What are the qualities of good legal ops leaders?

Usually, good legal operations leaders tend to fit one of four distinct personas:

♣ The uber-analyst who brings quantitative rigor to the legal department

♣ The Business or Financial Management professional (an MBA usually), who brings additional operational and financial discipline to the legal department and their vendors.

♣ The lawyer who has chosen a more business-focused career path, and

♣ The highly analytical Business Management professional, who is valued for their legal and business expertise

Now, while having an MBA is a great addition for some of the above job profiles, the people you require for these roles don’t mandatorily need to have those degrees.

What they do need to have is:

▪ A very strong understanding and knowledge of the core business.

▪ The ability to translate the needs of other business departments into legal requirements / solutions.

▪ The ability to control and manage external law firm performance.

▪ A solemn commitment to using the internal legal department to grow the organization.