Special report
2026 Legal Department Operations Report
As roles evolve, LDO leaders are looking to step up.
Longtime legal operations staff recall when their roles were specialist IT support, helping configure software and troubleshoot logins. Today, the profession is central to a modern law department, expected to master legal project management, vendor evaluation, data governance, and daily operations.
But your most central role right now is once again IT support — leading the legal department through the most disruptive technology shift of our time, into AI.
In the 2026 Legal Department Operations Report from the Thomson Reuters Institute, you’ll learn:
- How 86% of general counsels (GCs) see legal as a significant business contributor – but only 17% of the C-suite agrees
- How legal ops is shifting to setting technology strategy for the department
- How business pressure on GCs is being transferred to legal ops
- How legal ops is driving changes in outside counsel relationships
- How thin staffing puts legal ops’ impact at risk
Read the report to see how your peers are navigating this transformation, and where the opportunities for legal ops lie today.
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