#45 - Mary's Thoughts On CLOC Global Institute '24

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Marielle Carroll. Welcome to today's episode, which is a solo episode that's going to be focused on Reflections on clocks. Global Institute 2024, or affectionately known as CGI. CGI is an annual conference that takes place in Vegas, put on by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium and is truly the largest gathering of Legal Ops professionals in the world. There have been lots of recaps of Klox CGI in Vegas, through social media, on LinkedIn and so on. So I won't do exactly that. But today I'm going to do something a bit more like an AMA an ask me anything on the event. So I went out there and got some questions from you all and here are my answers to the questions that you asked me. The first question was this year's CGI felt different than years past. What felt different to you, Mary? Well, it certainly was different than years past. So this is probably what, the sixth or seventh. The first CGI took place in San Francisco in 2016 and then moved to the Bellagio in Vegas, where it's been ever since. This year was the first year, of course, that it was at the aria. I think just attending this year's event, it felt like a great balance. There was less vendors, which I know has been an issue in the past. So good balance between Legal Ops attendees, attendees and vendors. A slightly smaller audience overall, as usual, tons and tons of first timers, guests attending from all over the world. I think I met people from Brazil, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, the uk. So the role is definitely spreading and we can see that by the types of people who are attending this conference. There is some talk about are these roles being eliminated? I think there was some roles in the United States, at least at bigger companies where the role was eliminated and people are wondering, is this the end of us? Well, I definitely think that that's not true. That is garbage. There are constantly ups and downs in the economy and people will react in different ways to that. But the growth that we have seen in demand and the need for Legal ops continues to skyrocket each year. We definitely felt that at this year's event. This was the first year at the aria, which I mentioned. I thought it was a great change of scenery, much more spread out, a lot less frantic and crowded. So you felt a lot more relaxed at this year's event. I definitely didn't feel like I saw or ran into everyone who was there. I had heard certain people were there, but even I think there were A lot more side meetings, so people weren't necessarily out and about as much, myself included. There were less massive parties, more intimate, smaller get togethers, happy hours and dinners. I found people were being much more health conscious. Lots of people getting up early to hit the gym or go on the 5k walk every morning or do the group hike and I love to see that. Also heard a lot of people prioritizing their sleep. So everyone is out there following the good gospel of Matt Walker and learning that sleep is the key to everything good. So a lot of people going to bed early, making sure they got sleep and were ready to take on the next day on the trade floor or the showroom floor. I was a little worried, I'd have to admit, about it being on two different levels from the main session, but. But it worked. I think somehow it worked. The show floor most of the time felt buzzing, maybe a little less than usual. But technology is certainly one of the things leading transformation. And that room was full of new systems and tools every year. New companies that we haven't heard of that are emerging into the market. Technology is certainly the leader of transformation these days. It's a big reason that I joined Ironclad, because I saw this coming. There was going to be the day where systems and tools got so good that they would be driving people in legal departments to want to use them and driving individuals in departments to change the way they work. I think we are there. It's really exciting to see that. So tech as a driver of change was absolutely a theme that I felt very strongly this year is something that continues to evolve and is speeding up. Okay, next question number two. I expected there to be answers on AI this year, but there weren't. What are your thoughts on where we are? So I kind of agree. I think there was not a lot of new things when it comes to AI. There were in the showroom floor a ton of existing providers with, I guess, marketing materials that said this provider with AI language tacked onto that AI for contracts, AI for outside council management and bill review, AI for eDiscovery, AI for research. A lot of that is not different from what we saw last year. So I feel like there was not maybe a ton of progress made on defining exactly how AI is going to affect us and how we work with it in the future, or maybe even what will be the best use cases for it. So while I admittedly had a lot of meetings and speaking sessions, I didn't, as a result, didn't have the opportunity to make it to that Many sessions. I did hear from others, however, that there were sessions on AI talked a lot about the trends and where things could go and where things are now. But certainly seems like the sessions even confirmed the fact that everyone is still in the early stages of this AI, generative AI journey, and that there isn't anyone out there who's truly sort of revolutionized how they are running the firm, running their departments, or the way they are practicing law. So we're hearing about various use cases, we're hearing about different tools, both general AI and legal, specific AI that are being piloted. But it does still seem like we are all in that experimentation mode, and that's totally okay. I would encourage everyone to have patience. Change comes slowly and quickly at the same time, if that makes any sense. So if the tech isn't there today to solve all of our problems, I think we can no longer deny that it is coming. And we can see it getting better every single day. The developments are coming out so fast that we know we can't sit here and ignore it. So there are things that we have to be doing to learn, to prepare, to experiment, to get our house in order to. So that when it does finally arrive, we don't have to wait to capitalize on it. This is this one weird period in time that we can kind of see this giant tidal wave of change coming at us, and we can be prepared for it. So we're in a good position. It's still early days, absolutely confirming what everyone's hearing, but we know it's coming, and so we're just all getting ready for it right now. Next question. Ooh, this is a good one. How can there be so many CLMs? Ah, CLM. So CLM stands for, as many of us know, Contracts, Life Cycle Management. And yes, there are so many CLMs. I heard it last year and this year again, as you walked around the showroom floor. How can there be so many of them and how can they all survive? Everyone tells me, gosh, I talked to 20 of you, and you all sound the same. How are you different? And every year I say I feel really terribly badly for anyone who is trying to make sense of all the players out there, it is hard. They do all sound the same, even though they are obviously not all the same. We've also been saying for years that consolidation must be coming. Well, we did finally see some of that this week at the event where DocuSign announced their acquisition of Lexion. So congratulations to both sides and all of those involved. I do think perhaps we are going to start seeing more of this over the next year. I've actually heard quite a couple others who are up for sale as well. So we will see what M and A moves are going to be coming around the corner. That said, I've also been calling for sale on consolidation for at least two years now. So maybe, hopefully I'll be right this time around. Who knows? All right, next question. Can you recap what you said in your speaking sessions? I was only able to attend one of them. Okay, so I did have a couple speaking sessions. One was kind of about what's happening around the world, the trends internationally about legal operations and transformation across the world. I participated in, I guess, what is considered a keynote panel on the big stage with Guy Togi from Jim Pass in Brazil, Katrina Gowens from IFM Investors In Australia, Kurt McDaniel, who is a general counsel of Fairing Pharmaceuticals in the uk. And this was all moderated by Francis Pomposo of Splunk and who is also on the board of Clock. There's definitely much more interest in tech and tooling and modernization transformation around the world, but there's also pretty clear gap in the education and the understanding of that role. So while I was on stage, I admit that I went a little bit off script at the event and started to share some of the observations that I found were emerging from just my first two days at Clock's CGI in Vegas. First observation was we're really continuing to see a huge variety in the scope of the role that we call legal operations. And that's to be expected. But I think most importantly, and what I want to stress is at the top echelons of the role, we have certainly matured as a function so that within the field of legal operations, we now have a variety of levels of experience of roles and responsibilities. So you have everything ranging from things like E billing coordinators, project managers, data analysts, outside council managers, tech program managers, so on, so on, so on. And at these levels, I think we can have pretty good specialization and descriptions of these roles that translate well across companies, across industries, across geographies. And partially that's because some of these roles are really no different than other operational specialists in other parts of our companies. And so we are able, as we think about how to level people, compensate them, hire for these roles, et cetera. We can look across our organizations, at other operational teams, particularly in sga. The challenge we seem to have is at the tippy top of this role. So for those who are considered the head of legal ops and as a side note, I mentioned I'm very happy to see the up leveling of titles. So we've got lots of people now at the director and above level. But as we saw with the recent Bright Flag compensation survey that came out, there's directors of Legal Ops and they have a huge range of compensation. And I think what that tells us is there's different backgrounds, different skills, different experience levels, different scopes of the role. Some of them have teams, some are going to be individual contributors, some have broad range of scopes spanning the entire clock core 12 with everything from financial and outside counsel management to tech to tooling to professional development, strategic planning, practice, operations. And so you've probably heard me say for years now that we've come to a bit of a fork in the road of where we want to take this role in this profession. At that top level, will we just stay in operations where we take care of the day to day running of the department? And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And really that is really important. And plus, if you look across other operational leaders in those different SGA functions, this is what they generally do. They run the department, they run the metrics, the reporting, ensure that the function is operating efficiently and effectively. But the question that I am trying to pose is is there more that Legal Ops at the high level, at the head level, is actually doing beyond what typical other operational teams do? And what I think we are seeing emerge in a truly strategic legal operation. Professional leader is just that. This is sort of the opportunity that I see to take this leadership role to the next level, to be a part of the legal leadership team and offer strategic direction to the GC and clo. To me, that's really exciting. I think many people who are in this role are now playing this role of transformation leader, a change leader in modernizing the organization, bringing a new way of delivering legal services into the mix. It's sort of a combination of a chief of staff and a COO type of role in Legal one that's at that leadership table, determining direction for the department rather than just reacting or taking orders. Now this is a role that's going to be a lot more proactive, a role that goes hand in hand with the GC or the CLO's desire to be much more of a strategic leader, being closer to the business. I mentioned the two biggest questions that we hear over and over in our industry from our legal leaders is one, how do we demonstrate value as a department, as a function? And two, how do we get closer to the business. This is where I think the strategic legal operation leaders can have a real role in answering those questions and as being the right hand to the general counsel. And the reason that I so fixate on that top role in the top biggest companies in the world is because I really believe you have to figure that one out first. The scope, the experience, the leveling, the compensation, if you get that right, and the definition of that and in which direction we're going with that role, I think the rest of it will follow. The rest, meaning the other roles within the organization. So if we can't define that first piece well, then we don't have a North Star. So we've got to really align ourselves on the future direction of this role. The other session that I led at clock was on strategic planning. It was a bit of a workshop, so it was focused on what does it actually mean to be strategic. I planned this session with my friend and brilliant executive education professor at Harvard Law School, Scott Westfall. We've had him on the podcast as a guest in the past. He's fabulous if you haven't worked with him before. But as we prepped for what was this sort of experimental two hour workshop, we really wanted to challenge folks to answer the question of what is a strategy? How does that differ from a mission, a vision or goals? So we were asking, what are the things that you are working on this year and how do they fit into your strategy? And the outcome of the workshop was to have individuals work through the definition of their legal team and their legal ops strategy. In preparation for that session, as we were already at clock, I asked around for a couple of days, kind of what people's strategies were for the year. And to my surprise, I don't think anyone could quite articulate it. People said, I think I know what it is, but I don't know if I can articulate it. And in fact, I don't even think anyone could answer my question about how do you define what does it actually mean to be strategic? And yet, as I said earlier, that seems to be what everyone's goal is as a legal ops leader. We say we're being strategic, but are we really? When I asked more about what your strategies were, I got plans, I got tactics, I got projects. Things like a legal front door, outside counsel panels. But those are not strategies, those are projects. And further than that, when I pushed and pushed, I had trouble finding people who could properly articulate the why behind why they were doing those projects. And so what I fear is that we become Too reactive, too focused on what we think we should be doing rather than pushing the boundaries to truly innovate. And that brings me to another point which I raised from the keynote session, which is I love clock. I love what it does for sharing. I love the learning that we do from each other and allowing each other not to have to recreate the wheel from scratch. But I do feel that sometimes, or I fear maybe that sometimes there's too much trying to read from the Legal Ops playbook to see what everyone else is doing and saying, well, we don't have that, we should do that too. If we don't know why we're doing the things we do, is it because we're doing what everyone else is trying to do? Another theme that I'm remembering that I probably brought up from the main stage at the keynote is that I'm seeing a lot of folks in our profession who have moved up all the way to senior manager roles and are now feeling stuck not being able to penetrate into that leadership suite properly or not feeling like they're being invited to the leadership team table. And this is a question I get a lot coaching requests, mentoring requests about how do I do that? How do I prioritize my work, how do I focus on the right things? How do we market ourselves better? How do we demonstrate our value? And what worries me is that we're still asking that question about how do we demonstrate our value? Because I believe that Legal Ops has tremendous value. And if we have to demonstrate it, if we have to ask how to showcase ourselves better, perhaps we're not delivering the right kind of impact or value, perhaps we're not focused on the right things. Or is it that we need to take some leadership or MBA type course to shift gears? That's what I'm wondering. A lot of the skills needed to be successful in the Legal Ops role is about execution, about tactics, about project management, about getting things done, improving processes, implementing systems, getting things scoped and across the finish line is absolutely amazing. It is fabulous. It is what everybody wants in their department. It is why you get hired into these roles. But when I think this is tough love, those aren't the skills that are needed to be a leader of the department. There needs to be a skill change. There needs to be a mindset shift when you move into the leadership suite. And so I was very pleased to hear the Clock education committee is thinking about just this and how to offer courses, materials to help individuals skill up to take things to the next level. There are professional skills that you need to be able to obtain, to be able to operate, communicate, think, influence and work at that next leadership level. MBAs get this training for business school and that's a lot of the reason why people go to business school. They've got all the experience behind them, but they need to get to the next level. And so I think we all in this profession and field need that too. So it's not a criticism, it's just something you should open your mind to and think about if you're feeling stuck. Are there courses that you can take, is there training, is there mentoring that you can take to level up on some of the other professional skills that are needed at the leadership level? And then finally I commented that I wish that GCs and CLOs would be more open minded in their hiring of legal ops professionals. You certainly don't need legal background. I think we still see that in job descriptions and you still see that from gcs or clos who are hiring for the first time and kind of unsure about what they need. But I think as a profession we've been pretty clear that the business skills and the acumen on the business side are much more relevant background and skills needed to succeed than the practice of the law. During my panel session on the legal ops trends, I noted that most GCs aren't really sure what they need when they're hiring for the legal ops role. And honestly, it's not their fault. Who can blame them? As I talked about earlier, I don't think we have clarity ourselves on what legal ops heads should be doing or what it is. And if you're a senior lawyer or you're a general counsel who's never worked on an in house team with this legal ops function, then of course it's a totally foreign concept. Everyone else who is around lawyers at a law firm and in house are support staff, they're legal assistants, paralegals, contract managers, they're here to support you in your work as a lawyer. So for us to now try to say that you need to hire a non lawyer to help you lead your legal function, that's really difficult to grasp. And it's not that they don't want it, but they're, they're not totally sure what this person will come in and do. And the most educated, the most passionate about legal ops GCs are those who, who have worked in a company with a legal ops function who have seen it, they see the need, they understand the value, they know what this function does because they've worked with it before. The one thing that all the GCs that want to hire legal ops professionals have in common though, is that they seem to want to have someone who's done this job before. I hear all the time I want someone with legal ops experience, someone who's done it already at a similar company, someone who's done it for 10 plus years. Well, the difficult news I have to deliver is first, there's not that many of us who are seasoned, seasoned veterans with over 10 years of this under our belts. It's simply too nascent a field and finding those individuals will be challenging. They're really advanced in their careers, they might be very happy where they are. And again, there's very few of them. On top of that, I try to encourage general counsels to look beyond the obvious backgrounds. We are really uniquely in a totally new world right now. With the emergence of AI, with the emergence of new ways of working with the technology that exists, and just the will and desire to transform our industry. It's a different time and space. The schools, the law firms, the new types of service providers are all going to look very different in a small number of years. And we're in the midst of a complete change. So why would you want to hire someone who's done this before and repeat the same playbook, not throwing away the experience? They should be experienced people and it's great if they've seen it before, but the idea that you just want to rinse and repeat it, I think is maybe a very incorrect way of looking at it right now. They may come with all the tools and the learnings and experience to excel in the job, and you should want to hire experienced performers for that. But what is considered innovative anew 10 years ago is likely a dated approach today. And all the options in front of you that are new in terms of AI and tech and flexible talent and alternative service providers and all the things that we weren't using before can now allow you to leapfrog past some of those other departments rather quickly. So if you think of it that way, don't try to look around and model yourself on the way that we created this function or this role years ago while we were still trying to, we were struggling, just still trying to figure things out without that knowledge that we have today. So I encourage folks, throw out those old playbooks, don't look around to ask what everyone else is doing to replicate that. Think big, think new, and as I said at one of the earliest CGIs, go first, be brave enough to go off the map and be the person who does something different for the first time. It's all about experimentation at this point. Okay, that was a very long answer to that question about my sessions. And so the last question really appropriately wraps things up. The last question is, so what comes next? I love. What I love is that every Clock conference that I've been to, whether it's the CGI in Vegas or the regional conferences in London or Australia, they really force us to think about how far we've come as a profession, how far we've come in transforming the way that legal works and looks and feels, but also reminds us how far we still have to go. So I encourage folks, don't get frustrated. This is the fun part. This is part of the journey. Think about how incredible it is to be able to lead and to do the work today that is going to change the way this industry looks and operates tomorrow. We're creating it all in real time today as our day jobs and that is incredibly rewarding. So I cannot wait to gather again in CGI 2025 and to hear all the progress that is made and to reflect back on again how far we've come. We will have come then. So until then, I hope you enjoyed this summary and wrap up of Clock's Global Institute 2024 and I'll see you at the next episode.