#74 - From the Ground Up: Building Legal Ops with Sean Houston

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm Mary o', Carroll, your host and chief operating officer at Goodwin. Today is another real treat because I get to sit down with someone who brings a really interesting and unique perspective to our industry. Sean Houston is head of legal operations at Heineken, where he's been building out the legal ops function from scratch, laying the foundation, building the roadmap, rolling out technology, and now focusing on adoption, change, and impact. What makes Sean's perspective so powerful isn't just what he's doing now. It's the journey that got him here. Before joining Heineken, Sean worked on the vendor side, helping global clients implement legal technology at Bright Flag as a customer success leader. And before that, he was a professional sports broadcaster. So, yes, he's had a mic in his hand for a while and it's going to show in this episode. He brings sharp communication instinct, a radio, really customer centric mindset, and a real eye for what works and doesn't work when it comes to legal technology and legal transformation. So today we're going to dig into the how. How do you choose tools? How do you roll them out? How do you say no when everything feels important? How do you define and measure success in a role like this? We're also gonna be talking about what's working in AI and how the role of Legal Ops is changing and stabilizing around the world. Let's get right into it. From AI to M and A, change is accelerating. Stay ahead of the curve with exhibit A, charts and graphics on the latest legal and market trends that are impacting your business. Visit goodwinlaw.com exhibit A to check out our data driven insights. All right, Sean, I'm so glad to have you here.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. It's exciting and really appreciate it. A big fan of the podcast, first time caller, longtime listener, so thank you.

I remember meeting you for the first time a few years ago and being so impressed with how your story and your background contributes really positively to your perspective and success in the legal ops role that you have. And I loved it because your background is not the usual legal ops path. So maybe let's start there. How did you go from sports broadcasting to legal tech and then now to legal ops?

Yeah, so bit of an interesting path, as you said. Yeah, I went to university for communications, telecommunications specifically, and was always very interested in the sports broadcasting. Did that for a handful of years right out of college, and that's when I did my kind of first pivot, working at a few different Software companies. I had always been a big fan of technology, leveraging technology and was in charge of many of that for some of the sports teams that I worked for. So it was a logical pivot, I guess, at that point. And mainly customer facing roles like sales and customer success. And most recently had been at a legal tech vendor a few years, they were getting value out of the software that they were fine tuning their processes and identifying areas of improvement as much as possible. And that's where I got introduced to legal operations, working with the teams that our customers that I was working directly with on a day to day basis. And that's where I really saw the huge impact that this profession can really have on an organization. No matter the size, large, small, everything in between.

Right.

And yeah, it's rare that you get an opportunity to really get in at the ground floor, so to speak, on a basically brand new profession. This is not something that many people outside of yourself have been doing for a very long time. So yeah, during COVID it did a bit of soul searching and seeing is this what I want to do forever? And I thought, you know, I really like this legal operations idea. I think there's an amazing future for it. It's something that I thought, yeah, companies would need to be a bit creative in how they find talent and people who would be a good fit for it. And I thought I might be a good fit. So I decided to give it a go and yeah, very quickly was able to find this role here at Heineken. Yeah, I must say I had to do a bit of selling myself. So I was using that communications and sales background to the team here because they also, I think, didn't really think of a background like mine as a possible fit. I think they, you know, had envisioned this being a lawyer or someone who had worked in legal for, you know, a while. But I was able to think accurately, say, look, I think that my background, you know, legal operations, so much of it as, you know, is around communication, is around telling stories and it is around that change management and technology selection and adoption, which is all things that I had a lot of experience in. And so by doing that I brought a fresh viewpoint as well, where I'm not coming to this from. Having worked in legal for 20 years or any number of years and have that mindset, I don't accept things as just, you know, this is the answer. I'm always willing to question why and really push and see what we can do to improve. Yeah, that's a bit about how I wound up Here, but yeah, four years in now here at Heineken. And I think it's been an amazing ride and it's been a very big success and I've enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. So it's been a great shift in my kind of third career, I guess.

I love that. And what's so interesting is that you bring this mix of really strong communication, as you mentioned, storytelling. There's. You were in customer success at this tech firm working with legal ops folks. And so you have this sort of customer first change management mindset, technology focused into a space that, you know, hasn't traditionally been great at all those things. And it's just, it's a great perspective that you bring.

And.

And then you came into Heineken, one of the most recognizable, you know, global brands. And I believe you were there building it from scratch. Right, That's. There wasn't something there before. And so that's no small feat, you know. What was the mandate when you joined? Did you. Did they already have specific projects they wanted you to work on? Like, how did you even decide where to begin on all this?

Yeah, so during the interview process, you know, I had seen legal operations or even organizations where they didn't have legal operations, but they were trying to implement a legal tech software and having, you know, an attorney do it in their spare time or something like that. And I had seen other organizations where they had a legal ops team that was really well embedded and had a great relationship and, you know, mandates, so to speak, from the gc. And I had seen the impact that could have. So during the interview process, I was very clear, what is the GC's opinion of this? Like, why is this being created? And spoke with the GC multiple times. Yeah, it was very clear that he was a big proponent and he wanted someone who could come in and, yeah, really make an impact and kind of shape this their own. And that he was, you know, wanted to support, but wanted someone to, you know, help steer the ship and really get the ship off the ground. Yeah, when I started, I didn't rush to, you know, run out and try and buy a bunch of software. Basically, the first six months or more was really a bit of a listening tour. Just trying to talk to as many people as I possibly could, as I'm sure you've done there at Goodwin over the last year or so. Just trying to see, like, what is the reality of the situation across the globe at this very complicated company. Not just on the legal side. The nearly 300 people on the Legal team globally, but also in other departments and other functions from procurement, finance, it, et cetera, and trying to understand what's working well, what's not, and what are the biggest pain points. And then from there, yeah, we held a series of a few workshops with the leadership team on the legal side as well as some other individuals both from legal and other stakeholders outside of legal. And we identified basically many opportunities of things that we could do, some of them involving technology, some of them not. Then we simply rated all of these 20 some odd opportunities on a scale of 1 to 5 for what's the value we think that this would provide to us, you know, five being the highest. And then what's the complexity of trying to get this in place on a scale of 1 to 5? Ideally you'd have, you know, super high value, very easy to implement. I think on that quadrant, on that, that square graph, that quadrant was pretty empty. But the other end of that, you know, very low value, high complexity to implement that was also empty. So everything was in the middle, but there were a few that were much more obvious than others. So that's where we started that we thought would be a really big impact to Heineken and help us to really solve some of the key pain points that people were seeing. And then from there, you know, trying to then get that in motion and pick and choose, where do we begin? And when I met, you know, with our GC following those workshops, you know, we agreed that we were going to start with clm. Now of course, as everyone probably listening to this knows, that's probably the most difficult of these types of projects that you could do. There are other, let's say simpler, little easier, a little faster to implement, faster to realize some value as well. However, for us that was like a big fire and we really needed to start putting that out within the organization. So that's where we originally focused. And then over time, of course, we were able to take on a few more. We've grown the team and we've done, I think, quite a bit over the last four years. We've implemented a lot of new processes and several new key foundational technologies for us on the legal side. And it's been very effective. And I think, yeah, that answer could have been very different at other organizations where maybe they needed to start with, I don't know, a third party due diligence tool or they need to start with some sort of legal spend management tool. These are other things that we have done over the last few years. But, but for us, those were not as critical as, yes, starting with clm. But I think also things have changed a lot, both within Heineken and just the legal operations space globally. Legal tech industry has just changed so much with the explosion of AI and other things over the last few years. But I don't see any way that CLM as a subject is going to go anywhere. Companies are still going to need contracts and Heineken has lots of them from procurement and sales and everything. It's a truly foundational piece for us. But I think we've been able to prove the value and at the same time do some other things in the background, so to speak, that have been able to. Yeah, let us show the impact we're having on the Legal opsite.

That's awesome. I want to get into a bunch of things you mentioned and just for everyone who's listening, if you're not familiar, CLM is contracts lifecycle management and that's oftentimes, you know, the first piece of technology or software that in house teams put in place because of the impact that it can have on the high volume of contracts that in house teams are dealing with. I just want to rewind, you know, because you were the first Legal Ops hire and you sort of had to prove your impact, improve the value so that you could grow your function, your scope and your team. Do you know, just. I'm always curious how your GC came to learn about Legal Ops, why he was, you know, interested in putting this role in. Had he heard from peers, was he starting to hear from the community? Do you know where he got this idea?

Yeah. So I know that he is part of a few general counsel associations and groups and things. And I know that he had certainly heard of it from some peers, both in Europe, but also not in Europe. And then also there was someone on the legal team who was in what we call a short term assignment, who had come from an operating company here to head office for a short period of time, who was helping out with a few of these types of activities. And I think she had said, look, yeah, we could really benefit from this type of a role. And at that time, Heineken had just done a big reorg where unfortunately, yeah, decent, a large percentage of the workforce globally had been let go during COVID As you can imagine, our business with bars and restaurants around the globe being shut down, was hugely impacted. And so with a shrinking headcount, yeah, we, we really had to do more with less. And really the only way to do that, of course, is to work smarter, not Harder and to improve processes and to automate and leverage technology smartly where possible, these sorts of things, which is, of course, a key tenet of legal operations. So I think it was a few different factors. And so then as a response to that, this. This team was created.

Yeah, super smart force multiplier on. On legal teams. And then of course, you went and did this listening tour. You prioritized. I love that you used the kind of versus level of effort framework to figure out where to start. But presumably, you know, being a party of one or even a small team, you had to say no to some things that I always say, like, every idea that comes up is a good idea. They wouldn't come up if they weren't things that, you know, we could or should do someday that would have some value. But how do you go about saying no to folks or saying, we're not going to be able to get to that? Is that difficult? And, you know, maybe you've used your comms superpowers here.

Yeah. I have to say very transparently, that is not a skill that I'm super good at, is saying no. I've really had to learn that over time. Over the last few years, until recently, I have been reporting to one of the members of our leadership team, and she reports directly to our general counsel. It was a very open door. I speak, you know, very regularly with our gc, but I had officially reported to one of the members of the lt, but he. She rather has really helped me in that area with growing that. Yeah, Part of the challenge when you're starting a legal ops function at a company is it's a new place for a lot of people to give some work to or, you know, try to hand some things over. And over time, over the first, you know, really year or two specifically, a lot of things had come my way that I was, you know, I was eager to help. In my nature, I like to try and solve problems and to help where I can. So I was very eager to say yes and to take things on. But then my. Yeah, my workload had gotten to a point where I was doing all sorts of things and I really needed to be better at prioritizing and saying no. Is this going to absolutely, definitively help us with our, you know, three key priorities as a function? And if the answer is not a resounding yes, then I have to be able to say no. Unless it's something, of course, that I've already agreed with our GC that I'm going to perform. So there has been Some times where I've had to push back and say, understand that there's a need, but that's not something I can support with at this time. Yeah, I think by default, if you're doing one thing, you can't be doing something else. Time is a, you know, a valuable resource and a limited resource and we can only, you know, do so much. Yeah, I've had to learn that honestly over the last few years. But I think I've gotten better at it and doing so, of course, in a very, you know, understanding, very kind way. I'm not, you know, telling people, get the heck out of here. It's a good question. As you said, it's a good idea. It's just not something that we can do right now. And that doesn't mean that's not the answer forever. It's just right now we cannot accommodate that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay. And then I love the fact that, you know, when we first met I just, I learned that you had learned so much from the vendor side and I could totally relate to that. You know, having spent years at Ironclad and working with a ton, just so much exposure to clients or customers really of different sizes, different geographies, different industries and different priorities and then working with them to sort of like help them scope out what technology they needed, the roadmap and implementing those, you know, you have been able to see so much from being on the vendor side. So I, now that I have lived it, really value that experience. You know, what are some of the things that you learned watching other legal departments try to implement new technology, buy new technology and like what separates those who succeed and those who kind of stall out.

Yeah, I've described it as almost a bit of a master's in legal operation in a sense of working at a legal tech vendor and getting to work with dozens of in house teams on this subject was, it was really like there's no better on the job experience you could possibly get, I would argue than that. And yeah, definitely seen what worked, seeing what didn't work and understanding, you know, you could have the best tool in the world. Doesn't matter what it is if it's not designed for what you're trying to use it for, or if it's not the right time. I think timing really is everything.

So true.

You know, if again, you can't do everything all at once. If you try to do too much, something will fail or they all will fail. You have to be able to focus. So yeah, really understanding that and Being very clear to vendors. I understand what it is you're saying here. And you know, vendors are amazing at sharing why you should do this and telling you all of the reasons why. This is a super easy yes, not, you know, no forever, but no for now I think is a very fair answer. And you really have to do some soul searching yourself. Is this something we can actually dedicate the time, energy and let's be honest, money and resources to as well? Or could we better spend that doing something else? But I think also a key thing I would really call out is ensuring that you have the right people involved as early as you possibly can on any project. Super important. You don't want to, you know, get 75% of the way there and you've already invested a lot of time and energy and then some, you know, unknown requirement from finance or procurement or IT or whatever comes in last minute and derails the project. That's going to be incredibly frustrating for everybody. And I've seen this where companies went out and bought a software and then when we go to implement or very late stages, oh, actually we can't even take that invoicing then get it paid without several manual steps of intervention. And no one had really sketched out the process entirely and understood the requirements from the finance side. So yeah, mapping out what is this process that we are designing and what do we desire this to look like? Not necessarily what is it exactly like today, but what's our desired process, all the steps involved there and then making sure that the right people are all on board with that. You know, it sounds very basic but it's so crucial. And then I think a lot of times you see, yeah, we bought this software, we've now implemented it, we're going live like we're done. But that couldn't be further from the truth. That's really when the work begins. In many cases that's when the adoption and the change makes management really kicks in. But then you have to constantly be evaluating this, you know, over time. So every time we're adding a new process or a new technology, like that's another thing that I have to then keep up to date and make sure that we're revisiting this regularly and sharing updated communications about and expressing the value and answering the question of why do we need to do this. So it's a lot, right? It's not a one time thing. It is a really an ongoing, living, breathing thing.

Yeah. And you have to set that expectation up front, you know, to your GC to Your finance team. This isn't like I buy the technology and then we set it and forget it. You do need dedicated resources to keep it up. There's always going to be new feature releases. You need to train people, you need to onboard, you need to continue to build workflows or, you know, keep things up as the business is changing. Are you leveraging your own team? Are you hiring more people every time you have a project? Do you have outsourced providers? Like, how are you thinking about expanded scope for your team?

Yeah, it's a good, good question. So we've grown the team a bit where we now have, you know, multiple full time employees here in Amsterdam. I also have some people basically with a dotted line that are based in a shared services center in Poland and then a few people in some regional hubs around the globe that will support us with certain projects, like our CLM implementations, for example. We also do have a partner that we use who supports us with a couple of key projects. But yes, within Heineken, there's a very close relationship between our IT function, what we call D and T digital and technology and all of the other functions. So anything technology related, they're very involved with and including legal technology, you know, we, a lot of it we can handle ourselves, let's say there's not a lot of ongoing work or sort of things, but many of them like CLM and others there, there are, this is going to continue in perpetuity. And so yeah, it's a bit of a hybrid approach where we have some people from legal, some very solid resources from D and T, and then also a key external partner that we use. And then I would also add, I think when you didn't specifically ask about this, but I want to make sure I get a chance to say it. I think making sure that you're choosing the right partner, not just the right technology and understanding that's also a big time investment. Right? Like if you want to make this a real partner that is adding value not just to you as a legal ops person or to your GC or to the legal function, but to your organization overall as something that you can then share with, you know, your executive board, cfo, CEO, whatever the case may be, that's going to require a real partnership and that's going to require, you know, on site visits and meetings and lots of, you know, time and energy on your part. But if you're not doing that with some of your key vendors, I would argue you really should be because that is super important to the Long term success and really to making sure that, you know, it's not a transactional relationship but it's really a true partnership. Because I also am a big proponent of the concept of, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. And I think the more successful that an E billing solution is or a CLM or whatever, the more successful that those solutions become and those companies become, the more successful the customers of those companies should become. Yeah, maybe it's a little self serving but I love to see the success of the partners and the companies in this space. But again to your point, that is a time commitment to make that happen. So you have to understand that going into it as well.

Yeah. And you know, you chose CLM contracts as your first project and that was probably pretty important as you're trying to again demonstrate the value of this role and this function that you're trying to, to build and prove out at Heineken. How did people react? You know, was the impact obvious? Did you have to show metrics and ROI or how did you win everyone over with the success that you've had? And this is like you said, it's a very difficult cross functional project that involves IT and finance and procurement and sales and you know, globally, you know, that's a, it's a massive undertaking.

It is, yeah. Hey, before I answer that question, I think there were a couple of small things we did before clm and I can give you one funny slash sad example. So don't judge us. We've come a long way in four years. But I remember when I started I went to send an email to the 40 some odd people on the head office legal team here in Amsterdam and I asked someone like, oh, what's the distribution list? And they're like, I don't think there is one. You just email all of those people. So you're supposed to try and remember 40 some odd people and type them all into the two box in an email. So ye just very quickly figured out how to request a distribution list through our IT team, got it created and communicated that out, you know, and it took 10 minutes of my time. But that was like a very simple example of without a legal ops function or team here. No one had done that before. Even though that was so easy to do because no one had really, yeah. Thought about it or taken the initiative. It was just, yeah, we just type in 40 addresses or I take the most recent one of those emails I sent and I copy all the names and put them in the next one. So anyway, just to give you A sense of where we were coming from and some of the very low hanging fruit that was, you know, almost on the ground that we were able to solve for. And then I would love to touch.

On that just for a moment, because the fact that you did that, you know, and it's a small thing that is like paper cuts of pain for everybody. And it's not something that falls into anyone's job description. So what you brought in was one, a fresh pair of eyes, like coming from outside of Heineken and showing up and going, you know, scratching your head and going, this is crazy. This is how I'm supposed to do this every day, every time I have to send an email. And then the willingness to take ownership and take initiative. You know, anyone who is already there could have said, there's gotta be a better way and let me go talk to it or let me figure out how to fix this. But people don't have that in their job description or they don't have that in their mindset. And I think that's what you bring, that's what Legal Ops often brings. Because we're always about efficiency and like looking for things to make better. And again, a small example, but a perfect example of you showing up very quickly going, okay, that's crazy. I'm gonna just make this small tweak and make everyone's life easier. And that's exactly how you gain credibility, you know, one little thing at a time. And then of course, you embarked on a much bigger project that had huge impact.

Yeah, no, exactly right. And I think identifying those ways you can show value very quickly in any role, not just legal operations, is, you know, very important. But anyway, I thought that would be a good anecdote to share there. And. Yeah, so back to your original question. When it comes to clm, how are we proving the value? What's being requested? Yeah, so we have worked with, both internally and also with our vendor, Ironclad, on what is it that we can show and what do we want to show, you know, up the chain, so to speak, on how we're getting value out of Ironclad. It's again, as we said, it's a difficult solution. It's also not necessarily a very cheap solution. You know, it's a key foundational piece of technology and we spend a decent amount of money on it each year. So we need to be able to prove the value. So again, doing some external benchmarking, also working with the vendor to help us tell this story. The first operating company that we actually went Live with, with our CLM was Brazil. And for Heineken, that is one of the largest, if not the largest, operating company that we have. And it's a, yeah, it's a huge operation. For anyone who knows anything about the culture in Brazil, it's also a big, yeah, it's a big beer drinking culture and it's a big part of how people, you know, spend time with one another and that sort of thing. So it's a big operation for Heineken. And they actually were one of the very few operating companies that had a CLM, quote unquote, in place where they had a technology that was helping them with the kind of start to finish process of some of their contracts. And so as a result, they had some information and some data about what their existing process looked like. And so we were very quickly able to nearly cut in half, or more than cut in half their time to contract for sales agreements. That's real money coming in the door faster for Heineken, right? That's a very simple, easy to show metric. I understand that's very obvious. I'm not trying to say it's a groundbreaking thing to show. But very quickly productivity and timed contracts, you know, night and day increase. And we're able to do that by, you know, numerous ways. But one, the actual software itself, the functionality and how, you know, we're able to bring people in when necessary, not bring them in when not. Bringing to light all of the redlining and negotiations and just giving a very clear understanding on who needs to do what next, et cetera, integration with our E Signature provider and also very old fashioned thing of okay, currently there are eight people that are reviewing and approving this contract. No matter the the amount that the contract is worth, I don't think we probably need eight people reviewing this relatively small sales agreement. So we were able to, you know, reduce that number down to four and only increase it when necessary. And maybe someone acting as a signer is fine versus them approving and then 10 minutes later signing if they're just doing the same action. TW so just fine tuning that approval process, again a very simple example, but by implementing the new software and not just taking the current process, but improving on it and then implementing it, we were able to see some real changes. So that was a very early example that we've shown now that we've had, you know, thousands and thousands of contracts from more than 30 operating companies around the globe, from head office, all sorts of different types of contracts, from sales to procurement to whatever. Now we're able to really share some very interesting insight from the data and the insights that are available in the tool and the reporting there. Also, we can take the data out and put it into Power BI to help us, you know, surface that to other people and to, you know, build custom dashboards and things like that. And then we're also relying on, again, the vendor to help us with painting this picture. And they've been a very good partner in that regard as well. We're also using it as a way to challenge them, as I said, help us as our partner to show the value of what we're investing in you on a yearly basis. And I think that that should be an exercise that a vendor can help you with. If they can't, I would say that's a problem.

Yeah. The first impact that you mentioned was accelerating revenue. And I think anytime the legal team can help with revenue, everybody is made to look good and that's, you know, it's a huge win. What you didn't also mention that I remember is that Brazil for you all was the most complicated market in terms of the complexity of their agreements, the complexity of the requirements, the process. And you all went to do Brazil first because I think the mentality was, look, if we can make it work here, everything, every other market and entity will realize that it's doable for us too. And it's, you know, if it works for Brazil, it's going to work for everyone. Very different than, you know, what I think I normally recommend, which is start with something simple and easy and that's going to be a surefire success and then grow and learn from that and enter into more complexity. That was pretty brave for you to go into the most complex market. I think I remember that it was also the one that was most in dire need, and that's why you went that way. But what was your thought process in going to the most complex first?

Yeah, no, I think on the surface it is a bit counterintuitive. You're starting with one of the largest and, yeah, arguably most complex and difficult in the organization to get something like this done. But at the same time, the fact that it is a very large operating company and is very complex, they're also a bit further ahead in some respects when it comes to technology and understanding this than some other, maybe smaller, quote, unquote, easier operating companies. They also do have, you know, a somewhat larger legal team and a larger D and T team there locally that can help support with this sort of a. You know, it was a brand New project, let's be honest, we were figuring it out as we went in that way. It did help the fact that they were bigger and had more experience and other types of implementations. But it was definitely difficult. It was, you know, there were calls with, you know, a dozen or more people, very often between the vendor and a couple people at head office and six or eight people in Brazil. So it was a lot and juggling time zones. But one of the other real compelling reasons was that their legacy system that they had been using as a kind of cobbled together CLM had been sunset and was no longer supported. So they had an urgent need to move away. And so, yeah, it was a great way for us to partner with them. And then as you said, it really is was a situation of we've solved for this and you know, a handful of months as our very first operating company for the largest one within the organization. So if we can do that there, it really is a situation of if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. And I think that has rung true so far. We haven't really had a scenario that I can think of that we haven't been able to make it work, which has been pretty incredible.

Amazing. Let's shift to the hot topic. You know, of course we can't not talk about AI. It seems like legal in house teams are truly embracing it kind of. What's your take? How have you thought about approaching it inside Heineken? Are you guys using it? What are you seeing that's actually working for you?

Yeah, so I wish I had, you know, some amazing thought or vision to share with the listeners. I don't. There's a lot of smarter people that, you know, I think you can look to for that. But what I can share with you is, yeah, within Heineken, what we have been doing is really focusing on the, let's say, the basics. I like with any new technology or change, you know, it's just going to take some people longer to get used to it than others. You're always going to have, you know, the early adopters and then the middle ground and then the laggards. And I think with AI, there's even fewer, I think, of the early in the middle and probably more on the other end of the spectrum because it can be a little bit scary if you're not someone who's very, very technology driven and very adept at these sorts of things and you don't really understand it. It's very easy to just say, okay, I'm going to Ignore that and see what happens in a year or two. We've really been trying to focus on just getting people used to having this be part of their daily lives. So within Heineken, we're a big Microsoft shop and we have some copilot licenses. We've made them available for the legal team and we've been trying to, yeah, increase the adoption of that and making that a part of, you know, the day to day where it makes sense. Not even necessarily for a lot of actual legal applications, just purely using it for helping you with, you know, getting some time back to your day from recapping meetings. And you know, I have a daily prompt that I wrote and shared with people which will prepare you for your day recap the previous day. I use it every day. It's incredibly important. It's, it takes five minutes and it really helps me prepare for each day.

Things like that, share that, share that, share that with me. I want to see.

Yeah, I can share it with you, no worries. Things like that are very simple, like having it help you with your drafting of emails and helping you recapping of meetings, but also, you know, embedded within PowerPoint and Word and Excel, just really trying to get people using it where they're already working. So I think that's important for us on that end. It's not a new tool and a new thing they need to go to. It's just a new feature essentially within the applications where they're already working. I can't say everyone is using it perfectly today, myself included. It's definitely a journey, but it's definitely part of my day today now and many other people as well. So that's really step one, I realize that's so basic and these, you know, a lot of people who might be listening are night and day ahead of me. But that is really how I think you need to start with it.

I think that's so important because the whole, like I've said many times, it's so powerful, it can do so many things and then you tell people it can do anything and until they start to use it for little things day to day, that whole art of the possible, when your mind starts to click, when you're doing something that is work related and you go, oh, let me see if I could try it on this. Like you don't have this aha click moments unless you're used to how to prompt, what it can do, what it can't do, how to make it better. I think there's huge value in just getting people Comfortable with generative AI in their personal life.

Exactly. Yeah. And then now that we've done that and we spent some time on that over the last many months, you know, now we're introducing more and more types of gen AI functionality and you know, other existing products like our clm, we've implemented several of the features that they have available. Now we've partnered with a team within our D and T, our IT function to help develop within Copilot Studio a bot that actually will help us with evaluating marketing materials and press releases and other things against our internal green claims policy. That subject of greenwashing and green claims is a big important one for us and that's been a very interesting project for a number of reasons. But yeah, I think getting the D and T teams and the lawyers to speak the same language, not always easy. There's some translation both ways that needs to occur. But that's been a really, yeah, exciting project and one that I think will really pay us some key dividends in the long run. And it will, yeah, help our lawyers save a lot of time in reviewing materials. You know, can be three sentences in a 35 page Word document or something that are relevant and the, the bot can help us to, yeah, identify that and help provide, you know, instructions on how we should respond, basically. Is this appropriate language or not? And most importantly the reasoning why. So yeah, that's been an exciting project that we've been working on and again, hopefully now people are comfortable and this isn't some, you know, scary thing. They can see the value that this is providing and the time that they're getting back to their day. And now we can start to do more things like this hopefully over time, whether it's build something in house or. Yeah, leverage existing functionality in some of our current technologies or going out and purchasing some very, you know, purpose built, legal specific AI tool. There's a lot of ways that this can go and I'm curious personally to see how it plays out over the next six months, a year, multiple years ahead. I think it's very interesting and I have no idea which way it's going to go.

How have you seen the adoption for things that are AI features that are being released within tools that you're already using, you know, like the stuff that you've rolled out as General SaaS but now has AI components that just pops up and are your users able to sort of figure that out and start seeing the impact?

Yeah, it's a good question, I'd say on some of them, you know, the Ones where. And it even happens to me sometimes I'll log in and all of a sudden, you know, now you have this and it's available and sometimes it is difficult because you went to that tool to do something and you don't necessarily have the time to then sit down for five or 10 minutes and understand how it is and work it. And yeah, it's always very much easier to say, I'll worry about that next time. I definitely think there's an element of that for sure. I don't know that for certain, but I can almost guarantee that's the case for some of these things. But some. For example, the AI assist functionality in our clm, you know, we've spent some time on sending out communications, organizing, training, sharing material about it and really trying to identify a few, as you were saying earlier, try to eliminate this kind of paralysis that there's so much that you can do and so you don't end up doing anything and identifying a few small things that you can do with it and focusing on a couple of operating companies that we know, you know, this would be a nice add in to their playbooks or something like that. And so that's been the focus. I think we can certainly improve on the adoption. Certainly there's a lot of people that aren't doing it, but we have been able to find some, yeah. Early wins for us in that area. So still a work in progress. I can't say we're doing it perfectly, but we're trying.

Yeah. You know, every conversation I'm having now with gcs, legal ops people is so focused on exactly this topic, technology, AI efficiency metrics. And just going back to the beginning of our conversation, you know, your background in communications, in the customer journey, truly understanding the user experience and the customer success using technology is so valuable. Wanted to just zoom out. You know, we talked about a lot in our space about the legal ops role and how it's changing over time. And I think it's been in constant evolution since, you know, since I started in this two decades ago. What are you seeing these days? And I don't even know if we've mentioned that you're actually based in Europe, you're in Amsterdam, you've been there for about eight years, but were in the US before that. So you've seen the role in the US in Europe, you know, are the backgrounds of people that are being hired into this role, is the scope of the role, the title and leveling, is that continuing to be in flux? Is it finding a steady state now what are you seeing from your vantage point?

Yeah, I do think that it is certainly becoming more commonplace across Europe, at least in this region. You know, I'm seeing more and more small groups being spun up and more and more large events taking place and you know, the communities online and in person that I'm part of have all gotten much larger over the last four years. And yeah, I think there's always been a few large organizations that have been doing, I say always that have been doing this really well for, you know, 10 plus years now. And now I think it's really catching up a lot. It's truly become a well established part of any in house legal team, you know, and within law firms now as well, few years behind maybe when that had become more commonplace in the US But I really think we're at that point now and that's because I think people are seeing the value of it. There's a lot of people I know that have come from legal backgrounds. There's a lot of people that have not. So it is a, yeah, it's an interesting, an interesting space and I think you, you also see a lot of, yeah, partners and other ALSPs, but also technology partners that can help that are now based in Europe or have large teams in Europe. So I also see that on the kind of vendor space as well as the technology companies themselves. There's been big European startups over the last handful of years that are doing interesting things and then yeah, existing vendors from other places setting up, you know, decent sized offices across Europe. So I think they're also, you know, following the trend, so to speak. So yes, I think it's definitely, it is now a well established part and I'm seeing fewer and fewer like first time hires at some of these organizations and now it's maybe adding someone to the team like we've done a few times or you know, replacing the person who had gotten it off the ground a few years ago as that person has maybe elevated and gone on to something else. And I don't hopefully, knock on wood, that will not change. I think it now has a foothold within Europe as far as I can see. This is, you know, a lot of this is anecdotal and it's my observations, but that's what I'm seeing.

Where do you go to hire people as you've grown your team over the last few years? Is there a profile that you look for or do you just post something and wait to see what comes in? Like what are you looking for?

Yeah, really good Question. A couple of people have been internal hires from within Heineken. So one came from operating company who had actually helped us with implementing our CLM and a couple other projects at the operating company. And they had expressed an interest and we did too. They've joined us here at head office and that's been very effective. That person is an attorney. But they're also, yeah, quite interested in technology. So it's that kind of perfect blend in a sense. And they had the operating company Heineken experience that I did not have. So that's been a super valuable. Yeah, super valuable background and gap to fill. Another person who's on my team now joined us from our business support the executive assistant type situation. But they had been doing a lot of other things, including some IP formalities and organizing signatures and signatories with our Dutch Chamber of Commerce and all of these sorts of things. So they've been involved in a lot of situation, a lot of processes for the function. And now they are part of legal operations and helping us a lot with our vendor management and invoicing and spend management and that sort of thing. So that's been an incredible resource. But then also when we've needed people in Krakow or in Mexico or in the APAC region for some of these regional hubs, yeah, we have elements within Heineken where we work with partners in those regions to help us find the candidates. So I provide the role that we are looking for and they'll help find the candidates and then we. They screen them and then we do the kind of normal interview process. So yeah, it's a bit of a mixed bag, but I think it's not like there's a super clear if you do this, then you do this, then you'll be a perfect candidate for legal ops. It's very mixed bag. And so I think always being open and willing to think outside the box a bit for where that person might be. I don't care where they come from, as long as they're a great fit. That's all I really care about.

Yeah, it's such a good observation. A term that we've been using just this last week here. Goodwin on my team is like corporate athletes. Like those are the people that, you know, you can just throw out a different situations and they can figure stuff out and run with it. Just that's what I think we're all looking for in these roles.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.

So, last kind of question as we sort of wrap up, we're halfway through the year, what is kind of your main focus for the back end of the year as you start to plan for the next 12 or 18 months?

Big topic for us, and this might sound obvious or maybe a little of a boring answer, so apologies, but really we are focusing on adoption and change management of everything that we've done to this point. We're in our annual planning cycle now already for 2026, so I'm also very busy on that front, but, like super hyper focused on. We have many now very key, very powerful technologies that are available and we need to make sure everyone is using them. So not 80% of people using it, but 100% of people using it. So while we have been successful, you know, really focusing and this will take time to bring those laggards across the line, so to speak. So that's a huge key focus of ours, and that's not just for legal or not just for me, but within Heineken. This focus on adoption is a crucial one from our CFO down, so that's definitely the biggest one. And then securing what we want to do for next year as part of our annual planning and making sure everybody is clear and working with the leadership team and our general counsel that, look, these are our priorities going into 2026 so that everyone is very clear. Look, this is what we are focused on. And if you're being asked to do something that does not directly align with these priorities of which will align with our, you know, company evergreen strategy, then you should be empowered to push back and being very clear on that messaging. So, again, from my original background of communications, like, that's, I think, a really important one that I take quite seriously and I try to play a big role there where I can, and the strategy and the communications for the function. So that'll be a big one after we get back from summer holidays.

Awesome. Sean, this has been so good. Thank you. Thank you for your time for sharing your story and so many great insights about tech and prioritization, your background and role. I think that people are going to really enjoy learning from this and hopefully you and I get to see each other in person. Definitely with a Heineken in hand. Soon.

That's right. Yeah. You're always welcome here in Amsterdam, so let me know when you find your way over here. But it was a pleasure and thanks so much for having me.

Wonderful. All right, see you soon.

Take care.