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The Make-or-Break Role of Legal Ops in an Economic Downturn

Every economic recession has its casualties. Some companies disappear, others limp through, and most assess their internal efforts in thoughtful, proactive ways. Focusing on legal operations in your organization improves your chances for smart investments and overall success. That’s why we’ve created this guide, The Make-or-Break Role of Legal Ops in an Economic Downturn.

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The Make-or-Break Role of Legal Ops in an Economic Downturn
News debates rage about whether the US economy is technically in a recession. In reality, semantics matter little. Either way, outlooks aren’t rosy. While some argue that companies with the best overall talent will outperform during a decline, we believe the best talent in the right positions matters more. This means that starting now, enterprises must gameplan staff roles and investments. In this guide We spotlight the role of legal operations staff in boosting performance during slowdowns. For enterprise leaders, we share four smart ways to deploy legal ops and build a case for why legal ops teams will deliver outsized ROI when you need it most.
LEGAL OPS Your behind-the-scenes business enabler. During a downturn, cost-cutting measures often include headcount “right-sizing.” While reductions may have merit, Harvard Business Review warns of eliminating staff who deliver “disproportionate importance in executing strategy”—including those who help sustain a competitive advantage. Many point to functions like sales or customer support as most valuable during a downturn. No doubt these roles matter. However, removing process friction and revenue bottlenecks is equally important when a recession hits. As belts tighten, businesses must ensure that nothing inhibits the ability to generate value. Here, the legal operations team shines.
Law.com explains that legal operations staff often fill project and operations gaps—the self-starter types who are “forced to learn things on their own.” Legal operations is an emerging field. Rarely do staff have the luxury of templates and playbooks. This keeps them scrappy and resourceful— perfect characteristics for when slowdowns hit. In baseball-speak, they may be the best bang-for-your-buck utility players.
When trying to sustain business efficiency, consider unleashing your legal ops talent in one or more of these ways. Legal Ops as… Engineers of Sales Process Effectiveness Legal Department Load Lighteners Financial Data Fact-Finders Corporate Continuity & Knowledge Keepers
LEGAL OPS AS… Engineers of Sales Process Effectiveness From bridging communication gaps to enhancing productivity, the nature of operations is to streamline essential business processes. “The best sales leaders I’ve worked with have always told me, time kills all deals. To shorten the time between business opportunity and revenue receipt, lean on the unique skills of a legal operations professional.” Jonathan Greenblatt LinkSquares’ Vice President of Legal This is especially important during a slowdown.
As we’ve highlighted, legal operations staff have a front-row seat to most process inefficiencies. More than most, they are positioned to eliminate process friction— often using technology and automation. For example, legal operations teams may champion efforts to move contracting workflows out of employees’ inboxes (or Slack channels!) This is likely a task your lawyers or compliance teams want to do, but don’t have the time or skill set to pull off. We’ve seen legal operations professionals reduce deal close timelines by installing improvements like adopting a CRM integration within a contract lifecycle management platform. These efforts improve sales teams’ ability to get contract status updates, forecast, assess time to close, and accurately predict revenue.
LEGAL OPS AS… Legal Department Load Lighteners Know this: When staring down reduced cash flow, your customers will reevaluate or renegotiate contracts. While no one can begrudge the effort, it adds up to more disputes and investment from your legal team and/or outside counsel. To deflect waste here, legal operations can bolster reporting and contract terms analyses. Many leading legal operations teams lead efforts to analyze existing contracts and expose text, clauses, or terms within legal agreements on behalf of corporate counsel.
“Well-oiled legal departments lean on ops staff to quantify revenue-related contract terms—like auto-renewals, payment terms, and revenue sharing clauses.” Ashlyn Donohue LinkSquares’ Director of Legal This expedites reporting and planning – and reduces the scramble when customers reevaluate their obligations.
LEGAL OPS AS… Financial Data Fact-Finders Important financial signals live inside legal team data. But scrubbing contracts, reports, or data to mine these insights is manual and error-prone. According to Thomson Reuters, legal operations teams are well positioned to directly manage inputs into department finances or forecasts. When fiscal management is top of mind, legal ops can join forces with finance teams to evaluate agreements, understand renewals, and surface contract obligations. With a contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform, for instance, enterprises can extract critical contract data to provide needed inputs to models, forecasts, and contingency plans. Financial insights can extend beyond reporting. The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) recommends firms leverage legal ops staff for better economic context in many financial decisions. Some of their proposed deployment areas: Streamlining invoice review and supporting budget development with centralized, on-demand reporting.
LEGAL OPS AS… Corporate Continuity & Knowledge Keepers Staff turnover, attrition, and transfers wreak havoc on knowledge and best practices management. As the CLOC warns, too many departments rely on “unstructured ‘tribal knowledge’ that fails to scale as teams grow or change…” In periods of heavy headcount shifts, legal operations leaders can stabilize knowledge sharing to ensure a consistent topic and issue response. Consider having legal ops staff lead efforts to standardize workflows, document best practices, or apply templates to ensure consistent, quality, Q&A delivery. When the pace turns frenzied, quality control often drops. This exacerbates enterprise health issues during a downturn.
When the pace turns frenzied, quality control often drops. This exacerbates enterprise health issues during a downturn. “Inconsistent or incomplete communication is particularly concerning when employees need terminating or the legal team is involved in high-stakes business management scenarios,” guides LinkSquares’ Greenblatt. For this, legal operations are ideally placed to ensure procedure and policy execution—thereby lowering enterprise risk and exposure. In every downturn, some companies disappear. Some limp through. Others assess internal capacities and deploy staff in the smartest, most helpful and cost-efficient ways. These companies ready themselves for an upswing. Legal operations improve your odds for the latter. Invest accordingly.
LINKSQUARES CAN HELP LinkSquares offers best-of-breed software tools to support resource and reputation-saving operations. We’ve helped hundreds of corporate legal department leaders drive innovation, lower costs, increase revenue, and minimize loss. If you’re ready to adopt the most effective solutions for Legal Ops—and harness cutting-edge artificial intelligence to improve every aspect of your legal department -- then contact LinkSquares today.
The Make-or-Break Role of Legal Ops in an Economic Downturn