Late last year, CLOC, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, released the results of its first annual State of the Industry Survey, looking at such metrics as legal spend; legal department and legal ops headcounts; commonly used e-billing vendors, contract management systems and alternative service providers; and law firm evaluation priorities.

The respondents represented 156 companies in 32 industries, spanning 30 U.S. states and 11 countries. With a median company revenue of $7 billion, they claimed an average external spend of $60 million per company.
Continue Reading Resetting the Process: An inside look at the state of legal operations

For the first time in some years, law departments are anticipating bigger budgets, and they plan to put that money to work in-house. That’s bad news for outside counsel, who continue to sit squarely in the crosshairs of spend-conscious general counsel and their ops squads, who, despite their growing budgets, plan to cut outside counsel’s share from 40% to 36%.                              
Continue Reading Cost Control Is Job 1

Clifford Barr is assistant general counsel, litigation and human resources, for Marathon Petroleum Corporation. In October 2018, the company merged with Andeavor, an integrated marketing, logistics and petroleum refining company where Barr has worked for 13 years. His job there changed dramatically about two years ago, when the company hired Kim Rucker as its new general counsel. Rucker had previously been general counsel at Kraft, where there was an established legal operations group. 
Continue Reading Legal Ops 101 for Law Departments: Using key performance indicators and productivity tools to create better outcomes