Building Cross-Functional Collaboration Beyond the Legal Department

We talk a lot about collaboration in Legal Ops, but let’s be honest: it’s usually described in vague terms. “Breaking down silos” sounds great, but what does that actually look like when you are buried in budget meetings, sitting through endless tool demos, and planning team meetings?

Collaboration is where Legal Ops leaders earn their stripes. It is not just about implementing solutions you think the team needs (believe me – I've made that mistake more than once!); it's about really understanding the work your team is doing and helping them show up as a true partner to the rest of the business. And the good news is, collaboration is not abstract. It is practical, repeatable, and often surprisingly simple once you know where to focus.

Here is what it looks like in practice, step by step:

1. Partner Closely with Finance

Finance prioritizes predictability, while Legal often struggles with last-minute surprises. That tension usually comes to a head at quarter-end or during budget cycles.

Legal Ops can break this cycle by creating visibility into the pipeline of work and addressing cost drivers before they become budget blowups. That means forecasting spend based on matter volume, monitoring deviations in real-time, and introducing structured fee arrangements such as fixed fees, retainers, and value-based pricing wherever possible. These models replace uncertainty with known, manageable costs.

Shared dashboards and reports, which show forecast accuracy, outside counsel spend, and savings from alternative fee arrangements, build credibility with Finance. The message is clear: Legal is managing costs with the same discipline as other functions. Once Finance sees predictability and control, budget conversations shift from adversarial to collaborative.

Quick Play: Select two high-impact levers (for example, monthly outside counsel spend and percentage of matters under fixed fee arrangements) and start reporting them in Finance’s format. Prove that Legal can deliver not just outcomes, but cost certainty.

2. Make Procurement Your Ally

Legal teams often keep Procurement at arm’s length, worried they will reduce outside counsel decisions to lowest-cost bids. That perception sells Procurement short. The best Procurement professionals are sophisticated partners who understand that legal services are not commodities.

When Legal Ops brings Procurement into the fold, they can provide valuable structure for outside counsel management programs. Procurement can help design and run RFPs, manage preferred firm panels, and negotiate value based pricing models that emphasize quality and predictability rather than simple cost cutting. An added benefit is that Procurement will take on much of the heavy lifting of running RFPs, saving Legal Ops significant time and effort while still allowing Legal to set the criteria and make the final call.

By collaborating early and often, you create a unified approach that balances Legal’s need for expertise with the company’s need for financial discipline. Procurement gets the transparency and accountability they are measured on while Legal retains control over firm selection and strategy.

Quick Play: Invite Procurement to co-design your next outside counsel RFP. Demonstrate how you evaluate firms based on expertise and outcomes, not just price. They will help you formalize the process, shoulder the administrative work, and strengthen your credibility with Finance and leadership.

3. Run Intake with Business Partners, Not at Them

One of the biggest pain points between Legal and the business is intake, often referred to as the Legal Front Door. Stakeholders want speed; Legal needs to manage risk. Too often, the intake process becomes a frustrating back-and-forth with little visibility into where things stand.

A practical fix is to run joint intake sessions where Legal Ops and the business map out what information is actually needed upfront. Create a shared form, align on service levels, and set expectations for turnaround. Just as important, build in simple status updates so clients know whether their request is pending, in progress, or complete. This visibility goes a long way toward reducing frustration and eliminating the “black hole” perception that often surrounds Legal.

In many cases, simply agreeing on a common intake checklist and status tracking process can significantly reduce turnaround time and increase trust.

Quick Play: Host a one-hour workshop with the operations lead from a key business function to co-design intake fields and define how request status will be communicated. Promise them one less email chain per request and then deliver.

4. Create Self-Service Guides

Too often, processes live only in Legal’s head. That leaves business partners unsure of what steps to take and frustrated when they cannot get answers quickly. Legal Ops leaders can ease that pain with self-service guides: short, plain-language resources that explain “how Legal works” in a way that anyone in the business can follow.

Examples include: “Here is when you need an NDA,” “Here is who signs what,” or “Here is how long a contract review usually takes.” When packaged into clear, accessible guides, these resources empower teams to handle straightforward tasks on their own. They also reduce the volume of repetitive questions that bog down Legal and eliminate the guesswork that leaves business partners feeling in the dark.

The result is twofold: clients gain the confidence to self-serve when appropriate, and Legal is freed up to focus on strategic work rather than constant hand-holding.

Quick Play: Draft a one-pager for your most common request, like NDAs. Use simple language and a clear checklist. Share it with the business and measure how many fewer repeat questions come your way.

5. Make Collaboration Visible

It is not enough to collaborate; you must demonstrate it. Business partners rarely see the behind-the-scenes work that Legal does to make their lives easier.

Ops can fix that by reporting on collaboration wins. Share outcomes like “intake improvements cut turnaround time” or “shared reporting with Finance reduced budget variance.” These are not just metrics; they are proof that Legal is listening and responding.

Quick Play: At your next company all-hands, include a two-slide “Collaboration Wins” section. Frame Legal as a problem-solver, not just a rule enforcer.

Final Thoughts

Collaboration is not a buzzword, it’s a discipline. It’s the skill that transforms Legal from a bottleneck into a partner the business trusts. And like all transformations, it starts small: a shared dashboard, a streamlined intake form, a simple self-service guide, even just sitting in another team’s shoes for a week.

The Legal Ops teams that master these practices not only keep the work moving but also ensure that it is done efficiently. They help the entire organization adapt more quickly, with less friction and greater trust. That is what collaboration looks like in real life.