Legal operations is the function that turns your legal department from a cost center into a true business partner. It includes the processes, technology, and data layer that lets your team work smarter and faster. I talk to General Counsel every week, and they all ask the same question: where do I even start? The answer depends on your team size and where the pain is sharpest, but the principles are the same whether you're managing 2. 20, or 200.
What Legal Operations Actually Means
At its core, legal operations is about asking the right questions. How does work get assigned? Who's creating bottlenecks in approvals? Which contract types take three months when they should take three weeks? Where's your money going, and are you getting value? What happens when someone leaves? Are you collecting the data you need to spot trends?
Legal ops sits at the intersection of law and business. It's not legal advice, and it's not pure administration either. It's the strategic function that lets you run your legal organization like an actual organization. It's why some in-house teams punch above their weight and others feel perpetually stuck.
The five core functions of legal ops are straightforward. Matter management handles intake, triage, assignment, and tracking so work doesn't get lost. Contract lifecycle management controls the full process from draft to renewal. Legal spend management gives you visibility over outside counsel costs and vendor relationships. Technology selection ensures your tools work together instead of creating silos. And reporting/analytics turns raw data into insights that actually change how you operate.
How to Start Building a Legal Ops Function
You don't need to fix everything at once. Start small and build from there.
First, understand your current state. Watch how work actually flows today. Where do matters get assigned? How do contracts move through your organization? What information do you need that you don't have? Talk to your team and document what you find. You can't improve what you don't understand.
Second, pick one or two areas where you're feeling the most pain. Maybe contracts take forever to process. Maybe you don't know what you're spending on legal work. Maybe critical knowledge walks out the door when people leave. Focus on the problem that matters most to your business right now.
Third, design better processes before you buy technology. What should the workflow look like? Who needs to be involved? What approval gates do you need? Write it down, test it with your team, and get feedback. Make sure your process actually fits how your team works.
Finally, choose tools that fit your size and grow with you. A legal operations platform should be designed specifically for legal teams, should integrate with your existing systems, and should be easy enough that adoption isn't a battle. Run pilots and get your team to test things before you commit.
Side note: Consider your “nirvana state” against your “achievable state” and be realistic. There is no point asking AI to derive the perfect outcome, or polishing a 10 page list of requirements that are unable to be met or implemented due to lack of resources or change fatigue. We recommend starting small, achieving quick wins and then accelerating toward nirvana.
The Technology Side of Legal Operations
Good technology puts information at your fingertips and eliminates repetitive work so your lawyers can focus on thinking and advising. AI is accelerating this: contract review that used to take hours can now happen in minutes, key terms get extracted automatically, and natural language search means you can ask your system a question instead of building a report. But not all platforms are created equal.
You need matter management that handles different types of work and gives you clear visibility into what's happening. You need a CLM system for contracts so you don't miss renewals or renegotiate the same terms twice. You need legal intake and triage so business teams can submit requests through a self-service portal instead of emailing individual lawyers. You need analytics that collects data automatically and surfaces real trends without requiring you to export everything to spreadsheets.
The case for an integrated platform over point solutions is simple: less toggling between systems, less data reconciliation, faster adoption, lower total cost of ownership. A small team doesn't need an enterprise platform designed for 50 lawyers. You're looking for something that fits your size today and grows with you tomorrow. The best platforms scale from small to large without requiring a complete rip-and-replace.
How We Built Xakia for Legal Operations
When we built Xakia, we designed it to bring the core legal ops capabilities together in one place. You get matter management, contract lifecycle management, legal spend management, legal intake and triage, and analytics all in a single platform. No toggling between five different systems. No reconciling data from different sources. One source of truth.
Xakia also comes with the security and compliance credentials that modern legal ops demands. We're ISO 27001, SOC2, and HIPAA compliant, so you know your sensitive legal data is protected. And we're the only multi-lingual matter management platform that works across regions and jurisdictions, which matters if you're operating globally.
Setup takes 2 to 4 weeks, not months. Pricing is straightforward: subscription per user, not module-based, so you know exactly what you're paying for. And we're built specifically for in-house legal teams, so the workflows and design choices actually fit how you work. Learn more about our legal operations platform.
Xakia focuses on what in-house teams actually need to run their operations. If you need specialized point solutions for specific areas, Xakia integrates with them.
Why Small Teams Need Legal Ops Too
Here's what keeps me up at night: 64% of small legal departments recognize the value of a technology roadmap but don't have one. Small legal teams are 120% less likely to have access to legal technology than large ones. And teams without formal ops processes are vulnerable to the same risks that larger teams have solved for.
The myth is that legal ops is only for big organizations. The reality is that small teams have even more to gain because they're usually doing twice the work with half the resources. You can't afford to lose work, miss deadlines, or have unclear processes. Even a small team of five or ten benefits from matter tracking, a clear intake process, basic metrics, and the right tools. You don't need a Legal Operations Officer or a dedicated team. You just need discipline and the right systems.
FAQ
The Bottom Line
Legal operations used to be a luxury. Now it's table stakes for any in-house legal department that wants to compete. The teams that win have clarity about their processes, visibility into their work and their spend, the right technology supporting their day-to-day, and someone focused on making the function better.
You don't need to go all-in overnight. Start with one problem, solve it properly, pick the right tools, design processes that fit how your team actually works, and measure progress. Build from there. The organizations that have built real legal ops capability are spending less on legal work, turning around matters faster, and showing the business what their legal team contributes. That's not a coincidence. That's what happens when you get the operations right.
For more on legal operations, check out our pieces on best in-house legal software and legal department KPIs. Both will help you think through what ops capability looks like for your specific team.
