Legal Ops: From Contract Support to Operational Leader

Key Takeaways:

• Legal ops should build deep partnerships with finance, procurement, and sales to anticipate contract roadblocks and improve workflows.
• Documenting playbooks and workflows ensures consistency and smooth transitions when team members change.
• Legal Ops teams should identify specific AI use cases, like contract drafting and risk assessment.

Over the past decade, legal operations has evolved from being a back-of-the-office function to being a strategic business contributor and leader. 

In this article, we will explore how to build an effective Legal Ops function.

How to make a Legal Ops team more effective?

Legal Ops today doesn’t just act as a support function for contracts but as a critical business unit that streamlines workflows, integrates technology, and ensures seamless contract execution.

To build an effective Legal Ops team, focus on these three initiatives: 

• Partner closely with cross-functional teams: Legal Ops team members can’t work in isolation. They need to sit in on finance, procurement, and sales meetings so that they understand their pain points firsthand. This allows them to anticipate contract roadblocks and streamline workflows before an issue arises. 
• Develop internal knowledge management: To help manage change across the organization, Legal Ops should document contract playbooks, workflows, and decision-making frameworks to ensure continuity when new team members come on board. This will also lay the foundation for AI-assist tools that rely on the organization to provide playbooks and guidelines on how they prefer to prioritize and manage risk.
• Create a data-driven culture: Legal Ops professionals need to be comfortable with contract lifecycle data. Metrics like contract turnaround time, redlining frequency, and approval bottlenecks not only helps streamline the processes, but also helps showcase the team’s impact to the top management.

Contract Management Optimization: CLM or AI? 

Legal departments are prioritizing tools such as CLM and compliance software to manage day-to-day operations and ensure regulatory compliance. These tools are essential for streamlining contract processes and reducing manual workloads, allowing legal teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

AI has made this shift even faster. With the advent of generative and agentic AI, Legal Ops teams need to educate stakeholders about the potential value of AI while advocating for pilot programs that allow them to test and prove the value of AI on a smaller scale before committing to full-scale integration.

In a report from SpotDraft, findings show that 54.6% of legal professionals use CLM to manage contracts while only 17.5% are using AI contract review tools. 

The slow uptake of AI-powered tools reflects hesitation among legal departments to embrace newer technologies, possibly due to concerns about cost, complexity, or the perceived maturity of AI solutions.

To increase AI adoption, Legal Ops teams need to focus on identifying specific use cases where AI can provide immediate value, such as Contract Management. 

Here are some of the ways AI is speeding up the contract management process:

• AI-Powered Contract Drafting: AI contract drafting tools generate first drafts based on standard clauses, reducing time spent on contract creation.
• Automated Risk Assessment: AI can scan contracts for deviations from company policies or risky terms, flagging them before legal review. This reduces back-and-forth between legal and business teams.
• Smart Contract Summarization: Instead of manually reviewing lengthy agreements, AI can generate contract summaries, highlighting key obligations, renewal dates, and liabilities for quick decision-making.

Moving forward, AI will be able to handle low-risk contract negotiations autonomously, perform proactive risk management, and self-execute contracts based on predefined conditions. 

The Future of Legal Ops

Legal Ops is set to become even more tech-driven. In the next five years, AI and automation will further reduce the manual workload of legal teams, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks like strategy and negotiation.

Companies will continue integrating legal ops more deeply with business operations, reinforcing their role as key enablers of growth and efficiency.

By embracing technology and optimizing legal workflows, companies can build a legal ops team that not only supports legal functions but also contributes directly to business success.