What is Legal Operations?

A few days ago we had the opportunity to participate actively in the annual CLOC, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, a association that was born just about 4 years ago and brings together the main exponents of the world of Legal Operations from companies such as Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Gap, JP Morgan, Citi, American Airlines, Virgin and practically all companies that are part of Fortune 500, the S & P, Nasdaq, FT100, DAX and others.

The scale of this session was over 2000 and also included as exhibitors suppliers of consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions for legal business departments.

It is a fact that modern and avant-garde companies have found in this role of "Legal Ops" the opportunity to professionalize their legal management, build much more efficient support areas within their companies and strengthen the position of the legal department within them as key actors in decision-makingwithout envy to the business, financial and business development areas.

But what is "Legal Operations"? We've been doing with Alster and our practice of consulting legal management and public prosecutors, the introduction of this function, but those who have not had the opportunity to work with us, they probably still don't know what it means.

Basically, Legal Operations or Legal Ops is a role or several within the prosecution of a company that is engaged, with many technical capabilities, in processes of administration, management and support to the legal area.

However, This should not be confused with a simple administrative or secretarial role, but rather a more important, than even the lawyers that are part of those areas.

In fact, the role involves the responsibility to manage knowledge; budget, collect and analyse data; lead the relationship with external lawyers and their selection; implement and monitor the use of technologies; design, systematizing internal processes and ensuring at all costs the efficiency of the area; adding value to the decision-making and adequate allocation of resources to meet the needs of the company.

This role even ensures the relationship with internal customers, satisfaction rates and collection of opportunities for continuous improvement. If the company also has positions in other countries, the Legal Ops is concerned with the coordination of the prosecution's global stakeholders.

In Alster We have specialized in developing and even outsourcing this role and functions, but we have also was able to internalize best practices that, organisations like CLOCthey promote at the global level. This has allowed us to observe the value these functions can generate in a team and company.

I invite you to meet us, I assure you that you will be surprised with our Success Stories and what we can offer to the teams of the legal departments.

Andrés Jara, CEO Alster Legal