Legal Operations Management (LOM) is the term given for all the activities, practices, and surrounding strategies that in-house legal departments use to manage finances, matters, vendors, knowledge, and operations. Legal Operations Management is an evolved form of Enterprise Legal Management (ELM); it expands the responsibilities of the legal department beyond legal advisers and helps them emerge as exceptional business leaders. While ELM helps manage legal activity at the matter level, LOM provides all of the tools required to efficiently run and manage the entire legal department.
The evolution of Legal Operations Management software can be traced backed to the litigation and insurance industries, where e-Billing emerged to solve specific process challenges. As the legal department’s needs evolved over time, there was a shift from e-billing towards ELM and then towards adopting LOM platform.
Today, it is no longer acceptable for legal teams to limit themselves to only managing legal activities – they must play a much larger role in the organization and act as strategic business partners. A comprehensive Legal Operations Management platform enables this, elevating general counsel and their legal teams to rise as leaders within their companies.