Akshay Verma led legal ops at Facebook and Coinbase before moving to the C-suite. Now chief operating officer at contract tech startup SpotDraft, Verma chatted with me about the value legal operations can bring to a corporate legal team. Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
Q: What’s the hardest problem in legal ops that you’ve had to solve?
This is the crux of legal operations, it’s the foundation of how we succeed: change management. And that’s getting people to do something that is new and feels uncomfortable, at scale.
The very first project that I did at Facebook was moving a large part of our external spend off hourly fees to value-based pricing. And I had to convince an entire team of litigators and regulatory lawyers who had strong relationships with their law firms, who were all on hourly billing, to do something differently. And that was hard. It took months.
Q: How does the legal ops role change after you’ve set up core processes like contract lifecycle management and e-billing?
With how quickly technology is evolving and developing now, new ideas pop up all the time.
You should always want to get better. The minute that you turn your mindset from “I can always get better” to “Yeah, I’m good now,” that’s when you start failing.
Q: If you could require all law school students to take one class, what would it be?
I want an entire slew of classes because just one is not going to cut it. A set of courses that cover legal technology for lawyers. A class that covers financial acumen. And then one that is kind of more hands on, operational in nature. That would be my holy trinity for law schools.
Q: What do you think of the term nonlawyer?
I think it’s derogatory, to be honest. Yeah, I hate it. I think it needs to die like a quick death. Not even a slow one. I want it erased from people’s lexicon.
This one has a real implication in how the person who uses that word feels towards people who aren’t lawyers but are important parts of the legal department. I was a paralegal before I went to law school. I know exactly how that feels. I know exactly how law firm lawyers view their paralegals, for the most part. I know exactly how in-house lawyers view their legal professional counterparts.
Q: How do GCs generally view legal ops?
I’d say maybe 10, 15, 20% of GCs really understand. You’ve got this entire set of GCs who are like, “What do I need legal ops for?”
There are plenty out there that say “I should hire legal ops.” But they don’t set them up for success because they don’t understand the value. They treat them like admins. They don’t understand the capability that legal operations should bring.
Q: Who’s your favorite fictional legal character?
Jake Brigance in “A Time to Kill.” Fantastic John Grisham novel. Movie was powerful as well.
What’s the hardest problem you’ve tackled in legal ops? Drop me a line at eochsner@bloombergindustry.com.
