Legal Operations Software: A Modern Legal Team’s Must-Have Tool

Legal teams today are trusted to be strategic enablers, business partners, and operational leaders. But while their role has evolved, their systems often haven’t. Many still rely on spreadsheets, email threads, and independent tools to manage legal requests, matter tracking, and KPI reporting.

And unfortunately, that disconnect between responsibility and resourcing creates friction across the business, reduces visibility into legal work, and makes it harder for legal to prove their value.

That’s why many are turning to scalable solutions such as legal operations software.

Legal operations software acts as the connective layer that brings structure, visibility, and scale to modern legal departments. From intake and matter management, to contract workflows and real-time analytics, it empowers legal teams to streamline their operations and become more efficient, data-driven, and aligned with business priorities.

Let’s break down what legal operations software really is, the key features to look for, and how modern legal teams are using it to scale their impact.

What is Legal Operations Software?

Legal operations software refers to a centralized system that in-house legal teams use to manage "the work behind the work".  

It brings requests, matters, documents, contracts, and reporting into one platform, giving teams complete visibility and control over their legal activities.

Legal ops software provides the infrastructure for how legal teams operate day-to-day, helping them shift from inbox management to true work management.

You can think of it as a legal team’s command center—combining matter management, legal workflow automation, contract management, document organization, and reporting and analytics software into a single source of truth. It eliminates silos, reduces manual effort, and creates a more streamlined, strategic legal operation.

And it's important to note that legal operations software isn’t just for large organizations. More small-to-mid sized companies are investing early, knowing that scalable systems lay the groundwork for sustainable legal support as their businesses expand.

What Key Features Should You Look For?

While most legal operations software promise greater efficiency, the best solutions go beyond surface-level automation to deliver real, scalable impact. Whether you’re evaluating your first platform or replacing a legacy system, here are the key features that matter most:

1. Matter Management

At the heart of legal operations software is matter management—a centralized way to track all legal work, from intake to resolution. This ensures visibility into who’s working on what, where things stand, and what’s been completed.  

2. Legal Workflow Automation

Repetitive, manual tasks eat up valuable time. With legal workflow automation, you can standardize and streamline processes like contract approvals, legal intake, or document reviews. This reduces bottlenecks, enforces consistency, and frees up legal teams to focus on high-impact initiatives.

3. Contract Management

Managing contracts across shared drives and inboxes is a recipe for risk. Look for built-in contract management capabilities that allow you to automate contract generation, route approvals, track key dates, and store everything in one place—making compliance and renewals much easier.

4. Document Management

Version control issues and scattered files can slow down collaboration. A strong document management feature ensures that teams can access the most up-to-date files, share securely with stakeholders, and maintain an auditable record of changes.

5. Legal Spend Tracking

Keeping a close eye on outside counsel spend and budgeting is critical, especially in times of tighter resourcing. With integrated legal spend tracking, you can monitor invoices, compare vendors, and analyze cost trends—enabling more informed decisions and better forecasting.

6. Reporting & Analytics Software

Legal teams are increasingly asked to demonstrate their impact. Reporting and analytics software surfaces insights such as matter volume, turnaround times, team workload, and more. This empowers legal leaders to communicate value, identify opportunities, and plan strategically.

How Do Legal Teams Benefit from Legal Ops Software?

By centralizing workflows, eliminating inefficiencies, and surfacing actionable insights, legal teams can operate with greater clarity, speed, and strategic value. Here’s how legal teams benefit from legal ops software:

Increased Visibility and Control

With all matters, documents, and tasks tracked in one platform, legal leaders gain a real-time view of their team’s workload and progress and can clearly pinpoint what’s happening and where support is needed.

Faster Turnaround Times

Through legal workflow automation, repetitive tasks like triaging requests, generating NDAs, or routing approvals are streamlined—reducing response times and accelerating how quickly legal can support the business.

Improved Collaboration Across Teams

Legal ops software bridges the gap between legal and business teams. Requesters know where things stand, stakeholders can access documents or updates as needed, and legal no longer has to deal with back-and-forth communication.

Stronger Risk and Compliance Management

With standardized processes and centralized document and contract management, legal can ensure nothing gets overlooked. Key dates, approvals, and obligations are easier to track, reducing exposure and maintaining compliance.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Through built-in reporting and analytics software, legal can shift from anecdotal updates to hard data—tracking KPIs like matter volume, resolution times, and team capacity. This makes it easier to justify strategy, headcount, budget, or resourcing based on clear performance metrics.

Demonstrated Business Value

Legal ops software allows legal teams to speak the same language as leadership by showing how legal enables the business to move faster and smarter through concrete metrics.

Use Cases: Real-World Applications

Legal operations software is most effective when it solves specific, recurring challenges. Here are two practical examples of how legal teams are using it to streamline work and support the business more efficiently.

Example 1: Organizing Legal Intake & Matter Tracking

A mid-sized SaaS company was handling legal requests through email and Slack, with no clear system to prioritize or track progress. As request volume grew, so did the delays and confusion—matters were missed, follow-ups were manual, and visibility was limited.

By implementing legal operations software, the team introduced AI-powered intake integrations and automated triage rules. Every request was captured from the source and routed to the right legal owner, with due dates and status tracked in a centralized dashboard.

The team now manages requests more efficiently, avoids duplicate work, and has real-time visibility into active matters.

Example 2: Automating Routine Contract Work

A fast-growing legal team was spending too much time on standard agreements like NDAs and vendor contracts. Each request required manual drafting and review, creating a backlog and slowing down the business.

With legal ops software, they automated the contract lifecycle management process. Business users could generate contracts through a self-service portal, and the system routed them for approvals automatically.

This reduced turnaround time for standard contracts and allowed legal to focus on higher-value work.

Choosing the Right Solution [Considerations]

With different solutions available on the market, it’s important to choose one that fits your team’s current needs and can scale with you as those needs evolve. Here are key factors to consider when evaluating solutions:

1. Flexibility Without Heavy IT Support

Look for a platform that legal can configure and manage independently. If you need to rely on IT or external consultants every time a workflow changes, you’ll lose agility. The best tools allow legal ops teams to make updates quickly and without coding knowledge.

2. A Centralized, All-in-One System

Point solutions can create new silos. A strong legal ops platform brings together intake, matter management, contract workflows, document storage, and reporting in one place. This ensures end-to-end visibility and reduces tech stack overload.

3. Ease of Use and Adoption

Adoption is critical. If the platform isn’t intuitive, legal and business users won’t use it consistently. Look for clean, user-friendly interfaces that guide users through the process and reduce the learning curve.

4. Scalable for Growth

Your legal team and workload will grow, and your system should be ready for that. Prioritize solutions that support increasing matter volume, user access, and integrations with tools like DocuSign, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams.

5. Real-Time Reporting and Analytics

To demonstrate value and make data-driven decisions, you need easy access to performance metrics. Built-in reporting and analytics software should let you customize dashboard views and track key legal metrics like matter volume, response times, and team capacity.

How Can Checkbox Help?

Checkbox is a leading in-house legal software solution designed to meet the needs of modern in-house legal teams that are managing increasing workloads with limited resources.  

As an end-to-end platform for legal intake, workflow automation, and matter management, Checkbox helps legal teams centralize their operations, standardize processes, and gain visibility into their work.

With Checkbox, legal requests are captured through a structured intake system, eliminating the need to chase down incomplete information. Requests are automatically stored and routed to the right person, reducing administrative overhead and response delays. Teams can then manage all open matters in one place, with real-time tracking and updates that make it easy to stay on top of deadlines and priorities.

For high-volume tasks like NDAs, contract reviews, and approvals, Checkbox enables legal teams to build self-service workflows without coding or IT support. This not only speeds up turnaround times but also frees legal from handling repetitive, low-value work.

Checkbox also provides powerful reporting and analytics tools that surface insights into team performance, matter volume, and response times. Legal leaders can easily track their impact with data, helping them make informed decisions and report effectively to stakeholders.

Overall, Checkbox gives legal teams the tools they need to operate more efficiently, reduce manual work, and scale their support alongside the business—all from a single, easy-to-use legal operations platform.  

If you’re looking to streamline your legal operations and gain full visibility into your team’s work, book a demo to see how Checkbox can help.