lawyers.
The legal operations industry has expanded rapidly in the past few years. Increasingly, GCs realize the need to focus on critical legal matters rather than financial, personnel, technology, and operational issues.
Engaging a COO who can manage the demands and pressures involved in administration of a law department allows you and your attorneys to go back to lawyering. That individual may be the invaluable success partner you’ve been seeking.
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