In a recent Platforum9 ession, Vadym Kuzmenko, a legal operations professional at Noerr, one of Germany’s largest law firms, shared valuable perspectives on how legal operations can transform law firm performance and client experience. Drawing from his background transitioning from traditional legal practice to operations and technology implementation, Kuzmenko offered practical insights that apply to firms of all sizes.
The Business of Law: When to Invest in Legal Operations
One of the first questions addressed was when firms should consider investing in dedicated legal operations resources. While Kuzmenko noted that approximately 90% of firms with 250+ professionals already have someone in an operations role, he emphasised that the decision isn’t purely about size.
“It boils down to the question: do you want to run your law firm as a classical law firm, or do you want to run your law firm as a business?” Kuzmenko explained. When firm leaders begin thinking about pricing strategies, efficiency gains, technology implementation, and product development, they’ve effectively crossed the threshold where operations support becomes essential.
“Imagine any company out there without a COO,” he noted. “Obviously not everyone has a COO, but it’s slowly becoming a standard. I think that’s the same for a law firm – if you don’t have anyone working on that side, you’re missing an opportunity.”
Starting Small: Legal Operations Without Dedicated Staff
For smaller firms not yet ready to hire dedicated operations personnel, Kuzmenko suggested beginning with process awareness. “One thing that is essential is being aware that you have processes and being aware of them,” he advised.
He recommended viewing legal service delivery through a manufacturing lens: “Treat it as a manufacturing process where you can use Lean Six Sigma or Kanban or whatever is out there to actually see where are the bottlenecks, where are the things that are not increasing the value that we deliver to clients, where are things that we pay too much for.”
This process-focused mindset doesn’t require a dedicated role. Solo practitioners and smaller firms can adopt this perspective by intentionally documenting their workflows, identifying inefficiencies, and making incremental improvements.
The Three Pillars of Effective Legal Operations
According to Kuzmenko, legal operations consists of three main components:
- Process Optimisation: “Legal operations as such is rather a role that oversees everything from above, on a very high level. You look at the processes, you look at your tech.”
- Technology Implementation: “Currently most of the things will be kind of tech-driven, but still doesn’t have to be. If you have a process and you understand, ‘Oh, there’s a particular person who always does this, and that’s the bottleneck,’ then just teaching someone else to do the same thing to eliminate a bottleneck doesn’t involve any tech at all.”
- Data Analysis: “If you want to professionalise it, if you want to really build that as a business, you need data. You need data-driven decisions, you need data analysis, you need KPIs, OKRs.”
Kuzmenko emphasised that many lawyers aren’t trained to think in terms of metrics and data visualisation. “I don’t think many people have those KPIs, OKRs, any thinking of ‘I will visualise my output in a dashboard. I will define what I need. I will define the value that I deliver to my clients.'”
A Real-World Success Story: The “Process House” Project
To illustrate legal operations’ impact, Kuzmenko shared a successful project at his firm. The team built what they called a “process house” – a standardised way of documenting all processes in the law firm, from HR and travel booking to client engagement.
When examining these processes, they discovered a particularly inefficient workflow around award submissions. “It was a very manual process. Lawyers would have to think, ‘What were the transactions that I worked on a year ago? And the most important ones that we can use for a submission?’ Then you would have to look for data on it.”
The solution was creating a centralised repository of all projects across different teams. “We automated the data extraction with AI,” Kuzmenko explained. “When you finish a project, you just throw the documents into the platform. It extracts all the data and prefills almost 80% of all the fields that are required.”
This centralised, partially automated system not only streamlined award submissions but also created a valuable resource for business development, enabling the firm to identify potential cross-selling opportunities with existing clients.
Organisational Positioning: Where Does Legal Ops Belong?
When asked about the ideal reporting structure for legal operations professionals, Kuzmenko suggested that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. “It really depends on the overall structure of the law firm and the hierarchy,” he noted.
In smaller firms, reporting directly to managing partners might make sense. In larger organisations, he recommended positioning legal operations within the innovation team – but crucially, not as a subset of IT.
“I think ideally the innovation team is not inside of the IT team,” Kuzmenko explained, referencing concepts from Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” “If you are disrupting, if you are innovating, it’s ideal for you to have a specific unit.”
He distinguished between the roles: “Innovation is rather ‘let us look at building new legal products, let us look at optimising processes.’ IT is rather ‘let’s keep the law firm running from an infrastructural perspective.’ It’s in a way a cost center.”
Proving Value to Partners: Beyond the “Fee Burning” Stereotype
Addressing the common perception that non-fee-earning roles are simply “fee burners,” Kuzmenko emphasised the importance of demonstrating clear return on investment for legal operations initiatives.
He shared an example from his current work on streamlining court communications: “My calculation, when I was presenting it to managing partners, was saying, ‘When we do this project, it will save us half a million a year if we automate a lot of redundant data pushing from one system into another, which is done manually.'”
With that kind of demonstrable value, he noted, “You are automatically not seen as a fee burner if you’re saving the money that is there.”
The Ideal Legal Ops Professional: A Rare Combination
When asked about the ideal background for legal operations professionals, Kuzmenko suggested that business expertise might actually be more valuable than legal training. “It’s almost better to have someone without the legal background,” he noted, “because what you need is rather a business background.”
The ideal candidate, however, combines three distinct skill sets: “The absolute unicorn, the ideal person will have legal understanding, business understanding, and tech understanding. If you have those three, that’s the winner.”
Since finding these “unicorns” is challenging, Kuzmenko suggested that most legal operations professionals transition from one of these areas and gradually develop expertise in the others. A lawyer might learn business and technology skills, or a business professional might gain understanding of legal workflows.
“It is not necessary for you as a legal ops person to be able to give legal advice,” he emphasised. “It’s essential for you to understand how lawyers work, or even better, just be able to empathetically listen to lawyers who can tell you how they work.”
Enhancing Client Experience Through Legal Operations
Beyond internal efficiency, Kuzmenko highlighted how legal operations can transform client experience. “Clients don’t necessarily want a hundred percent bulletproof outcome with a hundred billable hours invested,” he explained. “They want their problem to be fixed.”
He shared how his firm has developed a collaborative platform where clients can track their matters in real time: “Our clients can come to our collaborative platform and see immediately where their case is, what deliverables are there, what was the budget, what are the current fees. They have a whole overview.”
This approach meets modern client expectations shaped by consumer experiences. “People are so used to Uber or whatever where they instantly can get a service. Legal is under pressure to deliver at least a comparably good user experience.”
Conclusion: The Evolution of Legal Practice
As the legal industry continues to evolve, legal operations represents a crucial bridge between traditional practice and modern business principles. Whether implemented through dedicated professionals in larger firms or as a mindset shift in smaller practices, operations-focused thinking helps firms deliver more value to clients while improving internal efficiency.
Kuzmenko’s insights suggest that the future belongs to firms willing to view themselves as businesses, apply data-driven decision-making, and redesign their processes with both lawyer and client experience in mind. For forward-thinking lawyers and firm leaders, investing in legal operations capabilities – whether through hiring, training, or simply adopting new perspectives – offers a powerful competitive advantage in an increasingly complex market.
