The Benefits of Legal Ops | Esther Bowers

Transcript

Esther Bowers 00:00

The legal ops professionals that I know in peer firms are ahead of the curve. They’re leading, they’re in the forefront. They see what clients are asking for. They see where there are opportunities to improve.

Candice Reed 00:18

This is Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law, and we are your hosts, Candice Reed.

Tim Haley 00:25

And Tim Haley.

Candice Reed 00:26

Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Candice Reed 00:41

Hi, Tim. How are you doing this week?

Tim Haley 00:44

Hey, Candace. I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Candice Reed 00:46

I’m doing great. It’s good to talk with you and all of our audience. This week, we’re following on the tale of a conversation about how hot the legal market is.

Tim Haley 00:59

I think bonkers is the technical term, I think. It’s bonkers right now.

Candice Reed 01:04

It is, it is. I was just reading something this morning that was talking about how in-house legal departments are now experiencing difficulty recruiting law firm associates in-house because the bonuses that associates are receiving, that the firms are so high, that it has dried up that market for in-house legal departments, so.

Tim Haley 01:29

And I mean, that’s exactly what they wanted too, right? The firms?

Candice Reed 01:33

Right, that was the point.

Tim Haley 01:34

They want to retain their associates. Yeah, and I’ve heard of some cases, multiple retention bonuses in the last quarter are sometimes really big. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy out there, Candice.

Candice Reed 01:45

It is, it is. And one thing that we are seeing in many mid-sized markets like Nashville and probably Indianapolis and other cities in the Midwest, is a growth of these really large firms that have traditionally been on the coast cities, New York, LA, Houston. They’re now coming in to these mid-sized markets and merging or acquiring smaller law firms and establishing a footprint in more cities. So, there’s growth not just individually as firms pick up new associates from across the street, but we’re seeing a lot of big firms expanding their footprint across the country as well.

Tim Haley 02:32

Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. I know when I first started practicing, there were some attorneys out East or out West that assumed mid-size as a market was code for less sophisticated. And of course, that’s not true, it’s not true at all. There’s plenty of really sophisticated stuff going on all over the country, and of course the firms and companies are moving around to take advantage of it.

Candice Reed 02:54

Yeah, and interestingly, I think we’re seeing professionals other than the attorneys drive a lot of that movement, certainly be the ones who are doing a lot of the work involved with merging two sizable firms together.

Tim Haley 03:15

Yeah. The business side of a firm merger, I’ve never been in the weeds of one, but just thinking through each individual. I mean, you’re merging firms so you’re merging multiple partners in together. And of course, there’s a business side of things. There’s conflict issue, there’s a culture issue, there’s… And even down to the nuts and bolts of, okay, how does payroll work and how do we consolidate these two things?

Candice Reed 03:40

Yeah, different computer systems, different client database management tools, all of that.

Tim Haley 03:47

Yeah, so the work tends to fall almost completely on law firm staff, or especially on the business side, the law firm legal ops group, or the people that are doing those legal operations functions, which is oddly enough, the topic of our episode today.

Candice Reed 04:05

Yeah, and we’re seeing that sector of the legal industry grow as well. So whereas 10, 20 years ago, you may have only had a handful of operations professionals within a law firm assisting with things like marketing or accounting, we’re now seeing a really sizable growth of those positions, both in law firms and in legal departments, as those folks are trying to help us lawyers run a business and get things done, find alignment with what clients want, and how lawyers can provide the best service. And there are a lot of people making the wheels run. Is that the expression? That seems wrong, but.

Tim Haley 04:52

I don’t think that’s right. I’m trying to think. A lot of people make… I mean-

Candice Reed 04:55

The trains run? That’s it. A lot of people making the trains run.

Tim Haley 04:59

Trains run. I mean, this is like Flintstones era stuff. There’s a lot of people making those cars run.

Candice Reed 05:03

That was such a mom moment. I can see my almost eight-year-old rolling her eyes at me right now thinking, oh mom, you didn’t just say that.

Tim Haley 05:15

Yeah, trains run too though. Well, I mean, I assume they do.

Candice Reed 05:19

Of course, she’d probably ask, “What’s a train?” What?

Tim Haley 05:21

Yeah, that’s right.

Candice Reed 05:24

Yes. Okay, so these are the people making the trains run in the business of running a law firm or a corporate legal department. And who are you speaking with today?

Tim Haley 05:34

So today we’re talking with Esther Bowers. She’s at the Honigman firm up in Michigan, it’s an AM Law 200 firm, she’s in their legal ops group. She’s going to tell us her story and a little bit more about what the law firm legal ops folks do, and a little bit comparatively about what the in-house legal ops people do, although she’s never been in-house, so she doesn’t have the direct experience other than-

Candice Reed 05:55

That’ll be a conversation for another day.

Tim Haley 05:57

That’s right.

Candice Reed 05:57

Right?

Tim Haley 05:57

We got another episode, Candice, we got another one, it’ll be good. But she sits on the other side of the table so you got to know, just like in any business relationship, you got to know what the other side’s going through in order for it to be a productive conversation.

Candice Reed 06:11

Well, great. Well, let’s listen to the conversation between you and Esther and hear more about legal ops and what those folks are doing inside law firms.

Tim Haley 06:28

Hi, welcome back to Leveraging Latitude, this is Tim Haley. I’m here with our guest this week, Esther Bowers. Esther is the Director of Practice Management at Honigman Firm in Michigan. Esther, welcome.

Esther Bowers 06:40

Thanks, Tim. Glad to be here.

Tim Haley 06:42

So, one of the most fascinating things to me in talking to people in the industry is just how you ended up where you ended up. So Esther, how did you get to be the Director of Practice Management?

Esther Bowers 06:52

Well, that’s an interesting question if I reflect back on my career in legal, which I believe has been 17 years now. There’s a bumper sticker that says, “I love lawyers,” and so I think that probably is, it’s not on my car, but it certainly follows me around. But the evolution of my career began in legal education for the ABA and transitioned into business development and marketing, and then really started taking off in this legal ops direction about seven or eight years ago, where you start to see a shift in the legal market. And being naturally curious, as I am, to understand market demands and changes, again, to recognize where the legal was heading by reading a lot of client produced publications, understanding the gap between what clients were asking for and where the law firms were, and seeing an opportunity.

Esther Bowers 07:53

So since then, I’ve held several positions that have kind of continued to evolve and grow. And that has typically been because I continue to see gaps and opportunities where we can improve how we’re doing things. So, that’s how my role has evolved over the past few years.

Tim Haley 08:15

That’s great. And Esther, how big is the legal ops department at Honigman?

Esther Bowers 08:19

That’s a great question. We work across a number of different departments, so I would say we have probably 10 folks who are focused on elements within the operations of legal ops.

Tim Haley 08:35

And now that we’re in the weeds of legal ops, let’s go back. And legal ops, it’s a word now I’ve used, I don’t know, 10 times, short for legal operations. What are legal ops, in your mind?

Esther Bowers 08:46

So in my mind, I think of legal operations as connecting functions within the client life cycle. So, understanding the mechanics of a client relationship from beginning, all the way through. And all of the various touch points in that life cycle where the firm has an opportunity to enhance the relationship, or there are situations where it could detract from that relationship. And so, legal operations is making sure that that progression is fluid and that relationship is seamless.

Tim Haley 09:23

Excellent. So legal ops, at least as I understand it, and feel free to step on me, as I understood it, legal ops started on what we would call at the law firm, the client side, right? The in-house legal departments that really started to, I don’t want to say professionalize, what do I want to say? I want to say the in-house legal departments started to really pay attention to legal spend and hold the legal departments to the same set of standards that the rest of the business was held to. And that grew over time, certainly in my career as an attorney. And more recently, we’re seeing law firms adopt a mirror image department, the legal ops department that’s growing. And as you said, that’s something that started seven to eight years ago.

Tim Haley 10:06

I want to dig into the client side real quick. What are the key features of a legal ops department on the client side?

Esther Bowers 10:13

So I think some of the top priorities of in-house legal departments operations functions include the limitation and reduction of outside counsel spend, and you’ll see that through the issuance of outside counsel guidelines and RFPs. I think another priority that they have relates to contract lifecycle management, document management, systems around matter management, and a lot of reporting as it pertains to metrics that are similar to the way the business units within the organization are being held accountable. So, kind of professionalizing the function of the legal department and moving it from what’s been typically seen as a cost center, more to a value arm of the organization.

Tim Haley 11:08

And in your experience, how many, percentage-wise, of the big companies out there, how many of them have an in-house legal ops arm?

Esther Bowers 11:16

Exponential growth within this area. I don’t know the percentages precisely, but I know that there’s… When you used to go to clock, there were 100 people, now there’s a couple thousand. So, you know that this has been an area of great growth.

Tim Haley 11:32

So, every action has an equal opposite reaction. Right? And if that’s what’s happening on the client side, what’s happened then recently on the law firm side?

Esther Bowers 11:42

Sure. So as you’ve seen clients issue RFPs or guidelines, those were essentially like contracts that were producing to work with law firms. So, law firms were almost forced into the build out or the standing up of operations internally to be able to execute on the billing guidelines and the requirements that organizations were putting out to their outside counsel. And so with that, that causes a need for a connection internally within the law firm to be able to understand when a matter comes in, how that’s going to be billed, how it’s going to be executed, how it’s going to be managed, and then how the firm is going to follow back up afterwards. So, it forced firms to get organized internally to break down some of the silos that naturally exist, and be able to execute on what the client was asking for.

Tim Haley 12:50

And so the legal ops arm in the law firms, how do they work with the lawyers in their firms?

Esther Bowers 12:57

So, it depends on where the area of need is. So commonly, how legal operations get involved is when there’s a budget that’s needed or a fixed fee that’s been requested. That’s the typical entry point into legal operations. Other areas would be maybe where there’s business development opportunities and they’re trying to think through, all right, what would be a strategic or a unique competitive advantage that we have? How do we position ourselves with this work that’s perhaps attractive to a client? And so that would be another entry point into legal operations. Perhaps a third would be, I went upon new matter opening when you see that there are particular guidelines that have been a set applied to a matter or to a client relationship that are more complex or sophisticated than perhaps the other ones, and so there is a need for internal legal operations to help in supporting the matter team to execute on what’s being requested. So there’s a number of different sort of opportunities for legal operations to get involved. But those I would say are probably the primary ways that we get engaged.

Tim Haley 14:09

Yeah, so, and those are really important pricing and alternative fee arrangements, business development guidelines. In your experience, and I don’t just mean your experience, I know you’re connected with a lot of legal ops people everywhere. Are the legal ops folks in the firms, are they out on the leading edge of the firms? Are they mostly following, or is it a mix? Is it all over the board?

Esther Bowers 14:36

So, I would say the legal ops professionals that I know in peer firms are ahead of the curve. They’re leading, they’re in the forefront. They see what clients are asking for. They see where there are opportunities to improve. They see where there’s opportunities to gain a competitive advantage as well. They see opportunities where a margin can be improved, how to go to market in a more strategic way. They see how questions are being asked from clients or prospective clients within RFPs to understand really what’s driving that decision, the purchasing decision, and knowing how to align services that are speaking directly to what the client is asking or what the prospect is asking for. So, I would say definitely they’re leading their firms in change.

Tim Haley 15:30

Excellent. With respect to the… Well, I’ll ask the question this way. In your network of legal ops professionals, what are some of the biggest challenges, just generically that you all face?

Esther Bowers 15:45

I think probably one of the biggest challenges is breaking down the natural silos that exist within a law firm environment. And the education of bringing people along to understand how all of these things connect and how each part of them, each piece of this contributes to the larger whole, and to the client relationship, and what the client experiences in working with us. So one of the biggest challenges is breaking down those walls, the communication, and then just the education of understanding all of those pieces and how they fit together.

Esther Bowers 16:27

I think a second part of it, one of the bigger challenges is capturing the value and communicating the value of the legal operations role. I think some of it’s obvious, right? You can see that in margins, you can see that in revenue, but there are things that are less obvious. When you’ve satisfied a client in a way that maybe they hadn’t or you went into your work but you didn’t know it was directly related to the legal operations offerings. So, there’s some challenges in capturing what the value is to the firm and then communicating that out.

Esther Bowers 17:00

I think a third one is probably in the same vein, is the understanding of it too, and that this is sort of a way to enhance the client relationship. The involvement of legal operations can be a very big competitive advantage if used and understood. So, I think helping partners understand how to engage legal operations and the various functions within that to improve their practices, to drive change, to help in the client relationships, that’s definitely a huge challenge.

Tim Haley 17:43

So, you talked a lot there on value and mechanics of the legal ops. You mentioned early on, breaking down silos. I don’t want you to give away all your secrets, but how, big picture, what are the strategies to go about breaking down silos internally in firms?

Esther Bowers 18:00

Yeah, I think one of those strategies that I’ve tried to apply is the idea of enrollments. Enrolling others into the idea, enrolling them into the vision, and helping them understand that what we’re doing here improves and helps maybe pain points that they’re experiencing within their own respective areas. How do we collectively advance goals? What are your goals? How do we work with them together? And if we’re all working together, we can improve how we all function separately and collectively.

Esther Bowers 18:39

That, as well as finding opportunities to provide someone else to shine or visibility into something that someone’s doing that’s unique or great, and kind of highlighting that new way of doing something or a new idea or new initiative helps to continue to build that trust. And I think the trust piece is huge here in the breaking down the silos, is because once they understand that we’re all working together towards a collective goal and vision and it’s not my agenda, your agenda, it is, we are all here to serve the firm and to serve our clients. I think that’s been largely successful.

Tim Haley 19:25

Fantastic. So, legal ops in law firms are on the rise, they’re growing. How does the growth of the legal ops departments within the firms, how does that shape firms strategy, big picture in the macro market out there?

Esther Bowers 19:41

Sure. So, I think I alluded to this in a couple of questions ago, in that illegal operations are out in front of seeing what clients are asking for, and they also see areas of opportunity. So, we understand how firms are going to market with some of these services, we consume a lot of data about what clients are asked for within surveys and reports, making sure that our strategy from a firm perspective is aligning with that. And so, a lot of the initiatives that are being proposed by legal operations groups are in direct response to what’s happening with clients. We have the data, we understand what our clients are asking, we know what’s happening in the market, and collectively, that together tells a really compelling story. And I think that elevates the legal operations roles into a more strategic, rather than a tactical. Just being seen as strategic, but also being able to execute on the tactical elements, I think that’s been huge in both my own experience, but also in observing some of my peers at other firms.

Tim Haley 20:54

Great. So building out a legal ops department, if you’re, and you are, I mean, you’re the Director of Practice Management. So when you’re building out your own team internally, what are the criteria? What are the characteristics? What are the types of people you’re looking for?

Esther Bowers 21:09

Well, that’s a great question. I mean, you kind of need a mix of individuals with various talents, right? You’re going to need people that challenge ideas in a productive way, people that compliment skill sets. I see that the greatest opportunity to build out a team is to understand where your gaps are, as it pertains to the larger vision. Knowing where you want to go with the group and with the firm long-term, and knowing the incremental steps that need to get there and the skill sets that are going to help you get those things accomplished. And then also, some of that’s just time, right? You see at this crossing point, we understand we need this resource. We need someone to be able to fill in this area, this need, this gap.

Esther Bowers 21:56

Beyond that, some of those more soft skills, but they’re not necessarily soft skills, are people that are, what we refer to as entrepreneurs. I love someone that can come in to understand how to advance things, how to own something and build it out, because most of our functions within firms, legal ops, both from internally and in a client organization, we’re functioning like that. We’re functioning from a building a business, building something within a larger organization. This didn’t exist before. We have to set the vision, we have to set our budget, our team. We need to understand where we need to go, our product, what we’re building, our service. So someone that can come in, understand the vision, the directive, to have new ideas, challenge ideas, and then just run with something, is huge in my world.

Tim Haley 22:54

No, that’s great. What is fascinating to me is at no point in there did you mention the need for a JD or an MBA or any kind of specific degree. Are those experiences or degrees, are they helpful, are they hurtful? Maybe a mix of both?

Esther Bowers 23:10

I think it really depends on the individual, to be honest. I mean, I appreciate the academic accomplishments of individuals. I think there’s something about having a JD that immediately credentials people within the law firm, but that’s not necessarily, it’s not necessary, I’ll just say that. There are members on the team that have JDs that are fantastic. They understand the work, but they also understand the workflows. And then there are others who don’t. So, I think it largely depends on the role and the individual.

Tim Haley 23:45

Awesome. So, one of the things that I’ve watched in my role at Latitude, as kind of watching the market as a whole, is this continual conversation. And there’s groups like the ACC that do it, and there’s groups like Legal Value Network that do it, and there’s ALM, there’s little trade pieces or whatever. And there’s this ongoing conversation between an in-house legal department and a law firm, generically, that is underscoring is the foundation of these individual conversations that’s going on between specific departments and specific firms.

Tim Haley 24:19

What I’ve seen in this generic conversation is the two sides are, can be very far apart and have complete opposite incentives. So the internal incentives, obviously, I mean, big picture, right? The firm needs to maximize profit. The in-house legal department needs to minimize spend. These two things are fundamentally at odds. And it seems, at least in the national conversation, the generic one, to kind of be pulling the two sides further and further apart. What do you think is the role of legal ops in trying to bridge that gap or to help bring those sides back together?

Esther Bowers 24:58

First of all, I think there’s a lack of communication there. So, there’s connecting people that are in legal ops roles with one another to explore solutions, would be really big. So that would open the door to that communication, so that we can ask the questions that our partners aren’t necessarily asking or should be asking, really. I mean, they’re positioned to provide legal strategy, and in my experience, the business professionals interacting with the business professionals can help with the operations elements and allow the legal teams to focus on legal strategy. So, we’re not having the communication with the right people to understand, what are the drivers for them for the client side? And be able to develop creative ways of doing it to achieve those objectives on the law firm end. Understanding what our goals and our objectives are on our side as well.

Esther Bowers 26:03

But I don’t believe that they have to be at odds at all. I think there are ways to come together and understand. I mean, I truly believe that any client organization appreciates when their law firm can function, and there’s business drivers for us as well. I think they appreciate that their firms can perform and operate in a smart business with smart business mind. So, I don’t believe that they have to be at odds. I think it’s just about connecting the right people to have the communication about what’s driving this. Here’s where I’m at, how do we come together and figure out how to make this work for everyone? That’s my observation.

Tim Haley 26:43

And as legal ops on both sides, I mean, it is your job to find solutions, find creative solutions sometimes to whatever problem is out there once you identify it.

Esther Bowers 26:55

Yeah, absolutely, that’s precisely the role. And then to sell it, right? You got to sell it to the partner and say, “This is really what they want to do. Here’s how we can do it,” and sell it to the client as well. And there has to be a degree of trust there, both from the client side as well as with the partner for a legal ops. And with law firm environment, there has to be a lot of trust for that relationship to be opened up, but also for trusting that the execution of or an implementation of some idea will actually work, or may not work in some situations, but that it may work in another and would in large part offset.

Tim Haley 27:37

Yeah, I like that. I mean, lawyers in general get hired because whomever hires them trusts them. And so what you’re describing is a transfer of trust from the lawyer to lawyer to legal ops to legal ops. Is that how you’re seeing it play out?

Esther Bowers 27:52

Yes, absolutely. I think one of the most successful situations like this just came up recently where there was a fairly junior legal operations professional in their role on the client side, understanding that this individual is just trying to get their arms around what’s going on. On our end we have some solutions that can help that individual just get organized, and we can provide that value. That immediately built trust, both from our partner’s perspective because they said, “Oh, wow, look what we’re able to offer to our clients,” and wow them on the client side. They were thrilled to have the legal operations assistance from in our firm be able to stand up data points and reports that help them be able to report up.

Tim Haley 28:42

That’s fantastic. So, legal ops is growing, we’ve got a lot of different examples. We talked a lot about different examples of what’s going on currently. Where do you see legal ops going in the future?

Esther Bowers 28:54

I think it’s just going to continue to grow, because it just takes on so many other areas that there’s sort of a saying within my peers that basically we just, our roles keep expanding because we see where there’s opportunities to do something better or more connected. So our roles continue to grow, and there’s so many different areas that if brought together, I keep saying together, but when they’re brought together, they just work more efficiently. There’s less partner involvement and time that’s spent administratively. There’s higher value that’s provided both to the firm and to our clients. So, I see it just continuing to expand as they’re taking on different roles and different responsibilities. So, I think we just say we just get stuff done. Unfortunately, we just see something that’s broken and we have to take it on and get it fixed.

Tim Haley 30:09

Well, Esther, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, this was Esther Bowers, the Director of Practice Management at the Honigman Firm. Thanks so much. Hopefully with the rate of evolution, hopefully we can have you back here sometime in the future and tell us about all that’s changed since June 2021.

Esther Bowers 30:26

Thanks, Tim. It’s been a pleasure.

Tim Haley 30:36

Well, Candice, that was Esther Bowers at the Honigman firm, discussing her career in legal ops and where she sees the future going. What’d you think?

Candice Reed 30:44

I think it’s really interesting. One thing that she pointed out that we see interviewing candidates for legal operations positions, both in law firms and in corporate legal departments, is that the resumes of these candidates are not the same. As Esther mentioned, some people come into these roles or into this specialty through law. So they’re JDs, they’re former practicing lawyers who are now working on the business side of law, and there are also paralegals who are moving into these roles. And then, there are professionals who are expertise in specific fields like marketing or accounting, who have then taken on additional areas of responsibility like procurement, and e-discovery, and data management, client management, all of the various responsibilities that legal ops professionals touch. So, it’s interesting that there’s not one specific profile of the perfect candidate. Right? There are lots of different ways into this specialty within the legal industry.

Tim Haley 32:10

That’s right, and I think paralegals or other law firm employees that take on additional responsibilities, we can leave to our imagination whether they volunteered or were drafted. But expertise comes in all different kinds of ways.

Candice Reed 32:25

Yeah. We saw this a lot when I was in-house, probably at least my experience was that I saw it more in-house than at a law firm, where in-house, there weren’t the traditionally defined roles for the team members within the legal department. So it was basically like, oh, what can you do or what are you willing to do?

Tim Haley 32:49

Right.

Candice Reed 32:50

Oh, you’re willing to review and negotiate contracts and put together a data retention policy and manage our e-discovery review team? Great. You do that, and then you start to collect different tasks, and all of a sudden you’re the legal ops person.

Tim Haley 33:08

Yeah. I envision a manager saying, “Oh, wait, you can do this. Phew, okay, that’s yours. Come back to me next week.” Right?

Candice Reed 33:16

Right.

Tim Haley 33:16

That’s in my mind, that’s what I see happening. But I don’t know, maybe that’s real.

Candice Reed 33:20

Yeah. Well, and I also think that it’s a valid way of showing your worth within a legal department or in the case here, a law firm, or kind of rising up the ladder. I mean, one thing that we are seeing is that these legal operations positions are very well paid positions for the most part, or at least there are high paying positions and low paying positions too, depending upon the work that you’re doing. But I think that it’s a real interesting area and something that both attorneys and people who are just really organized and really good at multitasking and juggling a lot of areas of responsibility should consider getting into and thinking about. We certainly have a lot of those opportunities on our website.

Tim Haley 34:11

Yeah, and to sum it up for the listeners, I mean, it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, doesn’t matter what your experience is, if you have interest and ability, this is an area of immense growth. And people, firms, companies, they need you. So check out our website, check out opportunities on other websites if you as a career hunter, job searcher are looking to get into the legal ops space.

Candice Reed 34:34

Absolutely. So Tim, what are we going to be talking about on our next episode?

Tim Haley 34:38

Oh, I don’t know, Candice. Let’s see, our next episode in a couple weeks is right at the turn of summer.

Candice Reed 34:47

Summer.

Tim Haley 34:50

Maybe we’ll get into some of our, figure out what our summertime hits candidates of 2021 would be. Maybe the summer song. We can get into all sorts of stuff. We’re going to just talk about summertime, what lawyers do during summertime, maybe what they don’t do during summertime, maybe what they should do during summertime, and we’ll just have some fun with it. It’ll be another one-

Candice Reed 35:10

Yeah, this will be a fun one.

Tim Haley 35:11

Just me and Candice telling you everything we know. Well, not everything we know.

Tim Haley 35:23

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