Get A Legal Operations Health Check

Legal operations teams spend every day looking ahead: managing matters, monitoring outside counsel spend, improving workflows, evaluating technology, and responding to new demands from the business. Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to stop and take stock.

A Legal Operations Health Check provides an objective look at how your legal department operates, where opportunities for improvement exist and which actions deserve priority. Rather than trying to improve everything at once, a health check helps legal leaders focus resources on the areas most likely to make a measurable difference.

LexisNexis^® CounselLink^® is offering a consultative Legal Operations Health Check designed to answer two fundamental questions: Where do you stand, and what should you do next?

What Is a Legal Operations Health Check?

A legal operations health check is a structured assessment of the processes, practices and capabilities that support the business of legal. Think of it as taking the pulse of the legal department’s operation.

How effectively does the department manage legal intake? How well are outside counsel and vendors managed? Is legal spend visible and controlled? Are pricing strategies working? Can leaders readily measure performance? Are workflows consistent? Is the department prepared to adopt AI responsibly?

Looking at these areas together provides a clearer picture than evaluating an individual process or isolated technology. The goal isn't to uncover everything that's wrong. It's to identify where meaningful opportunities exist and determine what deserves attention first.

Why Take Stock of Legal Department Performance?

Legal departments face growing expectations to do more than manage legal work. Business leaders expect visibility into legal spend, performance and outcomes, while legal teams are simultaneously being asked to improve efficiency and make thoughtful decisions about technology and AI. The value question, how much value does the legal department deliver, is top of mind, and legal operations is expected to provide proof points.

Without periodic assessments of operations, it's easy for processes to evolve incrementally. A workaround becomes routine. A report requires more manual effort. Work intake differs among teams. Vendor information lives in different places. A technology investment isn't being used to its full potential.

None of these issues necessarily requires a major overhaul. Some may be addressed with a relatively simple process change. Others may point to a larger opportunity. The value of a health check is knowing the difference.

Do You Have the Tools to See How Legal Operations Is Performing?

Effective legal operations requires more than software. Teams need the right combination of processes, data, technology, and visibility to understand what's happening across the department.

That includes consistent intake and workflows, reliable matter and vendor information, visibility into legal spend and pricing, meaningful performance measures, reporting and analytics that surface useful insights, and appropriate governance for emerging technology such as AI.

More importantly, these capabilities need to work together.

When information is fragmented across processes and systems, assessing performance becomes harder. When legal operations has reliable information and greater visibility across its work, teams are better equipped to identify gaps, measure progress and determine where improvement will have the greatest impact.

What Do You Receive from the Legal Operations Health Check?

The LexisNexis CounselLink Legal Operations Health Check combines a short online assessment with a 60-minute discovery conversation to understand your legal department's priorities and operating environment.

The resulting report provides four practical outputs:

• Maturity Snapshot: A clear view of operations across intake, pricing, vendor management, legal spend, and performance.
• Peer-Informed Benchmarks: Perspective on how your organization compares with peers and leading practices, helping identify areas where additional value may be available.

The CounselLink Insights Benchmarking Database provides data about actual invoices paid to outside counsel by legal departments of all sizes.

• Prioritized Opportunities: Five high-impact improvement opportunities, ranked according to the goals your organization identifies as most important.
• 24-Month Roadmap: A practical sequence of quick wins, medium-term improvements and strategic initiatives that gives leadership a clearer path forward.

The objective isn't assessment for assessment's sake. It's to turn what you learn into an actionable plan.

The CounselLink Strategic Services team conducts each assessment based on data from the CounselLink Insights Benchmarking Database. The experts can evaluate the status of the legal operations function by analyzing legal spend and from answers provided in the easy survey.

Assess Legal Operations and What’s Next

Legal operations improvement doesn't have to begin with a major technology project or sweeping transformation. It can begin with a clearer understanding of what’s working, what could work better and where your team should focus next.

The CounselLink Legal Operations Health Check provides that starting point: an objective assessment, peer-informed perspective and prioritized roadmap your team can use when ready.

Get your Legal Operations Health Check and find out where your next opportunity begins.