Sarah Irwin
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7 myths about Legal Operations (and why they're rubbish)

7 myths about Legal Operations (and why they're rubbish)

2 min. read

Sarah Irwin
November 08, 2025

One of the biggest myths I still hear about legal ops is that it’s a “nice to have.”

Something you get to after you’ve hired more lawyers or bought more tech.

In reality, legal ops is the foundation for everything else.

It’s the piece that connects people, process, and technology so the whole machine actually runs.

It’s inherently human-centric, too.

You need the human touch for things like:

🟪 Cross-functional collaboration

🟪 Change management (aka bringing folks on the journey with you)

🟪 User adoption

🟪 Strategic decision-making (aka a human being interpreting and leveraging data)

🟪 Fixing human pain points (burnout, workload overwhelm, stress)

Read on to find out the 7 myths I hear about legal ops and why they're rubbish.

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1. Only for large companies

Rubbish - legal ops benefits legal teams of all sizes. In fact, it’s the cornerstone of building a legal department from the ground up, because most of what you do in the early days is design and implement processes, improve efficiencies & position Legal as a revenue generator.

2. Legal ops is all about cost-cutting

Nope - it's also about driving value, risk management, increasing productivity, positioning Legal as a growth driver and helping legal teams feel happier at work. Which don't always come from cutting costs.

3. Only needed for contracts

Wrong - legal ops teams oversee a broad range of things like data analytics, vendor management, tech implementation, corporate governance, legal spend. In fact, large US companies have a separate legal ops professional dedicated to these areas.

4. You need a large team for it

A small, well-focused legal ops team or solo hire will have a huge impact. And you can outsource this support to an ALSP if you need (I did!).

5. It's a "nice to have"

Is Rev Ops a nice to have? Or People Ops? Or Marketing Ops? In this post "growth-at-all-costs" landscape, every single function is in the business of revenue generation. Including Legal.

Legal Ops is your shortcut to moving faster AND managing risk in a modern, relevant way.

6. It's going to replace humans

Legal tech is certainly a key enabler and dominating the narrative out there, BUT - legal ops is first and foremost about PEOPLE and PROCESSES. The golden rule of legal ops is to ensure you have mapped out the people first, then processes, and only THEN consider buying tech.

In fact - the core elements of a robust legal ops strategy are about HUMANS. Cross-functional collaboration; change management (aka bringing folks on the journey with you); managing external and internal stakeholders; user adoption etc.

All these need the human touch.

7. Spells the end of Outside Counsel...

Legal ops is about OPTIMIZING how you use outside counsel, not getting rid of them. It's no secret in-house teams spend most of their money on law firms and don't have a good handle on why.... You want to be sure when you pay a bill that you're doing it gladly and paying the right firm for high value, deep subject-matter expertise work. Legal ops is how you do this.

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by Sarah Irwin