TD;DR: 

• Improving legal operations has several benefits, including reducing risks, saving costs, improving efficiency, and assisting with compliance.
• Due to its significant impact, legal operations teams have become an integral part of companies and are actively involved in business decisions now.
• Contract management solution is the most common tool implemented by the legal operations team
• Having AI features is one of the key factors when purchasing/evaluating legal operations tools.

One fact that most in-house legal teams will agree on is that they often operate under budget constraints. Chief legal officers say they face intense pressure to do more with less. Amidst this cost pressure, what can help legal teams tremendously in maintaining budgets is optimizing legal operations.  

In this post, we will look at how to optimize legal operations by using technology, top trends in legal operations, and key roles required to build a strong legal operations team.

What is legal operations?

Legal operations team manages the business and administrative aspects of an in-house legal department, including paperwork, budgets, vendors, and knowledge bases. Their primary purpose is to optimize key processes and implement legal operations technology wherever applicable to improve efficiency. 

Source: Hammad Rafaqat via LinkedIn

What is legal operations technology?

Legal operations technology are the tools available to improve the effectiveness of legal departments. Some of the commonly used legal operations technologies are contract management solutions, spend management software, legal research solutions, etc. 

"We are getting to a point in the evolution of legal tech where it is actually coming as strategic tools that are not just value generators for the legal department but are also becoming a product or company differentiator. Now, you can pull an agreement quickly or respond more decisively than your competitors. You can get into the new market quicker and give insight more quickly. This is what we all want to do."

~ Doug Luftman, Fractional General Counsel & Senior Advisor
Unlocking Success in In-House Legal Roles

What are the key functions of legal operations

The key processes of in-house legal departments that can be optimized by legal operations technology are:

1. Budget and financial management:

Legal tech tools help to manage and forecast the entire legal spending.

2. Vendor management:

Legal tech facilitates onboarding external vendors and managing invoices.

3. Workflow management:

Legal tech helps manage contract workflows, get eSignatures, and conduct detailed reporting.

4. Knowledge management:

Legal tech supports creating, storing, and retrieving legal documents. 

Key roles in the legal operations team 

Here are the must-have positions of a strong legal operations team:

1. Legal operations associate

This is the entry-level legal operations role taking care of data entry, document management, scheduling, and research related to legal ops projects.

2. Legal operations specialist

This role is responsible for streamlining processes to track the implementation of new processes and technology. They analyze existing legal processes, identify bottlenecks, and implement solutions to improve efficiency and reduce turnaround times. 

3. Legal operations manager

This is the most common legal ops role in managing the legal department's staffing, team schedules, and technology. A day in the life of a legal operations manager includes managing the regular operations of the legal ops team by addressing their challenges and handling cross-team and vendor collaboration.

4. Director of legal operations

The director of legal operations is responsible for building and implementing the legal ops strategy and managing the legal budget. They manage the entire team while striking a balance between hands-on daily execution and long-term strategic planning. They also work closely with the Chief Legal Officer or General Counsel to align legal operations with the organization's goals.  

Also read: Legal Operations Careers: Alternate Perspective From Experts

Legal operations in 2025: The evolution of legal ops

With a growing awareness of the impact of legal operations, its integration into businesses is accelerating. We also conducted a study on the state of legal operations to understand the current state and growth of legal operations (ops) over time. Here are some of the key findings from the report: 

1. 56% of companies have dedicated legal ops teams 

Companies are actively building a legal ops team to improve operations. Around 49% of respondents reported having at least one to five members in their legal ops teams. 4.5% have six to ten members, and 2.7% have even 10+ members. 

Source: State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

2. Legal operations also involve in business decisions

Legal operations teams are actively involved in business discussions. A staggering ~85% is now taking part in key business decisions of organizations. Every one in four legal ops professionals have a crucial role in business decisions. 

Source: State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

3.  Companies are actively investing in legal tech

Companies are also investing in legal tech tools to optimize their workflows. Where companies have spent most are contract lifecycle management solutions (54.6 %), compliance tools (47.1 %), e-billing and finance tools (34.7 %), and AI-powered chatbots and assistants (21.3 %). 

Legal tech used by businesses | Source: State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

Why is legal operations important? 

Why have the majority of companies started investing in legal operations now? It’s due to these top benefits: 

1. Increases operational efficiency

Legal operations automate routine tasks and improve efficiency. For example, contract lifecycle management software expedites contract creation review and execution. As a result, 81% of legal professionals plan to implement contract management solutions.

2. Helps in cost management

Legal operations help in cost management by helping to manage budgets, improve processes, and track entire legal spending. For instance, 25% of legal professionals who started using Generative AI in their work have already started to report cost savings. 

3. Reduces risks

Legal operations reduce manual errors by predefining tasks/roles, setting approval workflows, and assisting in risk auditing. For instance, an AI-based contract management solution highlights risks in the review stage itself. 

4. Assists with compliance

Legal operations establish processes in a way that mitigates risks and helps organizations stay up to date with law regulations. For instance, a contract management solution helps with contract compliance by:

• Defining standardized contract templates adhering to the latest laws
• Creating contract view playbooks to highlight any potential compliance errors.

"We are getting to a point in the evolution of legal tech where it is actually coming as strategic tools that are not just value generators for the legal department but are also becoming a product or company differentiator. Now, you can pull an agreement quickly or respond more decisively than your competitors. You can get into the new market quicker and give insight more quickly. This is what we all want to do."

~ Doug Luftman, Fractional General Counsel & Senior Advisor
Unlocking Success in In-House Legal Roles

5. Helps in data analysis

Another advantage of using legal technology is that it centralizes data and comes with built-in dashboards. You can generate reports to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and suggest improvements. For instance, many contract management solutions come with built-in dashboards that tell the average turnaround time of contract reviews by different teams. This data will help you understand where contracts are getting stuck and improve the process. 

"Using data analytics in legal departments is a no-brainer. Not only will you get deep insights into the department's operations, but you will also be able to provide better insights to the business backed up by data — and not just gut instinct. Start small and simple, and work your way up to more complicated questions. Ultimately, your analysis will start to drive excellence, efficiency, and better decisions."

~ Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel at Hilgers Graben PLLC
Applying data analytics for in-house legal team

Best practices for implementing legal operations technology

Despite active efforts to improve legal operations with technology, implementation challenges continue to create roadblocks. When asked about challenges legal professionals face in implementing legal technology, this is what they responded:

• 75% had budget constraints
• Around 30% have security concerns
• Around 20% are not comfortable with learning new technology
• Around 20% find the onboarding process complicated 
• Roughly 15% found integrating it into their current workflows tough. 

Legal tech challenges | Source: Legal Ops + Tech Survey by Bloomberg

The best practices legal professionals can take to avoid these challenges and implement legal tech smoothly is to choose a solution that is:

• Simple to use and has an intuitive interface
• Budget-friendly with an option to get custom pricing
• Customer-focused with good onboarding customer support for round-the-clock issues
• Easy to integrate into your existing workflows.

The future of legal operations

If you are actively building a legal operations team now, here are the two trends that will shape its future:

1. Improving contract turnaround time will be biggest responsibility 

One of the biggest tasks on the task list of the legal ops team is enhancing contracting progress. 39% of legal professionals say improving contract turnaround times is their biggest responsibility. That makes contract lifecycle management solutions a key investment for legal operations teams in the near future. 

Key responsibilities of legal ops | Source: State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

"Although a CLM solution might seem costly in the early stages, companies should have it in place and build workflows within the tool to process contracts better. By doing so, they can keep legal costs low in the growth stages and close deals faster. Moreover, they will have clear visibility into the contract pipeline and use their legal resources to optimize workflows better for yielding maximum results."

‍~ Igor Poroger, the Director of Legal (EMEA) at Vectra AI
Streamlining Legal Processes: Advice from 7 GCs and Heads of Legal

2. AI will transform legal operations

Similar to all industries, AI has now penetrated the legal profession well. The International Bar Association is also actively advocating for legal teams to embrace AI in their process. The popular AI-powered legal ops tools are legal research and contract life cycle management solutions. In fact, approximately 80% of legal professionals are looking for AI features when purchasing or evaluating tools. The future of legal ops technology is AI-powered. 

Impact of AI on purchasing/evaluating tools | Source: State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

“AI is going to play a huge role in Legal ops over the next five years. We must harness the potential of AI. Contrary to the common belief that AI will take over our roles, I feel that we will need a lot more legal ops professionals in the years to come, as we take more and more work from legal teams to help them focus and double down on their legal expertise.” 

~ DeAnna Papadis, Head of Legal Contracts and Operations, Google
State of legal operations report by SpotDraft

Improve legal operations with SpotDraft

Looking to improve legal operations? Contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions are a popular starting point, with many legal operations teams actively investing in them. SpotDraft is an AI-powered CLM and document management platform designed to optimize the entire contract lifecycle, from creation and approval to ongoing management, ultimately increasing efficiency at every stage:

• Contract creation: You can expedite and standardize contract creation by creating templates. Further, SpotDraft AI helps maintain consistent and compliant contracts by suggesting relevant clauses and language during drafting.
• Contract review: SpotDraft routes contracts to relevant stakeholders for review. Stakeholders can generate quick AI-powered summaries and pull key information to conduct reviews faster. SpotDraft AI also redlines risky terms and suggests alternatives.
• Contract termination/Renewal: SpotDraft AI pulls key information such as party names and dates from contracts. You can easily set reminders for termination/renewal of contracts for any follow-up activity.

Our easy-to-use interface and comprehensive integrations makes implementation a breeze. And if you face any issue, you have a 24/7 support team for immediate assistance. 

SpotDraft user review | Source: G2

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