Ari Kaplan speaks with Connie Brenton and Jeff Franke, the founders of LegalOps.com, a
membership community providing legal operations and other professionals with resources and
events including an inaugural conference in October.
Ari Kaplan
You have served as the VP of Legal for NetApp for over a decade and also founded and served
as the first CEO of CLOC. How did your career move from legal in the traditional practice sense
to focus on legal operations as a unique discipline?
Connie Brenton
I was very fortunate to have started early on in the evolution of the legal operations role. I had
a fantastic general counsel, who saw the bigger picture and looked at legal as a competitive
advantage. He truly understood the value of running legal like a business. I stepped into that
role with a team of 23 almost 20 years ago. The role was unique and at that point, it was almost
unheard of to have a team of that size. I was also active in the legal process outsourcing space
and visited India to find LPO partners. We built a legal operations team that bridged all of the
different groups within the company into one optimized team and produced a true general
counsel/legal operations partnership to help provide value beyond the strict delivery of legal
services.
Ari Kaplan
You are also a co-founder of CLOC and like Connie have practiced in a legal department while
leading legal operations. How does LegalOps.com combine those two elements?
Jeff Franke
At its core, legal operations is really about delivering legal services. I spent about 10 years
practicing law and received an MBA when I got my JD so I have always focused on the bigger
picture. This function is multidisciplinary and there are three components to it: (1) finding the
right tools to help deliver services; (2) the delivery of those services; and (3) the core elements
of the business, from finance and communication to technology and organizational design. If
you were going to design the perfect person for the most senior role in operations, it would be
somebody who had a JD, an MBA, and a background in IT.
Ari Kaplan
How has legal operations changed since you led the team to formalize it from a book club, as
you've described it in the past, into a global community?
Connie Brenton
There have been some big advancements and the number of professionals in the role has
expanded exponentially. When we started the book club, there were probably 150 executives
who labeled themselves as legal operations leaders. Now, the vast majority of legal
departments in the Fortune 500 have a legal operations position. The progression of the role
itself has been slower and one of the reasons we started CLOC was to define the role. As the
role of the general counsel evolves, the remit of the legal operations executive changes, so we
have seen quite a bit of change recently, with those responsibilities now including strategy, HR,
and technology.
Jeff Franke
People still ask: “What is legal operations?” It is unusual because almost all of the roles within a
corporation are defined while this one is not because: (1) the initial role of the general counsel
was as a risk manager and there was no legal operations support; (2) the GC evolved into a
business partner as legal departments focused on helping the business move forward; (3) GC's
are now strategic and trusted advisors; and, (4) the ultimate paradigm is the general counsel
who is helping to create a competitive advantage for the business. Those four paradigms result
in four distinct legal operations roles, from tactical, cost-cutting, and efficiency-focused to
supporting and driving strategy. The strategic GC, however, needs a chief of staff, who can
extend the reach of the law department. And the ultimate result is merging the role of
operations with legal, with legal operations woven into the fabric of the general counsel to
deliver legal services, where everyone in the legal department is a legal operations professional.
Connie Brenton
Redefining legal operations is really about helping GCs understand those four paradigms and
the stage in which their legal departments exist to support their growth, as well as explain to
CEOs, CFOs, and COOs the breadth of legal operations.
Ari Kaplan
How do you see LegalOps.com’s first conference distinguishing itself from others that focus on
this topic?
Connie Brenton
We will have the entire legal ecosystem in a room together. The LegalOps.com conference is
being produced in partnership with the Women's General Counsel Network and LawVision,
which largely supports law firms. In addition, we curate all of the content so that attendees will
leave with additional knowledge that improves their performance and an expanded network to
increase the available resources when people have specific questions. In fact, we are dedicating
the entire afternoon of the first day of the “Running Legal Like a Business Conference” to
personal development.
Jeff Franke
We are also creating a community to both discuss and apply the concepts that help law
departments thrive. We see this as an educational event and also an opportunity to share new
ideas to help drive the profession forward. We created the CLOC Core Competencies or CLOC
12, which is still a great paradigm, but we have also created the Personal Effectiveness Skills
and Traits Competency Model and will provide training around it, as well as on a third model
we will be introducing at the conference. In an ideal world, business and law schools would
already have the content and incorporate it into their curricula.
Ari Kaplan
Where do you see legal operations headed?
Connie Brenton
Legal operations will follow the evolution of the general counsel and align the delivery of legal
services to the creation of a competitive advantage for the business. Law firms are also now
creating their own technology solutions and overhauling the way they are thinking about
delivering services. As alternative legal services providers, law firms, and technology companies
change so do legal operations professionals.
Jeff Franke
Changes in technology, including ChatGPT and the expanded use of automated workflows, will
impact legal operations, as will creative staffing models and ALSPs. Regulators will also
influence this shift because the regulatory environment will become more complex and
increase the relevance of legal. We are even breaking certain services, such as legal project
management, into components and identifying their true value in a process of de-aggregating
and re-aggregating. The evolution of the role of the GC and legal operations, in general, is
largely driven by changes in the law.
*Editor’s Note: This transcript was originally published by the ABA Journal at
Ari Kaplan (http://www.AriKaplanAdvisors.com) regularly interviews leaders in the legal
industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspectives highlight
transformative change, and introduce new technology at
Listen to his conversation with Connie Brenton and Jeff Franke here:
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