Law.com reposted this
Trudy Knockless reports: Companies increasingly are favoring attorneys for legal operations roles, a trend that Akshay Verma, a former legal ops chief at Meta and Coinbase, blasted in a recent LinkedIn post that’s sparking spirited debate. Verma, himself an attorney, said he wrote the post after seeing a spate of job listings that either require a juris doctor, including this post at Meta, or prefer it, including one that’s now closed at ADP. “This is a huge miss!” Verma wrote. “We can talk for hours about what law school does or does not teach you, but one thing is for certain: law school teaches you virtually nothing about legal operations. These job posts are a disservice to the company, the department, and our profession.” He added: “By insisting on a J.D., companies are losing out on fantastic candidates who possess the real skills and experiences needed for legal ops. Not only are you attracting the wrong crowd, but you are missing out on great talent. Legal ops is about strategic thinking, process optimization, and leveraging technology and data to make legal departments more efficient. It’s not about drafting briefs or arguing in court.” Verma’s post, submitted Aug. 13, caught fire on LinkedIn, drawing 289 likes and 99 comments, the vast majority in strong agreement and another handful supportive but mentioning scenarios where a lawyer’s perspective would be beneficial or injecting other caveats. https://lnkd.in/gdxYrDbc
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1moI’ve only seen 3 roles at really large companies require this, I’m not sure it’s a trend but it is a miss. If you can get someone like Akshay who is an operations minded attorney, then why wouldn’t you get the best of both worlds? You limit your pool greatly, but you will still find great talent either way! I think the issue stems from the hierarchical and elitiest culture of legal more generally.