#42 - Strategic Solutions: Navigating Legal Operations Challenges with Dawn Hinz

I'm Mario Carroll, Chief Community Officer at Ironclad and you're listening to Pearls on Gloves Off. Today my guest is Dawn Hins. Dawn is a Director of Legal Operations at Avery Denison. She sits on the law Department's leadership team and is responsible for delivery of the strategy and day to day operations of the Global Law department focused on continuous process improvement, self service enablement and effective resource allocation. She comes with a blend of over 20 years of industry and consulting experience and is an experienced professional with a proven track record of driving operational excellence through leveraging people, process and technology to innovate and drive efficiencies in the way work is transacted. Prior to joining Avery Denison to establish the Legal Ops function, she was global Legal Technology Leader at Dell Technologies. I've known dawn for a while and the thing about dawn is she really knows her stuff. We all know there's a lot of people out there who are good at being a talking head or can talk about Legal Ops at a high level, but dawn is the real deal. No fluff here, just real experience and leadership. And as we get into later in the episode, she has a zero tolerance for mediocrity. Dawn holds herself, her team and others to a high standard of excellence when it comes to work product, but also when it comes to work ethic and attitude. She's not afraid of a tough challenge. When we get in this conversation, we talk about her move from Dell to Avery Denison and how she made the choice to join that new organization. We talk about how to work creatively and to think strategically, to leverage an army of vendors and service providers to get things done so that you can quarterback the work without getting too in the weeds and without doing the heavy lifting yourself that's critical to being a strategic leader. We talk about how to elevate the impact of what you're doing, how to prioritize, how to know the value of your initiatives, how to set expectations about what it takes to do something well. And finally, we talk about program management as really a core skill and a key to success, what to look for in a new team hire. And we close with the very cool idea of a leadership mindset. I hope you enjoy. Hey dawn, welcome to the show. Good to see you as always. Hi Mary.

Thanks for having me.

So you are now the Director of Legal Ops at Avery Dennison. I know that Avery Dennison makes labels because I use them to print addresses every Christmas for my holiday cards, but I know that they also do a lot more than that. So just very Quickly, do you mind enlightening our audience on kind of what Avery Dennison does as a company?

Sure. So, yes, most commonly you're familiar with all of the labels that you, you know, see at Office Depot and things of that nature, but much more than that. So when you think of, you know, when we were just material science, just actual labor labels in terms of sticky paper, things of that nature, everything from medical tape to all of your, like clothing labels, sports team labels, street signage, car wraps, really anything of that nature. But moving pretty rapidly into the space of digital labeling now as well.

Just yet another company that is a traditional company that's becoming a tech company.

Yeah, we say we're, you know, kind of bridging the gap between the physical and the digital.

Yeah, you've been there a few years. What does the legal department look like? How big is it? What are the practice areas?

Sure. So as a company, you know, we're global. So in over 50 countries, we're over 34,000 people. As a company within the legal department, we have about 60 full time employees, obviously highly staff augmented with outside counsel. We are segregated regionally in terms of we have regional legal teams and then from a global standpoint, we have functions like ethics compliance, intellectual property, corporate governance and M and A.

And you are director of legal ops, but you're also in a lot of ways chief of staff, isn't that correct?

Essentially, yes.

Yeah. So what does your role entail there? And do you have a team? Is it just you?

I do have a team. I have two direct reports. But I would say I have several other individuals you could consider somewhat dotted line to me, there's folks in IT in terms of legal IT business partners that are focused on holistically on legal IT technology implementations. We have contract administrators in each of the regions as well that as we globalize or standardize processes across the department, those folks are highly interlocked with my team as well as all the legal support staff as it relates to spend and matter management. And then in regards to some large scale technology implementations that we have going on, we have outside implementation partners and consultants helping as well. So really my role, you know, encompasses all the legal department's responsibilities that are not, you know, practicing the law itself. So everything from spend management to anything related to what we call from a strategic priority standpoint, operational excellence. So driving efficiency, productivity, streamlining, say communications. So what do we have in terms of, you know, department communications, but what are we also doing to keep the business informed? So obviously highly focused on change management when we're doing some of our large scale tech implementations, so really a little bit of everything. So kind of driving that operating model or also taking a step back and understanding how things were done before and what can we do to better kind of elevate our service delivery model with some of our tech implementation? So as folks are so strapped for bandwidth, what can we do to offload some of that high volume, repetitive, lower risk work to either automate it or kind of shift who's doing it so folks can focus on the more complex, the higher value work?

Yeah. And am I imagining, did you tell me that you were also Chief of staff or is that something that I made up?

No, I do that stuff as well. It's really all encompassing. So anything to do with the department operations and then really anything our CLO needs to support him on, whether it's, you know, a deck for a board meeting or you name it, it maybe that's what I like about the role. It's averaging.

Yeah. And so do you see those as kind of two different hats or groups of responsibilities? Or do you see that really, is that just kind of one role that is merged together? And I'm asking because there's so many different models nowadays where we see a director of Legal Ops with a separate person who's the Chief of staff. Sometimes there's a chief of staff either reporting to or Legal ops is reporting to that person. How do you see it in your Oregon? Do you think that's the right way to set it up? And are there different ways that work?

From my perspective, I guess I just see myself as wearing a couple of hats. So I think there is, you know, the hat that I wear as the legal Operations director that I, you know, interlock with the folks that report to me and team members in terms of execution on. And then there's the other aspects of my role that I would say work directly with the CLO on that don't necessarily require me to engage my team may require me to engage others on our leadership team. But I kind of look at that as different hats. And in some case that part where I work directly with the CLO may require me to work directly with, you know, HR or comms or other things of that nature. For me, it's all part of my role. But in terms of who I interlock with, it really depends on the nature of the work.

Yeah. It's so interesting how every, everyone you speak to in these roles has it defined a different way. I mean, I think a lot of what you're Saying is the two roles or two hats that you wear sometimes that's very common. Like the way people do both those roles is pretty common. I think that's best practice. I don't like it when they're split up because I think the legal ops and the chief of staff, essentially, whether they're the same person or not, have the same goals and objectives and they really kind of need to be working almost as one person if they're not one person. Now, were you the first legal ops person at Avery Denison?

I was, yes. Or I am, yes. About three years ago I was contacted actually by a headhunter in regards to the role. So had some, you know, collaborative discussions for several months before I actually decided to take the position and step into the role. But personally I like that. I like stepping into somewhat unchartered territories. It's challenging, which I also kind of embrace. But it also gives you the ability to kind of charter your own path. And so I like that. I like that aspect of it.

And you had done it before, which we'll get to. But what was it like when you set up and you described kind of what you do, but was that all defined or had. Did you kind of have to come in and define it for yourself? You do report to the clo, I believe, and was, you know, was what the role well defined in his mind of what he wanted, or was it just hire the right smart person and let them figure it out?

I think a combination of both. The role was not well defined. I think there were core aspects of a legal operations role that were an expectation or were kind of breast hacks in terms of had to get done, but in terms of how they get done, he was looking at me to really make that happen. So I think when you think of, you know, spend and matter management, your vendor management, things of that nature, I would say those I consider kind of run rate work that, you know, needs to happen and needs to happen seamlessly. We've done a lot of work since I've joined to, you know, know, replace our E Billing solution and things of that nature. But I think those aspects of the role were somewhat well defined in terms of someone who could take that run rate legal operations work, make sure that it happens and make sure that it happens, you know, seamlessly and where there are any either undefined or defined, but broken processes put in place, process and kind of solution, any gaps or shore up any gaps in those processes and then clm, as you're aware, has been, you know, a big initiative for so many. But it was a priority for me to step in and define our legal technology roadmap and prioritize what's going to happen and really execute that roadmap. So bring it to life. And so that was an expectation as well. But in terms of how to do that, he was really looking at me to do that. Coming from a department which you can talk a little bit about in the past that, you know, was very focused on digital transformation of the law department, I was able to bring some of that in to this role as well. Because, you know, as our company is evolving, so we are shifting, you know, from just a, you know, physical labeling company to a digital labeling company. Like many others, the company itself is going through an evolution and a digital transformation, but in tandem, we need to go through one as well, because as our company grows, the law department's not going to grow at the same speed. So what can we do to really enable our team members to do more with less, or what can we do to enable the department to do more with less? And I think there's, you know, people, process and technology aspects of that. From a process perspective, maybe what is some work that we're doing in the law department that isn't necessarily the role of legal? So maybe we need to take a step back and shift that work either to the right function department or even, you know, outsource it. Do we have the right people? So even the people that the skill sets that, you know, folks had 10 years ago, I think things are evolving. It's great, you know, for me, from a legal operations function, I think historically, when people thought of a law department, they think of just attorneys. We know there's, you know, much work that happens in a law department that doesn't necessarily require attorneys to do it. And then there's a lot of work that attorneys do that doesn't necessarily require attorneys. So it's how do we shift the right work into the right people's hands? And then from technology, I see technology as an enabler. Where do we either have solutions in place that are maybe archaic, or we need to replace rip out, or you have a solution, so you check the box. Yes, we have that tool, but are we really optimizing it, using it? What it's for things of that nature? And then where do we have manual processes or opportunities to really be transformative, to put in place new technology? So that, that's been a key focus, you know, since I stepped into the role, replaced our E billing solution, you know, integrate it with our accounts payable solution so that we're actually, you know, kind of being able to, I wouldn't say automate. There's still some gaps, but, you know, have that piece of spend and matter management operate rather seamlessly so that I can also shift my small but mighty team to focus on the priority work like implementation of our CLM solution, which we've procured as well. We're, you know, we have, we've done several tech projects since I've stepped into the role. So having done that in my, you know, prior experience, that's been helpful. It was a really, you know, transferable skill into.

Yeah.

This role.

How hard was it for you to come in and look around and decide, this is archaic, we need something new? You know, someone else must have put that in place and made that decision. You know, to decide to rip and replace can sometimes cause some friction in the organization. Was that an issue for you or was it very clear and it was your clo just behind you or how did that come about?

He was behind me. Was it hard for me? No, but it's always interesting. Some people are so attached to technology. I guess I'm pretty attached to my phone or I don't know. But it's interesting to me how attached people can be to, you know, an archaic application. Like when you switched from, say, Lotus Notes to Outlook in a role, I don't know, that was really, like, concerning to me. But yes, you have people that are very resistant to change. I think part of a key skill of a legal operations function is, you know, being a change agent, being able to influence and it's really being able to tell that value proposition and tailor it to who it is that you're talking to. And then at some point it's, this is the way we're going to get on board. Because there's functions behind our previous E Billing solution that were very manual behind the scenes. Sure, it didn't impact you. You're used to using the tool you've always used, but there's a whole bunch of manual work that's happening behind the scenes that we need to automate. There is definitely some resistance from just a user experience standpoint. It's getting folks to use something different that they're not familiar with. And I think it's taken a while, but I think that kind of goes into, you know, making sure you choose the right tools, making sure you engage the right vendors so that you can really kind of develop those partnerships to help ease the pain as much as you can.

Right. And you had Older systems in there. I kind of sometimes wonder. It's often the new leader's job is in a, in the legal ops position to come in assessment, find the things that are old, pull them out, or put things in that are new. I kind of wonder if you never showed up, you know, would you, would your department still look the same now or do you think something naturally would have happened? Would someone have raised their hand and said, this is broken, we should change it?

I think someone would have raised their hand and said, this is broken, we should change it. But do I think that it would have got changed? No. I just think from a bandwidth perspective and from a skill set perspective and putting in place a ripping something out, putting something new in, or just taking some manual processes and putting in new tech, it's a lift. Right. So even as we're undergoing a CLM implementation right now, the, you know, nirvana at the end of the day, when you have full end to end CLM at a global company like ours in place will be transformative and a huge value add, not just for the law department, but for the company as a whole. But the work to bring that to life is pretty extensive. So do I think that it would have happened? No.

Yeah, you. So you really need someone to come in and be dedicated to this change management and change agency and all the work that needs to get done. Now I know that you came from Dell where you already had legal Ops experience and that's pretty rare to be able to hire someone these days who has enterprise wide digital transformation and legal ops experience. So curious because I know that you could have probably walked into a lot of companies. How did, I guess, advice for those who are looking for the right fit. You know, I think a lot of us talk about if you're going to do legal ops, you have to have a good relationship with your clo, your gc. It's got to be a good cultural fit. The role needs to be scoped correctly. What did you look for in a new role in a leader when you're evaluating this and what are the things, you know, the flags that you want to look out for?

So making sure, you know, I really clicked with the Cielo and the leadership team and I wanted to feel like I felt like they were making the right choice in me and had belief in my abilities and that I felt like they were folks that really had a healthy culture, that there was, you know, trust amongst one another, that they felt like they gave each other the benefit of the doubt, that they were collaborative and I. That was, I think it was really the people that got me to take the role. I think sometimes the work is not always super sexy in terms of what it is that needs to get done. And it's no doubt that it's going to be a challenge because like you said, change management is, you know, a huge part of the role. I think it's, you know, managing relationships. It's, you know, being a people connector. It's. And the change management piece is often pushing change that people didn't necessarily ask for. And so I think ensuring that you have that right level of support, that you can have an open conversation. Because stepping into a new company where you don't have a decade of relationships that you had before and everything's new, it is challenging. Right. So knowing that you can bring in the skill set that maybe doesn't exist, so you're bringing something to the table, but also being honest, you know, with myself to say, but in order to be successful, I also have this gap in, you know, knowledge and understanding of the, you know, organizational design of the company and this gap in understanding of, you know, this problem that I'm going to have to solve. And I think just being able to openly talk about those things so I could get support to get the resources that I felt are needed to be successful was something that was important to me. I think the culture is great. We have a great leadership team, and I feel really blessed in that it was the right decision to come here.

Yeah. You and I have known each other for some time, and you've mentioned many times how blessed you feel to be in that seat and to have a great clo who's super supportive. Is that something that you wanted to be sure you had before you?

Absolutely, absolutely. And I also, coming from a law department previously when I worked at Dell, that had ebbs and flows like 550, sometimes more people, sometimes, you know, less. Moving to a department where we have approximately 60 folks globally, I can really get to know almost everyone. And so that's achievable. Like, I felt like I. It's. It's hard to build relationships, you know, with 500 and something people, but it's actually feasible, you know, when the department's a bit smaller. But I also didn't want something so small to where, you know, sometimes you talk to someone who's the head of legal operations. There are Law Department 7 people, and their Legal Ops function is one. And it's hard to, you know, collaborate in theory on certain topics because the situation's different or the but yeah, so culture was important to me. The collaborative nature of the team was important as well.

Yeah, and you were the first one. But you said you have a team now. How did that come about? I know some people get stuck being the party of one for a long time. You know, how do you get your first head? How do you advocate for it?

To an extent, again, I feel blessed in this sense. So I do have an individual that reports to me who's been at the company over 17 years and she is an expert and I would say spend and matter management as it relates to Avery Denison and all the intricacies of things with that process and has been involved with it for so long. When I took the role, she moved to report to me. And I've recently hired another individual who has a really strong background in contract management that will report to me to help as an ironclad administrator as we stand up our CLM platform. And so I have two direct reports. And then like I said, in terms of our contract administrators, there's an aspect of their role that, you know, the processes get driven from my team as the same for our spend and matter management accruals, litigation reports, things of that nature. But then really right now I'm augmented with, you know, support from a few different consulting groups to bring the platform to life. So in terms of direct reports, just two. But I, you know, I always tell people too, in terms of even leadership, you can be a leader even without having, you know, a big team. There's, you need to work creatively. So I think when I think of the legal operations function, I think of what can we do to think strategically, Be those thought leaders, be those strategic advisors so that in some cases we're quarterbacking the work but not doing it all. So is there work that we can leverage the contract admins for that the, you know, paralegal should be doing? So that we are defining and driving the process and operationalizing it as opposed to doing all of the underlying lift. Yeah, that wouldn't be feasible with as lean as my team is. But I leverage the folks too. I have it an IT business partner that you could say kind of dotted lines. I would say spends 85% of their time with my team. And so from an org structure standpoint, it might look like my team is very lean. It is, but we work creatively to get things done.

No, I mean, I know you have an army of vendors working for you and outside consultants and managed service providers. And I think that's, in my view, it's Actually best practice. So if you can keep your headcount, lean and outsource a lot of the work that's more mundane, more day to day and you want to keep the higher value, high touch stuff internally. And I love the way you set up your own role in that. You're much more strategic and the quarterback, as you put it, the orchestrator of everything that's happening. Like you should be having the big ideas, put them in motion, you know, decide how it should look and be executed and then be able to point to different people to get those things running and stay up here and let people run down here.

Yep.

And you've done that. So I guess my question was that hard to get those resources, whether it was headcount or your outside resources or did you always have that level of support when you walked into this organization?

I would say I had to put the business case together as specifically as it relates to CLMs in terms of. I think I had the support to define a technology roadmap and bring it to life, but I had to do the work to justify it. And so yeah, I think that's an area that I even have as an opportunity in myself. I think sometimes there's a lot of work to get done and so I think prioritization and time management is an essential skill. But I think also being able to elevate the impact of what you're doing. So because if you're just looking at things in terms of the tool cost this much it's going to cost well. But if you can flip the script in terms of what's the value that it's going to provide or you get alignment on that North Star vision, for lack of a better way to put it. I think it's also being honest and pragmatic about what it's going to going to take to get that done and you know, even thinking of releasing things in like a minimum viable product and scaling from there and getting alignment because if you just focus on end to end, full blown CLM across. I mean we're a global company, right. And so we have a lot of templates and things of that nature and some templates that, you know, we have to do the work and we're doing the work to rationalize those templates because why am I going to configure eight if I can have one dynamic template and things of that nature? So breaking it down into different work streams and like you said, I do have several teams that you could say report to me, work under me. Yeah, yeah, outsource but really marching it in terms of different work streams really helps me to kind of compartmentalize. So if I'm thinking of, you know, migrating, you know, active agreements to a repository and, you know, extracting data from those or doing quality check on the data that it's constructed, then you have template rationalization and then you have, you could say workflow configuration of those templates. So that's really how I kind of operate. And you know, part of it. There's a big strategic focus with legal operations, but I also think it's a bit of program management as well. Right. Because people say it's kind of like project management. Sure. But it's 15 projects at once. So I think it's more of a program manager. And what can you do to prioritize and make sure the needles moving amongst all but while also being able to elevate the impact along the way of what's been accomplished. Because it might take two years, sometimes longer, to truly achieve certain things. And I think the ongoing investment gets harder if you're not proving value along the way.

Yeah, it's so important. You got to in setting the expectations correctly upfront, proving the value, then being smart about asking for the resources at the right time. And I like that you mentioned program management, not just project management. And it's funny, I had a conversation with another legal ops director from a different large company the other day and he was saying out of all the skill sets that are needed to be successful in legal ops, program management is probably the one that the least people have a strong sense or strong experience or good skill set for program management. But there's a lot of folks who are good at executing and tactics and kind of here's the project and here's what needs to get done. But being able to, like you said, orchestrate, you know, step back and know the big picture of all the pieces and how to resource each of them and how to put them in order. The roadmap, thinking creatively and differently. That's. I think I agree with him. That's probably not something we see in a lot of folks's roles.

And you know what's interesting to me, Mary? I started my career in, you know, at Ernst and Young. So I was a boomerang employee at Ernst and Young. I've worked there both in Chicago and now I live in Austin and I worked in the Austin office as well. And when I was a IT auditor and consultant. When you work in a consulting company, you know, I may have this manager who I may not even be working on audits with or totally projects that I'm consulting on. So I've always kind of carried that through in my career and saying you can work with folks that maybe aren't like in your same small team. So I was a SOX program manager at Dell. When I came to Dell, I actually was in basically an IT audit role and then I stepped in to be the SOX program manager. So it's funny inherently, that is kind of my background. And when you think of audit, you think of risk and controls. And I think if you, you know, starting my career, one thing they taught us is like really kind of how do you understand business process? Because how are you going to understand where something went wrong if you don't understand the end to end process? And so understanding things like preventative controls, detective controls, what can we do to prevent something from going wrong or what can we do to detect it if it went wrong? And then moving into a SOX program, it's understanding what are our internal controls, are they operating effectively and how do we test those controls. And then moving into the legal department also very focused on mitigation of risk. Right. And so there's so many transferable skills. And while it seems like maybe I did a career change, I don't know, 13 plus years ago or whatever, when I moved into the law department, there's similarities or synergies.

You could say, yeah, that's so interesting. Being that you were in risk and audit and then went to legal, I would have guessed you would have been much more risk averse. But maybe because you program managed some of that, you had to be the one that was taking risks and pushing for things to be different. I wonder, because I know that you are very creative and innovative and like to challenge the status quo. So I don't see you as being that risk averse, I think.

Yeah, I don't think so. I think sometimes maybe I have a strong ability to understand a business process. And I think inefficiency is what I. Irks me. So sometimes you find a business process and you're like, oh my goodness. And so, and understanding where do we need those control points? You, you probably don't need five of those control points. And I think smart risk is the way that I like to put it. It's kind of that likelihood and impact. What's the likelihood of something happens if it does go wrong? What's the impact that it's going to have and where do we make those choice points? And so I do think there's a balance Right. Because we want the business to understand the risks, the legal risks that, you know, they need to consider when they're making certain business decisions, but also in terms of operating efficiently and effectively. Because if you're too risk averse, you're going to slow everything down and be seen as a bottleneck. So with my role being to drive efficiency, drive productivity, how do we do so in a way that, you know, sufficiently mitigates the risk? I guess you would say.

I, I'm chuckling because you said you, you get irked by inefficiency. And I think that you and I were together at some point, I don't know, at a conference or an event, laughing and bonding over that. The fact that we both have very low tolerance for mediocrity. That is true not just for people, but processes and things where we just see this can be, that can be so much better. I, I can't unsee it, is the way I always say, and I know you're the same way. Like, it will drive you crazy if you can't, you know, how much better it could be and it's not there.

Yes. And it's so interesting if you even think of, you know, discerning talent or what do you look for in people or how do people develop certain skills? I think there's, you know, one having that growth, mindset, wanting to learn, seeking to understand is very important. But also grit is so important. And that's one skill. I don't know how you instill that in someone. Like, it's. You're kind of born with it. And maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's how my parents raised me or something like that, but it's inherent. And when someone doesn't have it, those are the things that drive me a bit crazy.

Yeah, I hear you. We have that in common. And I. Yeah, I totally agree. Let's go to your Dell experience for a moment, because you. That is where you learned about legal ops. That's where you had your first role. And like you just said, you transitioned from the risk and audit team, is that right?

Yes, and I'm having brainlapse in terms of what we called our team back then. But it was essentially we did our Sarbanes Oxley compliance work and then we moved into the audit function. So originally I was in finance. We moved into the audit function, which was still connected to finance, and then I moved into a role in the legal department on the corporate team, actually. And so I was the global legal, knowledge management and technology Manager, I believe was the original role that I took. And there was not a legal operations function in place at that time. So we had two individuals, one sat in litigation and one also sat in the corporate team that reported to our corporate secretary and agc and they did all of the spend and matter management. But there wasn't a formal legal operations function. There had never been a legal technology roadmap or someone in my role. So that was a new role that I stepped into as well. Few months into the role we established a legal operations function. So there was a little bit of orgy restructuring and it was just the three of us. So I was one of the OGs on the legal operations team at Dell as well. By the time I left three years ago to move into my role at Avery Denison, I think legal operations had 30 people. So we were rather large operations function at that point in time. Knowledge management technology was a pillar. Spend and matter management was a pillar. Pillar. Business intelligence was a pillar. We did like client training. So we had an individual that would take training and she had a really strong background, maybe from like LexisNexis or something. And we'd do kind of those bite sized brain shark videos and things like that. She was really talented. And then we had the internal like skill and career development in the law department. So we had different pillars and different teams underneath each of those. And then a team that was focused on CLM as well. And it grew pretty quickly over the years. It was interesting even in the tech team. At one point in time I think I had six direct reports when I led that team. And so we did some large scale technology implementations there as well. A lot of integrations. And so I see some synergies in the company that I work at now as well is where, you know, sometimes people think of like an accounts payable system. Well, when you're at a company like Avery Denison or a company like Dell Technologies, you may have 10 accounts payable systems, you may have a different, you know, payroll system in, you know, different countries. You may have. So the landscape, the, you know, technology architecture can be rather complex and so truly bringing something to life like spending matter management globally can be rather complex.

Yeah. And how different was Dell from where Avery Denison is today? I mean it's a very different organization, different culture, size, the history of legal Ops there. What was kind of surprising to you or was it what you expected?

Very different. I think I like being in a role now where the culture is a much better fit for me. I think in terms of getting things done. I like being in a role where the leadership team entrusted me. I can have those collaborative discussions across the leadership team as well as with, you know, my boss, the clo, to then make a decision and move as opposed to kind of turn on decisions for a long time when it relates to the things that I need to get done. Now does that happen on certain topics that we collaborate on as a leadership team? Absolutely. But in terms of if the objective is clear, in terms of this is what you want me to achieve and I can garner alignment on how I'd like to approach it. Also being strategically agile. Right. Because sometimes you have to pivot and I think that's a important lesson for any legal ops leader as well, is sometimes you're going to. I think there are a point where you make a decision, do we need to turn the corner or not? But I think being able to be empowered in your role is important. Being able to get the support you need, if you need it, is important because I do think there are certain messages that you know can be strong enough coming from me. There's other messages that will have more meat behind them if they come from the clo, but I think being able to balance when to pull those levers is important as well. So things don't kind of fall flat. If you're having, you know, the CLO send a company wide email every week, that's not going to have the same traction as if you're. You make good choices in terms of when to leverage those modalities.

Yeah, you're out there and building the relationships and stuff really helps to get stuff done. As I hear you talk and as I've known you for a while, there are a lot of qualities that I think you possess that make you successful in your role. But more importantly, as a leader and a strategic leader and a strategic asset, your department, as you build your team, what do you look for when you interview and how do you know what are the keys to success, do you think? And we talked about a few of them.

Right.

Program management skills influencing grit. Of course. But are there things that you look for in the way that you hire and build a team, either, you know, in the past or now? And how do you sort of look for those? How do you discern those?

How do they optimize the use of their time? Because I think in this role, if you come in thinking that you know everything, like you will not be successful Because I learn something new every day. I enjoy the folks that report to me, the folks that I, you know, work with on a daily basis and I want to ensure that we continue to really enhance that, that culture. I think every Denison as a whole has a really good culture, but in terms of work ethic, I think it's understanding, you know, asking specific questions because someone can look really good on paper but then actually understanding how do they communicate as well. Because you're working with the business and to an extent you're creating your brand. Right. And so if you think the as the legal operations lead, you're going to be the one that can be the FaceTime with everyone that we interact with, that's not achievable either. So if these people are going to be an extension of the department, that's the department's brand, that's the brand of legal operations. And so understanding how they would approach things, are they a strong communicator with tech implementation? Sometimes you have someone that might have that really strong technical background but then being able to explain it in layman's terms to the department or to, I mean even leadership. Yes, they're brilliant, but you need to executize the message. And so I'd like to understand how someone might, you know, tailor. I like, I call it like click down communication. So if I'm going to send something to, you know, the C suite, it's going to be different than I'm going to send to the legal leadership team. It's going to be different than I'm going to send to all the contract administrators and the folks that are working on the project. So what can you do to tailor the message, you know, and asking them those questions? Because change management. So I guess that's how I assess questions too. How do you approach operationalizing something with these different groups, even from user experience or understanding the value to them. Different. Right. Putting yourself in like the shoes of the customer. And so really asking them those questions though, to see how they will respond. And is it genuine as well? Because I think we can all read a lot of articles and we know all the buzzwords that are out there these days, but just are they genuine? You know, do you feel like that's an individual that will mesh well, have the trust and respect across the team brings a skill set to the table as well that either we need more of or is lacking. I'm not strong in every skill, so I think that's a strength as a leader as well as being able to identify where you're weak and where you can't do something to where you need to bring Someone in with that skill set to shore up the gap as well. So it's being able to look at my own skill set, understanding where I need someone to fill a gap, and then those other skill sets that I feel like everyone in a legal operations function needs to possess.

Yeah, I mean, you totally nailed it. If I were trying to hire someone, I would bunch you on my interview panel because I think you're. You nailed exactly all the things that we should be looking for.

And.

And that's also a very rare unicorn, right. That exists out there who can do these things, but they do exist and you're one of them. I've met others who are in that space. And the other question I was going to ask you, which I think you kind of already answered, is advice for legal ops professionals or people who want to get into this space on how to truly be a leader and be strategic and how to lead the team and how to run the department. I think you kind of said all those qualities to me are the same. The reason I ask is because one of my big goals in life is to educate all the GCs and the CLOs out there on what this role really means, how to hire for it, how to look for the right people to make sure that you get what you want to out of the role. Right. If you don't hire the right person with the right skill set, you're not going to get what you're delivering at your role right now. So what can we do to help coach these GCs and CLOs about scoping and hiring correctly? And I get frustrated when they say, oh, it has to be a lawyer or it has to have someone who has worked with contracts, or it has to be someone who has this specific technical skill. And I'm curious your response, because I guess I'm going to answer for myself, which is those things to me can be learned. All the tactical how to's skills, those are transferable skills, those are things that can be learned. But all the things that you mentioned that are just about how do you communicate? How do you work with people? What is your culture? Do you have grit? Do you have resilience? Can you roll up your sleeves? And can you work with executive teams? That's much harder to teach.

Yeah. So I think two things, Mary, and maybe I segregated into two pieces. So one thing I think as current legal operations leaders are out to say that I could do better, that I think some of us could do better, is elevate the impact that our role has. So it's not Just seen as we, you know, run these kind of core elements of the department. But what is the impact that. So we've, you know, I've done things around where we are today in different categories, the maturity model and where we want to be. And the cool thing is the needles move, like, halfway since I've joined. I mean, I'm not taking credit for everything that's been done, but strategically, we've been able to outline, you know, what is that gap between where we are and where we want to be and what are we also doing to elevate that message to the right people so that we can not garner new support for the function. We have the function. But to maintain the function, I think is important. But then I think be able to share some of that messaging with folks that are aspiring to get into the role or with companies that have maybe an appetite that need to be able to get support to add the headcount. So I think in order to elevate that impact, that would be important. Important. And then in terms. Because I think it's two different questions, if I understand correctly. One is what do you do to garner support to even put that function in place in the law department to begin with? And then two, what do you do to find the right types of people for the role? And I think there's different skill sets. I think there's different skill sets in terms of someone that you're going to bring in to form the function versus the other folks that that person might need on their team, too. But I would encourage folks, too. And I know you've been a trailblazer in this industry, and it's. I've enjoyed getting to know you, and I've always looked up to you, consider you, you know, a mentor in the space. But I think people need to tap into those networks as well. Because I would say, you know, when I reach out to you, I don't even. It's been a few years ago now. Right. Like, you're more than willing to have a conversation with me, and I'm so grateful for that. But I would be as well if someone would reach out to me and. But I think a lot of us don't use those opportunities enough or don't seek the opportunity. Because if I'm. If you're the person looking for the role or looking to learn more, then what are you doing to learn more about the role? Because I think if you're gonna wait till everything falls in your lap, you might get lucky. But otherwise, I think you have to take initiative in these organizations. I mean, especially if it's someone in college now. I think the memberships are like pennies, you know, but there's different memberships that, you know, clock is one, there's, you know, others as well that folks could tap into to collaborate, to learn more.

From folks and developing that. What I think you just nailed on in a few minutes ago was the leadership mindset. And maybe that's something we can dig into separately, deeper and maybe something I would like to explore on the podcast further. The having the leadership mindset of I was hired into this role to lead the department, not come in and wait for direction and wait to support and wait to hear what the roadmap is. Right. There is a mentality, a mindset that you come in with that's I expect to be dictating how we do things and here's my vision and here's how we're going to go execute on it. Yeah, that's really key. We talked about a lot of things, Dawn. I learned a lot. Your leadership skills, your background is very impressive. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story with us today.

Thanks for having me, Mary.

All right, good to see you, everyone. Thanks for listening.