During Onit’s January Third Thursday session, attendees heard from Matt Burdman, Director, Global Legal Operations, Colgate-Palmolive, on how legal operations teams can bring more discipline, predictability, and clarity to legal spend management. His presentation centered on people, process, and tools, and how getting the fundamentals right in each area can dramatically improve outcomes.
People: Setting Expectations and Reinforcing Accountability
Effective spend management starts with people, not technology. Clear expectations, consistent communication, and leadership alignment all play a critical role.
Organizations vary widely in how they approach budget adherence. Some are comfortable going over budget in pursuit of business goals, while others are not. What matters most is that those expectations are clearly defined and reinforced early and often. When expectations are ambiguous or inconsistently communicated, legal teams and law firms are left to make assumptions, often leading to surprises late in the year.
The mindset and tone of the department come from the top. When department leaders are aligned on goals, targets, and tradeoffs, legal operations teams are better positioned to communicate those priorities internally and externally.
Process: Discipline, Cadence, and Visibility
Simplifying spend categories
Overly complex spend categorization often creates more friction than insight. Simplifying categories improves reporting speed, reduces confusion, and increases adoption across teams.
Establishing a review cadence
Matt also stressed the importance of regular, structured reviews to keep spend management proactive rather than reactive. He has found this monthly cadence particularly effective:
- Monthly reviews with practice leads
- Monthly check-ins with the CLO
- Monthly reports shared with division legal leads
This rhythm creates accountability, encourages earlier course correction, and normalizes financial discussions as part of day-to-day operations rather than year-end fire drills.
Improving the accruals process
Another key area discussed was the accrual process. When Matt joined his organization, accruals for unbilled services were done annually. The team experimented with quarterly accruals, adjusted their approach, and ultimately landed on a monthly accrual process—a change that significantly improved accuracy and forecasting.
Standardization through templates
Standard templates, whether homegrown or technology-enabled, help ensure law firms submit consistent, usable information. This reduces follow-up, speeds up reviews, and improves data quality across invoices, budgets, and accruals.
Tools: Custom reporting & dashboards
When it comes to tools, teams should be thoughtful rather than reactive.
Technology should support well-defined processes, not replace them. Before investing in new technology, legal ops teams should:
- Review tools they’re already paying for
- Leverage platforms the team has prior experience using
- Avoid over-automation where it doesn’t add value
Examples of effective dashboards:
- Executive summary dashboards with top-line projections, opportunities, IP spend, litigation spend, and patent activity
- Trial schedule dashboards to track cases likely to go to court and forecast spend
- High-spend litigation trackers for focused oversight
- IP reports to monitor law firm spend and trademark activity
- Invoice review accelerator dashboards to analyze spend across the entire portfolio
Key Takeaways
Legal operations teams can bring discipline, predictability, and clarity to legal spend management through the right people, processes, and tools.
- Tone and expectations must be set at the top
- Law firms need to understand the full budget lifecycle and what’s expected of them
- Regular reviews with practice teams build strong financial discipline
- Accurate accruals are essential to understanding true spend at any point in time
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