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Legal operations is no longer a niche function—it’s essential.
As legal departments take on more responsibility in scaling businesses, legal ops plays a central role in driving efficiency, enabling strategic decisions, and implementing the systems that keep things moving.
This guide explores what legal operations looks like in 2025: the core competencies, emerging trends, key challenges, leading voices, and tools shaping the function this year.
What is legal operations?
Legal operations (or "legal ops") is the function that supports in-house legal teams in delivering services more efficiently and effectively. It covers everything from vendor management and budgeting to legal tech adoption and workflow design.
Legal ops is about turning legal into a strategic business partner—not just a reactive function.
Why legal operations matters more in 2025
Legal teams in 2025 face more pressure to deliver with fewer resources. Legal operations plays a key role in helping them do just that—by driving efficiency, enabling cross-functional work, and supporting smarter decisions.
The main drivers behind this increased importance:
- Higher contract volumes with lower headcount: According to our research, 32 per cent of lawyers feel more stressed than last year, compared to just 19 per cent who feel less stressed — a sign of rising workloads without the headcount to match.
- Growing demand for automation and efficiency: 93 per cent of CEOs and CFOs want legal to increase AI adoption, and legal teams are racing to keep up with these executive expectations, with 83% of respondents having used AI for legal research, and 79% using it to draft clauses in contracts
- Need for better cross-functional collaboration: Legal is working more closely with commercial teams than ever before, and they’re under increasing pressure to delegate more routine legal work to other teams in the business through self-serve workflows.
Legal operations play a pivotal role in ensuring that legal departments can meet these challenges head-on, leveraging technology and strategic planning to enhance productivity and align with organizational goals.
The 12 legal operations competencies (CLOC)
The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) outlines 12 core competencies to help in-house legal teams become more effective, efficient, and aligned with the business.
Here's a consolidated overview of each competency and why it matters for those in legal ops functions today.
Financial management
Legal ops teams take ownership of budgeting, forecasting, accruals, and spend analysis. That includes improving cost predictability, reducing reliance on hourly billing, and negotiating better rates with law firms.
A legal ops leader focussing on financial management can be responsible for any or all of the following tasks:
- Developing, adapting and optimizing your budget to ensure efficient and predictable spending
- Effectively communicating this budget with all relevant parties to ensure that they understand the decisions set out
- Actively seeking new opportunities to save money and negotiate better rates
Lawyers neither need nor want to analyse every line of a complex budget - therefore it’s our job in legal operations to understand that detail at the ground level” - Jameson Monterio, Head of Legal Operations, Assurant
Why it matters in 2025: CFOs are watching legal’s numbers more closely. Strong financial management helps legal earn trust, justify investment, and prove it’s not just a cost centre.
Read more: Financial management: a seat at the table
Vendor management
This involves selecting, onboarding, and evaluating external legal providers — from law firms to ALSPs. Legal ops sets up RFPs, defines KPIs, and ensures vendors are held accountable for outcomes.
Standard responsibilities for vendor management can cover the following bases:
- Performing effective due diligence in order to select the best firms and external counsels
- Negotiating rates and pricing models with vendors to obtain a more advantageous rate
- Set up efficient onboarding processes for vendors to ensure you receive value quickly
- Discovering new opportunities to collaborate, connect and align with your vendors for more seamless working relationships
Don’t assume your provider - however sophisticated - knows exactly what you want. Be clear on what you want, why, when, and how” - Denise Nurse, CEO, DNB Enterprises
Why it matters in 2025: With external spend under pressure, legal needs to get more value from its partners — and be a smarter buyer of services.
Read more: Vendor management: what makes a sophisticated buyer?
Cross-functional alignment
Legal operations acts as the bridge between legal and other departments — especially sales, procurement, HR, and finance. It enables other teams to self-serve on contracts and legal processes, without exposing the business to unnecessary risk.
In particular, the tasks that fall into the bucket of cross-functional alignment can include:
- Seeking ways to align with the functions that have the most direct impact on the legal function, such as IT and finance
- Implementing a contract playbook and contract management software that empowers teams to collaborate on contracts effectively, or self-serve altogether
- Finding ways to improve the communication between functions, as well as raising awareness of different individuals and tasks involved in other function through education
The best legal leaders are constantly reaching out and partnering at their level, and making sure their direct and indirect reports do the same” - Mike Russell, Head of Global Legal Operations, Expedia
Why it matters in 2025: Cross-functional friction slows the business down. Legal ops helps legal stay plugged into commercial priorities and respond at pace through enablement and seamless collaboration.
Read more: Cross-functional alignment: how to make friends
4. Technology and process optimisation
Legal ops identifies tech gaps, leads implementations, and standardises workflows. Whether it's contract automation, matter management or legal intake, ops focuses on reducing manual work and streamlining delivery.
Typical responsibilities for technology and process support teams include:
- Developing and implementing a robust technology roadmap that determines what technology is rolled out and when
- Sourcing and selecting legal software such as spend management, eDiscovery, contract review, knowledge management and contract lifecycle management tools
- Evaluating and comparing different technology vendors and ensuring effective onboarding once a tool has been introduced
- Figuring out the best use cases for AI across legal teams in 2025, including operational tasks like legal prompt engineering
It was important that I figured out the tools legal used every day, and built something on a platform they were comfortable with” - Sean Houston, Legal Operations Leader, Heineken
Why it matters in 2025: Most legal teams don’t have enough headcount to scale manually. Tech and process make that scale possible — and legal ops makes it stick.
Read more: How to build a legal tech roadmap with Heineken
Service delivery and support models
Legal ops maps work to the right delivery channel — whether that’s an internal lawyer, automated workflow, playbook, or external partner. It also helps create intake systems and triage processes to route work efficiently.
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Typical service delivery responsibilities include:
- Building and maintaining a complementary ecosystem of vendors and maintaining this close-knit network of options
- Breaking large projects down into smaller, connected tasks and allocating these individual tasks to the best-suited vendors
- Eliminating the need to use expensive and poorly suited legal support
- Creating a legal services map for the department to determine what your specific areas of need are and how they will be resourced
How does your internal client want services to be delivered? Too few in-house legal departments take enough time to put that question directly to business stakeholders” - Max Hübner, Managing Director, Novagraaf
Why it matters in 2025: Not every legal request needs a lawyer. Service design ensures resources are used where they have the most impact, freeing up legal resources for the stuff that matters most.
Read more: How satisfied is your internal client?
Organisational design and support
This competency covers team structure, role clarity, career development, and wellbeing. Legal ops defines how the team is built, how the roles are nurtured, and how it evolves as the business grows.
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The typical responsibilities involved in the organisational design aspect of legal operations include:
- Developing and implementing an overall, long-term vision for the legal department’s current and future employees
- Ensuring that the hiring processes used are fair and objective, but also that they attract a diverse pool of candidates with well-aligned skillsets
- Provide an environment where legal staff have the opportunity to develop, often by investing in mentors and professional development courses
- Support the legal department’s mental and physical well-being by implementing initiatives that promote a healthier work-life balance
The first step in organisational design is to take stock of what you’ve got, rather than trying to replicate what was there before, or what worked at your last company” - Natalie Salunke, General Counsel, LikeZero
Why it matters in 2025: Legal teams that are designed for scale perform better. A clear structure supports growth, reduces burnout, and builds team resilience.
Read more: How to build an empowered legal team
Communications
Legal ops helps legal speak the language of the business. This includes managing how legal communicates its value, shares updates, and reports on progress.
The responsibilities of the communications function are broad, but they often include:
- Sharing change communications (e.g technology pilots and training) through social channels and in-app messaging tools
- Optimizing the tone of communications to make them more effective and engaging
- Finding ways to communicate difficult information as early as possible and as persuasively as possible
- Using modern technology to communicate the right messages in the right way and at the right time
Legal operations leaders need to sell the vision internally and externally, and have a simple, compelling story. This is often unfamiliar territory for CLOs and GCs” - Jason Macarthur, Global Solution Design Lead, KPMG
Why it matters in 2025: Legal often operates in a silo. Clear communication builds credibility, improves stakeholder relationships, and gets faster buy-in for initiatives.
Read more: Communications and thinking outside the box
Business intelligence (formerly ‘data analytics’)
This means tracking and analysing key metrics — from contract turnaround times and legal spend to intake volumes and SLA performance. Legal ops builds dashboards and drives data-driven decision-making.
Many of the responsibilities of a business intelligence function also remain the same, including that they:
- Identify the most relevant and impactful data to collect, monitor, and analyse
- Conduct thorough data analysis to determine the best course of action in the long term as well as the short term
- Seek to uncover patterns and hidden opportunities to improve, based on the data collected
To become data-driven, and data-enabled, in-house lawyers will have to overcome inertia and a skills gap in the profession” - Lucy Bassli, Founder, InnoLaw Group
Why it matters in 2025: Legal can’t prove its value without data. Metrics help legal forecast demand, justify budget, and benchmark performance over time.
Litigation support
Legal ops supports litigation and investigations by managing eDiscovery tools, internal document collection, and data processes. This includes working with IT and security teams to streamline evidence gathering.
Some common litigation support responsibilities include:
- Maintaining the hygiene of databases in preparation for litigation risks
- Reviewing and retrieving documents and records in the event of litigation risks
- Implementing an eDiscovery software to minimize the manual labour involved in litigation support
Like so many areas of legal operations, having a good plan at the outset is the key to avoiding costly change management down the road. Make sure you’re ready for the new world” - Glenn O-Brien, Senior IG Manager, Johnson Controls
Why it matters in 2025: In high-stakes disputes, speed and accuracy matter. Legal ops helps control risk and reduce external litigation costs.
Read more: Digital tools solving digital problems
Intellectual property (IP) management
This includes filing, tracking, and protecting trademarks, patents, and copyrights — often in partnership with external counsel. Legal ops may also create IP education for teams involved in R&D or brand.
The responsibilities typically involved in IP management include:
- Capturing data from interactions to identify where your company’s IP rights are best protected, and when to apply for new registrations
- Conduct strategic planning into how to expand your company’s IP portfolio and eliminate risk
- Educate commercial teams about how to protect IP rights in daily tasks and transactions
- Ensure that information relating to IP is readily available to other departments
IP is one area where legal can directly influence revenue - for example, by protecting IP and facilitating new licensing opportunities” - Faye Moran, Legal Operations Lead, GE Healthcare
Why it matters in 2025: IP is a core business asset, especially in tech. Managing it well reduces legal exposure and helps protect long-term value.
Read more: IP management: protecting what matters most
Knowledge management
Legal ops creates, maintains, and distributes templates, contract management plans, and guidance. It ensures legal knowledge is centralised, accessible, and kept up to date.
The typical knowledge management responsibilities in legal operations include:
- Compiling contract playbooks and other guides around legal processes, and keeping these up to date
- Ensuring that the messaging and advice on different issues is consistent across the legal department and beyond
- Setting up provisions to ensure that information isn’t lost when team members leave or are absent
- Implementing automated templates for standardized contracts and other standard documents
Knowledge management (KM) functions inside corporate legal departments are much less common, despite companies having scores of lawyers” - Leif Frykman, Founder, LegalWorks
Why it matters in 2025: Without shared knowledge, legal becomes a bottleneck. KM helps teams self-serve, stay compliant, and scale knowledge without scaling headcount.
Read more: How to make your team smarter
Information governance and records management
This involves setting policies around data access, storage, retention, and deletion — particularly for sensitive legal documents and contracts.
Typical responsibilities relating to information governance include:
- Creating and maintaining information policies that are free from legal jargon and accessible to anyone that needs it
- Ensuring that all employees have an appropriate understanding of and access to important policies and procedures
- Monitor and restrict access to specific information, like confidential documents, for example
- Enabling and customizing contract permissions across your workspaces to maintain confidentiality across the board
While IG and records management probably don’t seem like the sexiest functions within a company – the impact can be dramatic and very real” - Romesh Paramesh, General Counsel, Pixel United
Why it matters in 2025: Good governance reduces regulatory risk, simplifies audits, and ensures contract data is reliable and easy to find.
Read more: Keeping your corporate memory
Strategic planning
Legal ops defines legal’s priorities, aligns them with business goals, and tracks progress against them. This includes setting OKRs, creating roadmaps, and leading strategic initiatives.
For legal ops specialists involved in strategic planning, the typical responsibilities include:
- Identifying the short and mid-term actions that are necessary to achieve long-term objectives and goals
- Communicating the overarching objectives to the legal team and the departments beyond legal to ensure a coherent approach to these goals
- Finding ways to embed your company’s values into the strategy and ensuring the strategy aligns with both these values and stakeholder interests
If lawyers are really to plan strategically then the edge of our ambition shouldn’t be managing to a simple deadline” - Mick Sheehy, Global Clients and Markets Lead, PWC
Why it matters: Legal can’t be reactive forever. Strategic planning ensures the function is proactive, intentional, and aligned with where the business is going.
Read more: Survive and thrive in the new normal
The key trends shaping legal operations today
Legal operations is evolving fast. In 2025, these five trends are defining how legal teams operate, collaborate and deliver value across the business.
1. AI integration across workflows
Legal teams are embedding AI into their daily processes—not just for experimentation, but to drive real outcomes.
From drafting NDAs and redlining third-party paper to triaging legal requests, generative AI and small language models (SLMs) are streamlining repetitive tasks.
But adoption is pragmatic: AI supports legal decision-making, it doesn’t replace it. Legal ops is often the function leading implementation and governance of these tools.
2. Shift to self-serve enablement
One of the most impactful legal ops strategies in 2025 is enabling the wider business to self-serve on routine legal work. Through careful but impactful delegation, in-house legal functions are freeing up their time for more strategic tasks, like preparing for exits, responding to regulatory changes, and so on.
Whether it’s creating sales contracts in Salesforce or signing NDAs from Slack, legal is building scalable workflows that don’t require constant legal input.
We see this play out every day with our customers who use Juro to enable other teams in the business to manage their own contracts:
- Talentful’s sales reps get contracts sent out in ten minutes without leaving HubSpot – previously it took them two days
- CSU Global’s business teams can surface contract data 75 per cent faster, reducing reliance on the compliance team to manually search for and produce this data
- G.Network’s legal and business teams have saved ‘significant time’ by driving consistency through automated workflows and templates and minimizing legal involvement
To hear more self-serve success stories like theirs, check out our customer stories, or hit the button below to see it for yourself.
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