Running Legal Like A Business

Companies support their executives in various ways, and many are intentionally focused on improving business acumen, which elevates corporate functionality and performance. If a company is running legal like a business, then the law department must also undergo programs to improve executive performance.

On April 18, 2025, in the Corporate Counsel Business Journal, editor Kristen Calve wrote this (extracted exactly from CCBJ.com):

“Decision fatigue isn't just annoying—it's an invisible predator eating away at executive effectiveness. Korn Ferry Advance experts Kendra Marion and James Bywater emphasize that this isn't ordinary exhaustion: it's an insidious drain on your team's judgment, sparking procrastination and pushing leaders toward costly, impulsive decisions.
If you're committed to keeping your team sharp and effective, get proactive. Streamline trivial choices, delegate strategically, reserve your toughest decisions for your sharpest hours (usually mornings), and stop revisiting decisions you've already made. Make the call, own it, and move forward.”

The operative statement is at the end: Streamline trivial choices, delegate strategically, etc. These points of action from Korn Ferry, and espoused by CCBJ.com, can be critical aspects of a maturing law department, especially if you’re running legal like a business. Executive performance and productivity contribute to data-driven decision-making, while lawyers’ up-skilling and growth are in synch with those objectives.

What Is Running Legal Like A Business

The phrase, running legal like a business, is now branded as an actual event. You can see this conference, sponsored by LegalOps.com, with its 2025 event in September at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

As part of its leadership track at the Running Legal Like a Business conference, attendees, who may be legal operations professionals, GCs, in-house lawyers, and paralegals, can bone up on leadership skills like personal effectiveness, emotional intelligence, speaking, resilience and well-being, personality, high achievers, and building a personal brand.
Breaking down the law department requires an eagle eye on its human characteristics.

It takes cohesive relationships and collaboration in the running of legal like a business. People must get along and find ways to return to work and be among disparate personalities that function in a chaotic environment. Legal operations professionals, already taxed with high-performance objectives, must assess the human side of collaboration to ensure the right fit, the right teams and adherence to company standards of productivity.

Lawyer Well-Being Critical To Running Legal Like a Business

The Institute for Well-Being in Law developed a task force in 2017 to address lawyer well-being. A report was written to unlock the mental health issues affecting the legal profession.

 (Source: screenshot from Institute for Well-Being in Law)

The result was the formation of the Institute for Well-Being in 2020. The organization’s National Task Force issued a report and also defined well-being: “Full well-being is multi-dimensional and requires things like connection, belonging, continual growth, and aligning our lives with our values. It requires that we take care of all aspects of our lives.”

At the core of its mission, the Institute for Well-Being in Law wants to lead a culture shift to establish well-being as a core centerpiece of professional success.

The American Bar Association also addresses lawyer well-being in its resources for the legal profession. Practically all state bar associations have programs for lawyer mindfulness and well-being to help legal professionals manage the chaotic climate that is the legal profession.

Running legal like a business can be defined in various ways, depending on the organization and person. Running legal like a business to a technology provider implies having the right software to create a cohesive, collaborative and productive environment for all legal professionals to communicate as a team. Contact us to learn more.