New On-Demand Webinar: McDonald’s Special Sauce for Corporate Legal Operations Strategy

In our latest Lean into LegalOps session, we invite you to learn how corporate legal operations leaders at McDonald’s created a cohesive, long-term strategy to achieve the right balance of people, process and technology. The webinar, McDonald’s To Reveal Special Sauce for Legal Ops Strategy and Transformation, is now available to view on-demand. Here’s a brief recap of the transformation.

Curtis Batterton, legal operations and global technology manager at McDonald’s, has spent more than a decade at McDonald’s. Seven of those years have been in IT management roles for legal. When he started in the corporate legal department, he found it had a squeaky wheel approach to technology – whoever spoke the loudest got the most attention.

The department had on-premise and custom-built systems, with some in use for 15 years. That technology, which included matter management and a document repository, often led in-house counsel and legal professionals to complain about usability and functionality. With a decentralized business structure and multiple systems, IT had to concentrate more on managing infrastructure instead of driving business insight.

Shift to Global

About five years ago, the company shifted to a global legal operations focus. Legal leaders also wanted more flexibility in how and why work gets done. They opted for a business process approach that included legal teams outside of the U.S. and an emphasis on efficiency.  The corporate legal department also wanted more insight into their legal spend.

Solving Business Problems  

Curtis explained in the webinar how the drive to global operations led them to solutions like Onit, which ticked his boxes for their ability for worldwide deployment and flexibility while moving infrastructure management to providers.

“Onit is really a workflow platform,” he shared. The Onit Apptitude platform provided a strategic advantage for building customer apps, allowing them to capture and share technological innovations across legal operations worldwide. They also deployed eBilling from Onit, which gave them greater visibility into legal spend and other important metrics.

Document management was another challenge they addressed. Curtis partnered with Onit partner Morae Global on a worldwide deployment for iManage.

The Future State

New technologies resulted in greater efficiency and business intelligence, as well as a platform for worldwide legal operations. For Curtis, future successes will rely on continuing the vision for global operations. That includes listening to users and their needs and collaborating with adaptive and flexible technology partners.

Learn more about McDonald’s corporate legal operations transformation by watching the webinar here.

Lean into LegalOps

Lean into LegalOps is an online learning initiative open to all legal operations professionals. It connects thousands of in-house counsel and technology experts, offering an expanded toolkit of masterclasses, case studies, educational content and virtual discussions. To join, sign up for the U.S. or European programs today.