#29 - Legal to COO, Centralizing vs. Decentralizing, and the Future of Legal Ops - Nitin Batra, Global COO for Citi Private Bank

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mary o'. Carroll. I'm really excited to share this conversation with you today. My guest is Nitin Batra, Managing Director and Global Chief Operating Officer for Citi Private Bank. As coo, Nitin is responsible for defining and executing on the multi year business strategy, driving sustainable revenue growth and delivering best in class client experience through enhancing sales discipline, implementing innovative digital solutions and achieving operational excellence while maintaining an industry leading risk and control environment. Why are we speaking to Nitin? Well, prior to this, Nitin was the global COO for Citi's legal department and previously worked at Wells Fargo where he held several leadership positions including the COO of Global Capital Finance. We had a great conversation today just talking through the COO role as part of supporting a revenue generating function versus supporting the legal department. We talked quite a bit about how these roles are organized, whether you should centralize or decentralize functions and the most important skills needed to be successful. I love this conversation. It brings a lot of hope for the future of this profession and I hope you enjoy the conversation as well.

I've been eager to get you on the podcast because I'm always trying to talk about the league legal operations profession, where it's going, where it's been. And you have such a unique perspective because of course you have this, this new role that you've been in for the last year. How is the new role?

You know, it's been everything I, I could have imagined and, and then some. It's just been fantastic. Just the industry has been a brand new industry for me. So a lot of learning on the fly, figuring out the business, figuring out the people, the organization and the industry as a whole. And we're going through a couple tough years, which is no better time to learn than during a crisis. Right. So it's been really fun.

So you're still at Citi. You've been at Citi kind of for a long time. So you just transitioned out of legal and into a pure play COO for the business role, isn't that correct?

Yeah. So I'm the COO for our private bank, the global COO for the Citi private bank. The private bank is part of our wealth business and the wealth business at Citi covers the full continuum from the 0,250k in terms of net worth 250k to 10 million, the 10 million to 50 million and then 50 million and up. And the private bank really caters to that high net worth and ultra high net worth. The latter two sort of segments, but we have businesses focused on the other segments as well. So I cover the private bank and we have roughly 600 bankers across the world providing our clients with all sorts of products from your typical lending types of products, banking, investments, trust, all of the things that the ultra high net worth clientele need. And so I help the bankers as I was in my prior role. Right. Helping the lawyers be as productive as they can and not have to worry about anything else. So all of the same things that we did. Even you in your prior role, I'm sure King. Right. It's sort of everything from the operations, the finances, the technology, the talent, the real estate, just, you name it. Thinking about analytics, thinking about reporting, thinking about productivity, all of the same types of things. Just now on the revenue generating side.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So it's kind of the same as being the internal COO for a GNA function, but actually on the revenue side. And does it feel very different kind of being on the revenue side? Are you more focused on revenue rather than cost cutting?

Yeah, so it's, it's funny because I thought that that would be the case, but cost is always going to be forefront, especially in the sort of industry that we're in and the economy that we're in. Right. And so cost has been a big focus and all of the same things, right? Thinking about automation, thinking about location strategy, thinking about pyramids, thinking about the right role for the right work, and all of the same things that we did, vendor management, procurement, optimizing all that spend, optimizing your tech spend. So from a cost management standpoint, all of that has remained but now also have the revenue side of things. So thinking about how do we optimize our banker productivity, right? The sales metrics that we should monitor, what are the leading indicators, the lagging indicators, building the right discipline from a sales management standpoint so that we can react quick enough and make some investments where we think they're underinvested or scale back if we feel like that's not delivering.

Do you think this is similar to like a pure COO role, let's say, of an independent business? Like, I know you're part of the private bank segment at Citi, like, let's just say you left and became the CEO of a small bank or something? Do you actually think the role would be similar in terms of like the scope of what you're doing?

I think it'd be very similar. The one main difference that I would, I would See is that if you go to an independent business, like a small business, let's say a small bank, in your example, you wouldn't have all of those centralized functions, right? So you wouldn't have the centralized hr, you wouldn't have the centralized technology, the centralized compliance, centralized risk, centralized operations. Right now they are all key partners of mine. They roll up into sort of these global centralized functions as I'm sure they did at Google as well in any large organization. So that I think from a direct reporting line standpoint, that would be the number one difference. But the scope of responsibilities would still be the same. You're still accountable for the soup to nuts, the end to end sort of profitability, the hygiene, the, the operational excellence and the success of your business. To deliver on that by calling on all these partners that no matter where they might report, that's I think the, the one main difference that comes to mind.

Okay, and do you work with legal now from, from this seat and how, what's that like?

Yeah, quite a bit. We finished Libor, that was a big sort of reg change initiative. So my, my colleagues, you know, my old team that was implementing it and I did a coordinate, quick virtual toast when that finished. But we were going along with them for the journey because we had our own clients and documents and contracts and stuff here, immediate. So we were sort of one of their many stakeholders now embarking on restructuring a whole nother set of our loans for some type of treatment again and working with legal. And now I'm asking them questions like did you get bids for this? Right. Did you. How did you identify the right sort of pricing structure for this? And there I'm happy to say that they're sort of on top of it now. Right. And I feel like culturally as a, as a department, it's in the DNA now, it's run like a business. And so of course, the minute I asked like, yep, you're in. Three bids. Here's why we picked number, number two or number one or whatever the case might be. And we're going to do this in sort of these phases. So I interact with them on these projects, these large sort of remediation and change types of projects, but also individual matters. Right. There's some risk here or some litigation there or what have you. So we do have regular contact with the legal colleagues and, and you just catch up, even just to catch up. Just spent almost 10 years with them.

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say still.

Some of my best friends. Yeah.

Do you miss it? And is there some part of you that's like, don't mess up all the stuff that we put in place.

I miss it for sure, but it's really the people, Right. Also there's an element of the comfort. So I'm still figuring out the new world and still getting my bearings here. But I definitely miss the people. I miss the culture. We've done some fantastic things. I still go back and check in on, hey, are we done? Did we go live with this? Remember?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting, your comment on like the type of people and your personality types of trying something new or getting comfortable with like being really good at something. I think there's two different types of people. Right. And I always kind of looked at that when I was hiring. There's like the people who once they've mastered something, they want to work on something new and like they're done with that. I don't, I got good at it. And then as a manager I'm always like, but you're so good. Can you just stay doing that forever? And then there's the other people who actually really enjoy mastering something and do want to kind of stay in that forever. Yeah.

Now that I'm good at it, I'm going to be best at it and I'll. I enjoy this, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely have fond memories and still stay in touch with the, with the legal colleagues.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's kind of neat that you get to still be in, in the same environment. Were you actively kind of looking to leave your current role? Were you kind of itching to do something new or what was the catalyst for you moving? Yeah.

So, you know, it, it was not by no means an active search at all. It had been a great run. I had done some great things, had achieved everything that I set out to do, but prior to coming to legal, had been in a frontline, sort of revenue generating business. And so when this opportunity came up, when someone reached out to me about this, so it'd be kind of cool to take all of this execution discipline. Right. This business management discipline and go back to my sort of roots of growing a business and going to the growth area. And so that's kind of what appealed to me about this. And we were also at a stage within Citi of thinking about what's the strategy for the next three to five years, where's the growth going to come from? The private bank and wealth management was a key part of that strategy. So. So for me to be part of that growth engine and part of what's going to take us to where we are planning to go and have a small part to play in. That was an exciting opportunity.

How long were you in legal Ops?

I think eight years.

Eight years? Yeah. Long time. Like a true industry veteran. By the time you left even, not.

Counting the time that I was actually full time in there, I was consulting for the legal department in my prior role. Right. So I was in a productivity strategy role internal to Citi. My first two years at Citi I was decked against legal and so that's how I got to know the general counsel and the team and get a appreciation for the opportunity within legal. And so I could count those years as well. That would be 10.

That was my next question. Kind of like, how did you fall into the legal world from being outside of it?

Yeah, because I came in the city in a productivity role, which is basically a strategy and expense management role right after the financial crisis. And I was asked to sort of work with our global functions GNA as you called it. Right. The global functions, legal, finance, HR were my, my main stakeholders and partners. And so I started working then with the general counsel who had come in just shortly, right before that from a large Amlod 20 firm as a managing partner. He had come in and he had known what a professional legal functioning department, law firm looks like, how to manage it. So I started working with him thinking about the transformation roadmap, thinking about the strategy, the organizational design, how to run it like a business. Again, this was post financial crisis. Everyone was in this mode of simpler, smarter, safer, stronger. Right. And so even the functionees were being asked to think about it like a business. That was his strong suit from having run a law firm for so many years. And so he said, you want to come in and help me build that, that muscle? I was like as a non lawyer, coming into the legal department didn't really make much sense to me in 2013, 2014. But I was like, sure, why not? Let's give it a try. Within the first few months of coming in, you look around and you see there's a lot of people doing this just like you. Right. I mean this was early days. If you, you, you go back, this was before the days of clock and before the days of. Yep, all of the big sort of legal ops wave and a lot of our, I'm sure mutual friends that were doing this were my guides into the, into the role.

Yeah, well, I always give credit. I mean there's so much credit given to the California tech companies that were early adopters, I think we were just more vocal and loud about it. And really the birthplace of legal operations was the financial services. And I think New York was the hub of it all, financial services, which is more highly regulated. And you guys couldn't be as public about saying what you were doing. And so I think like I said, California got credit, but you guys are the ones who really started this journey for the whole world. So credit should be given to all the pioneers in New York.

I think there's a mix of that. Right. I think you definitely pushed the envelope in a whole new direction with sort of the legal tech space. You were more agile and nimble and able to try things there. For us, it was really coming out of the crisis and the sort of a simplification need from an expense standpoint. And then to your point, the whole regulatory overlay, it was a do or die. You had to do that, right?

Yeah.

I mean these large reg projects, I mean $100 million was pretty standard on a large reg remediation that legal was running. You need the discipline to run those types of projects.

Yeah, that's nuts. So when you get taps to join the legal department, essentially with this role, you, you had come from a role that was much broader, with great transferable skills. You could have done a lot of things. Did you at any point. And I'm asking because I felt this a little bit feel like, ooh, this just legal. Is this too pigeonholed? Is this too niche and specialized? Was there a little bit of fear that like, how will I get out of this if I want to?

One day before I got in. Yes, I questioned it. Right. Like I was saying, I didn't know this sort of career path existed or there was a role for someone that's not a lawyer in legal.

And it really wasn't a career path. Then right. When you and I started to. It was like kind of a gamble.

Yeah. I honestly didn't know what I was getting into, except I knew the people that were asking me to come in and I just thoroughly trusted them and enjoyed working with them and saw their vision. And I was like, I can help with that. Right. Whether it be opening a new location for a lower cost location from a talent standpoint and a cost in a time zone coverage or what have you. Whether it be driving standardization, your financial reporting, whether it be putting disciplinary procurement practices, whether it be putting some new technology in place, all of the things that we did, I was like, these are all common things that you do as a practitioner, as an executioner as an operations focused individual. And I. I've done these for whatever at that point, 15 years in my career. So I, I trusted my ability, I trusted their vision. And I was like, yeah, I know I can add value. I know they see the value I can add.

How big did you grow kind of your function in your team by the time you left?

When I joined, I would say there was probably 20 to 30 people doing this in pockets. Our Asia General Council had their own sort of team. The EMEA General Counsel had their team. Everyone had chief of staff who did all of these other things for their general counsel, which was kind of the structure that a lot of the groups had. And so by the time I left, I mean, it was going on a hundred people. It was a pretty large team.

What were their roles, what were the functions and how did you structure it?

So the way I'd structured it, I had somewhat covering each region, so I had a sort of a very lean horizontal regional coverage, let's call it a regional COO. At points in time, those regional COs were more heavily staffed. In some cases, even when I left, they were, for example, Latin America and Mexico. That was a more integrated regional COO structure just because they're so different and some of the reg regime there, as well as the multiple jurisdictions that they had to cover, we needed that type of on the ground coverage there. But it was mostly aligned by global function expertise. So we had outside council management, innovation, finance and business management, we called it. This is where we did all our reserves, all of our CCAR planning, sort of a finance process, all of our internal external budgeting. Then we had operations and technology. So someone that did everything from our outside counsel information security reviews and audits to the billing reviews and audits, doing our actual billing, processing the invoices, doing all of our technology work. And then I had someone focus on innovation. I think those were the main sort of global functions. So outside counseling, finance ops and tech, Innovation, finance, business management, those were the main groups.

Tech was different or separate than innovation. And how did you define those and why are they different?

Yeah, so I did that very deliberately after a few years in the role every year, actually even coming in, innovation was sort of a buzzword. It's always going to be a buzzword. Yeah. And so Rohan, at that point, he really embraced technology, had all the time in the world to. To learn it and to sponsor it and support and spend on it. So we'd sit down and with the legal management committee, talk about wanting to embrace technology, wanting to define the lawyer of the future. Get our attorneys the training on some of the emerging tech and becoming more productive and efficient. We used to call it being the best for our clients. And then we'd look back at the end of the year and see what we had done. And you go through the list and you'd find nine out of the ten things were more safety and soundness, keeping the lights on, sort of bau, upgrading our billing platform, matter management platform, our knowledge management, document management, those types of things. We weren't really innovating as rapidly as anyone would have liked, me included. And it was just because when there's a fire you're putting out, you're making sure that the ship doesn't sink before you start go building this new, you know, laser sensor, whatever the case might be. And so we realized that it was not because of the lack of sponsorship or desire or ideas. It was just because those two things were competing against each other always. So we needed to separate the focus and give them an equal Runway.

Yeah, that's, that's really smart. I mean that's the same thing with just legal ops generally, right. When you don't have the dedicated role and it's like, oh, well, all the lawyers are kind of thinking about it on the side and they have their day jobs and the, the operational investment, the innovation will never rise to the same level because the day to day stuff is just so much more urgent and pressing and all this is important, but it can wait, right.

Six months, three months, then the year goes by. Right.

And exactly.

There's just so much in the BAU world that it became a year over year or a year type of thing. Look back, you like something's not right.

Here that's so great. I mean, that's the key to a lot of the talks that we've been having about how to become more strategic. It's like, don't get stuck in the day to day tactical stuff. You have to make space to start transforming and doing the strategic thinking.

So important. Yeah. If you, if you've got the right leadership sponsorship around that and you can do it, do it. Yeah, it's definitely worth it.

I want to go back to something you mentioned because it's another thing that's come up in a lot of conversations today, which is there's these large companies, older, let's say older companies as well, who have big legal departments, but they don't have an established specific operational role yet or CEO role and they're just now thinking about putting that in place. But exactly what you walked into. And I think, you know, it's a little bit what I dealt with as well is that there's pockets. You can't have a company that's existed for that long in a large legal department without some pockets of people doing it, right, thinking about it as part of their day job or even just on the side. So when you walked in, it was regional. There were kind of half roles here and there. And that's going to happen, they're going to pop up. But then you have this new person or this new role being created, or you and I walk in and you go, well, now I need to centralize all that, right? Get it all under one place so that we're working, sharing best practices, centralizing that. How did you go about thinking about that? Was that something that was just like a mandate? All these roles are going to now go to one place or.

Yeah, I mean, fortunately for me, there was a little bit of a mandate around. Just Rohan saying at that point is again, that I can't have five different reports of how they're performing on five different calendars. And some include this, some don't include this, some include this, some don't include this. Right. You've got to have a standard process and you've got to have a standard, predictable way of delivering it. And for me to be able to measure horizontally those apples to apples comparisons, because I can't do that right now, especially in the global company, fx is just the simplest thing to get your head around. Right. Do you include, don't you include which baseline do you use?

Yeah, good point.

His mandate was that these sort of legal professional functions, these business management types of functions, we need to bring them together because of exactly that. To have common process, standard way of understanding it and providing that insight back to each of the general counsels who need to be focused on providing the best advice to their clients, it will be a little bit of a discomfort initially having sort of your finance person, your billing person, your information security person and your tech person right around you is very convenient. But there's benefits to the scale as well. When you bring it all together, instead of being able to make small changes, you can make bigger changes and you can get the benefit of the best practices across the globe.

Exactly, exactly. And there's so much similar, whether it's regional or across practice groups, every group is trying to solve the same thing. Which kind of brings me to my next point about. Well, first of all, the financial services industry created the COO of legal title. I Think that's pretty well known. I mean, that's what everyone sort of in the banks are called, whereas everywhere else it's head of Legal Ops, director of Legal Ops, Vice President. Is there anything you think that's different with the scope of role or is it just a cultural title?

Good question. I don't think there's anything significantly different.

Okay.

I also know that some banks don't have that title. For example, when I left, my successor took on a different title because we made changes to the role. In my transition, given some of our regulatory focus and the consent orders that we're dealing with took on a CAO title. And so I don't think it's necessarily that there's a difference in the scope other than just the obvious big focus on reg change management. But that doesn't really have much to do with the title per se. It's just the amount of time you spend on the regulatory side of things is slightly higher. I think it's more maybe cultural. Okay.

The other, you know, thing we were just talking about is how much is similar across different practice groups and different areas within legal. I've always also thought there's a lot similar across different GNA functions or parts of the business. Now that you're in a COO role of another part of the same company, why do we not centralize? Why do we not talk to each other more? You know, I remember reaching out to who was my counterpart of running operations and marketing and sales and finance and saying, hey, maybe, maybe we should all get together and share best practices. Because like, don't you have the challenge with intake and measuring metrics? And don't you have the challenge with documents and sharing them and permissions, management workflow. Right, yeah. Assignment and what, you know, what do you outsource and insource And I got much traction trying to pull that together. But kind of now that you've seen it from two different sides, is there an opportunity for that?

So you're asking, is there an opportunity for more like collaboration, sharing across CEOs across the different.

The business? Yeah. Even centralizing more Right. Across the business. I always kind of wondered, would one day there be a global company wide COO and then a bunch of mini COOs that don't necessarily report into legal but report into the CEO? I don't know.

It's a cycle, right. I've seen it centralized. I've seen it get decentralized.

Yeah, it is a cycle.

Get centralized again. I think there are certain functions that can definitely be more centralized, more Horizontally across different functions. So thinking about, I mean just procurement management. Right. Some of the, some of the discipline there now, as long as you don't end up with a one size fits all. Because everyone's going to say buying legal services is very different than buying technology services, just as an example. But the capabilities from using the tools, using some of those processes are very similar. Same thing with the expense management, the finance management. Same things. Right. We're talking about the levels, we're talking about the locations, the spans, the layers, the pyramids. All of the same types of practices. Could you apply that? One big one is project management. Project Management 101 is Project Management 101 everywhere you need good project managers to execute on any big project. I think there are definitely opportunities to be more cross pollinated with other functions and COO groups within a large organization. But then there's some that are very unique, cater to your particular client set or your particular industry that you focus on.

Yeah. Thinking about tech platforms and thinking about processes and. Right. Sourcing in lower cost centers that the company has created. I've always thought like, wow, if you guys have a low cost center where you're hiring people, why can't we put some legal people there and make the most of it? But there's just so many things as, as you learn, especially in a larger organization, what other groups are doing. We're not the first to be thinking about this stuff.

Yeah. And some of the other organizations have taken that leap. Right. If you look around, I, I do know a few organizations that have quote unquote disbanded their CEO organization within their function to be part of a broader COO organization, maybe across functions of businesses.

Yeah. This is another argument, by the way. General counsel and clos who say how do I, I want to create this role, how do I hire someone? And I've often said maybe one of the easiest ways is actually look across your organization and see who exists in other ops teams.

A hundred percent. 100%. Right. It's the same execution, business management, focus and muscle that's very fungible and transferable. It's important though to be able to look at both sides of that. Right. There are some transferable and shareable capabilities, but then there are some things unique that you need the agility on that make sense to stay within the business. One example I would say in my mind that comes to top of mind is just the whole information security and the onboarding of new vendors and getting all of that stuff done right. In law firms. You can't wait to get them onboarded in the same way that you can wait for a consulting firm or a tech partner. Right. You need to be able to share data with them yesterday.

Yeah.

Having some type of carve out for that in your firm wide policies and firm wide standards around that is critical.

Yeah, no, that's definitely true. And on the other hand though, sometimes I think the hardest part of the role is navigating a large organization and figuring out how do I get things done, who are the decision makers, what are the levers I need to pull in a company like Citi or at a company like Google, which is going to be different. So from that perspective, like in your new role, you're probably able to hit the ground running a lot faster just because you know how to get stuff done within the organization already.

It's still a lot of learning. There's still a lot of new players. Right. 200,000 person organization, you're familiar with these larger organizations. There's still a lot of new players in trying to figure out who does what. I just had a thought on the prior question though, which you trigger. There's also value in having someone really close to the business and the function that cannot be overstated as opposed to working through a utility. I'll just give you an example. Like if you were to centralize a particular function, subscription management, to manage your licenses to the LexisNexuses and the Bloombergs, you centralize it and it goes into a utility. And then do you lose that subject matter, knowledge of the particular business, the particular industry that makes you so much more responsive and able to make more applicable decisions as opposed to using one size fits all.

Yeah.

Or getting in queue because the risk is legal being usually the smallest function in these large organizations would not necessarily get the time of day or priority to spend its tech budget on the things that are most important to it. Right. It goes back to our conversation about innovation and bau and you always give priority to keeping the lights on. Once you do centralize, you have the risk that you get deprioritized because there's bigger, more important things to do as well as having the person move too far away. I think that's the point that I wanted me. So now coming to your question on being able to hit the ground running and knowing people. Absolutely. There's a big part of that 100%. But this is also a very different business and different organizations. So I've had some, some learning to do there as well.

What's kind of been the biggest surprise or biggest Learning or knowledge gap that, that you see in the new role, Is it just kind of what the business is compared to what legal is, or is there something else?

I would say that's probably been just really learning the business, learning how we make money, what the different triggers are, both the micro and the macro. Getting a true appreciation for how the business is going to react when the Fed makes a rate change. I didn't really have that appreciation until I got into this. Right. Having an appreciation for how some of the decisions that our Treasury Department makes on the cost of capital, for example, I didn't really appreciate that fully till I got into the business. I knew there was an impact, I knew there's a linkage, but seeing it on the ground and being able to understand those linkages at the next level of detail has been the big part of the learning curve.

And then coming into such a senior level role in a new area that you're not familiar with, like, were you intimidated and were you nervous?

100%. A hundred percent. I'm still, still the new kid on the block. Still learning, going to every conversation that, hey, I know I've been here a little over a year, but you've been here 20 years.

Yeah.

Tell me how this really works. I'm fully aware of that sort of limitation that I know just, just a tiny bit of what, what needs to be known right now to be successful. So every day is just super exciting to pick that up and continue to, to grow that knowledge base.

Yeah. But I'm sure you're doing amazing. And the reason I asked that is so many folks who want to get into these roles then become intimidated. Well, I've only worked on one part of it. I've never done the outside counsel bit. I've never done the tech bit. And my response is nobody's done it all. Nobody knows everything. People get to be CEOs, they've never done it before. Everyone has to do it for the first time.

I think that's spot on. I think you just got to trust. You have to trust in two things. Just like I did when I made the transition into legal. Your ability from a core execution standpoint. Right. The execution focus on being able to organize large amounts of information and get it done. The change management piece, to be able to articulate not only what you need to do, but the why and the how you're going to get there in the disciplined track. The execution sort of the problem solver piece. Having that confidence that it'll take me a minute but I'll Listen.

Yeah.

I've got enough confidence in my listening skills and ability to break down the problems into smaller parts and then try to solve those. The sort of facilitation stuff that, you know, again, as any coo, you've got to drive consensus across multiple stakeholders. Each of them may have their way of doing it. And yeah, just so that that grit. Right. Bounce back after you make the mistake.

That's absolutely.

Or you failed. That doesn't mean it's the end of the road. Learn and bounce back and having that confidence, I think, is all that it is.

Yeah. No, you nailed it. It is the confidence. Because I always say someone's tapped you for the role or somebody's hired you, so they all believe that you're the best person to do it. Don't you be the person who doesn't believe in you.

Yeah. I mean, listen, everyone makes mistakes and trips.

Right.

It's about how you get back up and learn from it. So. Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah. So those things that you pointed out, figuring out what the problems are, going after it step by step, being a good listener in these various COO roles that you've had, what is kind of the most important skill set or training to be bringing to the table for success.

I think that's it. Those. Those things that I mentioned as a coo, your credibility, your reputation is based on your ability to get it done. The execution focus. And I'm not talking sharp elbows or bull and china shop type of situation, but being able to work across the aisles and drive, influence that vision and articulate that vision and get people to follow along with it.

That's what we mentioned earlier when I was trying to say, like, you need to understand the culture and how to get stuff done. It's exactly right. Is you get it done in the right way. Right. Because maybe a bull in a China shop with sharp elbows works in some cultures, but maybe doesn't work in yours. And what is the right way to influence and to bring people around and get them excited to do something with.

You and take a ton of credit in the fact that you're working with lawyers who are notorious about being skeptical. Right. If you can convince a lawyer to do something, you can go anywhere.

Yeah. And then I guess, final question for you, words of advice or wisdom for those who really do want to get into this space. Like, I am dying to get into legal ops. I just heard about it. What would you tell people now?

I think the. The demand for legal ops is as high as it's ever been. Right. Especially in the day and age, now that we're seeing this huge emergence AI and we haven't even talked about that, but just I think our Legal Ops colleagues just had so much opportunity to drive change and make an impact just in that particular space. But then all of the things that we used to do. Right, those things still are absolutely critical. And so from a advice standpoint, I would, I would just say think about those things that we just talked about, the execution, focus, change management, the. The consensus building, the problem solving and organizational navigation pieces, and pick a particular area where you're most passionate about from a vertical function standpoint and go make the case that, hey, I can bring these skills to your particular. Whether it be the law firm information security space, or implementing a new knowledge management solution, or putting some discipline into your reserve management process, or the bidding and the buying for law firm services, at the end of the day, they're all using the same skills that you've used and applied and developed somewhere else.

That's right. That's right. All right, Well, I wanted to say thank you both for your time today, but also for leading the charge and for sharing your story, because Legal Ops is still in its early days, even though for you it's been a lifetime. But people are often wondering, where do I go from here and what's next and what are the possibilities? And we're seeing so much of that now. Obviously, I've gone to the tech side. We've seen many become consultants, but you're one of the ones who've actually broken out altogether and used the operational skill set and transitioned that into a very different role and outside of legal altogether and done it very successfully. So I think that's great. Any last thoughts on how that feels?

I'm happy where I am. I'm loving this. I'm actually super excited for what the private bank future holds, coming around the corner with the economy and market cycle that we've been in the last couple of years. So I'm super excited about being prepared to ride that next wave because I believe this business is destined for some fantastic things. And I'm so grateful to be here. I think I would say, though, Mary, to you, huge shout out to what you do for this industry. You've blazed the trail and opened the doors for countless people. I'm so grateful for you to have invited me to this. So thank you.

Oh, thank you, thank you. That's very kind. Well, then, always good to see you. Missing you in the conferences and stuff, but hopefully we'll stay in touch. And we're all going to watch what you do and rooting for you for great success.

Likewise, Mary. We'll stay in touch. Take care. Thanks for having me.

Take care.