Over the past several years, legal operations (legal ops) has become a critical function within corporate legal departments and law firms. Legal ops professionals are responsible for managing budgets, implementing technology, improving processes, and driving efficiency – ultimately enhancing the value delivered by legal teams. Yet the skill set required for professionals to be successful in legal ops roles – including skills that come from across the disciplines of law, business, and technology – is not usually the focus of traditional legal (JD) training.
Bridging the Gap Between Legal and Business Needs
Legal ops professionals are uniquely positioned to effectively meld legal and business priorities. These interdisciplinary professionals are tasked not only with understanding legal nuances but also with managing corporate goals and driving efficiencies. According to Wendy Rubas, Chief Legal Officer at Innovaccer and Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, “The need for legal ops arose because lawyers often are not prepared or equipped for the corporate world where their peers operate with profits and losses and performance metrics.” Legal ops, she explained, requires a different mindset. “It’s not enough to simply work hard. The challenge is to do work that genuinely matters to the business and to define and measure what a ‘good job’ looks like in this context,” Rubas said.
Programs like Northwestern Pritzker Law’s Master of Science in Law (MSL) degree prepare students for legal ops roles by developing their skills in areas such as technology, analytics, AI, corporate governance, and project management. Rubas felt she had hit paydirt when she discovered that Northwestern Law was training interdisciplinary STEM professionals at the intersection of law, business, and tech; she has since hired numerous MSL students and graduates who “understand law enough to talk to lawyers, but also have the technological and analytical skills to drive change.” She described these employees as invaluable team members who could help build a “legal operating system” analogous to a smartphone’s OS – enabling the integration of different tools and systems for optimal performance.
Helping Facilitate Change in a Resistant Environment
“Legal ops is about bringing change to a chaotic, busy, very difficult environment,” Rubas noted, emphasizing the need for change-management skills. Lawyers, often resistant to change, benefit from the MSL-trained professional’s unique understanding of the legal industry and ability to foster collaboration in a way that maintains the delicate balance between different departmental priorities.
Legal ops professionals are not just administrators or assistants; they are skilled strategists who influence company culture and operations through their work. Rubas explained that she sometimes had to protect her MSL hires from being “stolen” by other departments due to their problem-solving abilities and impact. “With their training in negotiation, communication, and persuasion, MSL graduates become translators who can connect legal functions to broader business strategies,” Rubas said.
Legal Ops as a Growing Field with Expanding Influence
The demand for legal ops professionals is rapidly increasing, with salaries reflecting the value of these skills as businesses recognize the strategic advantage of having non-lawyers with legal knowledge on their legal teams.
“This evolution is driven by pressure from the top – from CEOs, COOs, and boards – who expect their legal teams to contribute to business goals,” Rubas said. She believes the field will grow exponentially, and non-lawyers will increasingly take on key functions in legal departments, especially in roles like contract management, technology integration, litigation management, process improvement, project management, and others. These are complex areas ripe for disruption, where legal ops professionals can use technology and drive innovations that benefit the entire organization.
A Vision for Interdisciplinary Education in Law, Business, and Technology
“The MSL opens doors for more people to engage in legal work,” said Daniel B. Rodriguez, Harold Washington Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and a co-founder of the MSL program. Launched more than a decade ago with the goal of preparing professionals for roles at the intersection of law, business, and technology, the STEM-focused MSL responds to the evolving needs of the modern legal industry. “The MSL curriculum is not just a repurposed JD curriculum,” said Rodriguez. “With bespoke, tailored courses that emphasize problem-solving, process management, and technological fluency, the MSL is unlike any other master’s degree in law. It provides students with a breadth and depth of legal knowledge that allows them to think and reason like a lawyer and also to understand the business of law.” This interdisciplinary approach is particularly valuable for roles in legal ops, where professionals need to understand legal principles and also be able to focus on business performance, technology, and process improvement.
For companies seeking strategic and adaptable legal operations talent, Northwestern MSL graduates bring a valuable blend of legal understanding, business acumen, and technological proficiency that is not only rare but also essential in the modern legal landscape. As the demand for legal operations expertise continues to grow, MSL graduates are uniquely positioned to lead the charge, transforming legal departments and contributing to broader business goals.
