CLOC: Australia's Legal Operations Market Differentiated by Global Perspective

He explains the value of having a global perspective in this aspect of the legal industry Last Wednesday 5 August, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) held its 2026 Australia legal operations innovation summit entitled Stronger by Design . The event, which is attended by around 150-200 every year, has been bringing together legal operations professionals in Australia for a number of years to discuss legal operations trends and issues because, as CLOC president and CEO Oyango Snell says, it’s good to remember that legal teams worldwide experience similar challenges and have similar concerns. “Sometimes, we think we’re alone in the work that we do, when we face problems. But there are other people facing similar challenges. We're all facing the experimentation and implementation of artificial intelligence into our daily work, how we're handling and embracing it”, Snell told Australasian Lawyer . He explained that legal teams in different regions tackle problems in ways that are germane to their operating models, legal markets, business issues, individual goals, budgets, and regulatory controls. “When you think of a mega empire like Meta or Uber or Amazon versus a smaller organization, they both have implementation problems. When it comes to artificial intelligence, some companies can build agents, deploy any technology, and hire developers to create the technology. Other companies might have to outsource it or rely on industry best practices to figure out what they want to do”, Snell said. “That's why I think it's important to understand the global perspectives of not just what's happening in our own backyard, but of those around the globe that impact some decisions being made”. He highlighted Australia’s more close-knit legal operations community as a key feature that differentiates it from other legal operations markets. “From what I've seen over the past few years, there's a tight niche in the Australian market in comparison to some of the other markets, where people don't really know who is in legal ops”, Snell told Australasian Lawyer . “Australia is very knowledgeable about the legal market space as well as what's happening in the US and some other parts of the world. That one big difference is really important because you have people that you can rely upon”. He noted that the activities in the Australian legal operations community has mirrored those of CLOC. “CLOC started with a dozen or so people getting together on a continuous basis to talk about best practices and the problems and issues that they were seeing in the workload and through the workflows they were creating in response to GC and chief legal officers’ demands. The Australian community has done that exact same thing in networking, building relationships with each other, creating a tight community to be able to share best practices and grow the industry in a way that's specifically responsive to the legal marketplace in the area”, Snell said. He explained that CLOC’s goal is not to integrate US customs and practices into local markets, particularly in light of the legal operations role evolving beyond administrative and into strategic decision making. Legal operations, he said, has grown beyond a pure legal team function and is now setting business agendas. “It's about us digging deeper to understand the key issues that's happening in each and every one of those markets so that we can show up and meet them where they are. Our business is about understanding what's happening locally in the legal ops space, in the legal landscape, and how we can show up and provide our resources to help the community thrive and grow”, Snell told Australasian Lawyer . “It’s about presenting the best use and business cases they can share with chief legal officers and general counsels so that they understand the importance of legal operations a