Legal ops: Lessons from HR, finance & procurement transformations

Lucy Powell explores how legal teams can look sideways at colleagues across the business to learn from their transformation success.

Understanding the Maturity Gap

• The Timeline of Transformation

HR began its evolution from personnel departments in the 1980s to strategic HR business partners by the early 2000s, driven by a recognition that people were a company's most valuable asset. Finance underwent similar transformation, with traditional accounting functions evolving into strategic financial planning and analysis roles, particularly as regulatory requirements intensified and CFOs gained greater strategic influence at board level.  Procurement shifted from basic purchasing to strategic sourcing, often catalysed by cost pressures and the growing complexity of global supply chains. The "strategic sourcing organisation" emerged as companies recognised the value in sophisticated vendor management and category expertise.

By the mid-2000s, the main focus of legal operational management was cost control and risk, and while larger teams evolved their operations approach, it was the COVID-19 pandemic which had a profound and accelerating impact, forcing a rapid shift toward technology, new workflows and heightening the strategic importance of the function. While the legal sector had been slow to adopt technology, the pandemic-driven necessity for remote work broke down long-standing resistance and fast-tracked the digital transformation.

• Why Legal Lagged Behind

Several factors contribute to legal's delayed transformation:

• Professional identity and perception. Law has traditionally been viewed as a profession rather than a business function with many careers being built on the premise that legal expertise alone was sufficient. The idea of applying business principles to legal work felt uncomfortable to some, even unnecessary. 
• The complexity of legal work. Legal matters are inherently bespoke – every contract negotiation, dispute or regulatory query can feel unique. This apparent uniqueness made standardisation seem impossible or inappropriate. Unlike Finance's general ledgers or HR's employee lifecycle processes, legal issues don't appear to fit neatly into predictable patterns.
• Talent and skills. Whilst you don't have to be a lawyer to be good at legal operations, legal departments have predominantly hired lawyers, with operations expertise being an afterthought rather than a prerequisite. Finance and HR, by contrast, have long recruited people with operations backgrounds, creating internal capability for process improvement and transformation.
• Resource constraints and priorities. Legal professionals continue to struggle with right-sizing and right-sourcing work, with lawyers taking on too much administrative work. When stretched thin handling urgent legal matters, investing time in operational improvements often falls to the bottom of the priority list.
• Budget and organisational structure.  Legal teams have historically been smaller than HR or Finance departments, with correspondingly smaller budgets, making it harder to justify dedicated operations headcount or significant technology investment. 

The Silver Lining

Being behind isn't entirely negative. Legal teams today have a significant advantage: they can learn from the transformation journeys of other functions without repeating their mistakes.

The blueprint for transformation exists. The challenge for legal is to adapt proven approaches to its own context whilst maintaining what makes legal advice valuable – expertise, judgement and risk assessment.

Three Critical Lessons from Other Functions

• Invest in Dedicated Operations Capability

Perhaps the most important lesson from other functions is this: transformation requires dedicated resource with appropriate skills.

Finance didn't ask accountants to build financial planning models on the side of their day job. HR didn't expect talent acquisition specialists to also design and implement HRIS systems. They created dedicated roles with specific skills – financial analysts, HR business partners, workforce planning specialists, compensation and benefits experts.

Legal operations professionals bring critical expertise in strategic planning, change management and financial oversight to legal practice, enabling lawyers to focus on providing strategic legal counsel based on business goals whilst minimising legal risks.

The practicalities of implementation vary by organisation size and maturity but what matters is finding people with the right combination of analytical thinking, stakeholder management and change management capability.  And even a few days per month of dedicated operations focus can help establish foundations and drive meaningful improvements.

The key principle: separate "doing legal work" from "enabling legal work." Both are essential, but they require different skills and mindsets.

• Embrace Cross-Functional Collaboration

One of the most striking features of successful transformation in HR, Finance and Procurement has been the willingness to collaborate across functional boundaries.

Breaking down barriers between HR and Finance functions has delivered significant benefits, with both departments working together on workforce analytics, identifying top performers, evaluating turnover risk and creating shared resources.

As Procurement has taken on more strategic responsibilities and HR has expanded its remit, these functions have become more entwined, particularly around contingent workforce management and the procurement of HR-related services.

Legal sits at a unique intersection of risk, compliance and commercial activity. Building genuine partnerships with other functions isn't just beneficial – it's essential for effectiveness:

1. with finance: as legal spend is often one of the largest discretionary costs in an organisation, collaborating with Finance on budgeting, forecasting and spend analysis transforms the conversation from "Legal costs too much" to "Here's how we're strategically deploying resources to manage risk and enable the business."
2. with procurement: Leveraging Procurement's expertise in vendor negotiations, contract management and category strategy can significantly improve law firm management.
3. with HR: closer collaboration on policy development, compliance training and people issues creates consistency and avoids duplication.
4. with IT: technology implementation and digital transformation require alignment and the early involvement of IT in legal technology selection ensures security, integration and long-term supportability.

• Let Data Tell Your Story

Perhaps the most transformative shift in Finance and HR has been the move to data-driven decision making and communication.

Finance transformed its reputation by demonstrating business impact through numbers that boards cared about. HR shifted from being seen as a "soft" function to a strategic one by developing workforce analytics that predict how workplace performance indicators impact outcomes like turnover.

Legal needs a similar evolution. Not because lawyers need to become data scientists, but because demonstrating impact requires evidence.

Legal's position behind other functions in operational maturity isn't a failing – it's simply where we are. The question isn't why we're here, but what we do next.

By transforming legal from a cost centre to a strategic partner, legal operations helps enterprises proactively manage risk, responsibly harness new technologies and stay ahead of evolving compliance requirements.

The functions that successfully transformed didn't abandon their core expertise. Finance professionals didn't become less financially rigorous. HR professionals didn't reduce their focus on people. They enhanced their expertise with operational excellence.

Legal can do exactly the same. We don't need to become less legal; we need to become more strategic about how legal services are delivered.

The blueprint exists. The time to act is now.