Real Talk with Mary O'Carroll

Welcome to the Corporate Legal Apps Consortium podcast where we dive deep into conversations with technology and legal apps thought leaders from across the ecosystem. This is Clock Talk. I'm your host, Jen McCarron.

I'm on the board of directors at.

KLOC and I lead the Netflix legal operations and technology team. Today's episode welcomes back my friend and Legal Ops legend Mary o', Carroll, chief community officer at Ironclad, former Legal Ops exec at Google and KLOC founder and former president. As friends, Mary and I like to catch up from time to time, invite about a thousand of you to come listen in and throw us your toughest questions in the chat. It's called Real Talk and we recently livestreamed Real Talk 3 on an ironclad webinar. We got into it career pathing. At what department size do you start automating for legal our real feelings on document management in house. We'll include a link to that full ironclad webinar broadcast in the show notes. But here's our post Real Talk decompression session on things like implications of ChatGPT document management again and our mutual obsession with David Goggins military special ops embracing the suck of making everyone change and pushing beyond our limits.

Enjoy. Here we are in my studio. Mary, I love your studio.

It's so impressive.

Thank you. Introducing you to my synthesizer wall over here on the left.

Yeah, there's a lot of equipment. I don't know what it does, but it looks really cool.

Yeah. These create sonic textures of just like I could land a spaceship with that keyboard. I could dial up a drum kit. It's just really wonderful and it's a place to go.

You also have three ring lights, which is like a real life filter.

I have four. There are four ring lights, many microphones. These are, you know, lo fi $50 ring lights. It's a start. By 2024, there will be a B and H order. And this is what I set up all weekend for our webinar today with Ironclad.

The webinar was great and it was so much better doing it in person. You just like, you feel the energy and like riff off each other.

You riff. I mean so much of communication is non verbal.

So much.

And that means it's physical. It's like what's vibrating out of me and off of you and just goes so much faster.

Even this, like doing a podcast face to face is so much better.

Yes. This is why I offered for the first pearls on. I said I'd fly to you. I will sit in your house with your daughters doing backflips in the other room and you not yelling at them but asking them to stop. I would have, could have, should have. We'll do the next pearls on. I'll come up or you come down here.

Absolutely.

I want to be all live this year. Clock's going to be live. You guys are in full swing. You have been on community dinners.

Yep.

I was at my first one last night. What a wonderful time. Great group of people. Yeah.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Yes. Great food. Mac and cheese for the win. You broke a fast for the win. Yeah.

And you got to meet some great people.

Awesome people.

Have a good time.

Yeah. And then of course, we got into shop on one or two things and I have two follow up calls with some wonderful people at my table to look at different solutions together. And my friend from Paramount is going to help me get challenge socks.

Oh, nice.

Yes. I don't know if you've seen those. Very cool tube socks, but I need them.

You definitely need them.

I am devotional to the challenge and TJ Lavin is my friend. Thank you. So we're back in person. You're in my studio. We just had a webinar and you're doing the thing I do after a public speaking thing where you go, oh, my God, what did I just say?

I said a lot of stuff.

I said a lot.

Well, we call it real talk. So we do try to say the real stuff.

And then after we make this face at one another, like, did I go too far?

Did I share too much?

Did I share too much? Possibly. But I don't think anyone will be harmed in the making of the webinar. We were a little concerned about how our document management solution opinions were received.

It's a little harsh. I mean, I do feel very strongly that it's so often a priority for people, but they don't really know why. They're just doing it because all the lawyers say they want it and just it's so much work. It's so hard to make it successful. And if you don't know your why, I don't know. Focus on something else that matters.

Document management is a folk story of legal. So they come in asking for it because they've known it as the key solution at the firm or a key solution at the studio or the company they were at. That makes sense. DM came in at a time and permeated legal environments. So I get it. What else did we potentially say in.

Our webinar someone asked about ChatGPT, so we started sharing about how we're personally using it. I don't even think we answered the question about how are lawyers gonna change because of it? Which I actually think is gonna be quite dramatic and there's gonna be a lot of use cases and implications and probably things we can't even imagine today.

Well, what's ChatGPT? It's a form of generative AI. Is that what they call it?

Yeah.

It is scouring the Internet, it is reading a bunch of stuff and it's formulating dialogue on things almost in a very human like way. I don't know how it's going to hit legal ops. You could start to see how it's going to hit legal if generative AI in a text sense or in an image sense starts taking like, you can say, give me Brad Pitt's face and put it on a pig body in Stranger Things clothes. And are you allowed to do that? Oh, no, I think the tech is able to do it because of all of those public sphere quoting images. But are you allowed to use someone's ip, someone's face? Those are big contract terms when deals are done and I don't know.

Well, like so much technology, the legal stuff hasn't caught up.

It hasn't caught up and IP is going to have to solve a whole new set of problems. Trademarks, copyrights, protections of all those. We're going to start to see that stuff. Can chat GPT generate a contract? Can it negotiate? It can.

Well, but then it's the unauthorized practice of law stuff starts to come into question, I think, because if you use it well, you shouldn't be asking for like legal advice, that's for sure. No, it probably can give it right.

But it's taking public sphere stuff and I don't know, these AI models are about the inputs, what goes in, what's it learning off of, Were they allowed to use that? I don't think you want to make any business documents based off that because you don't know what it's pulling from.

Yeah.

And your deals should be about your company's precedent and this industry you know so well from past companies.

So is it going to replace lawyers?

No, none of this will ever replace lawyers.

Actually gets them to focus on more interesting things.

I think so.

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I think we are still skimming the surface of tech and software. Sure. There's so much software and startups out there. Startups are software that are solving from the negative space a problem that's not yet solved. I know we think there's a lot, but we still don't know. What we don't know is like a race of human race. We're only 30 to 50 years into all of this. That's a surface skimming. So I don't know. I think we'll always need lawyers to help us navigate the unknown. They write the legal code operating system as we go and as we evolve.

These are some deep thoughts, Jen.

Are they? Yeah. I'm always on the edge of, what does this all mean? 50,000 up and back down just to keep things interesting. It keeps me inspired and helps me inspire people. Sorry if I'm going too deep. Do we need food? Do we need calories? I'm starving after that webinar Ironclad made me hungry and I drank five coffees. No, two. I drank two or four. However you define a coffee.

I can't drink any caffeine.

Mary's, you know this. Yeah. Well, Leo sign and Dragon sign in the Chinese zodiac do not have caffeine. Mary, Legal Ops will not be ready for you. Can we do an experiment where you do one session at clock on caffeine?

With caffeine? We've done that. My husband and I have gone to breakfast before where I asked for decaf and we're not certain that they actually gave me decaf because like an hour later he goes, I don't think you got decaf.

Oh, wow.

Mary has a big engine. It's part of the reason why you read David Goggins, who is both.

I'm very into everything. Intense and mental strength.

Yeah. Why?

I don't know.

You've always been this way.

Well, you and I share an obsession with, like, Navy SEALs and special ops.

I'm obsessed with the military.

Me too. But like, particularly Special Ops.

Special Ops Yeah.

The real badasses.

Yeah. Why do you think that is? When did this start for you?

I don't know.

Just sometime in adulthood.

I admire what they're able to do as humans, and I could never be that. But I'd like to hear about it.

I'm obsessed with them, too. It started in childhood. My dad's in the military. He served for 40 years or something like his whole life. Two wars, active and reservists and two branches. So I saw him a lot in uniform, which I think is why I want epaulettes on most of my clothing now. I saw him leave, and he was a cop. I saw him leave in uniform a lot. And this is so cute and funny. My brother and I, he's four years older than me and a lawyer, bless his heart. We would wait for my dad to come home from the military work or war or the cop work, which is also war. New York City cop. And we would be in our little kid versions of the uniforms he would buy us. I'd be like a little Navy. And my brother would be Army. And we'd stand by the door, and when he would come, we'd salute him.

Oh, so cute.

How cute. There's pictures of me at 4 years old in epaulettes.

So cute.

Saluting my dad. Cute. So I think that's why I am obsessed with these guys and gals, because they put service first and themselves last. And they're, like, called protectors. And I'm like, what is more noble than that? I get very emotional even thinking about it. Yeah. I'm on a fun tour right now, taking the legal ops gospel into military branches where people like the JAG Corps that focus on legal paralegals, et cetera. And I'm like, do you guys know you qualified for this career called legal ops? And here's three people from former military service who've transitioned into civilian. And we have tools for you.

Let's talk.

And it's been really fun.

That's cool.

Yeah. We went into the Air Force recently and talked to 50 or so paralegal folks in there. And now I'm like, let's do all the branching. Yeah. So now we're trying to get into the Marines.

Fun.

Yeah. When we get to the seals, I'll tell you.

Oh, my God, please do.

But, yeah, I love the military. I love the code. I love the service mentality. And the seals are so hardcore.

The seals are my favorite.

That training, is that how you work out when you go to F45? Are you just like, Combat zone.

Everything I do is this intensive, so when I work out, I go hard.

David Goggins said that he's at war all the time with himself in his mind.

Yeah.

Does that resonate with you?

Absolutely. And embrace the suck. You don't want to get up at 6am or whatever time you need to get up to work out. Because, like, who wants to do that? I'd rather sleep. But the fact that you do, I don't know. It makes you feel good. Like you did something today and you can start your day now.

He also says along those lines, 1 in 10 people have that warrior get up at 5 and do it, even though it's the last thing you want to do. The last thing I want to do is yoga. It's official legal ops. But I get up and I do it on Wednesday mornings because I know it'll help me not lash out at my vendors later in the day. Just kidding. It'll just help me be mindful and more centered and helps my body from sitting all day. Right.

That's good for you.

All the things. But I do not want to do yoga.

Then. David Goggins also talks about the one thing that breaks most people who can do anything.

Yeah. Is yoga.

Cold water.

Oh.

Which is never. That is the one thing where I'm like, I hate cold water. We have a pool in our backyard. I've probably been in it my life three times.

Okay.

The kids will play. I'm like, mom is not getting in that pool. That is cold water.

Mario. Carol heard it here first. Doesn't like water. And you're not a water sign.

No.

No.

What is Leo Fire.

Leo's fire. That's the lion.

That makes sense.

Yeah. And I'm Libra Air. So this is why we feed off of each other.

We're so different and yet so the same.

Yeah. I could make your fire bigger. Basically. Yeah. We are a formula for combustion. 100%. Well, I think all this David Goggins war of the mind, battling ourselves to better is really important in our work in legal ops and tech. And that's why I bring it up on this podcast. This work is hard. We're headed towards the unknown. We've only skimmed the surface. We're still figuring out CLM contract lifecycle management. The best of.

Most companies don't have any of this stuff.

Most companies don't have it. This career is still so new. Embrace the suck of the beginning. Make sure we're doing those challenges for ourselves. Where we go into, I don't know, recovery Extra. The things we need to do to be sharp so that we can lead a group of people in a legal department forward. They're looking at us to lead them. Even if you are, quote, just the paralegal in the corner who wants to switch to Legal Ops, they're looking at you to fix the thing. Know the tech, be the expert, talk them through the steps, file the thing, helps the workflow go. So you're all leaders, even without authority. And I believe all these kinds of books and things like give us some really great hacks.

You shouldn't get into this field thinking it's going to be easy. This is not hard work, an easy job.

It's transformation work.

And we don't, and we don't always know where we're going. We're guessing.

Well, and to your point about you being a very creative person and needing it in creative outlet, that is part of the reason why I love Legal Ops. Because it hasn't been written yet. You're doing it. You're building the transformation for legal like as it's happening, which is fun, but because there isn't a playbook, it's really hard and it's really scary. And you get all the pushback of people going, well, no one else is doing this or that. We're fine doing it the old way when we know you're not. And so trying to make everyone change, that is a really hard job.

It's a hard job and it's more soft skill.

Yeah.

Visionary. Of course, you need great tech, hard skill. And executors. God, there's only a few characters slips away from death there, but it's really about a story headed to the unknown. New places, new terrain. And you have to be tough stuff. Yeah. And to be tough stuff, you have to be able to go within and know your own weak spots. So you can stand strong in front of people and show them the weak spots of the department or whatever and. And they'll trust you because you've seen.

The darkness a hundred percent.

You've seen the blackest of blacks in the night. Well, thank you for coming to my studio in la. Thank you for coming to LA and coming on Clock Talk today for a post ironclad webinar Real Talk decompression session.

So fun to be here. Love being in person. Great to see you, Jen.

Great to see you. Sorry for going deep. Except I'm not more soon.

Sorry, not sorry.

Real Talk, Deep talk. See you out there, everyone.

That about wraps up this episode of Clock Talk Real Talk 3 Decompression. Thank you Mary for coming by the studio and you can catch this and all other episodes of Clock Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening. Until next time.