What Is a Legal Engineer? (And How It Relates to Legal Operations)

For modern in-house teams, automation tools, AI and legal software are already an integral part of the legal landscape. The plus side is more efficient workflows and less repetitive work. The challenge is that, for increasingly busy legal ops teams, this often means managing a complex tech stack to drive in-house efficiency.

Enter the legal engineer: a role designed to handle the confluence of legal processes and technology.

In this blog, we run through what legal engineering entails. We also discuss how legal engineers work with legal ops professionals to deliver streamlined tech services and integrate AI in legal operations.

What Is a Legal Engineer?

First, a quick definition. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), a legal engineer is someone who:

“…combines legal knowledge with technology and process design to automate workflows, optimize systems, and drive innovation in legal teams.”

We’ll add that, as the tech becomes more predominant, AI implementation and AI-driven legal workflow automation are a big part of the role. 

Recent research shows that while 96% of in-house teams are using AI in some capacity, only 31% have attempted wide-scale, managed deployments. Given the sensitivity of legal data and the risk of using tools that aren’t fit-for-purpose, that’s a concerning statistic. And a good advertisement for why legal engineering is gaining traction among forward-thinking in-house teams.

What Does a Legal Engineer Actually Do?

As the above definition shows, legal engineering is about building and improving systems that enable legal work to be done more efficiently. The legal engineer role, therefore, supports both the ops role and the broader legal team in the following ways:

Designing automated legal workflows

A big part of legal engineering is mapping your current legal processes to identify bottlenecks and build in legal workflow automation. This includes automating repetitive tasks and scaling automation to improve overall efficiency. The key point to keep in mind is that the legal engineer is responsible for actually building and implementing these systems, rather than just advising on them.

Streamlining contract and approval processes

One of the biggest areas where this automation comes into play is in contracting and approval processes. The combination of legal insight and technical knowledge enables legal engineers to tailor workflows and processes to the legal team’s needs. 

For example, ensuring tasks are automatically routed to the correct stakeholder for approval based on the sensitivity or content of a matter, and/or creating consistent handoff points and automated steps for moving contracts through the review process.

Implementing AI tools in legal operations

The increased use of AI in legal operations is a major factor in the growing importance of legal engineering roles. Legal teams need technical expertise to implement AI effectively, and legal engineers typically take ownership of testing and deployment.

This reduces some of the load on legal ops teams, which don’t always have the bandwidth or capacity to handle complex tech stacks.

Connecting legal tools with other business systems

As enterprise tech stacks grow, another increasingly important task is connecting legal tools to the organization’s broader tech suite and processes. Traditionally, this task would fall to IT teams, but they don’t always understand the specialized needs of legal tasks and workflows. 

For example, a legal engineer might build an IP renewal workflow that connects the IP management platform with messaging tools/email, and with the legal team’s matter management system, to ensure deadlines are flagged, actioned, and escalated within a reasonable timeframe.

Organizing and structuring legal data for automation and reporting

Finally, legal engineers are responsible for structuring data for automation. By standardizing how data is organized and handled, they ensure workflows and automation are repeatable and scalable. They also make it easier for their team to access that data, generating insightful reports that support both decision-making and further automation efforts.

Legal Operations vs Legal Engineering: What’s the Difference?

From the above, you’d be correct to think that there’s some overlap between what legal ops professionals already do and the role of legal engineer. In this section, we break down the roles and responsibilities of legal operations vs legal engineering. Here’s how they stack up:

Legal operations focuses on the big picture and identify the problem.

While ops professionals do look at the granular details of how processes are performing and how to reduce legal spend, their focus is more broadly on strategy, efficiency, and governance. They manage the legal budget and vendors, refine legal processes, and focus on making overall operations more efficient. 

Legal engineering builds the tools to get the job done.

Legal engineers are tasked with building workflows and implementing the functional tools needed to make improvements. They support the deployment of new legal technology, configure systems to meet legal needs, and test and refine the resulting workflows. This takes a different mindset from legal ops: one focused on deep technical implementation and expertise rather than big-picture thinking.

In a nutshell:

Legal Operations

• Focuses on operational efficiency
• Identifies performance  issues
• Manages legal spend and vendors
• Works to improve overall departmental performance
• Aligns legal performance with broader business goals

Legal Engineering

• Builds and improves legal workflows
• Implements automation and AI tools
• Bridges legal and technical teams
• Tests and refines automation
• Executes the technical side of legal ops strategy

In short, legal ops defines the strategy and legal engineering executes it.
With all of that said, the legal engineer role is still fairly new, and the responsibilities and duties assigned to legal engineering vs legal operations will vary from team to team. Or they may overlap significantly if your team is still small or just getting started with legal ops.

Will Legal Engineering Become a Standard Role in Legal Teams?

As AI use becomes more prevalent in the legal industry, there’s a growing demand for “AI-fluent” legal professionals. And while you don’t necessarily need to be a legal engineer to meet that demand, the increasing complexity of corporate tech stacks overall makes it likely that hiring for legal engineers will increase. 

The outlook? Demand for legal engineers is likely to continue growing alongside AI adoption, and the role is likely to become standard in mid-to-large in-house teams. Particularly as adoption of AI tools for legal work grows.  At the same time, be prepared for the fact that the role is still “figuring itself out”. This means there will still be some overlap with what’s traditionally been considered “legal ops work,” and it’s natural to have questions about where responsibility lies.

How Brightflag Supports Legal Engineering Teams

As automation and AI in legal operations become par for the course, expect to see more in-house teams hiring for legal engineering roles. It’s worth adding though, that if you do bring a legal engineer on board, having the right tools in place maximizes the value your team gets from the role.

Using an AI-powered ELM platform, like Brightflag, is a big step in the right direction. By centralizing data, workflows, matter management and legal AI in one place, Brightflag empowers your team to map out new workflows and respond to changing demands in real time. All backed up by built-in AI assistance. 

Interested in learning more about how it works? Book a demo and have our friendly team walk you through it.

FAQs

Is a legal engineer the same as a legal operations professional?

Not quite. While there is still some overlap in the responsibilities of these roles (legal engineering is still fairly new), legal engineers are more focused on technical implementation, workflows and systems. Legal ops professionals are more focused on overall operational efficiency and on managing spend, vendors, and team performance.

What technical skills do legal engineers typically need?

Legal engineers need a combination of legal knowledge and technical skills. While there aren’t “hard and fast” rules about the technological background a legal engineer should have, useful skills for the role include being familiar with process automation tools, workflow configuration platforms, and API integrations. Coding knowledge is also valuable but not always required. Being AI-fluent, however (meaning able to evaluate, test, and deploy AI tools in a legal context), is increasingly essential for the role.

Why are law firms and in-house teams investing more in legal workflow automation?

Legal workloads are growing. At the same time, many teams are on a tight budget and can’t necessarily add headcount to manage the increase in expectations. By using automation, these teams can reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks and free their talent to focus on higher-value, more complex work.

How do legal engineers support legal software implementation?

Legal engineers are at the forefront of new deployments.  They’re responsible for implementing software, developing systems, and building legal workflow automation to meet legal team needs and specifications. They also monitor implementations and refine the tech stack as needed to meet legal team requirements better.

What is the relationship between legal engineering and legal ops?

Because the legal engineer role is new, many teams are still establishing how it relates to legal ops. As a general rule, legal engineers work more directly with tech and implementation. This means they support the legal ops team by taking ownership of how tech is deployed and scaled. Where legal ops professionals are strategists, you can think of legal engineers as the “builders” that execute on efficiency initiatives.