#62 Is Legal Ops Losing Momentum?

Hello everybody and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mary o', Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwin. Today my guest is Frances Pomposo. She's the Senior Director of Legal Technology Solutions at Cisco. Before that, Frances served as VP of LGA Strategy and Operations and Chief of Staff to the General Counsel at Splunk. She was also Senior Director of Legal Operations and Chief of Staff to the General Counsel at Work Day, Head of Legal Operations and Chief of Staff to the General Counsel at Lyft, and also manage Legal operations at Adobe. Frances currently serves on the board and acts as Treasurer for Clock. She and I have known each other a long time and the reason I wanted to have Frances on this conversation today is because there's a lot of change happening in the world of legal operations as a profession, as a field, and that is a result of probably a lot of the things that are changing overall in the ecosystem. I had posed a question on LinkedIn a few weeks back that got a lot of people talking about what is happening with the role. Are we at an inflection point? There was a period of time where it seemed like there was a lot of roles emerging that were much more strategic in nature. Very much the right hand of the General Counsel and the CLO in terms of where's the direction of the department, how do we fit in with the goals and strategy overall for the organization and to help lead the function through some sort of transformation and prioritization? That is in contrast with a lot of what is the day to day portion of a legal ops function, which is a lot more tactical. Has there been a drop off in those strategic types of roles? Are we seeing less of them? Are people in the roles actually becoming much more specialized in their fields for things like data and outside council management and tech and tooling that may be the case. If all these things are happening, what are the causes? Is it because of the change in the role of the General Counsel and the Chief Legal officer? Is it because of the rise of really skilled consultants in this area that can help with establishing legal operations strategy? Is it because GCs are taking on more of the strategic and operational role themselves and looking for people to help execute? So many drivers, so many things to talk about. One thing is for sure, nothing is ever static in this world and there's a lot of changes that we need to be aware of so that we can all adapt to them. I'm excited for this conversation with Francis and I hope you enjoy it.

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Hey, Francis, how you doing?

I am good. How are you? Good.

Good to see you. How is the new job? I know that you were at Splunk for a long time with the big legal ops and strategy role there, and Splunk got acquired by Cisco. Right. And so now you're part of Cisco.

Yes. Everything's been smooth sailing since the integration is closed, which is great. I've been in role officially since September, so. So I'm still very much a new Cisconian, but it is going really well. I think the scale's been really interesting just because of how large Cisco is. But from an operational perspective, the team is great. We have a great legal IT team. We have great support. Our general counsel is amazing. So it really has been a good transition.

Yeah, great, Great. You've been in this space a long time. I know you're on the board of Clock. You've seen legal operations from various angles at companies of different sizes and shapes, and you're one of the ones that we had the older crew identified early on as like, part of the next generation of rising stars of legal ops professionals. So I am grateful for your time today. And I know I reached out to you because I wanted to actually get into a pretty meaty topic. So, as you know, a few weeks ago I posted something to LinkedIn. Got a lot of buzz around the topic that's so relevant to what's happening right now in our world that I wanted to get you on the podcast so we can talk about it live and see what's really happening. The post that I made was about is legal ops sort of like at a crossroads, so to speak? And I asked us, are we losing momentum? And the idea was that a trend that I have been noticing and I'm a little bit out of the loop now, so I definitely want you to tell me if you think that I'm wrong, is that for a while I think legal ops roles in corporations have been at a bit of a fork in the road, a juncture, if you will. Right. And the question was kind of like, are we going to see these roles continue to mature and develop into these much more strategic, strategic leadership positions that are like the right hand of the GC or the clo? These roles that are driving alignment with the organizational goals, or are they going to more sort of plateau as more tactical functions focused primarily on the tools, the systems, managing vendors, managing budgets? There is a role for that always. And that's not to diminish that role, which is exceedingly important. But we saw a point where there was a bit of a transition of the tactical roles into something maybe a little bit more strategic. I've been looking around and kind of wondering, has that trend stopped? Frances, I'll stop talking. Would love to hear kind of your reactions and comments to that observation.

I think it's a great question and topic to examine further. And as I was thinking about that, I think there's actually a couple different threads that kind of came top of mind for me. And I know that this was something that came up at a high level when we were at cgi. I think it was maybe a year or two ago where we had the conversation just about how the role is evolving. And that's what immediately jumped out to me is like the similarity between that and. I don't think you're out of the loop. I think you're very much in the loop. And I think your perspective, obviously, and what you've seen lends itself to having a pretty valuable vantage point on this. I do think the role is at an inflection point, but I do think that there's a couple of ways to look at it. So I started to think about it from like a change management perspective, where if we like took a step back and thought about the evolution of clock the role legal operations and really just took an operational lens to looking at it, about what went well, what didn't go well, and like, where are we at? I think that we are definitely at an inflection point. I do think that we kind of failed with change management. And the reason why I say that is when I'm looking back at the faith that people had and the approach in evangelizing for legal operations and the way that it was going to happen, it was very grassroots in the sense that people like you that were ahead of the curve and heavy hitters, being really focused on the advocacy of the role, your development, improving yourself. I feel like a lot of people depended on that to push forward the role. And I think that like the founding members of KWOK and different groups across the board and people that just have been in legal operations have taken on that charge. But as we think about, like different generations and coming into the role and how they approach just their own careers and like, what their role is in an ecosystem. I don't think that we can just assume that everybody is going to like carry that cross. The other piece that I was thinking about too, kind of on that same topic, is the approach was very much bottoms up in the sense that people were proving, advocating, performing in the role while they were trying to like build out business cases and use cases and ROI for the role rather than taking an outside in approach. And I also think that a lot of people depended on that narrative about GC advocacy, things like that, improving the role. When really, if you think about change management and taking a step back, I do think there's a lot of areas where our messaging wasn't consistent with the role. We didn't come at it from an execution perspective in the sense. And I'm thinking about all these things now from the vantage point of having time to think about it. But yeah, if we were going to establish this job architecture and structure, the deviation that we're seeing now is a product of just like the lack of consistency. So the cleanest way I think to do that, generally if you're coming in and establishing a job, family and an architecture and like advocacy for a role would be like working with HR or a standards organization. And we talked about this like Radford or some other group to say consistently speaking and like across the majority of roles, this is what it would look like. So then when you had people coming in, they weren't fighting fights about like pay advocacy or just differentiation of role or even what the role is. So I think that was the first thing that kind of came to mind to me when you brought up this topic. Our change management approach, although it worked and is very impactful, like I do think to your point being at an inflection point, we can't continue to do the same thing.

Yeah, that's a really good observation. I think you're right. So in the early days, nobody even knew what the role was. And you're right, it was grassroots because we were trying to spread the word. And I think we thought it was very important to, as I used to say, define the role for ourselves right before it was defined for us. And so we were getting out there being very vocal advocates, beating the drum of, hey, have you heard of legal ops? Let us tell you exactly what it is. Let us define the scope of the role for you. As we were trying to build it. And as it grew, we continued to sort of like preach to the world about it and try and get GCS bought in. And so it grew in prevalence for sure, it grew in scope, it grew in all the right ways. And you're right, it reached an inflection point. But perhaps the way we as a community approached, how do we then continue this awareness and building and continuing to elevate the role? That approach needed to shift. And we've done a lot of the same things. Right. Rather than now thinking, okay, the role is there. It is absolutely a real profession. It is established, it is prevalent. How do we then make it part of the HR functions? Understanding. When I was first at Google and trying to add roles and the HR team was like, we don't have a ladder for. For this. We don't have comps for this. This role doesn't exist elsewhere. Since you are non attorneys in a legal department, we've looked in the books and there's a category called librarians. Is that where you and your team fit in and we'll look at the compensation for that? We're like, no, we're so different. Let us explain to you. And so it was this constant uphill battle of explaining ourselves, justifying the role, advocating for the role. But now that it's established and people understand it, maybe we're taking for granted how much more we have to take it to the next level.

The approach that was taken in like the groundswell and what's been done with legal operations is groundbreaking.

Yeah.

So it's not a negative thing. It's more just that now that we do have this kind of established group, it's more just a behavior change. Because we are at that inflection point to take a step back and say systemically, how can we make sure that we're not running in the same hamster wheel for the next 10 years? It should just be, the role is established, here's the job, family, consistently so then at least baseline infrastructure. People aren't fighting that battle. Because I do think that the area where there is immediate opportunity is. I do think that there still are a lot of people coming in and fighting that battle in some instances. Because that kind of tying off at the end of just loose threads hasn't been done. To take a step back and say from foundations or like organizational perspective, how can we take the deviation out of it?

Yeah. If you have worked in a legal department that has the function that is well established and you then move on to become a leader in a new company or in a new role, you immediately are like, I'm going to set this up right. I need this. I know it. Why do we not have that here? If you haven't seen it before. If it's still foreign and it's not defined, it's really hard to get that going.

And you basically have not set that group back. But like the time that they could just spend on executing and like seeing the fruits of their labor and enjoying and thriving in the role is then allocated towards building consistency and legitimacy and fighting that fight that I think CLOCK has already fought or other organizations. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's more just an awareness to say let's take a step back and learn from it. I don't necessarily think with like the jobs, I think there's a shift to some of it may be different legal departments approaches the like evolution of the CLO role and like the emergence of that and the differentiation between that. But also like the expectation and excitement's not the right word. But I think General counsels and CLOs now are motivated by being a business partner and being strategic partners and it is a non negotiable in their role. Whereas 10, 15, 20 years ago there were general counsels and clos like that. But it wasn't necessarily always consistently a part of the role or a part of the role that they wanted to do or understood the impact and the business need relating to it. So I think that shift contributes a lot and then also the chief of staff role. So I think we've seen this development of the kind of legal executive team that hasn't been static either. And there's situations where a senior like legal operations professional can play both roles. I've been in roles like that, I enjoyed that. But that's not for everybody. There's pros and cons to doing that. And if you're coming into a legal operations or a legal team that's well established, what they're hiring for may be more niche because it's not green fields everywhere. So it may be you're supplementing a skill set or a particular area that isn't as necessarily like as formulaic as other companies where it is fluid, it hasn't been established yet. All of those things also just are considerations when we think about it may not be the same hiring landscape because those big needy like vp, svp, EVP roles may now be a couple people if they're coming into a company or we're also seeing people I think in legal departments want to lean into legal operations. So you may have people on the legal team that aren't necessarily experienced legal operations professionals, but they know the business and are given the Chance to take dual roles or expanded use functions to develop themselves. Maybe they're on a track to be a general counsel. And that gives them the kind of exposure and just understanding of like the full spectrum of what's on the plate of a CLO or a general counsel. But I'll pause there because I mean, I think there's a ton of different reasons why it could be. We're at this inflection point 100%.

I definitely want to pull on a few threads that you've highlighted there. The first being the changing role of the general counsel. And you're absolutely right. In the early days when legal ops was just burgeoning, a general council would think about like, oh God, the budget and the headcount, the professional development and the systems and tools. That is not something I learned about in law school, is not something I was trained on at a law firm. That is not something that is interesting to me. I am here to practice. That I want to do exactly. I want to practice law and I want to lead this department. And so I'm going to hire a right hand to do that and to give this person all the non practice of law stuff in my department that has changed. Right. Because the general counsel's role now is much more strategic advisor. They're much closer to the business and because of that they're looking at their own departments and saying we have to also be responsible in terms of how we run our departments and integrate with the rest of the organization. Think ahead, plan for how do we do things efficiently, effectively, how do we think about our vendors, how do we leverage tools, how do we develop our attorneys internally, how do we leverage data? And so they now have their own ideas. They are getting out there and getting educated. They're hearing from their peers about oh, I have a CLM and that's really working for me. And so they're now turning around and going where's the person who can execute on all these ideas that I have? And so they're starting to have much more that strategic operational mindset than I think. Not that they were different people in the past, but it was just less prevalent, it was less understood as an important part of the role as a general counsel or as a leader of the department. And so I mean, I'm curious your thoughts as one of the drivers of I need someone to actually just execute tactically on all the things that I want to do are versus I have no idea. Please have someone come in and assess the situation.

I think there's different ways to Potentially look at it. Every general counselor seal is, is going to be different and their strengths and what they want to do, what they don't want to do. But I think generally speaking, what you're saying is 100% true. I think it's more of like a partnership and an understanding now versus outsourcing with what it was before. It was essentially like, just handle this, get it done. You're obviously a trusted business partner or like team member, but there was still advocacy that was being done about like, why do you need to be care about clm or how that drives revenue generation or just the overall user experience or sales or customer experience. Now I think those are table stakes.

Right?

So I think the level of understanding, advocacy and the playing field when it comes to like ownership of strategy operations, it's more of a shared collective, which honestly showed the work that clock you others, everybody that's been in the field, what we're doing, worked in a lot of ways. That is a huge win. The fact that the. I don't think we can all take credit obviously for the like, evolution of the CLO role, but I do think that it's a compliment to that. And if we were in a different situation where we weren't seeing that, then that would show that we were at an inflection point because we failed or something wrong was happening. I think this is just. We're at another stage of a maturity model where we need to reset and understand, okay, we've done grassroots. What can we do from a global perspective or regardless of industry, just so there's consistency.

Yeah, that's right. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. The direction that everything seems to be going or maybe just appears to be going temporarily. We're in a different phase and the roles are changing and we are all adapting to that. The chief of staff role, you mentioned that there was a period where there was a lot of chief of staff roles for the GC that were popping up. And there was a period of. That's a little bit at odds with the legal ops, because I see the legal ops as sort of like the coo. Chief of staff is the chief of staff. One is more running a team and executing one is a more of an individual contributor focused on comms. Really depends how you define a chief of staff. There's a lot of different definitions for that. I have seen a decline in that specific role. Right. There was a period where it was like chief of staffs everywhere. See that many of them today, in my view. And I think you express this as well. Best practices to have those combined into one person, because you're helping with the strategy and then you're actually able to execute on it with your team. That's one person. That's the ideal situation. Is that your perspective, too, that there was a period where they were separate and now sort of less of that?

Do you think there's a huge uptick? I think maybe five years ago, and I may be, like, miscasting that from, like, a time perspective, but I feel like there was a huge emergence of, like, legal chiefs of staff.

Yeah.

And I think that has to do too, with the progression where we're talking about, where there may have been a need filled, but there was another gap that was coming up. But generally speaking, for me, I think it's most effective, especially if you are working hand in hand and you have that trusted collaborative relationship with your clo, to be in a position where you can not only have an awareness of things, but also execute on them. Because that trust is hard to build, but also you just lose, I think, steam and impact if you're constantly farming out all these other areas when ideally, if it's around strategy operations like the Core 12 framework. I'm a purist, and I realized that a little bit. So I think I may be more stringent about some things than others, but also just with what motivates me in the role. So I. I personally think it's best when you're able to have one individual in that role where they're really acting as a coo kind of for the legal department. Those are the roles that I think are, in a lot of ways, most exciting because you're acting as the COO of the department, essentially. That's the most kind of impactful.

You said something earlier as well about the evolution of the role involving more specialization. And that might be another driver of this. That is also sort of a hat tip to the success that we've had in defining this scope of the role. Right. It's become so broad and each of the areas of the core 12 are so important that back in the day, it was like, let me just find a generalist jack of all trades person who can do a little bit of all of that. And now it's like the scope of the role is so well defined. It's not like I'm not really sure what we need when it comes to data. So let me not have someone dabble in data for a little bit while they still manage outside counsel and are implementing a clm and are thinking about E Billing. Right. So now it's, I know I need E Billing. I knew I need outside counsel. I need someone who's really good at that. I need clm. I need someone really good at that. I need someone who's my data analyst and they need to go real deep on. On that. And so in some ways, we've almost more specialized into these roles and we've succeeded in growing teams and adding headcount and adding roles. And maybe because of that, you're seeing again, the less of the one person who needs to be able to do it all and see it all.

I think that's very fair. When we're thinking about, like the core 12 and the different areas of specialization, potentially, I think that's the area where defining something in a market perspective really has impact because I do think it's a testament to legal operations professionals and clock that we've gotten to that point because it shows that the foundation's there. And now the areas that people are hiring for, they either have the executive roles already established or the people that were in the roles before did such a good job that the trains are running.

Yes, yes.

That's not to say, though, that there is a need for the continued development and strategic insights and not just maintenance of the status quo. But that doesn't necessarily need to be one person. That is that, like, single lead of everything.

Yeah. I think the sense of urgency you have when you've never had anyone in this function before, particularly if you're like a Fortune 100 big company, things are big and messy and you get your first person in and you're just like, you own everything. Just figure out what's wrong, fix it, help us scale. And there's so much value, there's so much impact, there's so much work to be done. The goal is always to, like, optimize yourself out of a job. Right. And so some people get really successful at that. And you're exactly right. The work is never done. If we really believe in continuous improvement and the world is evolving and the. The organization at large is evolving, therefore the legal department needs to continue to evolve. The work is never done. But that sense of urgency of there are a million fires and I need someone to put them all out, it diminishes because things are somewhat under control. So there is a ton of value add. But again, it's like, hey, things are okay. If I were to not have this person right now, it's not. They're not feeling the pain as much as you might in an earlier stage of the maturity.

I also think that there is something to be said, and I'm hesitant to say this because it does age me a little bit, but I think generationally, what motivates people in certain instances. And again, I'm not going to make generalized sweeping statements like work, life, balance is different and like how people want to show up and be utilized and what different generations are motivated by. I do think that could have something to do with it also in the sense that we were talking about this a little bit earlier, just about the people that were coming in and building the foundation of legal operations, they were willing to fight that fight, but I feel like it also motivated them to be that kind of Swiss army knife. It may be generational, it may be because of the development of the role and just the fact that we are at a different stage. But I also don't know if that's what everybody wants anymore. That also is. It's a lot of work and responsibility. It's a great example. And like, that's kind of the way that I operate just from seeing how all of the people that I looked up to and mentors and like, people that laid the groundwork for me and others to like, be able to be in the role that I'm in now. But I also know that there's. I think there's something to think about there with the way that some of the original people showed up and what they were motivated by may not be how others will show up. I do think that may have something to do with it as well.

Are you saying that we all burnt out so badly that if you asked us if we wanted to do it again, we're like, oh, hell no. That message came.

Yeah, I'm just in awe because with looking at work, family obligations, just Covid all of those things, like remote work, all of those things. That's a lot of change that I don't think was taken in into account either. I don't think that's a main reason of anything, but I just know that even my perspective about things with people that have been on my teams, what I am willing, not willing to do, but what I think is a part of my role, just inherently with contributing advocacy from a market perspective or like giving back. That's not necessarily just an assumption.

Yeah, you're talking about not the day job, but all the stuff that is like around it, like going to bat in the community for this role for the world with nothing really to gain from it from just other than for the greater good.

The day job alone though, is a lot though, because if you were doing that one, if you were that one single thread, that is a lot. I've been there. I know others have been there. I think that's motivating in a lot of ways. And that may point to more issues with me being motivated by that. But I think that. Yeah, I'd love to hear what you think about that. It is a lot.

I felt like we had no choice. We had to advocate for the world so we could advocate for ourselves. It was like we needed this to exist everywhere so that people understood this is real. It was a made up role in the beginning and for the whole world to be able to see this is valuable for every GC to be like, I need one of those. This is great. We should pay them lots of money. They add value and impact. That was good for all of us. And if that didn't happen, we had a harder time within our own organizations. Selfishly, it was to our advantage to get out there and lift the rising tide for all the other boats because it would help us in our own careers and like advocating for ourselves internally, which again was like in the early days, really hard to try and educate everyone. There was always new people coming into the department, like, who are you? What is this team? What do they do?

So we were trying, asking me to do this. Yeah.

Yes. We're trying to teach the world that this is the new way, that this is what everyone's gonna be doing at some point. I felt like we had no choice.

Which I completely agree with. Having the ability to be in such impactful roles like that, that's very compelling. But I also, when you're thinking about like the spread and like the specialization that may be part of that is like you just want to go in and focus on a particular area, excel in that space. But it's not necessarily everything under the sun.

What do you think of the. The other hypothesis I had in terms of the changing landscape, the changing opportunities that are out there? You also amazing consultancies now. Many of them include people who have done the job and are now like able to help again spread the gospel to a bunch of other companies and help get them up to speed and get them going faster than you could by hiring someone who's going to learn on the job, figure it out from day one, from scratch, all over again. That might just be another way for folks to say, hey, let me just hire a consultancy to come in. Tell me the current state. What do we need to do where do I need to invest? What headcount do I need? Where can I use you as a managed services that didn't exist back in the day. So again, of course we were rolling up our sleeves ourselves. Is this maybe something that GCS and clos, again with their eye towards knowing what they need to do, are using that as an option? Because maybe they don't have headcount. Maybe it's just I'll get someone to tell me where I need to invest and then pick and choose the sequence of priorities.

That was an area that I think came up when I was trying to think about all of the different kind of levers that could be just contributing. But I do think that's a huge area and I think that's newer because to your point, that wasn't an area that you could outsource. So I think that you have a lot of general counsels to your point that they don't have headcount. Maybe the just with the environment and what they're focusing on, they don't even know what they wanted. So it actually, I mean realistically that's I think more thoughtful in the sense to say like rather than just putting someone in a role where they're either going to be misleveled or there isn't the even understanding of what they need, they know they just need it. That's also a really hard role to be put in where a team knows that they need you but they don't know why and where. So you're even. That isn't fun either. So the trade off I don't think is a bad one. I also think a lot of law firms now, or just like combined services consultants are offering that expertise. Maybe they say to their cfo, hey, I'm going to prove the ROI on this. We're going to lay the groundwork for the things that we knew that we needed. It could be everything or it could be a particular set of areas based on like the industry that they're in or the expertise or gaps of expertise that they are trying to look at. I think that is a change too. That was not, to your point, offered before.

Yeah, it's definitely a new option that I think many are taking advantage of and they're good. Even I've used them and they're very good. The other thing that came up in the comments from my original post was maybe this problem is that everyone's hiring the wrong people for the job. That's been like the eternal debate as well. Do you hire ex lawyers do you hire MBAs? What is the profile? Is it someone who understands legal? Is it someone who understands and has business acumen? And how do you weigh those two different things? What do you think about that?

I agree with that as well, but I think it's for a different reason in the sense that when we were talking about having a consultant come in, it's great when people know that they need legal ops, but to throw someone into a permanent role where it's like again, they're going to fight that battle, they may not be utilized in the way they need to or it's just kind of a flurry of noise and confusion. Throwing someone into that haphazardly again is a lot. So the role scoping, that's an awareness. And again like if we're thinking about it systematically or how can we get rid of that, it would be to define it. And it may be that specialization or it may be specifying up front if these are the problems you're trying to solve. You should have this background instead of it being like, hey, figure it out. Let's see what the HR team or the hiring manager uses to include in the job description or doesn't. Or like maybe what they put in the job description isn't even accurate.

It.

I think that's a big area too. I think the job descriptions now that we're seeing are interesting. I'm not loving them to be honest. Again, I'm biased and I do think that there is a huge non negotiable value in having negotiating experience and being an attorney. It's good if the self awareness is there to say that they need an attorney because they will be depending on them to do attorney work. But to say more broadly that you just have a legal ops role and you need to be an attorney, that is something that is a little. It hasn't been fixed yet.

And you're not an attorney. No, you're not.

So yeah, yeah.

Which I think both of us would agree that is probably the more important skill set when it actually comes to doing the job and knowing. I've always believed that you can learn the world of legal. It is an industry, it is a profession. It's a field just like any other that you would have to learn and you don't need a degree to do that. We're still seeing that JD requirement in, in probably most job descriptions. Right.

I think it gives them that fail safe if they don't know what they need or they mishire for the role. At least they have an attorney they could Utilize.

I see what you're saying, but if I can repurpose this person, at least legal department, I can do something with them.

Or again, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt because there are situations where it's like if you're looking for someone to act as, as the negotiating right hand or true representative for the general counsel, showing up for them in court or responding and giving legal advice, if that's part of what they're hiring for, I wouldn't say that's legal operations necessarily, but it could be a component of that. So then that is where that requirement may be needed in a non negotiable.

Like a hybrid. If you're hiring for a hybrid role, like and not a pure legal ops role.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah. Enough GCs that I've talked to back in the day and still even now are saying if I hire this role, what will I tell this person to do? I know I really need someone to come in and put a CLM in, but after six months then what will I do with them? That's why I don't want to hire someone full time or that's why I want to hire a hybrid because then if this, the work dries up, then I have something to do with them. The fact that there's, there's so much work, the job is never done, as we discussed, it's still foreign. We still don't have enough of an understanding of what this role is such that that the person who has to hire or manage for it doesn't feel comfortable knowing what's next.

That's the part that I think is interesting though where like I go back and forth on like the specialization at the end of the day is good in the sense that when we're looking at the market now and like not necessarily seeing all of these single point of entry roles where it's everything. The specialization I think is the future of this and the fix of it. I think there's going to be instances where it is going to be dependent on like the role, the general counsel or clo, what's going on with the company where those big roles are needed. But there may be instances too where you have people coming in and they had a legal operations professional who really knew what they were doing and what they have. They may not need that level of execution, but if they have the program pillars under that, then they're able to like continue to develop and iterate. I don't think breaking these up is beneficial, but I do think we're seeing more of like, legal operations business units, either just because of the way that their company functions or just the specific needs of that team where you have like, ops functions embedded within the various groups. Groups in addition to a legal operations team. I think that's new too.

Yeah, it's new and it's old. Right. There was a period where it was decentralized and then we all tried to centralize it, and now it sounds like the specialization is kind of forcing decentralization again. This is common in so many fields and professions, and it gets back and forth depending on the changing winds of the day. And that's okay.

And that might be part of it too, though if you take away the, like, mega function, then advocating for this super senior role may not have as much resonance in that particular area. But in five years, when it ebbs back the other way, who knows?

Yeah. So bottom line, Frances, like, where we are today, what we're seeing, does this just feel like this is normal? This is just the course of a maturing new profession and function? Or do we feel like, oh, no, have we gone the wrong direction and something needs to be done?

I think that we are going in the right direct. I think, though, that we can't do the same things that we've been doing. It's an inflection point for the community and kind of the profession to think about how can we move this forward and give that stability and resilience for the next iterations moving forward. I think generally speaking, I don't think there's anything bad. I just think there's opportunity to take it to the next level and where it does need to go. The area that I do think needs attention sooner rather than later is more about setting up those foundations and that infrastructure on the global level.

Yeah.

Because it is very US focused as well. It is what it is, which is the way that the role has emerged and how it was built out. But really that, like, foundational opportunity to like, further the impact for everybody, but also to prevent the impact lessening is to make sure that we're thinking about this globally. Because it's not the same.

Yeah, it's not the same. I would say 99% of the people in these roles outside the US are lawyers or ex lawyers. That is just the norm. So it is a very different environment. So what do you think needs to happen then? If we can't keep doing the same thing and you're on the board of clock, I think CLOCK will continue to play a really big role in shaping this role and this function where do we go from here? And where does Clock? Where should they play? Where do they play?

I think there's a ton of opportunity. So I think if I'm thinking about just based on the conversation we had, I think the job family just framework and the outward in approach from a implementation perspective that needs to be focused on generally. So instead of like having it be whatever approach the company wants to take or that department or that leader, really targeting it from a job classification family framework perspective to make sure that we just checked that box and that fight isn't happening any further. And then also building out in that same vein like the specialization tracks, so it allows for just stability in a framework work that works for everybody and gives companies and departments that flexibility. That I think is the gap. And I think clock, that's an area where I would love to see clock focus on because it is that kind of like community infrastructure scale that I think that would make a huge difference. I also think that from an advocacy and like role perspective, I don't think that people can just depend on others to give clarity into the role. And I think there was a conversation we had, I don't know if it was at like CGI a couple of years ago, just about. If people in the community can't succinctly express what they're doing and there's confusion and it is fly by night then expecting others to know and really enforce that and advocate for it, it's not going to happen. So I think it's the combination of not leaving it up to others or like gcs or others to like advocate for you. It really needs to come from the legal operations community at a foundation and global perspective level. I think those are the big opportunities.

Yeah. So don't wait for other people to help you. And there's a lot of folks who will make. I hate to say it this way, the excuses. Right. I wasn't set up, I didn't report to the gc. I wasn't empowered. And there's a lot of things that you can still do to be successful in the role. And many of us had periods of time where we didn't report to the GC or it wasn't like perfectly well defined. And there are things that you can step up and step into your role to do for yourself. I want to make a call to action to anyone who's listening. If you know how to get this new profession as a category in those HR standards like a radford, please reach out to Clock or someone because I think that's that is something we've been talking about for years. And yes, that would just put us on the map as this is as common as marketing ops and DevOps and FinOps and the list goes on and on.

Yeah, because I think some places have like the baseline ones but to your point, like the areas of specialization aren't there. So the minute it deviates from that, if it does exist, which it doesn't everywhere, you're starting the conversation all over.

Yeah, we've also talked about this over the years. When does this centralized operations for the entire organization come together such that does legal ops one day sit within a global COO or someone who oversees both, let's say HR finance and legal like that kind of combination because the skill set and once you get to the specializations are actually quite standard across different operational fields. They're just very deep within that specialization. But not necessarily like you don't need to understand the ins and outs of what legal practice looks like day to day.

I think we could see that now because to your point about the kind of transition we've seen in some of the roles, whether it's just like a period of time or that is something that's going to remain, if there was that shift then I could see that being a new kind of emergence of that kind of multi or business unit coo. I think the biggest area that would be challenging and I'd love to hear your perspective on this is just like, like the amount of time it takes and like the understanding to build trust within a legal department and a function. And that understanding, I think that would be the biggest barrier in certain instances. I could see it working where you do have a COO for DNA or maybe it's a mega group where you have leads reporting into the COO that lead business operations for each of the embedded functions. I think that's interesting.

Yeah, I don't know the answer. I could imagine though one day like a hub and spoke model where there are centralized share service centers of excellence that do data analytics and vendor management and whatever else, systems implementations and administration. And then you certainly have the legal professional specialists that are dedicated to legal and are playing the strategy prioritization operational role and using the resources in the specialist teams. Who knows, who knows. Do you have any like as we're wrapping like final thoughts on where, where things could go for this profession and are we continuing to see growth and expansion?

Yes, I think there's definitely growth and expansion. I don't even think we've scratched the surface from a global perspective, the most exciting groups, and I think the ones that bring me the most excitement and joy and just like the new frontier is really those global spaces because it is so nuanced, even with, like, conversations with our KWOK Brazil group, that in and of itself, it's like living through. I feel like an HBR case study because it's so different. Like, you're dealing with different practice groups, laws, all of that. The world really is their oyster. So being able to see that is really cool because we really haven't scratched the surface. It's very us centered still. And I think that is the opportunity.

Yeah, huge shout out to the Brazilian community who are the most passionate and energized and just excited about this role than any other community I have ever met. I think you're right. There's a lot of potential around the world. Frances, such a pleasure. Thank you for joining on this very timely conversation that I wanted to have because I think it's important and a lot of people are thinking about it.

Thank you very much for having me.

Such a pleasure, everyone. Thanks so much for listening.