Frequently Asked Questions

Legal operations refers to the process of delivering legal advice and legal services to a company.  It’s the way legal services are provided to the business team.

Good legal operations helps a company's lawyers – internal and external – better understand, anticipate, and serve the business’s objectives.  This often requires tapping in to workflows managed by departments other than legal, such as finance and accounting, human resources, IT, operations, and risk management.  By serving as a bridge between legal and other teams, good legal operations can unlock tremendous value from a company's legal function. 

Conceptually, there are two ways to measure the effectiveness of legal operations: (1) value achieved from legal spend, and (2) revenue traceable to more efficient and effective legal services.  The former is easier to gauge, but just barely; capturing value means more than spending less.  The latter is the secret sauce – think synergies, value-add, and other concepts they don’t teach in law school.

If your company has ever hired a lawyer, you already have legal operations.  If you are the only one overseeing the work of your company's lawyers, then not only does your company have a legal operations team, you are probably in charge of it.  

No two companies are alike when it comes to legal ops staffing.  

Some in-house lawyers – especially at small and midsized organizations – moonlight as legal ops professionals, whether they realize it or not.  The same goes for executives of smaller companies without in-house lawyers.  

Larger enterprises often have dedicated legal ops personnel.  These employees might be lawyers or paralegals by training or background, but they are not primarily acting for the company in a traditional legal role.  Rather, they work side-by-side with the company’s lawyers to help facilitate interactions with business teams.  Common titles include Manager of Legal Operations, Director of Contracting, and Legal Operations Specialist.  Dedicated legal ops professionals usually report to the company’s general counsel or head lawyer.

Grindstone helps business leaders and in-house attorneys take a fresh look at all aspects of the relationships between the company and its lawyers.  Our advice is designed to help unlock value in two ways: (1) optimizing legal spend (i.e., better results for the same or lower cost); and (2) driving revenue growth through more strategic integration of legal and business teams.

Some of the specific areas Grindstone can help include:

• Legal department structuring

• Governance review

• Policies and procedures review

• Contracting and contract management

• Enterprise risk assessment and management

• Communications training

• Strengthening intracompany relationships

• Transaction support

• Litigation and dispute strategy

• Managing outside counsel relationships   

Contact us to see if Grindstone can help sharpen your company's legal operations.

No.  Grindstone is happy to help clients evaluate potential team members or service providers, but Grindstone will never charge clients or anyone else a special “matchmaking” or referral fee (or any other kind of fee) just because a Grindstone client hires or utilizes someone Grindstone recommends.

It depends.  From solely a cost standpoint, a business facing the same kind of routine transaction over and over might benefit from assigning an in-house lawyer to handle just that kind of transaction.  Not only could the business save money, but over time the lawyer's expertise will drive efficiency and predictability.  

On the other hand, a business with varying legal needs spanning multiple specialties, or with legal matters that tend to be very complex, may be better served finding outside lawyers who specialize in those areas.  That said, depending on the size of the business (and the number of in-house lawyers), it may also be beneficial to have in-house coverage for those specialized or complex areas.

It’s usually better for outside counsel to handle litigation that ripens from a dispute, especially complex or high-stakes litigation.