I’m in Las Vegas this week for the annual CLOC conference at the Bellagio Hotel. CLOC (which stands for the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) is a network of businesses devoted to advancing in house legal operations. As its name implies, it’s membership and benefits have traditional been open only to corporations. Not law firms. And that may be about to change. Maybe. Well maybe sort of.
CLOC and its conference have grown substantially over the past 4 years; the conference is rapidly becoming a “must go” not only for legal ops people but for anyone in legal tech and innovation space. But with growth and notoriety comes new and thorny issues that CLOC is now grappling with, issues that are bubbling up just as CLOC has named a new President, Mary O’Carroll. O’Carroll is the head of legal ops at Google and a real mover and shaker in the legal ops community. She brings real and new energy to the group and has a stature and presence virtually no one else in the industry I know of can match. I thought when she was named it was a perfect choice. CLOC has brought in new board members as well.
And unlike other legal tech Conferences where Board members and leadership try their best to hide from any substantive media inquiry, CLOC makes its entire Board available for a full blown briefing. (Kudos to CLOC for doing what has to be a pain during a busy week). I attended this briefing yesterday.
Outside Law Firms: the Fox in the Henhouse?
One of the major and perhaps most controversial issues facing CLOC and its growth is what to do about the participation of outside law firms. (Leaving aside for the moment, what really is a “law firm”, see below). Nothing raises more passionate
