#31 - Offshore Your Legal Ops and More Advice From Abigail Nornoo, Head of Legal Ops at Standard Chartered Bank

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mario Carroll. Today my guest is Abigail Nornu. Abby is an experienced banking professional with over 20 years experience in banking industry. She is currently the head of legal operations and innovation at Standard Charter bank based in London where she manages a team of over 30 people headquartered mostly in their center of excellence which Abby set up in India to drive initiatives designed to increase the function's productivity, operational efficiency and digital innovation agenda. We dive into her journey today from her start in Ghana, the move throughout different roles within Standard Charter and her build out of the entire legal ops.

Function at the bank.

As with all of us, Abby's had to wrestle with the challenges of building business cases, demonstrating value and continuing to expand the scope of her role over time. And with that asking for and getting new.

She's one of the few people I.

Know who's created the function from scratch and grew it into a large team and are still there operating it. Finally we chat about what's on the radar for the year ahead and how they're thinking about AI. With that, let's get right into it.

Hey abhi, welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you here.

Hi Mary, Good to see you too. Excited to be speaking to you today.

I am so excited to be speaking to you because we last ran into each other at Clock London and you told me how much your team has grown and so we have a lot to get into to your story. But before we get there, I looked at your LinkedIn. You've been at Standard Charter for over 20 years.

I know actually. So in this month I turned 25.

Wow, 25 years.

Yeah. When I joined I told myself I was only going to do five years and max and that was it and nothing more. And hey, here I am, 25 years and still counting. It's been a. A long journey but yet exciting because I've got to do a lot of different things in my career.

Well, that's right. So it probably doesn't feel like it's been one job because you've had different roles and different experiences within the organization. And I think you've been in the legal ops role now for over a decade as well. I'd love to hear more about the journey and how it's been at Standard Charter and how you got there. It sounds like you, you actually started, you went to university in Ghana and started with the bank in Ghana and then moved to London.

Yeah, that's correct. So I joined as an international graduate. So the graduate program and that gives you a lot of opportunities actually. And I joined in retail so. So I'm a retail banker through and through, worked through the branches, through consumer banking and did a lot of things including serving priority clients, et cetera. So from there then I thought to myself okay, I wanted to do more. I did then go ahead. The it was called shared distribution but really a branch network in Ghana and I. So that was about, I can't remember about over 200 staff in total and also I was doing the alternate channels which was the non branch and channels like the taking care of the ATMs, mobile banking, Internet banking, et cetera which incidentally I essentially project managed it and then got to manage it as well on a bau, you know, on an operational level. So from there I did that for a couple of years and yeah, at that time I was just kind of. I get bored very easily when I'm doing the same thing. So then I came to the UK, that was in 2006. So the first year I did techenops and I did that for about a year. And then my boss got a role in HR as the coo. So he said look, you know what, we've done enough in this space in tech and ops, now let's move to HR to go and also improve the operational efficiency. At that time HR was going through a, I'll say maybe a transformation journey. So I was part of that, that journey to improve the way they work. They had a huge back office in our offshore location. So we are really big in, in India and currently we've opened some in, you know, Warsaw as well as St Pael and in China. So we started on the transformation journey. There were a number of processes that we earmarked things to do with hiring. There was one about international mobility. I did one on reporting and analytics and also to even improve the efficiency of our service delivery team. Then I probably got bored and so I just thought okay, what next?

Then I got an opportunity in our Africa regional office actually. So I went to work with our CEO over there again to build the governance infrastructure for the Africa region. So that I did for probably a year and then I moved on to. That was then the group and general counsel's office. So I did really enjoy that. So that was kind of the legal ops journey because I had to be doing things like financial management. I was doing the panel review, I was doing Risk and any other operational and also even implementing and doing all the programming change for them. And it was a one man band. So fast forward to 2016. That was when legal. And so there was a part of the work. So kind of business legal teams, and also the country legal teams. They were still part of compliance. So the decision was taken to split the two teams, which meant that the legal professionals within the LNC Group then came to join the group General Counsel's office to become the Unified Legal function. So that was a project that I also had to run because of my transformation background. I've done a lot of target operating model work. And therefore, kind of I was the right candidate in the right place probably. And so they all came together to form that function. So overnight I was managing a team of hundred. It kind of became, I think, 600 at the time. So it's like, oh, my gosh, how do I manage it?

This is for Legal Operations, right?

This is for Legal Operations. Yes, yes, for the whole company.

So that. So you were the first person. Was it. Was your role even called Legal Operations at the time?

No, no.

What were. What was the title?

It wasn't. It was called Planning and I think Project Management.

Okay.

And so it was a mix of. Because I was doing the invest, managing the investment portfolio, the program and change, and also the business management part of things to do with financial management, all the risk, et cetera. So it was. Yeah, it was some role. And so in 2016, when we split, and so it started actually first of January 2017, then we decided to call it Head of Operations. Right. For the legal function. And bearing in mind that our function is also made up of three distinct units. So we have the legal teams, we have cosec, and also the investigative services. So they deal with the Office of Loan and E Discovery. So those are the three that we call kind of the unified legal Legal function. So it was. Yeah, I think that was really a tough moment when it dawned on me that I have to create it. So a new seal had been appointed. And therefore, because of my experience in just the CEO function, as well as all the operational activities that I've been involved in, plus my experience in systems and processes, and both from implementation to also managing the operational excellence, I just thought. They thought, okay, then you have to spearhead this and create a target operating model, or as to how we operate as a function to support this.

And you report even today to the CEO of the legal department, is that correct? And a lot of folks who are Head of Legal Operations are called the Legal coo. So what is kind of the distinction between that person's role and the Head of Legal Operations?

So we have A CEO that combines with another GC role. Right. So it's kind of combined. But I think what happens is I do most of the, you know, kind of the CO type space with a couple of my colleagues and then she kind of runs the legal, what we call enterprise legal, which is an amalgamation of M and A commercial, you know, all the IP and brand, et cetera. So essentially my role entails things to do with the financial management. So I have to make sure that all the budgets essentially, you know, taking in time. And also I think it's because we have a function is big so you cannot expect the CEO to be doing all this. And that's probably why we are structured that way. I have to also manage all the investment portfolio, which is to do with all the projects, all the initiatives that we run. So I need to design or design and deliver our technology roadmap and agree with the governance of say the governance forum, what the priorities are. I also need to ensure that apart from budget, our risk agenda and so I do all the risk operations as well. I have a team that I set up to manage the, I would say all the payments and billing because obviously when you have an E billing platform that also opens up a can of worms and you need that support for the lawyers to be able to adopt that system. And then I also have reporting and analytics that's also in my area. So I have a team of data specialists, so data engineers, scientists, you name it, and who support us in our ability to report on and both internally as well as to support in external reporting. So essentially I manage the outfit or the infrastructure that underpins the whole function and not just for the CEO team. Cannot see the CEO really managing that on a day to day basis. So that's. And if I think about our structure and other support functions, you. We tend to have a similar, I would say maybe target operating model whereby you would have a CEO who would obviously be the lead on all the, I'll say maybe the strategic, you know, the. When you look at the Governor's forum or I'll say maybe in terms of if we had the GMT or can step in for the ggc, you would have the CEO in that capacity. And this is my role, which is the head of Forbes, which is really delivery focused and able to also. And I also have to step up for most of the time anyway to be able to occupy that space when let's say the CEO is not available. So yeah, that's, that's really in a nutshell how the role has Come up. So I think I told you I started with probably one and a half FTE.

Yeah. What are you now?

I have about 30. Wow. 30.

I mean that's. That is definitely one of the larger legal operations functions that I've heard of and struck me is that you've been there since the beginning. So you were the team of one before it was even called Legal Ops. And you've seen it grow to that incredible size and you're still there. What did it take? And like how did you get more headcount over the years? Because you know, so many of us struggle with, we're making an impact, but we can't grow the team how, you know, tips and advice. And how did you succeed in growing your team over time?

I always tell people you start small and then you make an impact, Showcase that impact and then get buy in from senior, you know, senior teams. In my case, it's my CEO as well as the group general counsel in getting additional support. And I also had this trick. If you need more from me than something's got to give. Right. I suspect the reason for my success here is because I, I was willing to lean into the low cost location versus the high cost location. So I know that not every organization has the. I'll say, maybe they don't have the liberty of having a literally, you know, a low cost hub.

Is that the center of excellence that you refer to?

Yes, yes, that's a center of excellence.

So that is something you set up in a low cost area. And what functions do they cover?

So, so I set that up in my, in India and so I have a team both in Chennai and Bangalore. Okay. And they cover everything that we've spoken about. So from the financial management through to the third party risk through to the billing and then payments and support risk operations, E. Discovery support. You just named the data and analytics, including my. The team that supports the investment portfolio. So the innovation side of things. So I set it up there. I have a very, I probably have only one person onshore at the moment.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Exactly. So it's. And it's more like what I would advise people is that yes, you might not have that opportunity to be able to lean into or leverage what your organization has from those low cost locations. If the infrastructure is not there, it will be difficult for legal to set it up on your own. Because we're never the pay setters. We are not the movers and shakers of any organization by far. So if you do, then I would advise or I would encourage you to probably explore that location strategy and just to add to that, Mary. So we do have apart from my legal orbs. So I as part of my role as well I do migration of activities and I think two or three years ago I supported or I set up another center of excellence for contract management activities.

Okay.

So one of the commercial for our commercial contact. So our commercial legal head is the one who is managing it, but it's myself and my team who are supporting that. So he also probably has about 40 there. And again it's about whether or not you are willing to invest the time and the energy in essentially building the team there and that. Because that's what will essentially move us from, you know, a one man team to probably a bigger one. Because your money would go further. Sure. Than if you concentrate on the high cost locations.

And do you personally spend a lot of time over there or how do you get these folks trained and up to speed and you're personally managing them, I take it.

Yes. What I do is I go there and I was supposed to be there in November, but I couldn't. So I've moved it in February. I was there early February as well. So I tried to go there twice. But again we all talk about COVID and what the positives out of it is now we can have all these conference calls, video conferencing, et cetera. And we use a lot of the tools that has been rolled out in terms of whiteboards, etc. So it's kind of. It's really the beauty about Standard Chartered whereby someone asked me how have I mastered working with a team that is not sitting by me, you know, like an off in an offshore location. How have I been successful? I. We. I don't think we even feel the distance.

Yep.

It's just because we speak virtually every day at best, maybe twice the we call that sort of thing, but definitely every week. So it's not as if I just leave them to do their thing and then. But I. I think that's the. That's been the success training, et cetera. So I do the train the trainer which means that I keep them accountable. Because one of the key things I always told myself is what's the point in not giving people? I recruited them for a purpose to grow and build them up. So if I do not allow them to be able to learn and grow, then I don't think I have done my job and therefore I really encourage them. One of the things I would also mention is I know people do have reservations when it comes to, you know, the location, strategy, et cetera. And the key learning for us was to really be patient and rigorous with our hiring. And that has paid dividends.

Yeah. So, so on. I want to dig into that piece a little bit about kind of what background, what profile of people and how do you go about finding the right talent?

Yeah, so it is, it is quite simple really because you first have your job spec and then you work with our HR counterparts in the hiring team, the recruitment team, or sometimes we even have our own established recruitment firms and we work closely with them to find us candidates that really meet that job spec. And yes, there is a hit and miss similar to anything, any hiring process. But that's what you really need to narrow it down to what and be specific in what you need. It's about the job. I think that it will take you longer if you are not really clear in what you need. And therefore there will always be this iteration. But if you get it clearly from the outset, you are bound to get those candidates that meet that criteria.

Got it? Got it. And when you started to think about setting up this center of Excellence abroad, is this something that is very common throughout Standard Charter, that there is a facility where other operations teams are located and did they offer this to you? Did you proactively decide, you know, maybe you saw it from your previous experience that I want to do something similar to that or was that already something that exists for legal now?

We didn't have anyone in the center of Excellence for Legal at the, at the time. But because of my experience with hr, as I mentioned, HR has a huge HR and finance, actually, because I work very closely with those two functions. They have a huge, you know, center of excellence and outfits in, in India, you know, Colon KL as well. So I set out. So it's more like I have been fortunate for the different roles that I've run, all the different experiences that I've had. So I'm able to leverage that when a problem presents itself.

Sure.

So it was. Sometimes you find a solution for a problem based on what you really maybe from your past or maybe a colleague has done. And this is one of those things. And we needed resources. There are budget crunches because we all have that in our organization. How can you make your money go further? And I just think that it was because we, and as I said, already had a Center of Excellence. It was much easier for us to, for me to lean in rather than if it didn't really exist. If I think back and we didn't have anything from an organization standpoint, I don't think I would have been able to do this.

Yeah. And I mean, you still had to build it up. You still had to somehow get the buy in. Right. To get to more headcount year over year. What were some of the wins or what were some of the arguments that you had for? You know, I know we're growing, but we still need more and we still need more year after year. How are you sort of getting away with that?

I think there were more and more requests coming in.

Right.

As to the supports that we needed. So the first test case obviously was to do with the billing. When we implemented an E billing platform and realized, oh, gosh, what have we gotten ourselves into? And there was so much. Yes, there was so much noise to deal with how we support the legal teams and for good reason. Come on, we all know it's not an easy platform.

Well, you're a big international function and there's a lot of invoices, I'm sure.

A lot of employees, a lot of law firms to deal with a lot of issues. Our own internal global issues. Exactly. So. So that was one of the key business cases that I had to write to say, look, if you need us to do this, then we need X.

So usually it's the problem presents itself.

Yep.

And then I find a solution. So the solution could be maybe people. It could be then process improvement, because I've done a lot of that. Or it could be purely be maybe operationalizing it or maybe removing any impediments. But on a large scale, it's really people. So that's one of the key things, is that I can articulate what it means and what the benefit case would be.

And were you trying to prove cost savings, time savings, painful work that nobody wanted to do. Was it kind of all of those? Was it obvious or was it difficult for you to try to make that case?

I think it was obvious in principle, but I still had to make the case because I needed to calculate. And the sort of things that I looked at was time savings, because this is lawyer time saved and you can't get your, you know, your senior lawyers to be dealing with all these payment issues. I think that's not what we pay them for. If we're perfectly honest and to get us off their plate, it will take X to do it. So that was my business case. And because it was already a pain point for the function, I think that's how come I got support. Another example is to do with when the bank Maybe introduces new processes.

I know they would love. Especially when you talk about the number of people that you have in your team to be able to absorb that. But in principle, you probably need another skill set or you can't even get your head above water. And therefore what happens would be you need additional resources. But in all cases, because I've done a lot of target operating model, I know one plus one is never two. You could say maybe it's one and a half bodies that I need rather than two and so on and so forth. And you don't go to town with it.

Yeah.

Right. You become a bit more objective in how you assess the need. And I'm not saying I always get it, by the way. I don't always get it. But. But I have been more successful possibly than some people. So. Yeah. So what I would say is it's really about your business case. Right. You should be able to articulate it. And, and, and I know that numbers is not everybody's 40.

That's right.

But you need to be able to, if you can't do it, get someone who can help you.

Did you face any resistance either from your internal legal team of, you know, this is work that you couldn't possibly offshore or, you know, push back about the model that you presented? And I, and I say this because we've thought about in my past, like offshoring work, but in a. Outsourcing it to like a managed service provider. And there was, you know, there was always sort of hesitation and fear. So curious how that went for you.

I think from obvious people always have reservations. Right. When it comes to taking the work away from the existing lawyers or, you know, the. And so there is. Will it be done? Well, yes. Will it be done to our expectation. That's right. I can do it better. So you always have that. We all do. Right. And so probably it's because a bit of both whereby it was things that people did not want to do.

Yep.

And therefore they were more than happy to relinquish that and get someone. If you can get someone to do it for us. Great. And it was also a bit about the, the fact that there were.

We had already an established infrastructure in place.

Yeah.

Right. I think we. We will. It all depends on the process that you want to offshore and whether or not from a. And bearing in mind that we are obviously operating in a lot of these markets where we are regulated. Right. So you need to be careful. So any process migration we do, we need to seek approval from the regulators in some markets. Some markets are fine, but so we have to go through all that process before we can even sign off and say yes, we can do this or not. So it all depends. But in principle, I think that so long as it's something that people are doing off the side of your desk, they are more than happy for you to give them back some capacity.

Yeah. And the billing function, the invoice stuff, E billing, that totally makes sense. I can see why you don't want lawyers doing that. You mentioned you also expanded into contracts management, which now you're touching the substantive work and it does have more legal repercussions. So what kind of work have you moved to your center of excellence from the contract side? And how did that kind of go when you had to sell that idea?

So again, that was being done off the side of your desk. And, and so, yeah, so it's. Because the way we are structured, you would have the core practice areas. Contracting was on one of it and they would still do it because let's say a category or whatever it is, they will help you. Because I always say that lawyers can never say no because. Yeah, because they are super helpful. So they, they just get bogged down by some of these things. We also had our own, I would say CM team who were also doing part of it in some form or shape.

What is the work? That. What is SEM and what is the work?

That was a contracting work. That was a contracting work because they do the, all the negotiations on our behalf. Okay, you know, so, so that's the, that's, that was their job. But they are not illegal. So they will support from the vendor perspective side of things. Well, so, so all the RSPs, whatever it is, they will support us in panel reviews, et cetera. But when it comes to the content itself, leader would own it and make sure that the contract will tick and tie everything dotted with IO and cross every T. So it was kind of a partnership between us. And I think they were doing at that time we were managing, I would say maybe the high risk would say multi country contracts when SEO might be doing maybe single contract, you know, no risk, et cetera, because you can use Playbook. So we just realized that it wasn't. And then you have the country legal teams also supporting some in some form or shape. And we didn't really have a commercial function. We didn't. And it's very important. So it was a way of bringing that piece of work together to centralize it. And I tell you, they were all more than happy for us. To go ahead. But then it was like, who bells the cat, Right. And that's where in those instances a business case becomes more important. And it took us quite a number of years to get that one going. But finally we got the approval and then we got into. We have lawyers sitting in there and making sure again, it's about what is the talent that you need. You have your job spec, who can do it. Yeah, right. So you wouldn't put a non lawyer in that. And that's what we've done in the contracting space.

Excellent.

And it's phenomenal, actually.

Yeah, yeah. So what you have is essentially what I sort of refer to as a captive managed service. You know, it's your own, but you can grow it and you can put all sorts of work there. How do you think that compares to those of us who use outsourcing offshoring as an option versus your own captive team? Are there benefits that you see into running it yourself?

I think there are benefits in both because whilst you would, you would think when you own it, you can put anything there versus if you have the managed service, you are probably only allowed, you know, you need to really define what you need and there's much more flexibility when you own that. But having said that, if you don't have the infrastructure already there to be able to lean in, I don't think any legal function would be in a position to be able to build that from scratch. Right. So I think that's what you've seen the law firms do it. So they are now putting resources and they do start with a couple of tens, twenties thereabout, and then they grow it more and more just so that they can have maybe the less expensive resources to essentially support their expensive onshore resources. What I would say is, even for us who would have our own outfit, there are times that there is always a place for money services. Right. And therefore you would need to look at the type of work and decide whether it is something that you can put in your own outlook or you can explore the support of an external vendor or a managed service to be able to support you on that. So, yeah, they're both pros and cons really, and we can debate that all day.

Yeah, no, I think you're very lucky that you have that sort of infrastructure set up and we had a little bit of that at Google and I looked into it and it does, does really help to have a facilities and managers and someone making sure that everything, you know, helping with the hiring and the. Everything it's. It Takes a lot of load off the plate, Abby, as we're all marching towards the end of the year now and looking towards 20, 24. What are kind of the big initiatives? What's. What are the big things on your plates or what your team is focused on for the Next, I guess, 12 months or so?

Oh, of course. The elephant in the room. AI. Right, yeah, of course. Oh, yeah.

I can't get through a podcast these days without those two letters coming up.

Oh, gosh. It's like anytime anyone drops it and gives you a penny, you'll be a rich woman by now. Right. I think it's taken the world by storm and it's one of those things that you. Look, I don't. If I should say that in the next 12 months, I'm going to implement something big, whatever it is, that's not going to happen. Right. It's all about experimentation. So it's about identifying what are the possible use cases and how we can leverage the power of generative AI. And if what I have read and that because of the operational efficiencies, I can't wait to try my hands on any sort of gen AI tool to see what the benefits would be. But yes, I know all GCs, even all CEOs, are essentially really keen on what the benefits are. And yeah, I just think it's exciting. Right. It's. Look, I'm similar to probably you. It's no illusion that it's going to, you know, help me to. Oh, I'm going to put my feet up anytime soon.

Yeah. As a country. So. So I'm looking forward to that. And also, I think from my perspective, it's really about, let's just end the year. I'm ticking the boxes on my calendar every day after the end of the year and then I can go on break. But I think for next year, we do have definitely, AI is going to be huge on the agenda. We will be much more informed than we are today of what it can or cannot do and we'll keep on learning. I think for me, it's about how we also improve adoption on even our existing systems, because every. That's what you always hear. Digital adoption is always a bit of a red herring. You know, we put in the systems because we need it, but then it's. It's a different story when it's really in production. So it's about how I get our teams to embrace the tech we have. And also, even with not just legal tech, frankly, Mary, but even Microsoft is doing a lot in that space.

Sure.

How do we use those tools a bit more effectively to improve the level of productivity within our tools?

Well, it sounds like you and the leadership team are very positive on AI. Are you feeling the same from your lawyers or is there trepidation amongst the legal team?

Oh, so I think the, the, when. That was in November, right. Last year, November, when we had chat GPT and it landed and you know, all the horror stories about the fact that it would take over the world and take all the jobs it will replace lawyers, I think that has. The trepidation has died down now because they've all understood that it's not really going to take your job, but you need to embrace it in some formal shape, if you ask me. What is that formal shape? I don't think anybody knows. And it's, that's why I say it's about experimentation. It's about trying to identify those use cases and then trying to see whether. Does it. Is it a. You know, does it fit or does it not fit? You know, so that's the fit gap analysis that we need to. And yeah, you've realized that all vendors are also now claiming that we have, they have AI. I am super excited to know what it is that they have because some of these tools we already have anyway. So if there is any, you know, any improvements or any operational efficiencies to be derived as a result of them adopting AI. Why not?

Yeah, yeah. Well. And I believe that your adoption of AI will be highest if it's embedded in the tools that people are already using day to day. Just shows up. Right. And it's, and it's made it so easy to use. There's no training. It's more human than anything we've ever dealt with before. So I know it's a fascinating time. Well, Abby, thank you so much for your time. I know that Q4 is the busiest time of year for all legal ops professionals, so I understand you're crossing off the calendar, trying to march to year end, so we can all take a little bit of a break before we inhale and start over. But thank you so much for your time and for sharing your journey today. It was great to catch up.

Thank you so much as well. I'm excited to be here. Cheers.

Okay. Cheers to all our listeners. Thank you for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.