Live Q&A: Level Up Your Legal Ops in 2024

Welcome to Leveling Up Legal Ops. This is the fourth time I think Jen and I have done this together. So really excited to be back. I love this conversation because I feel like we get very real and we get really great questions. Thank you all in advance for registering with questions which we have prepared here and we'll get to all of them. We're going to save a little bit of time at the end for live Q and A, so feel free to put your questions into the chat on the side. And we've got a Google Doc, so we'll make sure that we address those like in the last 15 minutes or so. But let's start with some intros for people who don't know who we are. So I'm Mary o'. Carroll. I'm the Chief Community Officer here at Ironclad, and before that I was at Google for most of my career where I led Legal Ops there and also helped to build and lead CLOCK for some time. And super excited to have Jen here also because we've had a big announcement about Jen in the last week.

Week.

So I'll let you introduce yourself.

Thanks, mary. I'm Jen McCarron, director of legal ops, tech and knowledge management at Netflix. I'm on the Board of Directors of the Corporate Legal Ops Consortium, or what we affectionately call clock. And most recently, the board has put me in place to be the president of the board for this current term. Thank you so much. And we just announced that last week.

Yeah.

The news flash.

This is the first public appearance of Jen as president of Clock, which we're super excited about. How do you feel? Are you nervous?

I feel nervous and I feel so excited and really humbled to be asked and revered to be able to take this role on. And I'm uncomfortable, Mary. I'm not going to lie. It's. It's another leadership role.

Absolutely.

And there's responsibility with that. So I have. I have a little growing to do.

So there is a lot of responsibility that comes with.

Yeah, yeah.

And I don't think any of us expected Clock to be such a big force in the industry, in the tech world, in transformation, and really has. I mean, just the idea of all these big companies and people.

Yeah.

Hiring folks focused on tech and efficiency and coming together with a common purpose and voice just created a lot of disruption and transformation, transforming the business of.

Law as you first wrote it. And we're still carrying that in our strategy. So the latest numbers on clock, close to 7,000 members. We're over 6,500 globally, representing 2,000 companies globally and many countries. Dozens and dozens of countries. So what a span. What a little community you built right up the road here in the Bay Area. And I just want to remind you that in 2013, when you guys were book clubbing, you and the original founding board, I was the one outside banging on the door screaming, let me in. And you wouldn't let me in. And it took me a few years of banging on the door until the hinges came off, until you let me in. And so to be here now as president, what an arc for me 10 years later.

Yeah. And do you think you're going to do things differently? And of course you should, because every leader of Clock should put their own flavor and spin on it. But, like, what? What are you thinking? Or have you not gotten that far yet?

I'm doing some thinking. I think it's going to be themes that you've seen from me as a contributor to Clock to this date, which is.

Some voice, some marketing, some content creation. I really want to open up our. Our content wings a little more and take some of our amazing ideas, folks in the community. Presenters, chop it up into a few shorts for TikTok and LinkedIn. I think we can get more of the conversation going in a wider digital way. And then the other big thing I'm thinking about is career ladders that are not only a singular shoot to chief of staff, to the general counsel, or to your chief legal officer. I think that's a wonderful job if you want it, but that's not the only job. And we should have diversity and options. And so I want to paint the tech career ladder and the chief of staff or the ops person who's in legal but isn't a chief of staff but has a huge finance or tech swing. There's so many Venn diagrams here, and I think if we can ladder those better as an org, then the community has things to point to and set their goals to.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Well, we are lucky to have you at Clock, so thank you for playing the role. Should we get into our questions? Is there any questions?

Okay, I have my. I have a first question, but as you pull the cards together, I'm going.

To give you half of them and we'll just.

Yeah. Mary, how. I'll take this one. How do I be president of Clock or membership trade group asking for a friend to a former president of Clock. What's your advice?

What's your advice?

Constantly evolve the organization.

Legal ops is transforming. The prevalence of the role is changing. I Think the strategic direction of what's within scope is changing. And so the organization needs to continue to lead, defining that for everyone. Be a champion for the folks. Keep the members first. I think as someone who runs community here at Ironclad, even that's always the first principle is what do they need? How do you meet those needs? What can you do as a community organization to provide that for them?

And there's so many different groups now involved. CLOCK is not just in house legal now. You've got law firms now you have tech providers, you have consultants. The ecosystem, the law schools has grown so much. And kind of thinking through how do you balance making sure everyone has a voice in CLOCK and part of the future.

Yeah. And the other community groups as well, who offer different settings, different stages for us to get out and speak and gather.

Yeah.

How do we partner with those groups.

That's right.

And kind of have cool intersectional community events.

Yeah. And think about, you know, what. What is clock? And like, why should people be a part of it and what should they be getting out of that? And there's so many communities now. There's so many events, so many. Oh, my God. You could go to a legal ops or legal tech event every day of the year, just trav around the globe. But I still think, you know, it's not a competition. And there's a place for everything and there's a place for each community. And clock, what is that for people? And just making sure that that's clear always.

Thanks for the advice, members. First. Call me, call me. Guys, let's talk about what we need.

All right, let's get into questions. What do you got?

My first question is, what do we think the biggest skills are to level up in 2024 in the legal ops and tech space?

There's so much.

There's.

I'll throw one out. One of my favorites is storytelling and. Or storytelling mixed with tactical empathy. You have to be able to tactically understand what's going on from a. I feel the pain. The pain points they're feeling. Then you have to be able to flip that into some kind of solution story that they want to buy into. And you. There's. You're never at the top of that game. There's always improvement to be made. So I'm going with my.

So I think mine is similar. I was going to go influencing. I think it goes hand in hand.

But not to be confused with influencer.

That's very different. More even influencing without authority. How do you get your stakeholders, your leadership, your Lawyers, everyone aligned to the direction you want to go without being like, this is what we're going to do. You got to bring them along, make them feel like it was their idea.

Yeah.

And that is and continues to be really hard and important.

You have to influence without authority in this role because you're not always going to get your leadership top down, requiring or telling people what to do. They're looking to you or the legal ops person to get that buy in followership.

Every culture, every company's culture is going to be very different. Like some of them will mandate and top down. And that's great if you can get it, but realistically, you've got to fight your way through all the changes that you want to make and make it happen in a way that doesn't make it feel like you're dictating.

Yeah. So, yes, no dictation, no dictatorship.

Oh, okay. Well, how important is personal branding in landing my next job? Do I need to be on LinkedIn? This is something we've talked about.

We're going there, we're going there. I'm sweating, my chair's moving. How important is personal branding? You and I talked about this on LinkedIn recently and it's the kind of question that it splits an audience.

Well. And I think it was a little misunderstood. So like, I, I, let's clarify. Yeah, I feel very strong, but like, a lot of people ask me this question a lot and, and look like you're, you're looking at two of the people who are most active and loud and noisy and annoying. Maybe LinkedIn.

I'm extremely annoying. And I'm not gonna stop.

I mean, I'm active on there because I actually think we have personal responsibility given, you know, the clock, leadership and, and whatnot to, to be a voice for the profession. But, and I was on a personal branding conversation and webinar recently and someone said to me, personal brand exists whether, whether you want it or not. Like, that's true.

It's so truth.

That was kind of a realization for me. So personal brand, I don't know that I think a lot about it. I don't know that you have to think a lot about it. I don't know that you have to have a presence on social. Can it be helpful? Absolutely. And we have a lot of stories of people who have found their next role because they were very active, but also know plenty of people who aren't on it at all and aren't comfortable with that and don't. I, I just, if you don't feel comfortable. You don't need to put yourself out there. And there's plenty of ways to network, find jobs, go to events, expand you know your circle without needing to be loud. On social that's I agree.

I've given this so much thought since your LinkedIn post because we heard so much feedback on both sides of the aisle. I think it's a necessary evil. It's there your personal brand is being built and give it some thought. If you're going to be like you, use the example that we're annoying on LinkedIn. We're actively posting. It's almost become a weird writing journal for me where I'm writing thoughts and breakthroughs I'm having in my self personal and professional development. If you're going to be annoying on LinkedIn, be 1.2 annoying internally at your job in your company. If you're employed at a legal apps job, make sure that your internal stakeholders get the same you but that version for internal work that they're going to get externally. I'm always worried that I'm going to do too much externally and be mis empathy and then internally have no empathy. And I'm always concerned my colleagues might see me and go well she doesn't have empathy. What does she know with that HBR article? So I think about my personal brand holistically to make sure there's a good balance there and if I'm doing too much externally I get quiet and I pull back for months at a time and make sure I'm heads down at my Netflix role doing that work and shining the light on my stakeholders and end users, et cetera. I think this is 10% of the puzzle. I think 20% of the puzzle is serving a community, going to meetups and all the community events, networking. Those are the people who are going to send you opportunities as well or you'll interview in the future. And then I think 70% of this formula for landing your next job is the work you've done.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Is it on the the branding and the LinkedIn might and the networking might get you the interview you couldn't get, but the work you do is going to give you the stories and be able to show them who you are via the work.

Yeah. And I'm going to backtrack a little because I didn't mean to imply that posting on LinkedIn is annoying.

Great.

It's been the greatest platform that I've ever found.

I think my posts are a little annoying. I'm teasing. No, but it's I tried this in the last two years I came off Instagram, I was very active on Instagram, and I put my whole self onto LinkedIn two years ago. And I'm like, let's see what happens. Here we are. And it evolves and there's story behind it. And I meet and talk to people all the time. Then we meet live and it's like we all know each other. So it's been a tremendous two years of branding and talking and connecting and making the world feel a little smaller.

Fabulous. All right, your turn.

My turn. This is a great one. How do I make the C suite care about Legal Ops or its P and L impact? The C Suite.

The C Suite. So I've seen this. I've seen this work. And honestly, the best way to get anyone in the C Suite to care is affecting revenue.

Yeah. Revenue protection.

Revenue acceleration.

Revenue acceleration, yeah.

So we do a lot on. We're all cost centers and legal. We do a lot on saving costs, mitigating risk, you know, that type of thing. But if you can get involved on the revenue side and like everyone's heard me say, this is why I love clm. This is why I think CLM should be one of the first projects that you work on, because that can help accelerate revenue. And when you start touching revenue and having an impact to the bottom line of the company, CFO, CEOs, board members, they start to pay attention.

I think what you're trying to say is faster deal times could get the attention of the C suite, but it literally can definitely.

Because that has measurable impact to your P and L. Yeah.

And so we're talking about measuring the deal cycle. And even if you have crude points in time from when a deal comes in to when it's signed, executed, cradle to grave the measurement, and then year over year or quarter over quarter, trying to accelerate that with tech and better process. CFOs care about that, and I've seen their eyes widen.

Well, if you're a big company, I mean, those dollar amounts of two, three, four days a week. Faster.

Yeah.

Wow. Those add up pretty fast.

Good answer.

What are you reading right now?

What am I reading right now? I am in the Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, which is a fictional book by Michael Chabon. I'm in more fiction now to help escape and relax. You want more fiction?

I went 20, 23 was all fiction. So I was just saying I read 50 books this year.

I just finished a book I didn't love. I read Handmaid's Tale. Oh, Mary, that was pretty rough.

She's like, I'm trying to unwind and.

I don't do fiction to relax. But it was, you know, kept coming up in the best books of all time list and I haven't hit that one, so I got that out of the way. It was rough. I'm gonna go a little lighter on the next book tonight.

Yeah, I just wrapped up Very fast read is Adam Grant's new book, Hidden Talents. And it's about kind of late stage discovering greatness and how we all don't start out as Michael Jordan. And he uses Steph Curry actually a lot as an example. And it's very inspiring because I'm on a delayed on set adulthood path to success. As I was telling you off camera, I'm taking my time with all of this. You know, this is 10 years in the making.

Yeah.

What? Everything in our legal ops work, you see, it's not overnight and it's a great and fast book and it's going to get a lot of. He's going to be on all the podcasts now.

Okay, good to know.

Here's a great one on careers. How to grow in legal In a legal ops career, what does it take to be in management at a big company?

Oh, sorry, what was the first part?

How to grow ops career. What does it take to be in management at a big company? You and I have been at big companies.

It takes time. So we were just saying how long you've been at Netflix and how you've moved up the ladder and you know, Google for 13 years and took a long time to move up.

Yes, it's.

It takes a long time at a big company to, to do that because you have to, you got to prove yourself, you've got to put in the work, you have to show your impact and then get another project and, and move your way into that whole strategic operations role. And that doesn't come in your first couple years. So it is a long game. And that's a bit of my philosophy, at least. I mean, once you're there, then you can move to another company and be at the management level. But to get there from the inside, it's possible.

At startups, the clock is different for sure. And places that have startup culture baked in because I know at Spotify, the work you did in a year felt like three years at Cisco and it was so chaotic, I was so tired. So your role just grew really fast there and sometimes the environment of that can risk you along, but for the most part we're all at companies that move like companies and get in, sink your teeth in park. I went into Netflix and was like, I am parking it for as long as they'll have me. And I really let myself have a five year outlook of digging into the systems. That takes two to three years to get beneath it all. And then you can start some of that big strategic project work. And then what about this note on being in management? That's a jump and a skill set. What's your advice?

I still think that takes time because, well, look, most companies are still just hiring like their first Legal Ops person. I know clock has grown 2,000 companies, but that's peanuts. It's nothing compared to where we need to be. And so as the first Legal Ops person, you have to build your team and you've got to build relationships and grow that. And all of that is about picking the right projects, demonstrating the impact over and over and moving up into more strategic, more bigger impact projects. And then you can get your team. But that, I still think that takes time and the right things.

You're calling out something that I need to underscore. It's okay to go into your first Legal Ops role at this company and be the level that you don't dream to be. I came into Netflix at the manager level and I spoke with my manager at the time and said, look, I'd love to show you guys that this could be director level work or beyond. And then I'd love to audition for that role once you see it. And he was like, deal. So I came in, not arm wrestling for level. I came in just, what do you got? Managers. Good, we can do that. And, but to unpack this another level. And then I became director a year or two later and, and then I proved it to them and then they cast me into the role and it's, it's another way to go about it. And it's okay to be unhappy up front, but how do you want to negotiate these things?

I think the beauty of this role is, well, like every role that you have, any role that you have, even right now, anyone who's watching.

Specifically in Legal Ops, you have the ability to.

Operate at a level that's above your pay grade in parts of your role, and then of course below your pay grade in parts of your day too. So you have to be really flexible and adaptable to whatever the task is at hand. But if you're a party of one in Legal Ops and you're the first person there, absolutely you can be strategic and thinking about leadership and five year plans and how to implement them. And you're doing the grunt work of executing and getting that done. So wherever you come in on that spectrum, you're going to have stuff up and down.

Absolutely.

But build the relationships. Build your personal brand within the company. That demonstrates the impact and the value and the level of thinking that you can bring.

100%. I love that to be in people management at a big company. My mentor and former manager and your friend Steve Harmon told me once it's eq. If you have eq, either native installed, it comes naturally or you learn it over the course of life and career. That leaders look for folks who have that built in empathy or emotional intelligence. Because you can people manage help navigate through the issues that come up within people and solution. Like sometimes I feel like people are my products in addition to the tech and the ops programs and products they build. And you can build that skill. It's a harder one to build. You have to do a different kind of reading and practice. But it's, it's possible.

How do you get your first hire? Like your first head count?

I went the finance route and said this finance legal ops person can manage that outside counsel spend optimally.

Yeah.

And. And we're, you know, twice in a row that that was the first hire. Because that's a big amount of spend.

Yeah.

And that should light up the P and L eyes of a chief legal officer. Their chief of staff. They have a budget to manage. Yeah.

For me. And I think this is why metrics and reporting and impact measuring is so important. Like everything that you do, make sure you can go back and showcase.

Yes.

Why you did it in the value of the work. And I remember going back and saying like this is how much we saved this year through, through all the work that we've done.

I just did that on mine and I, I gasped at the. We did.

The numbers are huge.

We did a three or four year number with the outside council savings program, estimated saved and put that into a highlight bullet. And I went wow.

Yeah.

Like wow, it's working. And wow, how lucky am I to be in a company that was like, come in and teach us what we don't know.

Right.

And. And we have this mega number to show and that.

And it's a real number. It's a real number estimating like, you know, hours.

Real talk, real number. And it. So with that we start to pay for ourselves or earn our. Exactly.

That's exactly right. So my GSE said wow at the numbers and said, well, if we can do that with One person, what could we do with two? And we're so glad you asked. Yes, so glad you asked.

Because here's my headcount proposal.

Here's the deck.

Here's the deck.

All right. How do I gain the confidence and trust of legal department members? Okay.

Number one, you have to do 25 push ups when you get out of bed every day. No, I'm just kidding. But there's, there's a level of to gain confidence, you do have to be confident yourself.

Because that's very true.

You have to get in front of people and convince them, sell them, draw them a vision they want to follow you on. So number one, make sure you do something in yourself. Your work, your self care, your workout or whatever it is. Look in the mirror and say I am. Even if you're faking it. I got this. Because legal stakeholders, it's grueling work to get in front of them and if they see a glimmer of that in you, they're going to want to be buy in and be confident in you and you them.

Yeah, I think make their life better. So the legal ops role for those who are in legal departments who haven't worked in one with legal ops before, like this is a, a foreign concept. We've hired someone to come in and there this person is here to do efficiency and change things and move your cheese. Right. And so the initial reaction I think from all the lawyers is defensive. Why is this person here? What are they going to look into my business and why are they trying to change things? So it's really important to establish your credibility as I'm here to help, I'm here to make your lives better. To yes, we'll save money, but that is going to allow you to focus on more exciting work or have work life balance or like have the cool tools that you've wanted for so long. You've got to convince them in a way that you're here to help. And maybe that's some of that is the low hanging fruit stuff. You know, get in, figure out what this team needs, give them a little bit of stuff and then say, oh, you liked that. Here's a bunch of other things that we can help you with. Also finding what we used to call disciples, like believers. There's always one group that is willing to experiment or try something, work with them, make them believers and make them plant your mole. Yeah. Then they become the advocates for you. So you gotta, you gotta and know who back to influencers, who the influencers are within your department and that doesn't always mean leadership. There's sometimes the paralegal or like the one person, that manager that everybody goes to for advice or like sets the culture of the in the environment that you're in and you've got to convince those people to be on your side.

What a relationships game that is 100 in creating networks within the system you're in that you can send the info around and socially engineer some of this out and with the strategy behind it.

Well you're saying earlier when we were just talking offline about psychology and how important that is to this role. Agree there's so much execution and tactical skills and like getting stuff done that is necessary to be successful but my God, like the majority of the role is the mind games and the change management and the influencing and well Yes.

I think 7 I'm into 70% depends on the day.

Right.

70% of the role is listening and understanding empathetically what they see through their eyes. The pain of the, the workflow, the problem. And when you say that and say it back to them and then you put it to paper and then you start solution proposing together. I recently had a 360 feedback and one of the good notes I got was you really listen and you understand the problem, how I feel it and then when you take me forward I feel heard and understood. So if you're listening well and tactically you're going to go forward in a good direction. And when they feel heard and understood now you've earned their confidence again. Now we're in an infinite loop on.

I mean that's exactly what I was going to say that how do you gain their confidence? It's not just being heard. There's a lot of this like well I used to get, you're not a lawyer, you couldn't possibly understand my day to day work. You couldn't possibly understand the challenges that we have. And that's true. But if I listen and I try to understand what the challenges you are like, I can definitely be good at fixing that. And that is part of it too. It's listening. But it's listening in the right way. I used to tell my team members it's tactical, don't do as you're told.

What does that mean?

What does that mean? So when the lawyers come to you and say I have this problem and I need you to do this, I say don't do as you're told. Draw out what is the actual problem, what is the issue, what is the root cause. So they might say I Want this report, I want it to have green here and these lights and these are the colors.

I need a tech solution.

Yes, I need a tech solution. And then when you, when you talk through why, why, why and what's the actual challenge that they're facing? It's not a tech solution or that's not the report you actually need. Let me give you something that's going to be more helpful and then they're grateful and they're happy and they're hear that you understand?

Yeah. So tactical empathy, it's a way of listening and it's a. I think, maybe that I think is our most important skill of the year to keep in mind so that we're listening and getting to the right root cause problems.

Well, that's so interesting because with all the questions that people are asking about AI, how do we get to AI? We haven't said a. How many minutes have we.

We've made it so far. But I'm ready.

But, but I'm not going to talk about AI. The point is like what, what are the skills of the future needed now that AI is kind of disrupting the industry? And it's all, all going to go back to these personal relationships, confidence building, how to get stuff done with people.

Agree.

Yeah.

Is it my turn?

I lost track.

We're in the matrix. How difficult is it to switch between paral and legal ops in a hybrid role? Hybrid roles.

Hybrid roles are really hard.

Gasp.

Yeah.

And we all. I started in a hybrid role. This career. I don't know if you did.

I did. Or not.

I had three slashes. And sometimes you have to do the hybrid role because this legal department or the leaders, they don't know all of this yet and they still need the paralegal tasks and work or the coordination and you can't switch it. But maybe you can do it for a year to two and talk with that manager and say, is there a road that we can pave where I do all the work, I help bundle some stuff and I can promo into a full ops role. I'll build the business case as we go. Don't stay hybrid if you can avoid it. But I know it's hard in these small environments.

It is. And I often actually encourage GCs to start with a hybrid because if they're not sure, they're willing to give up a whole headcount. At least dip your toe in the water, at least see what you can get from one project. And then they're usually very quickly convinced. I agree with you. Hybrid is Very hard. Because whether you're a paralegal or a lawyer or a contract manager, splitting your role, that stuff is client facing. And there's going to be deadlines and that's always going to become what takes up your time during the day.

Yeah. The deadline. And how do you prioritize two jobs.

And they're completely different things at 50%. And the legal op stuff is important but not urgent. So it gets pushed, pushed, pushed. So that's. It's hard to do.

Yeah. So I would think on the opposite side of your hybrid role, you're going to have to choose fewer initiatives to work on. If, if I'm full time in the role and I'm coming out with the 3 to 5, which is a good starting point on the strategy. Do one to two and smaller or lower hanging fruit first. Improve it out. Do things you can finish and keep showing. And so try to say no to other things. Don't try to do the kitchen sink.

And then I'm going to build on that question which is like how do you, how do you then move from being the hybrid to a pure play?

Yeah.

And that is like picking the right projects, making sure you prioritize them so they actually get done and then have that conversation of here are the two very different types of work that I'm juggling between. And I think this has bigger impact. You can find a different home for this.

Yeah.

And just try to make a case for that to be a full time role.

Drive the growth conversation with your manager. If your manager is not prompting that. I always tell people prompt it once a year and have a check in on these things so you can get clarity and maybe put some broad timelines around things. Prove the business cases out and discuss. Don't let it go and be assumed it's being cared about in silence. It's not. It's not drive your career.

I want to stick with that question just for a moment just because I want to love this. There's. And I just. I'm writing a blog so my next blog post is going to come out about some of this. I think as we talk about a lot in our industry. Moving from the legal ops fresh and moving from this tactical execution type role to a strategic leadership team. Right hand of the general counsel figuring out where the legal department should go in the future. Like that's, that's where I want to see this role go. It is very hard as a hybrid. It is very hard even as a hybrid turned full time. If you've come from legal Assistant, contracts manager, paralegal. Which are support roles.

Yeah.

And this is. And I did this great podcast with Sheila do so. So if you want to listen to that one which she talks about, try not to use the word support. And that's because legal ops is not a support function. We're a strategic function. We are a leadership function. And when the person has come from in the same department, has transitioned from a support role, it is harder, not impossible, just a lot harder to get everyone to see you now in a different light. And you're building the confidence, building who you know, why you're there and what they should come to you for is just so much harder when your history with everyone has been in a supportive, supportive style role.

The truth is I've seen a lot of people leave their roles at their companies to do it. Shed that.

Yeah.

And I've done it. And you've made moves. So it's okay to leave roles once in a while. If you have to shed, you might have to starting point. You might have to the assistant or the legal assistant. It's okay to do that.

Right.

But how do you get to strategic? It's such a great. I can't wait to read the blog post because it's the climb we're all on. I don't use the term support. Even my manager recently said, oh, so the tech side of the team does support. I'm like, no, no. They build an engineer tech using third inference. They're recommending that they're architects and engineers and yeah, they'll support their own products that they build if it goes down in the nut or a user's in a jam. But it's not tech support.

Right.

And. And being a service function to a service function. The legal. Org which serves the business. That's a different term.

Yeah.

And we don't say non lawyers anymore. Right.

Oh, that's.

That works.

See, I actually don't have a problem with nonliners. Please don't cancel me. I don't have a problem with it because I do think you do need the distinction between lawyer even. There's like the non practicing lawyers, but there's still lawyers. So there's, you know, there's privilege and stuff that we do sometimes need to be able to distingu.

But legal professionals.

Okay, my next blog post.

I gotta think about that. Yeah, I know, it's.

I don't mind it. Okay, we'll move on.

Okay.

This is a fun one.

Yay.

Fun, fun question.

Oh, cool. Fun question.

What is your dream job?

We all know this about Jen if you follow Jen on Instagram.

Well, I write music. I actually put out a new song today. It's called God of Thunder. And I wrote it during COVID and I took some time off from work. Well, Netflix forced us to stop having meetings because we're all kooky there and love to meet. So new. I love writing songs. I used to tour as a musician. That dream has died and been lived. So it died. I love to produce songs, but really, I love sitting and talking with people. I love when there's microphones. Weirdly, these are my mics.

You don't say.

I carted these mics up on the plane from LA for us. And I love engaging and just exploration of life and problems. And how do we climb to the top of these heaps? We all find ourselves in. In our work, in our life. I could talk for a living forever and do this. I love it.

Yeah, that's great.

What's your dream job? Tell them the dream job.

But it tells a lot about. Into my head. I don't know. So my dream job. I said this for a long time. If you ever watched Chris Hansen's To Catch a Predator on Dateline Detective, I was like obsessed with that. And my dream would be to work for perverted justice and to catch child predators. That's, like, what I want to do.

You heard it here first Aln Law Three, six.

One day to catch. One day, that is.

You have a bit of a justice streak in you.

I don't know.

I bet you have a Libra Rising sign. Next webinar.

I do have a justice streak. I love movies that are about revenge. I love.

Maybe you're Scorpio. Maybe a little death.

I'm on Leo.

Dream job. To catch a Predator. Detective. You got the Irish last name. You could be Detective O. Carol. He'll get you a trench coat and like stale coffee that you won't drink because you don't drink coffee.

Catch bad guys.

Yes.

I think it's your turn.

Oh, it's my turn. How do you. I've been waiting for this question. How do you change mindset and culture of departments who are adverse to tech? I got the one word answer. You got an answer?

One word?

Yeah, one word.

No.

Ready? Can we get reverb on my mic? Next webinar. Passion.

Interesting. Wait. When I say.

Expand on that.

When I say passion, you should echo passion.

Passion, passion, passion.

But explain if you're passionate in an authentic way, when you show up, when you present, when you start introing what this work can do for the department. They start to almost not care what you're saying. They're just like, I want what she's. What I'm feeling what they're feeling. They want it. And I've. I saw this at Netflix. Someone at Netflix told me once after I did a presentation in the conference room, I love you, animation legal. They stood up and applauded in their conference room. And I was like, oh, so you're gonna do the thing? And my friend was like, well, we'll talk about the tech product. But it was really moving and really passionate. But the passion hooks people in and makes them feel something. And then you can lay out a plan, a business case or this or that. If you don't have the passion, they might get bored.

Interesting.

This work looks daunting. They have to change their behavior to do a CLM solution or. Or matter management, and it's not natural.

So I'm going to strong disagree. So I can come off with a lot of passion. And I think you're a performer, so you can do it in a way that is like, people will applaud. I came into the role with so much passion and so much conviction about. This is just. It's so obvious. This is what we have to do. And I would go into meetings and just be like, so excited. This is the future. And the feedback I got was, you gotta tone down your passion.

You didn't know. You're too excited to align it to your audience. So passion aligned to the audience. Because if you.

This is a vulnerable moment. That's the sharing, like, some of the biggest feedback that I got when I was at the Goog.

Yeah. Yeah. And I have to be careful with that, too, to make sure that's a big note for me. And my growth in the year ahead is fine tune more to my audience. Because if you're just a passion rocket, people might feel torpedoed by. Yeah.

So what I ended up doing was what we like to call Inception, was like to give them nuggets of things and then show them the way and then make them think it was their idea and then tell them how brilliant they were. This is so horrible. I hope none of my old colleagues are watching this. But it's giving them like a trial, a demo, like, let you touch it and feel it, and then having them come to the realization of, hey, this is great. Why don't we have this?

Maybe I should stop. Maybe I should tone down my passion.

No, no. And the point is, you got to know your audience. I mean, that's. That's really.

It's almost. If you can take the hybrid of our answers and make the formula your own.

Yeah.

That is going to be how you start to change mindset and culture because you'll be representing that energy and the values of that and people will start to follow. But give it time. It takes six months to crack in a year to get your bearings, and probably one to three years to move culture meaningfully, which is a standard deviation. Also, don't expect. Someone called me recently and asked, is it my job as the legal ops head to change the culture of the department? And I said, no, don't put that on your shoulders as a one or two, man or woman show. Be the agent of that. Espouse these values you want. But. But you have to do that with your leadership.

Yeah.

And if you do it too hard, I. I fear burnout. Agree, agree, agree.

Can I try and pick some good ones? Let's see. Wow. I have so many. Okay. As a legal assistant, how do I get my foot in the door in legal Ops?

Knock on it until your knuckles are bloody and then pry the hinges off the door like I did with you guys. A clock. I wasn't a legal assistant, but I may as well have been.

I mean, you just do the. Just do it. Find things that are broken.

Listening Nike.

You kind of just find things that are broken and just dabble. Dabble in it. Like start tweaking.

I love that.

Tinkering with stuff. Build stuff. Just kind of start doing the job without being asked.

Yeah.

And then move yourself into a hybrid without being told that you're a hybrid.

Yes.

And then see if that works. And then eventually you might have to. Like you said, you might have to change jobs to get into a pure play Legal ops. But at least then you've had some experience even without it being given it to like, formally.

And you'll have some things to talk about on those job interviews. And look, we're. When we're interviewing, we're looking for people who have the mindset and the potential, not just the experience.

100%.

Because there's not enough legal ops folks out there. Experience. To fill the roles of today.

Yes.

So we'll. I'm a big fan of building people and converting people in. I love finance people.

I love consultants. I.

You love consultants? Yeah, I love finance ops. I'm like, come, come in. You're going to love this place because we care so much about the numbers of it.

I also love vets, which we've talked about veterans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You would take a Marine.

I love Marines.

A Marine has saved our webinar today when we were short one dongle.

Yeah, that's true. For Hod came to the rescue for.

Had bade from my Netflix team who lives nearby and has Ethernet tcpip. And his veins saved us. Semper fi. There is a. You skipped a very important.

Which. That one.

Yes.

I need to know, Mary, who's your new diva?

Diva?

Like you're singing. Who have you seen in concert recently? And you've taken Anna, Your daughter too.

We're gonna see Olivia Rodrigue. That's what we're looking forward to.

Okay, good answer. But my question is, why aren't you obsessed with Taylor Swift? What?

Ha.

What? I didn't want to get watch.

We really need to talk about Swifties. They're gonna come and get me. I would like to see more dancing from Taylor Swift. Like, dances all over.

Did you see the movie?

Yes, I saw the movie. Have you seen Britney Spears or Madonna? Like Janet Jackson? I mean, come on. She does not.

Taylor doesn't dance like them. But she's. But Taylor writes her own songs. They don't.

Taylor is amazing and a business mogul and a lot of things that I admire, but I would like to see some dancing.

Okay. Well, Taylor, if you're listening for a.

Three hour show, I would like to see some dancing.

Okay.

Okay. Is that too much to ask? Don't cancel me again. I'm gonna get canceled from this webinar. I'm.

No one can cancel me.

Okay.

Okay.

Better question that I think is more interesting. AI is coming, but we are not ready. Is it best to wait and not invest? I. Sorry, I read that wrong. Best to wait and not invest yet. Right.

Right.

No, wrong, wrong.

Wrong. Don't wait. You should be experimenting or doing, at minimum, a small proof of concept with one basic use case somewhere in your work or in the legal department so you get a feel for what it can do and its limitations.

Yeah, yeah.

And there. And therefore the resources you would need to go full scale.

Yeah. Never. I mean, for anything. Don't wait around. If you're in legal ops, like, your job is to scan the horizon, to know what's happening, to be aware of what other companies are doing and what the landscape of tech is and how it's changing. And it's changing fast.

Yes.

And nobody has the answers yet. But you don't want to be left behind. You don't want to be stuck.

Your leaders are going to come to you and say, what about this AI?

They are already. They've got to be.

They're coming. I'm getting.

Yeah. And I don't think it's okay to say we're just going to wait this one out.

Right. So get in there. Even if you do a very small like two, three documents, generative AI, proof.

Of concept, see what it can do.

All the new providers in this space, in our legal space, they're hungry for it. I've spoken to many of them.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, we're gonna have to move to live questions in a sec. Do you want to do one more?

Here's the last one from the card batch. Mary, what does it take to be called a legend?

That is a ridiculous question.

I love this. Are you a Legal Ops legend or Legal Ops legends? My answer is 10 years. Do grunt, work your way up to the top. Say yes to everything. Step out once present into the community like I did at Google in 2017. And people want to start calling you a legend.

Just share.

Just share the work, learn something and then share it.

But like help bring other people up.

100.

I have blank document with no live questions.

Oh.

Nobody is interested. There might be a different link she sent you.

Okay, for hot.

If you're watching, ping us the link refresh.

I did.

Okay, I'm try again someone while you guys find the link. Michael True texted me a question last night and he asked, how do you make the jump from a sales job, a sales or business development role, into legal office Ops? Is that even possible? BD sales into Legal Ops.

Anything to Legal Ops is possible. There is no traditional path.

Yeah, that's a great skill set to bring over. There's someone on my team I work with now who did sales for a completely other set of goods and I find that person has really strong customer listening skill and can really empathetically dial in what they need.

Yeah.

So how do you make the jump? You start on the bottom of the career ladder, sell yourself and you have this community around you to study up on the systems, the foundations, the clock. Core 12. Get a mentor and do some mock interviewing on how you can translate or transpose some of your skill and past project work onto Legal Ops work. You're going to have to do transposing, I think, on that interview, but people like me will listen to that. We're casting for new talent.

Yeah, people come from all sorts of backgrounds. Okay, I do have the questions now. So first question is for professionals with expertise or a keen interest in AI. What strategies would you recommend for identifying or cultivating opportunities and skills in legal operations.

Legal op skills from an AI.

So I guess if you are an AI expert. Are there. Is there such a thing? So to date, sure. And with a. Or with a keen interest, what strategies.

To create opportunities. I guess in legal ops, I mean, the world is your oyster.

The world's your oyster. I would run into the burning building of contracts. Right. And contract metadata. Here you have these super long text documents that the whole business needs info out of.

Yeah.

At speed. And if you could sell the ability to either extract using AI or create using AI, you're going to do that? Revenue or deal acceleration, or business acceleration we talked about earlier. I would run right towards that.

I mean, yeah, contracts are the obvious place for where everyone's using AI right now.

If you're a contract shop, which I've been in.

Yeah.

Three times in a row. So high volume of these documents. If you're not, you're a risk or actuarial or something else shop, you have large data sets to go through. Maybe that's where.

Well, everyone has contracts.

Believe it or not. Everyone has contracts.

Everyone has contracts.

That should be like the beginning of a. The musical Ironclad. The musical. Everybody has contracts. Oh, I meant to write you guys, you know, I wrote.

You did write a jingle.

Yeah, I'll send it to you. I started recording.

You have an ironclad jingle by. By Jen. Okay. Do you feel a project management or Six Sigma certification can be beneficial in legal ops? I think we've talked about this before.

Answer, yes.

Yes. We love that.

Which one do you have?

I. I don't have either. I've taken some of the levels of Six Sigma, but I never went all the way through.

You have no belts.

I have like yellow.

You have the David Goggins school of just. Just yell. Yell until it gets done.

Six Sigma.

I love Six Sigma.

It's really good. And then when they combined it with lean and made it lean Six Sigma, it almost felt religious to me. It's really. It underpins our field well, because we're reducing waste in every workflow, in any workflow. I think I. Maybe I did green belt. I belted somewhere in there. Cisco was a. Maybe it was green belt Six Sigma shop. And then the other folks on the team had pmp Project Managed Professional. And between the two, I felt like we could conquer the PM world.

Right.

And it teaches you. You might not use them so religiously, but it teaches you the phases and structure of how to bring it through. And any human that you're leading can respond to that kind of ability.

And there's so many. I mean, every initiative is a project.

Everything, everything Agile, product management, Agile, they combine them all. Is also wonderful skill set that the.

Only thing I will add is that sometimes people say, well, isn't Legal Ops just project management? And I think it's very much not. And if you think about it as project management, you. You will also not do well. Because at least in my mind, project management has a clear goal, like you know what needs to get done and you execute it. So it's about execution, seeing things through and there's of course moving parts and stakeholder management and all that. But Legal Ops is also about navigating the ambiguity. When there is no obvious answer, we have a problem.

Yeah.

How are you going to figure out what to do with that? Get to the answer and then project management through.

Yeah, I mean we talk about soft skill and influencing and communicating for half this webinar. There's. That's not in a project in some, you know, binary way.

Issue spotting, I think. And that's why I love consultants and they're really good at issue spotting.

Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. It's not just projects. Legal Ops is changing how legal people work in the departments. Sure, one project at a time, but there's so much more on that cake that to be simplistic would be unfortunate.

Right.

Any suggestions to stop the creep of traditional legal work on a legal on a lean team? I'm a paralegal turned Legal Ops director and over time my split has become 70, 30 heavy on the legal work side versus ops and strategy. We kind of talked about this a little bit. The hybrid role. It's very hard.

It's very hard, especially if you have that skill. I've seen Legal Ops teams, you have two that have a contract management outpost in them. You could put your arms around that and call it scope and scope it in. There's no right or wrong way here. So could you put more like center of excellence around that? Could you opsify the paralegal work? It gets very meta, but you could. I saw that at Cisco where they were opsifying contract management and pushing things through a deal desk. Maybe I'm trying to solution here. I'm coming up with solutions.

So going, let's take a huge step back. How do you define Legal Ops works versus other work? And so I don't know if you agree with me. I've said over and over that my definition of Legal Ops work is. It's. It's actually the Work that is not. None of it should be touching substantive legal matters. So negotiating a contract, supporting a litigation.

I disagree.

The paralegal work.

I disagree.

That is legal work. And then legal ops is not. There's practice management, but not.

Sometimes practice management winds up at your. On your desk.

Practice management is legal ops because that is about how the work is but not actually getting involved in the litigation or in the commercial work.

I don't have people drafting commercial deals, but I have folks who are operationalizing the insides of the contracts.

Yes. Or which I think that's correct. That comes from working on the playbooks, creating the templates.

Yeah.

Okay.

So maybe you're right. Maybe I'm agreeing again.

But people don't always agree. So anyways, that was interesting.

Is there a way to transition from an in house counsel or contracts role to legal ops?

Yeah.

Yeah.

People tons do it all the time.

Very common.

Stop drafting and just start problem solving. And.

It'S a big thing to let go of that. I make. I don't make light of that. If you have that credential.

Yeah.

And there's so much. I don't know, there's so much to being a lawyer. So you have to be willing to put that work down.

Yeah.

And find the equal excitement and problem solving and.

And you have. As an in house counsel, you have a much.

I think this is not fair. Easier time advocating for yourself to be able to experiment and try. Like can I work? Can I put in a system here? Can I put in a tool here than some of the other functions. And so can you go to your GC and say hey, love my job can continue to do this 100%. But on the side, can we try to look at some of these tools or can we bring in a clm? And I'll manage that from the side.

You know, to bring in a clm, there's so much readiness work you have to do to get your forms.

And let's be that person.

And if you're the former J or the lawyer who wants to do this, you are ripe for that project work to advise or consult or be a part of it. Go run towards the contracts.

Yeah.

Contracts, contracts. Faster deal times.

That's right. That's right. Anything you want to say as we wrap up? We're sort of at the end of our time here. These things go by so fast. Yeah.

It went so fast.

This was our fourth one. Hopefully we'll be back next year and I'm sure we'll do some podcasting during this year together.

We'll be talking. And maybe I'll see you in Las Vegas in May.

Oh, for sure. You'll see. Guessing I've never missed a clock event, never missed a park event around around the world.

So really excited for our COLLabs this year, 2024, and to see you all out there soon. Thanks for having me.

Yes. And make sure you sign up for the Ironclad community so you can stay in touch with us and know about all our future events. And stay tuned. On January 18th, I believe we're going to be doing a virtual webinar that showcases some of the winter releases on the Ironclad product so you can learn more about about what Ironclad does. And until next time, thanks so much for tuning in.