Legal ops in a large company is a department; in a company of fifty to five hundred it is what the general counsel does on Friday afternoon. Legal operations is the running of the legal function as a function: what the team is asked to do, what it commits the company to, what outside counsel costs, and what the business can see. The first system a small team builds is the contract register, because most of what the function is asked about is a contract, and most of what it costs is a contract too. This page is about legal ops at that scale, the register it starts from, and how legal vendor management, the tracking of outside counsel and legal suppliers, fits on the same register.
What legal ops is at small scale
Four questions, asked weekly. What is coming due: the renewals and notice deadlines in the window, and the obligations overdue. What is open: the matters and their status. What is it costing: outside counsel and legal vendors against budget. What can the business see: the register itself, or a report from it. A general counsel who can answer those four from a system rather than from memory is running legal operations; the size of the team does not change the questions, only how long each takes to answer.
The register first, because most questions are a contract
The contracts the company has signed are where the deadlines, the obligations, the money and most of the matters come from. Register them with their term, notice period, value and owner and the first question answers itself: on the worked example a register of 120 contracts on a two year average term has 15 deadlines and $270,000 in the next quarter, and 9 of those renew by default. The free contract tracking calculator on this site works that from four averages, which is enough to size the function's workload before any software is bought.
Legal vendor management on the same register
Outside counsel and legal vendors are counterparties with contracts, rates, matters and invoices, and legal vendor management is keeping them on the register like any other supplier: the engagement letter with its terms, the matters each firm is instructed on, the budget against spend. A small team that tracks its own vendors on the contract register has the third question answered from the same screen as the first two, which is the whole point of legal ops at this scale.
Questions people ask about legal ops
Does a company of a hundred people need legal ops?
It needs the four questions answered, whoever answers them. Legal ops is the name for doing that on a system and a schedule rather than from memory; the register is the system, and a weekly read is the schedule.
What should legal vendor management track?
Each firm or vendor's engagement terms, the matters they are instructed on, the agreed rates, the budget and the spend to date, and the notice period on the engagement. Kept on the register, they are contracts with matters attached.
Where does this site's paid plan fit?
Clauselane Pro is the register: contracts, obligations, matters, clauses and reminders, for $49 a month for the whole legal team. The two free worksheets are the arithmetic behind it and need no account.