Legal Ops Doesn't Need Features. We Need Results.

Welcome to Legal Ops Briefs—inspired by the mot-r mindset, this blog series of 3-minute reads gives in-house Legal Ops quick, operational insights. Each post will explore the tech, trends, and tactics that boost operational effectiveness and ease legal team stress—without adding to the noise.

Use Jobs to Be Done to Modernize Legal Operations
Legal departments are under pressure to deliver more value with fewer resources. But too often, tech tools fail to solve core problems. Why? Because most teams jump to feature comparisons before identifying the real outcomes they need. That’s where the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework for legal ops comes in.

JTBD shifts your approach from asking what a tool does to asking what it helps your team accomplish. It’s a mindset that prioritizes business value, not software bells and whistles.

Start With the Legal Job to Be Done—Not the Tool Features
Before shortlisting vendors or building a requirements doc, ask: What job are we hiring this tool to do? In many in-house teams, the top-level job is:

Consistently and predictably deliver high-quality legal service while adapting to changing business conditions.

This might sound obvious, but it requires alignment across intake, workload visibility, process, and reporting—areas where most legal teams struggle.

Identify Legal Workflow Inefficiencies That Block Progress
The JTBD framework encourages you to locate the operational friction that prevents job completion. Based on common Legal Ops challenges, here are some blockers:

• Intake via email is convoluted and lacks structure

• Work prioritization is unclear and reactive

• Task assignments are inconsistent and inefficient

• No repeatable processes to guide or improve delivery

• Expectation-setting with internal clients is near-impossible

• Data is insufficient to advocate for resources

• Operational improvements lack clear direction

Instead of adding tech on top of chaos, JTBD pushes you to eliminate root causes.

Define Legal Tech Success by Outcomes, Not Features
Rather than focusing on “does it integrate with Outlook?”—ask “will this tool reduce delays and miscommunication with our clients?” That shift leads to smarter, more outcome-aligned decisions.

A platform with dozens of features might look powerful, but if it doesn’t improve turnaround time or reduce workload chaos, it’s not doing the job.

Build a Competency-Based Legal Tech Evaluation Team
One of the most overlooked success factors in tech implementation is who’s evaluating the tools. Many legal teams delegate this to IT or procurement—teams that aren’t living the legal workflow.

With JTBD, your evaluation team should include stakeholders with operational, client-facing, and integration experience. These are the voices that will know whether a tool helps get the job done or just adds complexity.

Choose Scalable Legal Tech That Can Evolve With Your Team
Even great tools fall short if they can’t adapt to change. Legal departments shift focus, headcount, and KPIs often. A future-ready legal tech stack must be built to handle evolving jobs—not just current pain points.

Ask vendors tough questions: Can this platform grow with us? Will it require a rebuild to support new workflows? How does it manage technical debt?

Measure Legal Tech ROI Through Job Completion, Not Logins
Many teams rely on adoption stats to gauge success. But real value lies in outcomes. With JTBD, success means:

• Faster turnaround times

• Lower administrative burden

• Less burnout and more clarity

• Better service to internal stakeholders

If your legal tech isn’t helping deliver those results, it’s not the right fit—regardless of usage metrics.

Use Jobs to Be Done to Guide Your Legal Tech Strategy
The JTBD framework isn’t just a procurement tactic—it’s a strategic mindset. It helps Legal Ops align investments with measurable outcomes, tackle core inefficiencies, and build solutions that actually work.

Next time you're evaluating legal tech, ditch the feature checklist. Start by asking: What’s the job to be done?

Chime In. Be Heard.

Share your insight. The best ideas in Legal Ops don’t come from feature lists—they come from real teams solving real problems. What’s one workflow bottleneck you wish you could eliminate? Where do you see the biggest disconnect between legal and the business? What are you doing about it?

mot-r is the Legal Work Orchestration solution for General Counsel. It is designed to reduce overwork and elevate legal service quality of legal teams of all sizes. With workflows, dashboards and granular reporting, it improves operational effectiveness and client service quality. Created by a team of enterprise software experts—who have a passion for reducing the human cost of legal work—mot-r is a trusted supplier to general counsel teams in financial services, healthcare, real estate, sports management and more. When you're ready to modernize how your in-house team works, we're ready to help.