Jenn McCarron on Being Creative in the Legal Ops Field

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mary o' Carroll and today I have with me my dear friend Jennifer McCarron. Jen is the Director of Legal Operations and Technology at Netflix. She is also a member of the Board of Directors at Clock, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. She is passionate about innovation, delivering value, good user experiences and not least of all, storytelling. So welcome Jen.

Thank you, Mary. And it's funny you introduced me as Jennifer because you really call me Jen. You're Jenn and I'm Jen. Now everyone call me Jen. And it's a 2N Jen, not one. Why be average? So Jen, we've done extra, extra nice.

We've done a lot of chats together by now via webinar. People can find those online. We've always had a good time, so I expect you to be a regular guest on this show. But most recently we also had the opportunity to see each other in person at the annual Clock Global Institute which took place in Vegas for the first time in person in three years. And I think both of you and I have been to every single Clock Institute since the whole thing started. So how was it for you? How was it to be in person? How did you think it went?

Yes, since 2016 I've been in it with you. You put on the first one and all I did was the app for Hod and I from Cisco did the app beneath Steve Harmon's former board members leadership and then we just sat in the back like maybe one day we'll speak at this thing. So how was it for me this year? I keep saying this full circle, right? To be up there on stage, filling your keynote shoes, looking everyone in the eyes, giving and then hearing back from everyone. It was an elevated experience. Every year is elevated. Absolutely every year. And to now have been more in the wider production and interacting like that. I was floating the whole time and I'm still floating, processing a week later out.

Yeah. So Bellagio told us it was the biggest event they've had in three years, the biggest in person event. And other shows have come back, other shows that have been annually there have come back, but Clock was probably the only one that came back not at half the size, but bigger and better than it's done in person in the past. And that's so telling about the community that we have.

It's so telling of the explosive growth, number one, we have officially, that means officially exceeded the Bellagio capacity. What a great problem to have and future contract term to look at. But to know we Know that Covid is still happening in phases and has people conservative and holding back. That's what the Bellagio is saying, too. So some people still couldn't come and we were at capacity and it's their biggest event. So to me that means the future is bigger. We've exceeded and next year is going to be potentially more people and more new members.

Yeah, well, and the new members thing was really interesting because I know I had one session and this surprised me. We asked everyone who was a first timer to raise their hand. Now, in my head, I had imagined maybe 25% of the room was going to raise their hand, and I think almost 90%, I mean, almost the entire room had raised their hand saying this is their first time at a clock event, which, I mean, that was surprising. It tells us a lot about the growing size and the scope of, like, the prevalence of the role. Right. It's just emerging in more and more companies around the world.

It's flipping. I had the same anecdotal observation. Most people I Talked to, probably 90% were brand new to the field. And this is my first conference, which I said, well, way to come in. I on top and hot because we're cranking on all cylinders. We're firing on all cylinders on this one. And then when I think about the membership, as we study membership In CyLock, over 4,000 members, not all of which are in house. A portion of those are in house, but the predominants are in house. If you think of the bell curve, at least two thirds are brand new to field. So this field, people are flipping their roles, finding us, finding the role, seeing the job descriptions and going, wait, that's me. Yeah, and flipping it and going to their general counsels and chief legal officers and. And making the pitch. I heard a lot of those stories and what it. What an exciting shift. I mean, let me ask you, it's been new and building like this since you've been building all of this. Was it the same timbre? Was it the same feeling in 2016 from your vantage point, looking back to that first one to now?

It absolutely was. I think it's just a movement towards more of the same. So back then, it was the emergence of like the first round, you know, the first people who'd been in this role maybe had been in it for a little while and just for the first time found their people. Right. And we were getting together. Whereas year over year since then, I think it's just been new blood, like new people finding the role, coming into the role Needing to learn and that absolute need to have each other as a community, to learn from each other, to share, to find out what other people are doing has not left us. I mean that's still so important to each and every one of the roles of the people who are there.

Yeah, I love it. So exciting and exciting to see just how it continues to hockey stick. Is that what we say in graphs that upward trending up and to the right, up and to the right on membership and not just for numbers sake, but it's really behind the numbers is what you're doing hinting at standardizing best practices. Collectivization means we all start to change the in house legal departments, the ecosystem, law firm partnerships in more uniform ways.

Yeah. Well what I think is really exciting is if you look at the change in the landscape of the legal ecosystem, the way legal services were delivered, the players in the market, the amount of legal technology investment and emergence and adoption from 2016, the birth of CLOCK to today, it's been that same up into the right hockey stick as you mentioned. Right. It's with the growth of more people asking for it, more demand in the market and it's from what we saw at Clock, like it's only going to continue. We are just getting started. There's so many companies that still haven't put in a legal ops person in place and when they do, I mean even more magic will happen.

Yeah. On our startup and vendor side of the ecosystem where you're hanging out now, there's more VC funding that's also hockey sticked up over these last six, seven years. Tremendously, tremendously. I remember hearing some staggering statistic three years ago VC funding went from something to 3x for legal tech sector only. And so you see that in the proliferation of startups, the competition between startups solving and maybe the same space like clm. Well I'm sure we'll get to that today. But then there's still problem space is probably unsolved that will bring on new innovation and new startups. So there's, there's more and more to come.

Oh yeah, there's, there's a lot of problems we still haven't solved yet in legal.

Mary, what's, what do you think is like, what's one we haven't solved? I mean CLM's getting it, getting it, it's getting it from end to end. It's on the track. But do you know any blank spots?

One big question that I often wonder about is, and I've spoken about why legal tech is so much harder than any other vertical in enterprises because it's still new and we are very fragmented in the way that lawyers work. And IP is so different from litigation, is so different from contracting. So you have all these disparate systems. And I know for any gc, CLO or legal ops person who shows up new to this role, then they go, oh my God, why do I have to buy 10 systems? Right? If I were in finance, I've got one. If I'm in hr, there's workday. If there's salesforce or sales, like there's one thing for everyone and for us there isn't. There's 25, there's 20 and you. And you need them. Like you can't really say you only need one. And this is going to be the one you go with unless you. I think there's some ELM that are trying to solve that. But a lot of the best in breed is still going to be an individual solution 100%.

And then where you can't solve, you go with low code and orchestration software and doing your own version of whatever connective tissue software and data you need.

Or trying to use one software and stretching it beyond what it's meant for to, you know, service some other parts of your department, which, you know, I recommend doing that if you can. But that I think that's one big question for the 20 years from now, what will the landscape look like?

Oh, there's going to be a lot of gobbling up. As someone who's gone through. I've gone through two acquisition integrations in my career. So yeah, I've been at small. Either a dot com in a startup or startup that got gobbled by a big person, big company. There's going to be a lot of gobbling and it's kind of the history and evolution in future. That's how business works.

Yeah, yeah.

You're giving me a look like except for us, we won't be gobbled. No, I'm just, I'm just playing. I'm just reading your face. But.

So Jen, the other thing that I was just thinking is the, the up into the right hockey stick that we talked about that mirrors clock and mirrors the growth of legal office. It mirrors the changes that we're seeing in the landscape. It also, as you've mentioned before, mirrors your own career path. Right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean I'm in this now as I've shared a clock officially 14 years. Really when it flipped to career was what, 2013-14. So eight years just firing on all cylinders. When I sort of put the music dream and the band and the work. Like I was doing two jobs at some point, right. Like going out at night, playing in bands and promoting and pushing for all of that and then having my day job when I flipped it all to one thing and I brought all of that into work every day. That was the story I told opening of clock. It was 201314 at Cisco and I started connecting with others like me. And then it just, it really went up sharply from there because I brought all of the force of creativity into this work and then feel, I feel like I'm just in like the mate, not the matrix, but like mission impossible. I'm just looking at the board, just throwing it all around now. And the more I found I put creativity in and succeed or fail or draw this or that, it. People legal likes it.

Yeah.

People like it, businesses like it.

That's what we need. That is the one thing you can't train for or get. Like you, you're. You've got it. I mean that's really important. We're good friends. Jen. I. And I don't even think I know your story. Like when you were a kid.

Yeah.

Did you want to be a musician? Did you want to go into business? Like what was your. What was it like?

No. Like the first thing I ever said as a kid, what do I want to be when I grow up? Was a cartoonist. And I would just be like locked up in my bedroom and my parents showered me with art materials, art supplies and I would just draw everything, draw every cartoon I could see, draw anything in the house and put it up on the walls and be like, I could draw anything. And I'm really good at like copy pasting, drawing. And so I had to learn the skills like of original imagination drawing.

Oh, very cool.

And that. So I got art lessons and stuff. I had music lessons as a kid, but they didn't shower me as much with instruments. So I just went with where there was a confluence of materials and drawing was it. And that's what I thought for many years. And fast forward, we're going to college and my parents are like, so you should go to art school. You're creative and super weird in a good way. And we don't know if you're going to make it anywhere else. And they showed me all these art schools and I'm a bit of a rebel also, if you haven't picked that up yet, just don't like convention or always the old way. Respect the old way. And I Study it. But I like these new ways. So I was like, nah, I'm going to go to not an art school. And I went to a state school and didn't know my major for the first two years. I laughed at everyone who was pre law and pre med. I was like, you guys, no original material here. I'm just going to wait until the bolt of lightning comes. Hang on, I have the book. Sorry. You can edit out my stuff falling. So I got an internship ready. Between freshman and sophomore year, when no one knows their major, I had an internship at the town mayor's comptroller office. So I'm doing like all this office y accounting, going through ledgers that were like big printed ledgers and doing all the filing and getting a business taste. And I really that that town comptroller, the town I grew up in, gave me this internship. And he really saw something in me before I saw something in me. It was my good friend's parents and her dad and he was like, you should be in this office. You have a good brain. And I was just like, all right. So I did this internship. It was a slow day, everyone was out on vacation. And I'm reading this book. Ready? It's Apple the Story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders by Jim Carlton. This was published in like 95 or 96 when Apple was not even $13 a share. Nobody cared. Steve Jobs was fired. The book is about the failure. Yeah, it didn't even get to the good parts right. My brother, older brother was a guitarist and an Apple like enthusiast from the 90s. So I was into this rebellious, like, who are these underdogs? I'm reading this book and I get 2/3 of the way through and it's just like the inside wars at corporate Apple Software creating ideas, Steve Jobs iconoclasts in and out. And I got 2/3 of the way through. I slammed this shut, I put the book down and I called the registrar's office at University Albany. SUNY dropped all of my like gen EDS and added business course, infosystems design course, finance course, business law. All the prereqs for a business administration major. And I was like, I'm going to do finance concentration. Infosystems design. I had a vision of me then info system designing. I was like, that's where I should be. I think like that. I think like everything I heard.

Yeah.

And I never ever, ever looked back from just enriching that part of my brain, my education, my experience. And I went like just nosedive into that major and you know, you do that major and you're halfway to an economics degree. So I got a BA in economics while I was at it. And I didn't know those. Those two together are like a wonder drug for understanding business. The world markets, marketplaces, they potentiate each other. So it was a very almost renaissance time for me to fulfill, like, that part of my brain.

So interesting. So interesting. And what about the legal ops? Like, you didn't start in legal ops, so how did you actually end up here?

No, you know, at clock, I told this career story point from being the musician in the band 2008 forward and coming into legal ops. But if I talk about when I came out of college 2001-8, those were the 911 years I got a job out of college as a management consultant at Ernst and Young. I backed out of that job two weeks before 911 because I had a bad feeling about the economy because I studied it and it was going down, dot coms were going down. And I called the recruiter at Ernst and Young. I was like, I can't do management consulting. She's like, why? You're a shoe in for this. I'm like, yeah, but you're going to put me on a project in Sarasota, Florida, and I'm never going to leave. I'm going to be in Florida for three years. And no offense, Sarasota, love you, girl. But I wanted to be in lower Manhattan with finance and info system design work. And I was nervous because of the economy, so I backed out two weeks before I was supposed to fly to Los Angeles the week of 911 for Ernst and Young's headquarters training. And she was mad. Samantha Schettino, girl, if you're out there, I get it. You should have been mad. There were like, signing bonuses and all this. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm out. I'm gonna stick with this summer job I picked up doing software testing, and that was at a dot com called Prodigy. Remember Prodigy was the AOL competitor with Star.

Yeah, yeah.

I was at Prodigy. It was its dying days. Prodigy got acquired that summer while I was still a contractor by SBC Global, which was probably your Internet service provider in California. I'm in New York State. And eventually SBC then again became ATT through a series of acquisitions. So I did a year of software testing. 911 rocked the world. I didn't like it, so I escaped. And I was like, let me go back to school. Ah, this is what you do when you're 21, right? Like, go Get a master's. And I needed to like hide from society because it was a tough time. And I went to social work school, which was a very kind of bizarre choice that I tried to talk myself out of. Like, look, gift of eq. Awesome curse. I have eq. My dad has this. He was a social worker. He's a social worker now. Was a city cop. Very conscientious, empathetic years. We could have all been amazing guidance counselors, like that kind of thing. So I went and it was both brilliant educationally, but torture clinically to do that work. It was very hard for me. All the work we do now in inclusion as leaders, as people in corporate America, as people in society, you have to break some of your stuff down. That started for me in social work school. It wasn't so comfortable, but I bless that time. It was a blessed education I got because it helps in our work now. But my rebellion from the uncomfortability of that pushed me further into music. And so I escaped into music for five years after that master's and then picks up the music. Touring bands need money, legal ops tale 10 years later okay, and this is.

Another thing that I don't know much about you. So you were a performer in a band. What kind of band? What did you play? Do you. What, What. What kind of performing do you do?

Yeah, the touring and the session work, that was bass guitar, electric bass. Not standup indie rock bands like everything out of Brooklyn of the 2000s, really. Skinny jeans and swoopy hair. And it's funny, it's what all Taylor Swift songs sound like now. I was playing that music then. Cause she. She has all those producers now, people I know like in. In her production team. But yeah, indie rock. Just like if I could have been a stunt double for the Strokes pretty much. You were so ahead of your time, I guess. Or that whole era of music was just like a funny facsimile of disco and 80s. So was I ahead? Was I behind? But I was living in Brooklyn and New York and doing all the band stuff with no money. A lot of roommates, a lot of fighting with my bandmates, a lot of making records and playing in bars. And I sang. I sang like lead vocals, backing vocals, a lot of harmonies and stuff. So yeah, that was kind of my. The bag.

That's amazing. So one thing I just have to bring up, because as you were on stage at clock in front of thousands of people and then at the ironclad party and just dancing in front of everyone and jumping on stage and grabbing mics. People said to me throughout the week, Jen is so confident. I've never seen anyone with so much just true confidence.

Yeah.

Like, is that true? Do you just, Are you just extremely confident? Is there any part of you that's got some insecurity? Do you get nervous about stuff? Tell us.

Yeah, you know, I still get nervous before every and any big thing that's the right human physiological response. And nerves show that you care and that you've practiced and you have so much invested. So I always get that flash and my heart rate goes up just before I'm about to step out at a presentation at work or step out on stage like I did with Clock. As soon as I'm out, it's gone.

Yeah.

And, and it's down. Roller coaster. And that's. It happened for me at Clock. So that was really fun. The confidence thing is a really tricky formula. I am a believer. I just read a book and the book title will come to me so we can reference it later. Behaving my way into confidence versus quote, just having it naturally. It's never come to me naturally. When I was, I remember being a young kid and being really shy and in kindergarten the teacher saying, you have to introduce people to other people. And I'm like, but that's awkward and weird. And she's like, well, it was like on my report card or something. There's just like, there's a shyness back there. And there was a. As a kid I was like, could I ever, could my voice ever be powerful enough to be confident? And then those first years I would hear my vocals recorded in a song, I'd go through this like, this like self hate spiral because nobody wants to literally hear their own voice. It's an uncomfortable thing. Cause it sounds different.

Yeah.

And I don't know, behaving my way in one small dose at a time through. Well, I want to be a musician. I have to hear my voice. You hear it 6,000 times later, you all of a sudden are desensitized. You're just like, oh, that's my voice. You get used to yourself. So I don't know, it's been a long, slow build. And sometimes when I hear that, I've heard that feedback before, like, you were so confident. I go, oh my God. I still struggle with imposter syndrome. Especially as like a creative person who's in corporate environments. Everyone seems cool with it now. Mary. But in 2001 they weren't. In 2005 they weren't. And I'm In New York City in companies that are a little more conservative. It wasn't until I started working at California companies that they were a little more like bring it. We like create that kind of creativity here. I mean, think about tech.

Yeah, very.

So I found it more over time. But I say that because anyone can build and behave their way into confident moments, micro moments, and those can be, do enough of those and you'll have a bank to have macro confidence and you'll still get nervous and especially if you're a woman in the world, you'll still get this impostery thing sometimes. And that's okay. You can behave your way through that. I agree.

It's, it's funny you say that. I was also very shy as a child. I think I had to look, oh yeah, painfully shy. And now I just off the charts extrovert now and can't shut up. But yeah, I was very, very shy as a child. My sister was very extroverted and I couldn't get, I just couldn't get a word in around her. And we were only 14 months apart and good friends. So yeah, that's, that's funny now that I, people think that.

I'm sorry. So we're like practiced trained extroverts that started as introverts in a dream of talking.

I think that I'm naturally off the charts extroverted. I just really did. I needed my space. I needed my, like to learn who I was and to gain my own independent identity. And then once I kind of, maybe it's the gaining the confidence of like understanding who I am and learning my own voice.

Learning your voice is like the life, the life journey with all, all of this and all of us and the power of that and the work that it takes. I, I, I'm Wait, we have to back up. I'm blown away. You think you're off the charts extrovert? I think I'm off the charts introvert.

Yeah, you're an introvert. And people, people don't believe you. And like I know you and I mean, oh, you get it doesn't mean that you can't be out there on a giant stage in front of a thousand people. It just means that you need to recharge in a way that's different than someone like me needs to recharge. So like after a full day of clock shaking hands and hugging a thousand people, what do you do? I go back to my room at 11 o' clock and I look around and I'm sad because there's no one to talk to. And probably everybody else at that conference goes back to their room and is just like, ah, I need a moment. Right.

Yeah. I mean, me throughout the conference. The way I survived this conference and somehow avoided getting Covid right. Because that goes around in crowds now easily was these backstage moments. I was backstage in the dark with the stage manager, like, hi, it's you and me in no natural light. And those moments would recharge me and I'd go back out and do another three hours.

Yeah. And on the other hand, people who come up to me who are like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're probably really busy and I just wanted to say hi. I'm like, please come say hi. If I'm by myself, I don't want to be by myself.

Oh, this is so interesting. I'm so amazed that you are an extrovert because I thought maybe you were more ambi or introverted, learned extrovert. And then you. I'm surprised you see me as an introvert because people make an assumption that because I can get out and speak clearly and not with filler language and confidently, that I must be an extrovert. Or I'm good at presentations at work and people will say, well, you're just an extrovert. I'm like, nuh. Your introversion is not an excuse to be under practiced on your presentation. It's not even the same skill set, the same thing.

It's just how you recharge. And the best people know how to flex. Right. You can go into that other zone. It may not be your default comfort zone, but you can go into it and be there for a long time.

Yeah. I mean, Brene Brown, introvert. And that woman comes out and flexes and moves mountains in people and the podcast and she's so comfortable. That woman is an introvert. Admitted introvert, I think.

Isn't it like 90% of the world's CEOs are introverts? Something.

Exactly, Yeah. I would take a guess and say 90% of the world's lead singers and all those like big bands and musicians, you know, also all introverts. To go in and write songs like that, you have to be so interior that. And comfortable there for a week. I could be alone in a room making a song for three weeks and if you came to talk to me, I'd be incoherent to you. It's like I'd have to leave the flow state. But it's introversion.

Yeah. The other great quality about introverts that I love is they're very thoughtful before they speak. Unlike us off the charts extroverts who just speak and keep talking until we find the point that we're trying to make.

Yeah, I'm a severe introvert with a mouth problem that sometimes I still don't think before I speak. The really deep pocket intras do think and they say something and it's like profound.

Yeah, I love that. I love when they speak and you're just like the room is just a mic drop. Yeah.

And it's just like, wow. Truth bomb just blew us all up. Oh, funny. So we're like Myers Briggsing right now. So do you know you're Myers Briggs?

Yes, I am ENTJ.

GJ. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm ENFJ. But the E. This extraversion piece is 50 50.

Oh my God, you're an F. Of course you are. Okay. Because we learned this about each other at clock. You were like, I'm really touchy feely. And I was like, what? I'm dead inside.

Can we talk about this? Let's tell the people how not dead inside you are. First of all, no one's dead inside because we actually all have the same brain and feeling capacity. Right. And story. We watch a movie, you watch a show. It's about feeling and getting hooked and drawing that out in people. So we open clock and the real keynote, I was there to warm the room up. The keynote was the storytelling. Dear World exercise and conductor. We brought in Robert Fogarty, Dear World. And he gives you kind of a. Earns credibility, gives people a little boot camp. Like we're going to get into storytelling with one another because your story's powerful and you're the keynote. Everyone sitting at the table, you're going to turn to the right, meet someone you don't know and do like a two minute story exchange or whatever the time length. And you text me and I'm backstage and what did your text say? You said what you wrote. You said with three M's. What is this? And I said, mary, it's called feelings. Just go with me on this. We're trying a different approach here. Just trust me. And you wrote back, I'm just not the touchy feely type. But then you wrote lol. So I'm like, okay, she's going with it. Did you do the exercise? Were you in the group?

I admittedly did not do the exercise.

Okay, that's fine. No forcing people. It had to be something you wanted to do. Okay. Did you leave the room?

Well, so, to be fair, my session was next. And so I. With my other speakers, yeah, we went to go prep, you know, but, yeah, so I did not participate. I feel badly now that we're on the air talking about it, because it was nice, but it's okay.

I mean, you were also, let's be real, you were there working. If you were there as a board member like you once were, you would have been in it, like. But you were working, and you had to scoot and prep for your next session is a real thing, and it is responsible for you to not sit there and be late for your own call times backstage. So I'll give you a pass. But I want to just kind of draw the arc of the whole event. You know, a few thousand people did the exercise and told their story and opened up and felt a little more of their own humanity and voice.

Oh, and people cried.

And people there was crying, there was laughing. Just human connectivity was the keynote and the motif. And so then we sent everyone out into their conference, like, have fun. We'll be back soon with more stuff and connecting sessions, learning the rest of the. And I just wanna fast forward your arc. I'm in the hallway on Thursday. It's the end of clock. We closed. I'm out there with a microphone going, thoughts, people, reactions. Bye. Nice meeting you. Recording podcast content, which comes out soon to members only. And you walked by and you were weeping.

Yeah, maybe a little bit of tears.

And I tried to throw the mic in your face. I'm like, mary, are you okay? And you're like, this was so. You said something like, wow, this was an amazing week. I'm moved.

I was moved. I mean, you guys put the video montage up at the end. You put a video montage with music, and it doesn't matter what it's about. It's gonna get me to cry every time I cry during AT&T commercials of the 80s. But, like, sitting there and reflecting upon how far CLOCK has come, how far legal operations as a profession has come, how many careers, how many people entered this field because of something that we built, like, to have had some small impact on this movement was just. Yeah, it was a moment where I thought we should be very proud. This is. This is amazing. This is amazing. And you guys did such a great job. I mean, it's also. You know, this was my first clock. Not being involved, not running it. Yeah, not running it. Not being the president and the board, the team. You guys just made me so proud. I mean, let's just say the Entire Clock team that, that I hired out right. In the first couple years of the pandemic, they'd never been to a Clock Institute. None of them had ever seen, like, the power of that community and that movement and that feeling that you get when you actually go to a Clock Institute. And I've told a lot of people this who haven't been like, when you go to Vegas, you will feel something different. It is not a conference. It is not a trade show. It is, it's a movement. And you guys really pulled through. I mean, and it wasn't, you know, an okay show. It was bigger and badder and better than like anything we'd done before. So just so proud of everybody.

Yeah. Thank you. And so much kudos to you for being a part of hiring professional staff into the Clock organization and indexing on people who love, love trade groups and know how to put on and mount events that have emotional design in them. We, we went that way. We didn't just do like you did Legal Ops. You should be on the Clock staff. We put in the right staff for this new chapter and your growth and scale, you scaled so hard. You scaled out of there. You're like, you guys got this. Bye. I'm going to Ironclad.

Just kidd.

But you did. You got to scale. The organization got its own sea legs. And one of the members of the Clock staff turned to me after day one and she went, you know, I knew this, this was a special community, but. Oh, wow. Yeah, I like the wave of what you're describing was hitting her. And so kudos to you for scaling this thing in the right way. And we ran with it and we're going to keep going with the next events and bigger events and London, London 2022. I think it's a one day clock in Europe or in the UK event. But will you be there?

I will for sure. I will never miss a Clock for the rest of my life.

Okay, so I'm already jumping ahead, but we might have to. What's the party we're planning together? That Ironclad will get the paste hors d' oeuvres going? Will Thad be there? What song are we releasing? Is it a record release party? I mean, that party that you guys threw at Ironclad at the barbershop was so fun.

That party was so fun. I think there was a whole bunch of my old Google gang there and commented like it felt like the early Google days of a party. And you know, I hope that that's the same sort of energy and culture that we're bringing at Ironclad. And I mean, it is. It just. That party felt. It was awesome. It was so fun. The energy, the community. Like, it was. It was great.

It was really a vibe. As soon as I walked in and there were a hundred people queued outside like it was a nightclub. To get in.

Yeah, yeah. I felt. I felt very badly about the people who had to wait to get in, but it was worth it. It was worth it.

It was worth it. And I think the feedback note for Ironclad is just like Clock for Bellagio. We're exceeding our capacity all around. You guys need a bigger event space if you're gonna call parties like that. Get all 500 people on that waiting list in.

Well, so it'll be interesting. Same for Clock, right? We've exceeded or you guys have exceeded the size of the Bellagio and 24, 2500 people.

Yeah. And yes, that's the max.

The amazing thing is that it still feels intimate in some ways. I mean, it's enormous. Like, you go into that room where the main stage was, and it felt like everyone kind of took a moment to go, wow, this room is really big.

Yeah.

But you made so many individual connections with either new people or you, you know, you saw a lot of people you knew from the past or even relationships you've built online Right. Through social media and LinkedIn over the last couple years. But that, that feeling that you kind of still knew everyone or had an opportunity to meet people exists, even though it was so big.

Yeah. I think we need more. I think we need to design for those in the future. The one session I did was a secret chat that it was like, popped up last second. Rajan Gupta from Meta and I, you know Rajen.

Yeah.

Used to be at Google.

Why are you having secret pop ups that I'm not invited to?

How did you not get invited to that? How are we not our calendars? Do you want to just join our Google calendars together in life? Let's do that next year. It was a last, kind of the last minute thing. I had a hard time committing to sessions because I had to keep pulling out of sessions because my schedule for the whole MC part kept and podcast part kept changing. So I squeezed this one in and I wanted to create an intimate combo with 30 to 40 of our peers, sponsored by Checkbox AI. And it was about low code, no code, my desert island pick tech. And I was like, any press in the room? Just us. And I let it fly. And Rajen let it fly.

How fun.

I thought it felt really ripe. Cause people were just like on couches and I'm on a bar stool. So we were just in one little room. And I think if we can maintain intimacy as we grow, win.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You gotta be very intentional about those moments.

Yeah. Mary, do you have any feedback for us on how we can make clock better? I'm such a feedback nerd.

Oh, don't you think I was giving the team feedback the entire time I was there.

Yeah, but anything like standout that is appropriate for the podcast audience of yours? I mean, I'm talking gloves off. Tell us how to do it better.

I mean, I don't know that it's appropriate for the podcast. I thought that the exhibit hall with the food separated changed the feeling of that room. And I know it's hard to do because now it's so big and you have so many more exhibitors, but there was something lost in taking the food out and the lounge chairs out and the ability to hang out in that room. That said, I don't think it makes or breaks the event. You know, I just thought, yeah, it's.

Something we can play with.

Yeah. That was probably my biggest piece of feedback.

That's right. They used to put food in with the vendors. And then you'd be eating this very average bread. And you know, you know how I am. I'm very fussy with bread.

Bread.

Look, I. I grew up in New York. The bread's good there. The bread's good. In sf, I keep. I say this everywhere we go. No, no knock. But it's just like average at the Bellagio and you're eating your average dinner roll and like a vendor is in your face while you're chewing that. I'm like, this isn't right.

I don't believe you were eating any bread rolls.

Actually, I didn't eat any bread.

For truth for days leading Real Talk. This is Real Talk.

This is Real Talk extended. So I live in LA now. Carbs are dead to me. Then I go back to New York and binge on bread. We both were fasting a bit so that we could fit into all of our new clothes for clock.

Yeah, well, you know when you have to take a stage and people are going to take photos of you, you better be able to fit into that dress. Right?

Fit into the dress. You know, your pants better shine. All this fun things. What a dream to have costume changes at my legal ops job while I'm seeing are in front of our community. So. Well, I Like the feedback we're going to. We're going to reflect on that. We have. Have we processed everything with Clock? I think so, probably.

I don't. We haven't talked much about Netflix or your job. I mean I kind of meant to go into that so curious like yeah how. How big is your team now?

My team is. I always take it takes a second because it changes. I was the first. I'm here four years, we're up to 10, we'll soon be 12.

How are you guys organized?

This is going to sound very familiar to you because you and I have always tracked my pillars. Our brain styles go the same way here. There's a finance outside council management pillar in the team that has a few people led by John Elliot. There's a technology innovation pillar on the team led by Farhad Vade that rep that's almost representative of an enterprise IT capability. So those guys are super and gals are super innovative and techie and they live in the Bay Area because that's where. That's where they're all. They're all living. And then I have one more pillar right now I call the ops pillar. That's a lot of project management intake, triage. Maybe some of it gets mapped onto the roadmap passed to the tech team or maybe they run it end to end but a lot of stakeholder engagement and I had a fourth pillar, knowledge management. And through the great resignation some great people went on to greater heights. I paused that as a dedicated function for now to see how does my team look without dedicated knowledge management training, knowledge banking covering all of the adoption and running that as almost a service and metrics around it. How will we do without that dedicated for a minute. Well, it's been a few quarters and the answer is not so great. The team's like I think we need training rollout, super competency. So we're going to look to rebuild expand there in the future again. And I love as you know, the KM realm. Yeah it's where I found my creative chops and found this mix of people humanity, human behavior, user experience and product development. So I'm excited to restaff there. I think that role is a timing game is my great takeaway. I brought someone in early on it may not have been timed right. So I think the timings now that we're rolling out at Netflix some really big foundational enterprise solutions for legal.

I like the org structure. It sounds very familiar.

Super familiar.

Sounds really brilliant. Do you guys have data analytics or is that of part. Part of one of the teams.

It's part of a little bit of all the teams right now. So everyone, each of those three pillars that are in place have data analytics competency and we're doing a lot of metrics. We brought in, you know, a place like Netflix has like data scientist galore. I mean there's so much data under the hood of the platform and tableaus and the, and the super tools galore, they're so advanced and we're just starting and legal's just starting that I'm like, how many contracts? We like these numbers. It's so foundational that it's almost too basic for data science. And tableau is just, in my opinion, tableau is for them, not for us, the people. So we have a simpler bi tool that we brought in that we crunch all our own metrics that we can bring legal into very easily and have legal touch metrics like they touch it and feel it and interact and maybe annotate or and so on. So it's everywhere for now. But my guess is in the next year to two, that's the next pillar that pops out into its own thing with a strong leader who can maybe get a data scientist like person in the future and start to really do the next level stuff with our data and then tie it into the data science org who does super advanced stuff. So we're headed that way.

Yeah, that's exactly what we did. I mean, what you're saying now is data as a first class citizen right across all 100% and then just gather it, analyze it and then when you're ready, when you have enough, when you have enough being collected from all the parts and there's enough to do with it, then you stand up this independent data team, which was the last thing that we stood up as well, or the most like the most recent thing.

I was going to ask. Okay, so I'm tracking. And that too is a timing thing. And that's what we have to think about as legal Ops leaders at a new place that's starting Legal Ops. Just because it's all on the wheel doesn't mean you start it all. Our clock wheel doesn't mean you start every one of those right off the bat. You have to fold a lot in. You have to ignore probably 80% and pick a few things and let it all mature. And I started with. You started with finance and outside council management. Right. That was your first.

The first place, I mean. And that was very common back. Back when we were starting it.

Yeah. Well, in 2018 19. That's where I started. Even though that wasn't. That's not my strength. Like, you have that great finance background, Wall street background. You did it in the firm from that perspective. I saw people doing it. Learn from you, learn from Steve Harmon. I went into Netflix Legal. They had no idea that was even on the menu offering for legal ops. They thought I would just. They're like, you'll just put in a doc management solution. I was like, lol. I was like, you know, there is this one other giant capability for outside council management. I could bring that in and over time grow and show you how we can help manage the budgets. And David Hyman, my chief legal officer, was like, huh? Okay, let's try it. And he let me try it. And we tried it and it's working amazing.

You did it. Yeah.

We're saving the department money over there. And I always joke that that function can really help pay kind of ROI wise or budget wise for the rest of what we're doing and investing in tech and people wise. So it's really. It's essential. And I had to make a choice when I first joined Netflix. Do I go and do that? I have strength in tech and innovation in drawing. Right. Do I go and do the finance piece? I mean, I could know how to. Or do I staff for it and let someone who loves it do it? And so I did that. And I outsource. Good managers outsource to great.

You always need to be knowing your own strengths and skill sets. I mean, and when I say your, I mean the entire team. Right. And know what your gaps are and fill in those gaps and not just keep hiring people who are just like you.

Right, Exactly. Yeah. So John Elliott on my team is running that, and he's the finance guy who also drank the Kool Aid and is like, this legal ops thing is awesome.

Yeah. I got to meet him at clock for the first time. Much taller than I always expected.

Yeah, he's 6 foot 100 and really good at his work and brings in a diverse background in terms of what I think is diverse. He's worked at financial firms, private equity firms, law firms, and in house roles. And I have skewed the law firm job you've been at. You worked at oric?

I did it.

Yeah, you did it. I was on my way once and then Spotify sniped me.

Well, I remember when you told me you might go to a firm, I called you and I was like, what are you doing? Stay in house, girl. What are you doing?

Yeah. And I was like, but I'm in New York, I don't want to move to California. California yet. And they're stacking a lot of money on the table and talking a big KM game.

Yeah.

And you were like, what are you doing? And every Cisco VP was like, what are you doing? And after eight, what are you doing? So I changed my mind.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but at the time we were trying to grow in house legal operations. I mean, this was early days of CLOCK and stuff. And we were trying to get people to come to the. The in house side. Not go back.

Yeah, not go back. And people gave me really good career advice. The Cisco leadership was like, hi, so we see you. You're really creative and innovative. And they're like, remember your worst day pitching to like the one tough lawyer VP at Cisco? And he would just kind of lawyer you down. And there were times I left meetings and cried quietly after, like, wow, that was hard. Is he a litigant? Yeah, he's a litigant. That was hard. Steve Harmon said to me, that's every day for you at the law firm. I just think you're too creative to go in there and I worry that you'll just always feel chopped.

I agree.

By the business priorities there. And it was really good advice that when Spotify called in the 11th hour.

I was like, wee, yes, you told me you got Spotify. And I thought, Jen, who loves music, is a performer who loves legal ops, is going to do this job at Spotify. Like, could there be a better fit?

No, it was also elevated, like the way the conference was with CLOCK this year, the Global Institute. That was my year and a half at Spotify. I was walking in a dream with music coming out of the walls. So my third day at Spotify, I'm sitting in this tree house office. I was like, is this my kindergarten class? The architecture was so childlike and fun and bright. And I'm sitting in a treehouse looking down on content creative. And this woman who ran the playlist for up and coming music, she was always just DJing at her desk because she created curated playlists that like pop new artists off. And she's right there under me, under this terrace and she starts playing Cisco, the Thong song, without irony, like playing it for. Because that's a sampled song of an older, I think 70s song. And I was like, oh my God, they're playing I love the Thong song. Like, it's a really great groove and it's very funny. And I was like, I'm with my other people for a while here. This is great. Yeah.

Jen, I think we're sadly coming to the end of time. Is there anything I didn't ask you today that you kind of wish we talked about?

Oh, is there anything you didn't ask that I wish we talked about? No. I mean, I'm pretty much like, heart, career, life and spirit on my sleeve these days with. With this community, with who I really am. I really showed you all recently, like, hey, here I am. And I just am so appreciative of how you and everyone has just received that and been like, what? And gone. Wow. We're creative, too. I just want to resurface something you did hit on, which is the confidence piece. We all have it in us and we all have that greatness. And don't let someone else's outsides, like what you see in some finished product on me at a thing, dictate anything or negate your insides. You can. We all have the same brain chemistry. You can train your brain into being confident for every moment you show up to. And I think that's another thing. The more confident you are, the more people will listen to you in this work that we do, which this work is change management, it's transformation. It's taking legal people up a mountain and going, I promise there's a new view. Will you trust me?

Yeah.

I think it's all part of it and another place we should all be investing in ourselves, telling our stories, building those confidence muscles one little go at a time. So I'm glad you brought that up because it's another formula piece.

It's also a piece that so many people who are new to this field call me up, ask me for mentoring and stuff and say, I'm in over my head. Right? I'm now heading up Legal ops and I've only done one fraction of it in the past. I've only done outside council management, or I've only done contracts. And what I try to tell them is this imposter syndrome. We've all been there. Every single person who does legal operations is doing it for the first time. Right? There isn't like, there aren't that many people out there who've already become Experts on all 12 parts of the clock. Core 12, right?

100%. And like all things in life, when you come into those new roles, pick one or two or three things and just cover that and soak it up, saturate that and get confident in it. Because we all started from that place. I'm not sure. I never knew how to do lit tech.

Yeah, litigation. None of us knew any of this stuff.

Nope. And I called Jessie Murray, who was doing litigation. Was it at Uber at the time? I'm like, oh, this guy knows about litigation on early Uber. And I was like, jesse, gimme a crash course, half hour, go. And he told me the five foundations. And I'm like, oh, it's putting in tech and project managing and data. I could apply this. So it's never as hard as you think.

And that's the key. You're not alone anymore. There's people who've gone ahead of you. And so rely on the community, rely on your peers, and don't go it alone.

I'm trying to find this book, Mary, before we cut off and I opened my Kindle library to find it. And my Kindle library is joined with my wife's Kindle library. And she's a writer, creative writing teacher, educator, author, ghostwriter, and storybook editor. There are 7 million books.

You'll never find it.

My phone just fell over. But I believe it might be called the Confidence Gap by Russ Harris. I think that's the book. And it talks about behaving your way into more confidence using some kind of. There's a framework in there that's about behaving. And when you do something enough, your. Your brain will follow you eventually. And then you'll want. Your body, like, will want that your brain will do it. So I can relate to that.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's inverting. It's. It's not thinking going. I wish. How did. How do they do that? It's just getting up and doing it and going. That's how. One attempt at a time. And it actually tricks your brain into more confidence. So true. Act. Act therapy.

Jen, thank you so much for your time for being here. Always a pleasure. Always love talking to you.

Pearls on Gloves Off Episode one you did it, Mary. Congrats. And I can't wait to see where you drive this thing.

Thanks, Jen. Talk.