Practice Operations Support refers to the structured administrative and process support provided to legal practice groups to ensure that lawyers can focus on legal thinking - not operational tasks. 

It is the legal department’s internal “engine room,” where repeatable work is standardised, templates are maintained, and processes are executed with consistency and precision. Its inclusion on the Legal Operations Line reflects the need for the legal team to focus on the nitty gritty work that needs to be done to drive performance.

This station on the Legal Operations Line is often powered by a combination of paralegals, legal operations professionals, and process specialists who work alongside lawyers to manage the operational aspects of legal service delivery. 

Their work includes everything from document formatting and template management to process mapping, matter intake, and compliance tracking. The key theme is the optimisation of processes and procedures - the hidden performance infrastructure of every legal team. 

The goal is simple: free up lawyers to do what only lawyers can do. Every minute a lawyer spends formatting a document, chasing signatures, or manually updating a tracker is a minute of lost value. 

Practice Operations Support ensures that legal work is delivered efficiently, consistently, and at scale - without burning out your legal talent.

Critically, this station also lays the groundwork for legal automation. You cannot automate chaos. By standardising how legal work is done, Practice Operations Support creates the repeatable processes that legal tech can later digitise and scale.

The concepts discussed in this Station could easily be captured on one or more other stations on the GLS Legal Transformation Tube Map - but we have included it as separate station to make sure that in-house leaders are consciously thinking about “who” is going to be getting after the optimisation of processes that are often invisible and easy to ignore. 

The scope of Practice Operations Support typically includes:

◼️Template Management – Maintaining and updating legal templates, playbooks, and clause libraries.

◼️Process Execution – Managing repeatable workflows such as contract intake, approvals, and filing.

◼️Administrative Support – Handling document formatting, version control, and signature coordination.

◼️Matter Opening & Closing – Ensuring consistent matter lifecycle management across practice groups.

◼️Compliance & Audit Readiness – Maintaining records and documentation to support audits and reviews.

◼️Practice Group Coordination – Supporting team meetings, knowledge sharing, and task tracking.

◼️Process Mapping & SOPs – Documenting how legal work is done to enable consistency and training.

◼️Interface with Legal Tech – Operating and maintaining tools like matter management and e-signature platforms.

GLS has, through out its extensive work globally, identified more than 2500+ processes and procedures that underpin a modern and high performing legal department. We encourage you to explore the dedicated stations on Legal Operations Line dealing specifically with Processes & Procedures.

The Practice Operations Support station is considered a Repeater and Specialist  resource within the GLS Legal Operations model.

A Foundational Resource: Is responsible for determining the overall performance capabilities of a “critical” legal function. If it is not optimised, the function can never be optimised. 

A Repeater Resource: Supports the performance of multiple "critical" legal functions and as such represents a "ripple effect" productivity intervention point. 

A Specialist Resource: Is responsible for driving the performance of a very specific part of an individual legal function. Its productivity contribution is limited to that single legal function. 

The best practice features of the Practice Operations Support are as follows:

◼️Dedicated Ops Support Roles:  Paralegals, legal ops staff, or admin professionals embedded in practice groups.

◼️Standardised Templates & Tools:  A centralised library of up-to-date, approved legal documents.

◼️Documented Workflows:  Clear SOPs for common legal tasks, accessible to all team members.

◼️Centralised Task Management:  Shared platforms for tracking legal tasks and deadlines.

◼️Process Ownership:  Named individuals responsible for maintaining and improving key workflows.

◼️Training & Onboarding Support:  Ops staff help onboard new lawyers and maintain team continuity.

◼️Metrics & Reporting:  Tracking turnaround times, task volumes, and process compliance.

◼️Legal Tech Integration:  Ops staff manage and optimise the use of legal tools (e.g., e-signature, matter management).

Without wishing to sound self serving - using an expert in legal team process and procedure optimisation is by far and away the most qualitative and cost effective means of driving in-house legal department performance. Why? Well see if you disagree with the following:

(a) Legal Team Members: are far too expensive a resource to be plotting out basic operational workflows in addition to their legal work - and their expertise is limited to “front of house” as opposed to systems level; and 
(b) Paralegals: whilst more cost effective - do not necessarily have the practitioner perspective that can allow for proper process identification and optimisation.

This is just one area where using dedicate experts who have the diagnostic tools and benchmark data on what world class process and procedure optimisation looks like - makes all the sense in the world. 

Take a read of our thought leadership piece on processes and procedures - your core legal department infrastructure to discover critical insights on the role they play to help your legal team achieve industrial scale legal outputs. 

The Practice Operations Support station delivers the following value to the Business:

◼️Faster Legal Turnaround – Admin and process tasks are handled efficiently, accelerating legal delivery.

◼️Improved Consistency – Standardised templates and workflows reduce risk and improve quality.

◼️Lower Legal Spend – Lawyers focus on high-value work, reducing reliance on external counsel.

◼️Scalable Legal Support – Ops support enables legal teams to handle more work without adding lawyers.

◼️Better Business Experience – Legal becomes easier to engage, more responsive, and more predictable.

Legal teams benefit from reduced administrative burden, improved morale, and more time for strategic work. Practice Operations Support also improves team cohesion, knowledge retention, and onboarding. It enables legal leaders to manage performance, scale services, and prepare for automation.

The Practice Operations Support station is essential for:

◼️Legal departments of all sizes

◼️Legal operations teams

◼️General Counsel and Heads of Legal

◼️Legal tech and innovation leads

◼️Compliance and risk management teams

A legal team operating without a Practice Operations Support function will face a wide range of inefficiencies including:

◼️Lawyers Performing Admin Tasks – High-cost resources doing low-value work.

◼️Inconsistent Legal Outputs – Templates and processes vary across teams.

◼️Slow Turnaround Times – Bottlenecks in document preparation and approvals.

◼️Poor Knowledge Retention – No centralised documentation of how work is done.

◼️Limited Scalability – Legal cannot grow without adding more lawyers.
 
◼️Burnout & Attrition – Lawyers overwhelmed by operational tasks.

This station is tech-leveraged. While not inherently tech-based, Practice Operations Support often operates legal tools such as:

◼️Document Automation Platforms – To generate standardised contracts.

◼️E-Signature Tools – To streamline execution workflows.

◼️Matter Management Systems – To track and report on legal work.
 
◼️Knowledge Repositories – To store templates, SOPs, and playbooks.

◼️Task Management Tools – To coordinate team workflows and deadlines.

Ops staff are often the primary users and maintainers of these systems, ensuring they are used effectively and consistently.