Key insights
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1. Legal Ops is often born from necessity.
Tommie notes that her expertise emerged while managing an overwhelming volume of NDAs and contracts. Success came from survival-driven innovation: systematizing intake, leveraging technology, and empowering the business to negotiate their own simple agreements.
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2. Lean into your "Love Language."
Shifting from paralegal to operations doesn't always require new skills, but rather a new application of existing ones. Tom, for instance, used his "math and science brain" to transform finance-based paralegal tasks into data-driven analytics for the GC, effectively running legal like a business entity.
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3. Manage your career like a marathon.
New legal ops hires often try to "fix everything" in the first 72 hours, which can lead to failure. SUCCESS requires a slow "drip" approach: listening to stakeholders, understanding VIP business needs, and building trust through consistent delivery rather than instant response.
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4. Advocate for Visibility.
While you can do the job without a "seat at the table," having one is a massive shortcut for your career. Being on the GC's leadership team allows for direct presentation of wins and removes layers of translation that often obscure the impact of operational work.
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5. The Ceiling is Disappearing.
Legal ops professionals are increasingly moving into broader roles like Chief of Staff or COO. Because the operational skills used to run a legal department—managing finances, people, and cross-functional friction—are identical to those needed to run a whole company, the potential for growth is now "wider than the legal department".

6. Closing insight

The transition to legal operations is less about acquiring a new degree and more about unearthing your innate drive to build and fix systems. By identifying your personal "love language"—whether it's data, people, or process—you can turn a career in legal administration into a seat at the executive table.