When Elizabeth Miller arrives at Delta Dental's headquarters each morning, she's not thinking about contracts or compliance checklists. She's thinking about her team—and how to clear the path so they can do their best work.
6:45 AM: The Quiet Before the Storm
Elizabeth Miller's day starts before most of her colleagues arrive. She uses this time intentionally—reviewing metrics from the previous day, scanning for any urgent matters that came in overnight, and mentally mapping out her priorities.
"I've learned that the first hour sets the tone," Miller explains from her office in San Francisco. "If I spend it reacting, I'll be reactive all day. If I spend it thinking strategically, I can actually move things forward."
As Director of Legal Operations at Delta Dental, Miller oversees the systems, processes, and technology that enable a legal team of 23 attorneys and paralegals to support one of the nation's largest dental benefits providers. It's a role that didn't exist at the company five years ago.
8:30 AM: The Morning Stand-Up
Miller's first meeting is a fifteen-minute stand-up with her operations team—two legal operations analysts and a legal technology specialist. They review the queue: 47 new requests came in yesterday, ranging from routine NDA reviews to complex vendor agreements for a new claims processing system.
"We used to start every day in triage mode," Miller recalls. "Someone would be combing through emails, someone else checking Slack, another person fielding phone calls. Half our morning was spent just figuring out what we needed to work on."
That changed when Delta Dental implemented a centralized intake system. Now, every request—regardless of how it arrives—flows into a single queue with full context attached.
"The business doesn't have to change how they reach us," Miller says. "They can email, message us on Teams, even call. But we see everything in one place, prioritized and categorized. That alone saved us hours every week."
9:15 AM: Data That Tells a Story
Miller pulls up her dashboard. She's preparing for a quarterly business review with the General Counsel and CFO, and she needs the numbers to tell a story.
Average turnaround time for standard NDAs: 1.2 days, down from 4.3 days eighteen months ago. Contract review volume: up 34% year-over-year with the same headcount. Business satisfaction scores: 4.6 out of 5, the highest in the department's history.
"Legal operations isn't about managing workflows," Miller explains. "It's about understanding what's slowing people down and systematically removing those barriers. The data shows us where friction exists."
She points to a spike in procurement-related requests last quarter. "This told us something was happening in the business. Turns out, they were ramping up vendor relationships for a new initiative. Because we saw it in the data, we could proactively allocate resources and meet with the procurement team to streamline the process."
10:30 AM: The Technology Conversation
Miller's next meeting is with a legal tech vendor demonstrating a new AI-powered contract analysis tool. She's seen dozens of these pitches. Most don't make it past the first conversation.
"I ask three questions," Miller says. "First, does it integrate with what we already have? We're not creating another silo. Second, what does adoption look like? If my attorneys need to change how they work, that's a hard sell. Third, what problem does it actually solve?"
She's learned to be skeptical of technology promises. "Every vendor says they'll save you time. But time savings don't matter if the tool creates new problems—security concerns, workflow disruptions, or another system people have to log into."
The tools that make it through Miller's evaluation share a common trait: they meet users where they are. "The best legal tech disappears into existing workflows. People shouldn't have to think about the technology. They should just get their answers faster."
12:00 PM: Lunch and Learn
Miller hosts a monthly lunch session for the legal team. Today's topic: how to write better intake requests. It's not glamorous, but it's important.
"Garbage in, garbage out," she says. "If we get a request that says 'please review attached contract,' we're starting from zero. We don't know the business context, the timeline, the risk tolerance, nothing. That back-and-forth adds days to every matter."
She walks through examples—good requests and bad ones—and explains what information helps the legal team move faster. The attorneys in the room start to see their own bottlenecks differently.
"Legal ops is half technology, half change management," Miller reflects afterward. "You can build the most elegant system in the world, but if people don't use it correctly, you haven't solved anything."
2:00 PM: Process Improvement Sprint
Miller's afternoon is blocked for deep work. Today, she's redesigning the workflow for employment-related requests, which have been taking longer than they should.
She pulls data on every employment matter from the past six months. Where do delays occur? What information is typically missing at intake? Which requests get escalated, and why?
The pattern emerges: most delays happen because the requesting manager doesn't include the employee's tenure and performance history. Without that context, the employment attorneys can't assess risk and have to go back for more information.
Miller drafts a new intake form with conditional fields. If someone selects "employment matter," additional required fields appear. It's a small change, but she estimates it will eliminate two to three days of back-and-forth on every employment request.
"This is the work that doesn't make headlines," Miller says. "But it's the work that compounds. Fix ten processes, and suddenly your team has capacity they didn't have before. That's when you can start doing truly strategic work."
4:00 PM: The Escalation
Not every day goes smoothly. At 4 PM, Miller gets pulled into an urgent situation. A major vendor contract needs to close by end of week, but the legal review has uncovered significant liability concerns. The business sponsor is frustrated. The vendor is pushing back. Everyone wants legal to just "make it work."
Miller's role in these moments isn't to provide legal advice—that's for the attorneys. Her role is to facilitate resolution. She gets the right people in a room (virtual, in this case), ensures everyone has the same information, and helps structure a conversation that moves toward decision rather than debate.
"Legal operations sits at the intersection of legal and business," she explains. "In moments of conflict, we can be the bridge. We speak both languages."
By 5:30 PM, they have a path forward. The contract will close on time with modified terms that address the liability concerns. The business sponsor sends Miller a thank-you note.
6:15 PM: Reflection
As the office quiets, Miller takes fifteen minutes to capture her thoughts. What worked today? What needs attention? She adds items to her running list of process improvements, technology evaluations, and training needs.
"The best legal operations teams don't just respond to requests—they anticipate needs and build systems that scale," Miller reflects. "That's where technology becomes transformative. Not as a replacement for human judgment, but as an amplifier of it."
She thinks about where Delta Dental's legal operations was five years ago: no intake system, no metrics, no visibility into workload or capacity. Attorneys were drowning in administrative work. Business partners were frustrated by slow response times. The legal department was seen as a bottleneck.
Today, it's different. Legal is a partner that helps the business move faster, not slower. Attorneys spend their time on complex judgment calls, not chasing information. And Miller's team has the data to prove their value.
"Legal operations is still a young field," Miller says. "We're all figuring it out together. But the organizations that invest in it—really invest, not just add a headcount—they're the ones that will thrive. Legal complexity isn't going away. The question is whether you build systems to manage it, or let it manage you."
Delta Dental is a Coheso customer. To learn how Coheso helps legal teams build scalable operations, request a demo.