Legal Operations Best Practices: How In-House Legal Software Boosts Efficiency

Legal operations hasn't always had a clear definition. In some companies, it started as a single hire focused on contracts or spend. In others, it grew out of necessity and was created in response to increasing workloads, shifting business expectations, or a lack of visibility across legal work.

Today, it’s becoming something more deliberate. Legal Ops is evolving into a core function that supports not just efficiency, but strategic impact. That evolution, however, brings its own challenges—like knowing which processes to formalize, which tools to use, and what data matters the most.

Typically, the right practices depend on team size, business model, and priorities. But some principles—like standardizing workflows, automating routine work, and building better reporting habits—consistently help legal teams of all organizations move from reactive to proactive.

And increasingly, the ability to do all of that well depends on the software legal teams choose to support their work.

Process Standardization in Legal Ops

Legal work can be surprisingly unstructured. A single legal request might arrive over email, another via Slack, and a third through a meeting note or offhand comment. Without a consistent way to manage this flow of work, teams can end up duplicating efforts, missing deadlines, or losing track of key issues.

That’s where standardization becomes essential.

Standardized processes create both order and clarity. When everyone across the business knows how to engage legal, what to expect, and what information to provide upfront, legal teams can spend less time chasing details and more time on high-value work. It also makes triaging easier, especially in teams managing a large volume of matters with limited resources.

This doesn’t mean stripping away flexibility. Standardization is about giving the team a foundation—an agreed way of working that can be adapted when needed. And for that to work at scale, many teams are turning to in-house legal software that helps formalize intake and matter management without slowing anyone down.

Leveraging Automation Effectively

Not everything in legal needs a lawyer.

Many teams already know this, especially when they’re asked to review the same contract language for the hundredth time, or respond to repeat questions about policies that haven’t changed in years.  

These tasks are important—but they don’t always require deep legal judgment. What they do require is time. And in most legal teams, time is in short supply.

That’s why automation has become such a valuable tool for legal operations. When used well, it helps reduce the manual effort tied to repetitive, low-risk work—like NDAs, approval workflows, or intake triage. Instead of pulling a lawyer into every request, automation enables self-service, faster responses, and a more scalable way of working.

The key is knowing where to start. Look for high-volume, low-complexity tasks that follow a consistent structure. These are ideal candidates for automation because they still require accuracy, but not constant legal input.

And with the right in-house legal software, automation doesn’t need to be a long IT project. No-code platforms such as Checkbox allow Legal Ops teams to build and update workflows themselves, making it easier to test, improve, and expand automation as needs evolve.

Done thoughtfully, automation frees up time without sacrificing control—and gives legal teams the space to focus on more strategic, higher-impact work.

Reporting & KPI Optimization

For many in-house legal teams, reporting has often been neglected—not because the data isn’t there, but because it’s scattered, incomplete, or simply not tracked at all.

This can make it difficult to answer basic questions: How many matters came in last quarter? Where are the bottlenecks? How long does it take to close a contract, or respond to the business?

Without clear metrics, it’s hard for legal teams to demonstrate their impact—or to identify where improvements can be made. And as legal becomes more embedded in business operations, the expectation to show value is only growing.

That’s where a focused approach to legal KPIs can help. Rather than tracking everything, it’s more effective to monitor a small set of meaningful legal metrics such as intake volume, matter turnaround time, request types, and team utilization. These insights can help Legal Ops spot trends, set expectations, and prioritize work more effectively.

But reporting isn’t just about performance. It’s also about visibility. With the right in-house legal software, legal teams can consolidate their data into real-time dashboards that reflect what’s actually happening—without spending hours manually updating spreadsheets.

Over time, this kind of reporting becomes a tool for planning, resourcing, and making data-backed decisions about how the legal team operates.

How Can Checkbox Help

Building operational maturity in a legal team doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of small, intentional steps—standardizing how work is managed, identifying what can be automated, and tracking the right data to guide decisions. But to make those best practices stick, legal teams need the right foundation.

That’s where Checkbox comes in.

Checkbox is an in-house legal software platform designed specifically for intake, matter, and workflow management. It gives legal teams a single place to manage requests, automate workflows, and track performance—without relying on scattered emails or spreadsheets.

Checkbox helps teams:

• Standardize intake with customizable, AI-powered forms that guide business users to submit complete, actionable requests

• Automate repeatable work like NDAs, approvals, or triage, so legal can stay focused on high-value matters

• Report in real time with dashboards that show matter volume, turnaround time, and team performance—all in one place

By consolidating legal work in a centralized platform, Checkbox becomes the single source of truth for everything legal is working on. That visibility empowers teams to operate more efficiently, communicate their impact to leadership, and scale with confidence as the business grows.

So, whether you’re starting to formalize Legal Ops or looking to evolve your existing approach, Checkbox helps turn best practices into everyday practices.  

Want to learn more? Book a demo today.