CLOC was launched in 2009 by two Silicon Valley operations veterans—Stephanie Corey and Connie Brenton. Originally the group included about 30 legal ops pros from the law departments of Cisco, Google, Adobe, Amazon, Qualcomm, and other companies but now membership and influence are exploding.

CLOC now has 1400 members in 43 states and 37 countries. Attendance of the flagship CLOC conference in Las Vegas is doubling year on year, and its core philosophies, disciplines, and teachings are permeating the industry.

The responsibilities of legal operations managers vary widely from department to department, so there’s no set way to define the job. Along with managing outside counsel and vendors, some operation specialists oversee department budgeting and staffing, as well as diversity and pro bono programs.

Others have also taken take the lead on implementing e-billing and/or e-contract management systems and other technology initiatives. Whatever their specific duties, however, CLOC co-founders Brenton and Corey say that over the past decade the general trend has been clear: Legal ops managers have been gaining significantly more clout. That’s definitely been the case inside corporate legal departments, where they note most operations managers now report directly to GCs and many have risen to VP and other senior management slots.

But the same thing could be said about the growing influence of legal operations pros on the industry as a whole. Especially given their increasing sway on department spending habits and decisions. As Brenton points out: “We carry the budgets for billions of dollars in legal spend.”
Source Bloomberg Law