Your in-house legal function is under pressure to deliver more with less – driving efficiency, ensuring cost certainty, and demonstrating strategic value to the business. That’s where we come in. Ashurst Perkins Coie's Legal Operations team combines deep experience in legal project management, process improvement, and transformation to help you reimagine how legal services are delivered.
We work hand in hand with you to understand your strategic objectives and operational challenges, then deploy advanced frameworks and methodologies to transform the way you work.
We’re committed to helping you find and increase efficiencies in your own operations. We do that by working with you to really understand your big picture strategic objectives and granular operational needs, as well as your pain points, and use our deep legal transformation knowledge and experience to help you reimagine your legal services delivery.
Large and complex legal projects require sophisticated legal project management and process improvement. We help you improve ways of working, methods of delivery and quality of outcomes. Our solutions-oriented Legal Operations team, including members experienced in digital and delivery, manage large or complex contentious and non-contentious projects, reengineer workstreams to optimize efficiency, and stay on budget.
Our services
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Legal project management
Read moreLegal project management
Clients seek predictability, transparency and discipline with respect to their legal matters, irrespective of their size or complexity. With advancements in operational enablers, including AI, clients’ expectations around legal service delivery have evolved and matured to expect that our matter teams:
- Plan how the matter will be delivered within scope, price and/or agreed timeframes.
- Discuss and agree the application of efficiency enablers at the outset of an engagement – including:
- optimised workflows and processes
- AI and technology.
- Anticipate next steps and likely issues, using experience to flag and manage what is coming.
- Track costs and measure progress towards milestones to provide transparency and avoid surprises.
- Review and learn so that we continuously improve our service delivery.
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Legal operations advisory
Read moreLegal operations advisory
Legal departments are under pressure to transform because of cost pressures, changing buyer behaviour and the proliferation of technology and AI.
Our Legal Operations team is relentlessly client focused, with deep global and regional experience helping General Counsel and their teams solve strategic and operational challenges.
We help organizations improve the delivery of enterprise-wide legal services while cultivating cost-effective and innovative legal operations, including through the following services:- Legal department transformation consulting
- Legal technology advisory and implementation
- Legal operations solution design and delivery
- Legal managed services, including contract review and contract remediation for major projects and transactions.
Case study
Client context
The in-house legal department, acting under a direct mandate from the CFO, was tasked with transforming its operating model to support the organization's ambitious growth targets without a commensurate increase in the legal budget.
Project goals
As part of this mandate, the General Counsel was required to reduce the number of direct reports, explore the potential for leveraging alternative delivery models, and increase the legal department's adoption of technology, with a particular focus on GenAI and agentic workflows.
Our solution
- Conducted key stakeholder interviews to understand current pain points and facilitated a workshop with the entire legal leadership team to align on goals and obtain buy-in.
- Assessed and recommended the appropriate organizational structure for the legal department based on industry best practice.
- Recommended a 15-initiative transformation roadmap across 8 legal operating model components, with a key focus on:
- Technology and automation
- Operating model
- Process optimization
- Risk management and compliance.
Outcome
As a result of this transformation project, our client's legal team has earned a reputation as the most-innovative, forward-thinking corporate function. Key results include:
- Optimized organizational structure with a clearly defined RACI matrix, leading to clear roles and responsibilities and greater transparency.
- Designed an end-state procurement contracting process that incorporates AI and automation.
- Identified an initial list of potential technology solutions including GenAI uses cases.
- Prioritized a list of non-strategic and low-value tasks/processes that could be moved to a Center of Excellence to free up the legal team's time.
