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The Limits, and Limitlessness, of the Legal Function
205 Plays1 year ago
A typical legal department has some clearly defined responsibilities: commercial contracts, regulatory compliance, employment law, and perhaps government affairs. Yet, legal touches nearly all the other functions in a business and has a unique vantage point. What happens when legal is asked — or chooses — to take on more?
Join Apollo.io Chief Legal Officer Megan Niedermeyer and Senior Legal Operations Manager Brenda Yun Perez for a practical conversation about the limits, and potential limitlessness, of what the legal can take on. We’ll talk through real-world examples like establishing a Deal Desk, owning HR, and other operational processes they’ve chosen to take on as they’ve pursued personal and team growth.
And we’ll discuss how to decide if legal should give something its led back to another team in the business.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Abstract' and its Hosts
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the first episode of this new podcast, The Abstract. My name is Tyler Finn, and I lead community and growth for Spotdraft. We're a leading contract lifecycle management solution provider.
00:00:18
Speaker
And throughout this series on this podcast, we're going to be speaking with general counsels and chief legal officers, deputy GCs and legal ops professionals about how they've built their careers and where they're headed next.
00:00:34
Speaker
Today, I am so excited for this inaugural episode to be joined by Megan Mittermeyer and Brenda Perez.
Meet Megan Mittermeyer and Brenda Perez
00:00:42
Speaker
I've been fortunate to know Megan for a number of years from her time as general counsel at Gusto and then at 5TRAN and now recently in her new role as chief legal officer at Apollo.io.
00:00:56
Speaker
which is soon to enter hyper growth. I think it follows the path of Megan's prior employers and Brenda Perez, a new friend who helped build the legal ops team at Coinbase and is now leading legal ops at Apollo.io as, as well. Thank you both so much for joining us over the course of our conversation today.
00:01:22
Speaker
going to be talking about a theme that Megan came up with or coined that really resonates with me. We're going to be chatting about the limits and the possible limitlessness of legal and the legal
Career Journeys of Megan and Brenda
00:01:37
Speaker
function. Before we get to that though, I thought we could start by giving each of you a chance to introduce yourselves and
00:01:43
Speaker
a few of the key moments in your careers. Give us that background. Megan, do you want to start and tell us a little bit about some of your prior roles and your current one at Apollo? Sure. First off, Taylor, thank you for having us. The pressure hopefully isn't on. Inaugural episode, the few, the many, the dedicated listeners of the abstract. Thank you for being here.
00:02:10
Speaker
No, I am joking, but I am excited to get to have this conversation, particularly with Brenda, who is our newly hired legal operations manager, senior legal operations manager here at Apollo. First hire that I made coming into Apollo for the legal team, really important critical hire. We can get into it, but a little bit about myself, like pivotal moments in my career.
00:02:31
Speaker
Gosh, went to law school straight from Afghanistan, where I had a career in international development before I became a lawyer. So if that tells you anything about my ability to handle the risky, you know, risk assessments of startups and probably something there. Started my career really at Cooley and a private practice, working with some of the most well-known technology companies at the time.
00:02:53
Speaker
was lucky enough to land my first in-house gig at Gusto, where I very quickly became the head of legal and compliance through a period of hyper growth.
00:03:02
Speaker
did the next one kind of the same way, five trans, first in-house counsel and general counsel. We had a team of over 30 by the time I left two years later. So really excited to be at Apollo I.O. Have promised I will not create a 30 or 40 or 45 person legal team here. I'm all into the robots and the automation and the software so we can get into that later.
00:03:24
Speaker
Awesome. At least not 30 this year, but we'll give you 18 months. Brenda, you've had a really interesting career path as well. Can you tell us a little bit about how you transitioned into legal ops and your experience at Coinbase and then the past week, week and a half at Apollo?
Brenda's Impact at Apollo.io
00:03:43
Speaker
Right, right. Thanks Tyler. Sure. But yes, thanks Tyler for having me on this episode, your novel episode. And thank you for Megan. I mean, I've really been at Apollo for a week and a half and like, she's given me opportunities here, opportunities there. The opportunity to be on this podcast with her is I super appreciate. So thank you Megan for that. I joined Apollo last Monday. So I'm a week and a half in, as Megan said.
00:04:10
Speaker
first legal hire, that's amazing for a CLO to have that as a priority for her legal team. And, you know, I'm excited. We've already jumped into a bunch of projects and super looped in and ready to just, yes, rocket ship off with my role here. But going way back, so I started my legal profession as a paralegal, actually I was a paralegal secretary. I was there for about 10 years and it was,
00:04:39
Speaker
I was at a time when, at that 10-year mark, I was like, okay, am I going to be a paralegal for the rest of my life at a law firm? And at that time, I was thinking rest of my life. Or do I go to the in-housing that people are talking about?
00:04:55
Speaker
And so I was really lucky to be able to move after growing my career at really building my foundation at a law firm going in house. I was at a few, you know, pretty high profile tech companies in the San Francisco Bay area. I started at Zinga's where I first started pre IPO was in my paralegal role there. I worked directly on the IPO there then went to another public company from there. They.
00:05:23
Speaker
We're already public when I joined and smaller legal team, but worked on really public, you know, as continue to be a paralegal in that role. And then joined GoPro pre IPO, where again, I was directly involved in the IPO. They're supporting the team. And then at GoPro, I was there for five years.
00:05:46
Speaker
before I left, but you know, and near the end of my tenure there, I was kind of like, we were doing annual shareholder meetings. The share drive was all set up, like processes were in place. I could kind of do things with my eyes closed. And I was like, what more can I do? Is there something else I could do? And the GC really gave me this opportunity. I think we're at kind of the seat of operations in my head as to support the business development team and as business development operations manager.
00:06:14
Speaker
And so that was a great opportunity. But then in 2019, so after GoPro, I joined Coinbase, where I was able to straddle my role as a paralegal and as legal operations.
00:06:28
Speaker
So there, my hiring manager, he was a corporate attorney and the other corporate counsel, they were like, oh, well, we've got the corporate stuff, you know, the work with outside counsel, let us handle that. Why don't you go ahead and since you want to do legal ops, go work on that piece. And I was like, okay, great. And so.
00:06:47
Speaker
2019 was the first time I attended the Legal Ops Conference, like my second month at work, and it's the clock, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium Global Institute. It was pretty huge, and it was a little daunting. But after that, I think in my mind, I was like, yeah, I'm all into this Legal Ops thing. Coming back to Coinbase after that, and then just
00:07:10
Speaker
doing, doing, doing, right? Like I just did more. The first project was like contract management system, then we implemented the entity management system and board portal and e-billing system. So just really all into LegalOps and expanding that role and kind of eventually shedding my paralegal role and also building out a team
00:07:34
Speaker
of like five other team members on LegalOps to help the hyper growth that we had at Coinbase. Turns out all you need to do is go to Vegas with a bunch of LegalOps professionals and then you're sold for LegalOps as a career, right? I have heard lots of great feedback stories, commentary about the clock event in Vegas. And as a GC myself, I've always been intimidated by how much fun it appears to be. We'll have to work on getting
The Role of Legal Teams in Business Operations
00:08:02
Speaker
you there, Megan.
00:08:04
Speaker
What I'm hearing is you've had, you've led a couple of companies through hyper growth with Brenda on your team and IPO, maybe in your future. Yeah. Brenda has worked at some really phenomenal companies and I'm like happy to have her share kind of her, her career journey. Cause I think it's really important as we consider ourselves startup, you know, legal functions, what does it mean to build out a team, build out processes from scratch, understand what that next level looks like. And Brenda has certainly seen it all.
00:08:30
Speaker
Let's start and back up a little bit and talk about the big picture and then we can start to speak a little more tactically. I want to introduce a little bit of what I think of when you sort of coined the term limits and limitlessness of legal. To me, that means that legal can expand and take on
00:08:50
Speaker
operational challenges within the business, things like human resources or people ops can really provide strategic business advice and be a partner to the, to the business and business functions because legal sits at the intersection of so much and has advantage across so much of the business. How do you think of, of that concept at a, at a high level, Megan?
00:09:14
Speaker
Just some hand motions in the background for those of you just listening. That was me with some hand motions. One of the things I struggle with as an attorney for high growth companies is that there is so much to do all the time. And the number of things at any one point in time that the legal team could be focused on is really limitless. When you think about just places to add value in a company, one, companies that are growing that fast have a ton of areas where they need value add.
00:09:42
Speaker
Two, legal teams are often kind of a sneaky secret weapon where you've got folks who are a combination of strategic, great communicators, good operationally, and they can sort of plug in in a lot of areas. Both a risk and an opportunity is that, you know, legal teams could be doing everything, but at the end of the day, if we don't cut back, we are doing nothing effectively. And so I think when I think of the limits and limitless of legal, how do we self limit ourselves? How do we get feedback from the business to limit ourselves?
00:10:11
Speaker
And then how do we also maintain a little bit of that limitless mindset, which is we can and should be operationalizing across the entire business. We're not in a silo. If you need help, we can help you. It doesn't necessarily have to be legal for us to be able to plug in. I want to go a little bit deeper on that as you think about the potential limitlessness of legal and how you manage that.
00:10:36
Speaker
Do you take on these sorts of tasks or even other functions more permanently? Do you think about just filling in or issue spotting? How do you think about that, Megan? It's really hard because there are some points in time where it is great for legal to be limitless because there is an essential need of the business. You have to plug in. It needs to get done tomorrow. Critical gap. Plug in whether it's legal or not legal.
00:11:02
Speaker
But as the company grows and continues to develop, there can actually be a bad quality, a kind of shadow side to that. If legal is plugging in to keep HR afloat or to keep a really critical process running that really shouldn't be living in legal, that's something that we should talk about, look at, and make sure that if there are issues, they're being seen and identified by others.
00:11:22
Speaker
I don't have that problem on Apollo. We've got a phenomenal people leader and people team who is awesome. But I know that that's a frequent struggle, particularly as people teams may be more nascent. If you have a people leader maybe hasn't done it before, particularly I see legal teams get pulled into a lot of people work.
00:11:38
Speaker
And that can be both a good thing to help the company move forward, but it can be bad if it holds the rest of leadership back from seeing, hey, we actually need to invest more, get a different leader there. So be careful where we invest our limitless resources. Next, I want to ask both of you about the sort of mindset that you bring to work every day with you. We've been talking about how much legal can take on. I often have heard some, not all, but some in-house counsel
00:12:07
Speaker
refer to the folks they work with in the business as their sort of like, quote unquote, clients, right? In the same way that a firm might. What do you think about that? And how do you view your business partners? You're trying to get under my skin, Tyler.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, anyone that's worked with me for a while knows that one of my pet peeves, I don't have it done, but one of my pet peeves in operating a legal department is hearing team members refer a lot to like the business, this, the business that let's ask the business, our client and this team needs us to do. Yes, they are our clients. Yes, we are out of business, but the legal team is equally part of the business as well.
00:12:53
Speaker
And so when I hear people refer to the business decision versus the legal decision, I think there is a mindset shift that I usually like to see on my teams. But more importantly, I think that's where the industry for in-house counsel is trending. We've got clients, there are business decisions that are a little bit different than legal decisions, but
00:13:11
Speaker
The same way we think in kind of that old school mentality, there's the reverse, right? A bunch of our business partners are also, we're their clients, right? Legal teams should be pushing businesses forward, not just receiving tasks to be done. And so if a legal team doesn't equally view themselves as part of the business, making business decisions, asking the marketing team to do something, and the finance team, if we can tweak that, and the product team, if we can figure out a different roadmap,
00:13:39
Speaker
then that symbiotic relationship is lost. And I question really the value of legal over the long-term of the company, unless I can propel it differently than it's operating today. Yeah, Brenda, how about your sort of mindset?
Building Relationships and Strategic Partnerships
00:13:52
Speaker
Because LegalOps, of course, sits to serve partially the process within the legal team, but really to serve sales, go to market, like other functions. Yeah, I think I really see it as
00:14:05
Speaker
partners as well. Apologies in advance if I accidentally say client every once in a while. I mean, I definitely see other teams as partners, right? I know that attorneys are providing like legal advice and sometimes strategic advice, but we're really working together. We're on the same team. I think sometimes it's maybe the culture of the company if they
00:14:30
Speaker
show if there is that collaboration between teams that they're working together and not just for the other team. I think I really like to see it in legal teams where companies where legal teams are like brought into the other teams early in on the relationship.
00:14:47
Speaker
Whether it's like, you know, inviting the legal team member to their recurring weekly meetings or to like a strategy meeting or even to an offsite every once in a while with Renai, Sue. And then the legal team member really gets to know the other team, right? They really get to understand their strategy. They're embedded with that team. And so when they are brought in,
00:15:07
Speaker
It's not just like calling your lawyer or calling your attorney to help out with this advice. They can really jump in and chime in when and where needed. And I think that collaboration makes it feel like partners and not like your clients.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah. Brenda had like the magic words right there with partnership and partners. And that's where I view legal ops is like this glue between the legal department and all of the other departments out there with the right legal ops person and the right mindset and the right like partnership oriented focus. Legal ops is such a critical, you know, stickiness to really understand
00:15:40
Speaker
how does legal match to the processes that the rest of the departments have adopted and then like how do we help like help those departments like iterate a little bit based on some of our roadmap items and so it's very symbiotic and that that partnership all depends on the stickiness of a great legal ops hire. I'm thinking about Halloween costume where you're wearing this blow-up suit and like everything kind of just sticks to you as you're walking along.
00:16:07
Speaker
Are you previewing your Halloween costume for this next year, Brenda? With the theme, yes. With the little sticky tape and you've got some marketing, you've got some engineering, you've got some... I love that. That's amazing. That would win a contest for sure.
00:16:23
Speaker
I totally agree with that point as well. I would just offer, you know, when I used to work on privacy issues, being in there with the product team and joining their weekly meetings or going to the monthly go to market stand up where they're sharing their sales figures, right? I mean, it tells you what the priorities of the business are. I think it's absolutely vital.
00:16:45
Speaker
Brenda, you're also, oh, go ahead, Megan, please. Well, I think you're kind of like gunning at a really good thread here, Tyler, which is, you know, people, especially in this like remote environment, we're all doing our own thing. And in a lot of ways, people want to feel a connection to the teams that they're helping support to the people they're helping support.
00:17:01
Speaker
to the projects they're helping support and so the like the real secret of how legal will prioritize your work to the top of that intake who list is like here comes one of my dad jokes right like what did the mushroom say when he ran into his friend and was looking kind of down mushroom says why didn't I get invited to more things I'm a fun guy
00:17:28
Speaker
is, you know, like being around people that you can connect with at any level, but that you view as fun and relatable colleagues, really makes a difference in both of your work qualities, both of your work satisfactions, that embeddedness, that ability to call each other. There's a shared sense of automatic trust when you work on projects. And I think that is really built
00:17:52
Speaker
from the relationships first. Absolutely. One of the concepts that I thought would be interesting for us to explore is the notion of sort of non lawyers on legal teams and how they're able to work with folks on other business teams. And Brenda, you talked a little bit about it in your intro, but when you were making that switch from paralegal to first sort of like
00:18:18
Speaker
BD ops and then ultimately full legal ops. How'd you get that chance or that opportunity? And then Megan, I'm going to flip it around and get the sort of manager perspective on this too. I think the key word there is chance. I remember asking somebody in like the legal ops profession a few years ago, like how do I grow my legal ops career? And she said, somebody has to give you a chance.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think that's what it was, right? At Coinbase, when I joined to straddle my paralegal role and legal ops, my hiring manager gave me that chance. The people on the interview panel, even though I didn't have the legal ops background, they somehow saw that my background in the legal field was transferable and I would be able to jump in and support the legal team.
00:19:03
Speaker
you know, along my career, my growth at Coinbase in the legal ops role, it was people giving me chances, right? I think they saw that I, you know, was able to jump in and fill the need and, and really gave me those opportunities. I like to really get to know like legal team members. And we were just talking about relationships. I love meeting other teams. I love getting to know other teams. I really like, you know,
00:19:32
Speaker
not only on the business aspect, but right just to say hello in the beginning and just to learn about them. I think going into those meetings with building those relationships also along with just kind of being like laser focused on improving efficiencies and helping grow the team. People really saw that and they just kind of give you more, right? Like when you build those relationships,
00:19:58
Speaker
I think people start to lean on you. They start to look at you and you get more chances. I mean, you have to show that you can do the job, which, whew, I'm glad I, hopefully I showed that at Core-Riz and I was able to do what was needed at that time. And, and, and that's, yeah, it's about giving chances, I think. And right, like Megan, my opportunity here, like giving me the chance to report to her, to be the first legal hire, it helps with, with growth. And that's how I am where I am, I think.
00:20:24
Speaker
along with a little bit of hard work and some sleepless nights.
Evolving Roles in Legal Teams
00:20:29
Speaker
It's interesting Brenda, I feel like equally you gave me a chance, right? Like you're coming on board to a brand new legal team that's being built out from the ground up. And so that chance goes both ways. And I think as leaders, we often don't think enough about the chances that other people are giving us and the trust they're putting in us. And I think that's just as important as me thinking through, all right, I'm going to give this person on the team a chance to do a stretch project just because it will be great for them to get the exposure.
00:20:55
Speaker
I said, how amazing Megan is. Cut this from the podcast. You're very lucky. Megan, who's your next tire? I should say. You're employed as a professional podcaster now, so I can't take you, Tyler.
00:21:10
Speaker
And we do have a couple of roles that are going to be coming open. And, you know, I love to talk with people who are interested in them. One will be an associate general counsel for product and privacy, and another will be a privacy program manager. And so excited as we get those both posted and up and running to continue building out a team and a culture that represents kind of what Brenda and I have aligned on. That program manager role, it's interesting.
00:21:36
Speaker
Um, presumably that could be a lawyer or a, or a non lawyer, Megan curious for, for your view and then Brenda too, on where you think the role of sort of non lawyers on, on legal teams is, is headed over time. It seems like it's much more common now than it might've once been because the scope of what legal needs to deal with, uh, has so sort of greatly expanded.
00:22:01
Speaker
One of my favorite movies is Jurassic Park, and I would say the role of legal ops. Legal ops are the dinosaurs and the GCs and lawyers of the team. In some ways, the people just hanging out in the park. Legal ops is taking over for all the right reasons and all the right ways, and I wouldn't be surprised as more companies continue to invest in legal ops. They see
00:22:23
Speaker
the really extreme value that they bring. It's really important to have a mindset that's different than the mindset of attorneys. I think attorneys are excellent in all the things that we were trained to do, that we practiced for many years to do. Extremely detail-oriented, very communicative, great at verbal and written communication, super analytical. Sometimes those skills don't
00:22:45
Speaker
translate to the rest of your company. And not only do they not translate, they can actively work against us. They can hide the really big benefits that we're bringing to a company because the skin around how we operate maybe is jostling folks around us. And so I really view the role of non-attorneys as helping be those translators for what the legal team, what the lawyers are doing,
00:23:07
Speaker
how that works with the business, how each side needs to adjust accordingly to make it a really good symbiotic partnership like Brenda was mentioning earlier. I really, so coming from a paralegal role, right? I love it when I see a legal ops, when I meet a legal ops professional and I'm like, first time and I go to LinkedIn and because I'm like on LinkedIn all the time, I type in their name and I scroll through their experience. I'm like,
00:23:29
Speaker
This was she or he had a role as a paralegal, right? And now that person is senior director of legal operations. I was like, whoo, big win. But yeah, I think I see a lot of paralegals, right? Shifting into a legal ops role.
00:23:43
Speaker
I think because of the growth opportunity and the type of work that's being done, it just opens, like for me, it was pretty eye-opening, right? Like I'm doing a lot of this stuff and my skills are super transferable until legal ops roll in and I can do this. And the legal ops community is so like welcoming. There are so many people willing to share their stories, right?
00:24:04
Speaker
podcast like this one there's articles there's there's like the clock global institute coming up in may right they have they offer that workshop on
00:24:16
Speaker
Fundamentals of legal ops, I think for people who are starting in the legal profession. So I think seeing all that growth and seeing that community building that growth and then aligned with CLOs like Megan that have that mentality, right? That they're open to having legal ops professionals come in or just legal professionals come in to fill roles in addition to the attorney roles.
00:24:40
Speaker
I would just note, you know, when I was a junior associate at a law firm, and if there are, you know, early stage career lawyers out there, whether you're in a law firm or not, one of the best pieces of advice I got was to really like watch and listen to the paralegals. And to this day, I learned so much about being a great lawyer from some of our really senior paralegals at the firm who really have been doing this, they're experts in their field. And so like, what an amazing foundation to start from, if
00:25:06
Speaker
someone is interested in going into legal ops or if you are working with a paralegal closely, for someone who knows what they're doing, that is amazing opportunity to learn. I'm going to throw this question back to you though, Tyler. You have been on adjacent to legal teams in a non-lawyer role. How do you view that relationship between the lawyers and non-lawyers? Well, I love it because I think it creates a diversity of views and a diversity of background.
00:25:33
Speaker
And I think that lawyers, generally speaking, are really, really good at identifying risks and solutions to those risks. And people who sit on the business side may be a little bit more attuned to opportunities and how they can go after those. And I do think folks who are working on an in-house team, working across legal and other functions, can kind of serve as a translator because
00:26:03
Speaker
they report into and are ultimately responsible for protecting the business against risks too. But they're just a little bit closer to those folks who are seeing some of the opportunities. And I don't want to jump the gun into question, but later on we'll talk about where GC rules and CLO rules are going.
00:26:25
Speaker
over time and, and I think it's really interesting because you see some folks who, whether it's because they, they've just been able to grow and mature with a business so much or because they want to take their careers in slightly different directions, going on and taking roles that leverage their legal background, but put them a little bit more in that, that opportunity camp. That's a bit of how, how I think about it. I love Megan, the, the sort of like.
00:26:52
Speaker
humility and also recognizing some of the flip sides of being able to see all those risks. I was wondering how much of your day-to-day is really around the practice of law and when you're in a business with
00:27:07
Speaker
hyper growth, whether or not that changes,
The Diverse Roles of General Counsels
00:27:09
Speaker
right? Like if you're at a place that is 100 people is a lot of your day actually in the weeds on the law. And then as you get bigger and bigger and bigger, maybe more operational or how is how is your experience been with been with that?
00:27:23
Speaker
Well, I will say like not a day goes by that I'm not practicing law. And so I'm still a lawyer, just my best efforts, right? But there is an interesting inverse relationship. I think if you're working at a fast growing company and you're an early legal hire, like I've done a couple of times now.
00:27:39
Speaker
which is you know there's a the first period i'd say phase one you're really like doing everything that a lawyer does from nda's to inputting equity grants to negotiating a partnership agreement to talking with the product team you are full stack full everything everywhere lawyer as you get to the privilege to build out a team
00:27:59
Speaker
you maybe shed some of the things you were working on before and the work and the time you spend starts to become more, you know, it's still legal, but it's more kind of risk calculus for legal. It's strategy for legal, it's decision-making for legal, which is entirely informed by your team, but you spend more time only thinking and communicating more than you do actually doing.
00:28:22
Speaker
And so one of the interesting aspects about being a GC for fast-growing companies is that you have to be able to be kind of a one-man, one-woman show. You play the individual contributor in some areas until you've hired them away and processed them away.
00:28:39
Speaker
You are a C-suite executive in other areas. You're a mid-level manager in other areas. All of that fills out over time. But I think one of the hard things for both startups and GCs is to really wrap your head around like, do I like this? Does that person like that? Are they going to be happy in that role given they have to play all parts of the like one person show?
00:29:00
Speaker
Absolutely. And there's, there's a lot of ownership that comes along with that. Um, one, one concept that I thought that we could explore, Megan, I was curious for how you think about sort of the concept of ownership, given all that legal can take on philosophically examples of, of times when, when legal has really taken on a task that may not fall directly within the, the remit of the department.
00:29:27
Speaker
You know, this is an interesting question. I think in a lot of ways, I bristle a little bit at the idea of ownership only because if we're focused on ownership, we're not focused on impact. I'm someone who's entirely impact driven. I want to see the right impact for the business. And if I see an executive team or a cross-functional stakeholder group or a boardroom, or no matter what setting you're in, if I see a group that is more focused on who owns what,
00:29:51
Speaker
what's the racy or the rapid rate or the decision-making process for XYZ? Is it you? Is it me? Is it this person? Finger-pointing, I get a little nervous, right? Because at the end of the day, we want to see the right outcome for the business. There are a couple of ways to get there and we should decide based on our business, our talent, our current resourcing, our current experience, which way we want to skin the cat. Every company is a little bit different and
00:30:20
Speaker
You can't tell me that there's only one way to do something. There have been people who've done it differently and they've still survived. And so there is probably a one way to do something based on the facts of your company, based on the resources and the talents you have at your company. Assess those carefully to figure out who's going to take the lead on a certain area of responsibility.
00:30:40
Speaker
and who's going to follow. But really, those should be outcome-based decisions rather than ownership-based decisions. Yeah, I actually love that. It's super insightful because I've always liked working with people who think of themselves as owners. Everything that is put in front of them, they own it all the way through. They're not going to say, well, I've done the legal review on this marketing doc, and even though there's a bunch of
00:31:06
Speaker
typos in it or I don't think it will resonate with any customer based on what I know of the customer. If marketing says it's okay, just ship it, right? That's that's not really it being an owner. But I love I love and that's very insightful. I love that idea that ultimately, among functions or among people, you shouldn't just be focused on dividing up ownership and saying,
00:31:28
Speaker
now we can sort of turn our backs. And the people you're working with, Tyler, who are owners, those people that you gravitate towards, I gravitate towards those people, too. And I tend to think the reason why they follow things through all the way is because they're like, I'm the owner. And because I had this stamp of approval is why I'm going to finish it.
00:31:47
Speaker
Those people are intrinsically driven to just do a good job for good job's sake, to put something great out into the universe, to make sure that end result actually happens and give it the best chance possible of happening. I think that's what drives those people rather than any sort of bestowed ownership. Everything Megan was saying in my one and a half weeks, one week, one and a half weeks here, I can see like she walks the walk that she's talking. So it's been great to hear her on this. Were you shadowing me doing NDAs earlier?
00:32:17
Speaker
No, just kidding. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. You know, Megan, we can automate those away, actually.
00:32:26
Speaker
Great opportunity. Yes. Yeah. It is a lot, though, to play player coach. And I think that like finding, you know, early employees, if you're building out a legal team early, you want to play player coach is really important. Now, if you're a much larger company, you've got different, you know, considerations. Maybe you want to find a coach coach or a player player. But in this kind of like, you know, high growth mode that we're in, that player coach from from everyone is really important. Brenda, I want to go deeper with you for a second on this sort of concept of
00:32:56
Speaker
of being an owner or ownership and ask you a little bit about like saying yes to various stakeholders. And I'm actually very curious for how your mindset was when you were a paralegal and then in a little bit more of an elevated ops role where you're
00:33:14
Speaker
having to work across different functions, how that's changed. And I think ultimately this is really kind of a question about prioritization. Can you say yes all the time anymore? It's really difficult for me not to say yes to everything, right? Because as a paralegal, that's how you learn. You do, you want to, you say yes to everything as an in-house paralegal to if you're like the only paralegal and there's other, you say yes, even though you're a corporate paralegal, you say yes to doing, you know, other,
00:33:43
Speaker
cross-functional teams with supporting legal no matter what. So I'm really been working on embracing, moving away from the mindset of just doing everything to being like, whoa, like where, how does legal ops fit into this request? And like you said, right, it's prioritizing. I think it's really being strategic about what you're doing now more so than just
00:34:08
Speaker
doing whatever work comes to your desk, you're being more strategic about it, like planning it out. I think it helps if you, like LegalOps as a function has sets its priorities, responsibilities, whenever, if it's on a quarterly basis, like with your OKRs or it's on a project or like an implementation, right? Like you're setting the responsibilities. And so then the stakeholders know, right, what to expect. They know what kind of support you're going to provide.
00:34:36
Speaker
Then you yourself know where the line is kind of drawn that you're going to do this part and not everything. I know there's always going to be urgent requests that come across, you know, your desk P zeros and whatever they're called. And, but, and you.
00:34:51
Speaker
have to reprioritize based on that, right? If it's coming from the CEO and it's a project or if it's something that's super urgent, that's coming from the business, you have to think about that. But I think it's maybe it's about reprioritizing that and it's also right. Like I think legal ops, maybe it's not always just saying no, but it's like you said, reprioritizing and then maybe it's no right now, maybe it's no, but hey, why don't you get on our roadmap for next quarter?
00:35:18
Speaker
or hey, why don't, you know, why don't you speak to this team because they can help you move a little bit down closer to the finish line or like, let me give you this resource to help you with that. So it's, I don't think, I don't think I'd ever still say no, right? Like it would be discussing it, talking it out, figuring out how else you can help, but it's not going to be, I think I've already changed a little bit to where I was before was like, yes, yes, yes, do everything. So I think I'm, I'm moving towards that.
00:35:47
Speaker
And because you can't, you can't do everything, right? Like it just jeopardizes your, your health, your mentality, the work product, right? If you're doing everything and you're not raising your hand to say that, you know, this is not in your plate or then, then it just jeopardizes the work product. But again, I think it depends on the company size, right? Like Megan was saying.
00:36:07
Speaker
here at Apollo, it's just me and her. And if she wants me to, I'm doing whatever data entry or supporting this other team or whatever she wants me to do. So I think it depends on the size of the team and where you're at and what the needs are and just kind of moving into more strategic thinking. And it takes a while to do that. Absolutely.
Changing Perceptions of Legal Functions
00:36:28
Speaker
I think it's especially interesting for legal to think about this because there is this history
00:36:34
Speaker
I've actually never really seen this, but there's this history of legal as being a sort of department that says no a lot. Most of the attorneys that I have worked with all throughout my career have been folks who say,
00:36:47
Speaker
no but we can do this or yes and why don't we do that slightly differently and do it this way. Megan how do you think about that as you've built teams of 30 plus folks? Do you think about sort of one helping them with the mentality of saying yes but not yes to too much and two with prioritization of what they're going to be focused on?
00:37:11
Speaker
It's a tough one, and I think there's a couple trends I see from managing all sorts of people over the years. One is we oftentimes have our own pet projects that we care about, that we like, that we're good at, that are within our super comfort zone. It can be really tempting to gravitate towards those projects. I'm guilty of this as well.
00:37:32
Speaker
as a corporate attorney about background gravitating towards those feels really safe but it may not always be the number one priority for the business and so making sure that you check yourself and you can openly check each other and like kind you know probing ways sometimes hey
00:37:49
Speaker
How's this other thing going? Like that can be really important because otherwise, of course we all go back to our safe space. And so as a manager and leader, one of the things I try to do is make sure both myself and others around me are not just in our safe space, but are in the priority space too.
00:38:06
Speaker
Another thing that's important to me, and it's different for every leader, whether you are a leader of yourself, that is absolutely a management position, or you are a leader every large team, right? Life is a lot to manage. Figure out what your standard non-negotiable, typical working styles are. For me, personally, after many years in a law firm, I do not work weekends unless there is an emergency. Of course, emergencies pop up, and I'm around, and I'm jumping into action, but that should be the
00:38:36
Speaker
rare exception, not the norm. For every leader and for every person though, that's different. If you're a manager of one of yourself, like figure out what your things are. Oh, I have to log off at four o'clock to go, you know, pick up my kids from school and feed them dinner. I'm back on at seven for sweeping my emails or whatever that means to you. It's easier said than done. And it has taken me a lot of years to iterate on that personal management, manage of myself. Yeah. One, just one thing I would add, and I'm curious if
00:39:04
Speaker
The two of you would agree with this. I find that folks, oftentimes myself, team members have a sort of like endless capacity to do small things, things that take 10, 15 minutes, keep trains running on time, but that you really can only push forward.
00:39:21
Speaker
three maybe four big initiatives at once and so oftentimes success looks like. Setting yourself up for success and saying no that really that big thing you know that roll out of a new vendor or.
00:39:38
Speaker
a whole new process for sales, intakes, or needs to wait until next quarter, or the second half of the year, or whatever the sort of roadmap looks like, because I need to be focused on these three projects here today. And I know that with day to day taking up two thirds of my day,
00:40:00
Speaker
going to be really hard to push forward more than a few things. And if you're at a startup, for every three projects you plan for on legal, two and a half come at you by surprise. So you're lucky to get a half project done when you think you're going to do three. And so there's a little bit of a discount you want to take when you think about the big rocks that you're moving on legal, because no matter how well prepared you are, how big your legal team is, how mature the company is,
00:40:26
Speaker
there will be things that we can't anticipate that hit us because on that risk matrix, it's not just like two to five risks. If you want to get real deep about it, there's a hundred different risks from employment to data privacy, to contractual, to bank system collapse risk. So there will be a bunch of these projects that just get thrown at you, I think as a legal team,
00:40:51
Speaker
budgeting for the surprises while also budgeting for that we need to keep this train moving is a really delicate balance. I'm impressed. At close to 45 minutes, you slipped in an SBB reference. I thought that we might make it through. I know. I was trying not to because I know this made it not like launch for a while. I thought it was going to be brought in when she was talking about working on the weekend.
00:41:15
Speaker
I am a big proponent of weekends also being for, you know, rest and recharging and then coming back and working hard and being focused during the work week. There's only so many weeks in a row that you can just sort of continually work, I think. Although investment bankers out there may try to prove me wrong.
00:41:38
Speaker
One more round of serious questions and then maybe a couple of fun ones before we wrap up. Brenda and Megan too, I'm really curious for where you see the legal ops function going over time.
Predictions for Legal Ops in Tech
00:41:52
Speaker
Is it going to be more tech implementation? Is it process? Is it always even going to live within legal? I'm just very curious for your sort of high level views on what legal ops means today and what it might mean in the future. I can go first.
00:42:07
Speaker
Yeah. Mine will probably be quick. I mean, I think there's so much growth in the legal ops field that it could go many directions. And sometimes it just depends on the company that you're at and the needs and, and what's going on with the team. Right. I think if you're thinking about people in legal ops, similar to Megan bringing me on as a first legal hire, you know, I've seen so many legal ops roles, manager roles open.
00:42:36
Speaker
And speaking to other GCs and CLOs, I start to see that out there, that they're kind of doing the same. They're seeing legal ops as a priority in hiring, right, to help build the infrastructure, to help achieve efficiencies, to build a team.
00:42:51
Speaker
So I kind of see that maybe growing and hopefully thinking of legal ops as a priority hire. Technology, there's so much technology, there's always technology. Sometimes it's overwhelming for people, I think. But given the market and everybody's like, do more with us, whatever, technology will still be there. And I think it's just continuing to lean on them to help
00:43:14
Speaker
create efficient processes. Maybe it's, we're not gonna get through this podcast without saying AI. But maybe it's the other day I was on a tool and I was telling Megan, I was like, oh my God, I didn't know this had an AI function. I just answered something really quick and it just fit the sound, it was amazing.
00:43:31
Speaker
So maybe the technology, it's the wow factor, right? Like what are they going to wow us? Are there going to be providers that stand out a little bit more than they do now in the neck-to-neck race with stuff like AI or whatever else is out there? Megan, curious for your thoughts as well. These are great predictions. Brenda, I'm etching these in stone. We're going to come back to them in a couple of years, see where we're at with legal apps. No, just kidding.
00:43:56
Speaker
Couple trends I see for legal ops. One is the continued elevation of legal ops is a really essential function. I think from a lot of tech companies, people really intrinsically understand product operations or marketing operations. And legal ops will continue to be viewed and understood and seen as that key cross-functional partner. And I think there's a real path for development for legal ops to be directors of legal ops, a pathway to chief of staff, and to other really
00:44:26
Speaker
business and operational roles. The second one is technology. It's not going away. In my mind, the legal department is the last department of an enterprise business to be sassified. So we're going to continue to get really sassy. There's going to be all sorts of new
00:44:43
Speaker
software and like some will emerge and they're really great and some will emerge and we're going to try to figure them out. But that like software implementation part of LegalOps is going to continue to increase and rise. And I think it'll be interesting to see whether LegalOps takes on some of the like IT type of skillset or if it becomes a partnership with IT and just sort of tech implementation teams are more familiar with LegalOps tools.
00:45:08
Speaker
I'd say the third one really is, where was I going with this? There was a third one. Education for legal leaders about the role of legal ops. You know, Brenda mentioned that there's an increasing number of roles out there for legal ops. It's becoming a thing. It's like you see it everywhere, whereas maybe five
00:45:25
Speaker
more years ago, it was definitely more rare. I do think that the other side of that is that for legal ops to be effective, lawyers and GCs need to really understand how to utilize legal ops, how to work with them, when to rely on them, how to communicate with them. We spent our careers
00:45:45
Speaker
being lawyers and understanding the work that a lawyer did. And then we grew out of that work and did different work, but it was still a lawyer work and then we different lawyer work. So there is a little bit of an education gap for lawyers of really truly understanding legal ops and how to leverage them appropriately.
00:46:01
Speaker
Fourth little last one is I really am a huge believer of communication within a company and branding the legal team as equally as important as educating the business about this is the process you have to follow. This is what we want you to do from here on. We're going to reduce risk by logging our contracts and using an automated system and doing this other thing. That really only works
00:46:29
Speaker
If you've got the brand, the capital, the relationships, the knowledge, the one-on-one settings to really have people want to buy into those change management issues that you bring to the table. And I think legal apps will continue to lean in to that comms and change management piece as well.
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think the key word there that you used was cross-functional and LegalOps really adding a lot of cross-functional value. And to bleed a little bit into the sort of last question, which is around how we see the GC or CLO role changing over time or evolving over time.
00:47:09
Speaker
You know, five years ago, I would go to TechGC events and other great organization for general counsels and now DGCs, AGCs too. And I would hear about how they just didn't want to be seen as the department of no, and they wanted to figure out a way to build relationships with other stakeholders. And now I think the conversation is much more a place of
00:47:32
Speaker
How do we become sort of true operators within the business? And, you know, maybe, maybe the GC role or the CL or role is the pinnacle. And that's what some folks love, but others are thinking about how do I become a chief strategy officer or go be a founder myself or be a GM of a business unit or even a CFO, pick up some finance skills. And the trend there that I see is that I think teams and leaders are expected.
00:47:57
Speaker
to operate in much more cross-functional ways, to be able to see things from a variety of angles. The days of sort of the business is just going to be run off of spreadsheets, at least for the tech space, which we're all in, or it's just going to be run out of engineering and the other opinions are very ancillary. Those seem to be gone. You have to be able to see problems from it.
00:48:23
Speaker
a whole different set of angles. Megan, how do you think about the GC role over time and where it's headed in the next few years? I have less concrete thoughts about that than I do legal ops. Listen, you mentioned like being involved in strategy, being involved in finance, being involved in operations. I know lots of GCs and CLOs today who do that and they have the GC or COO title.
00:48:50
Speaker
So I think that the role has expanded, whether it's a different title or not is a different question. But just as I mentioned, there's an education piece with GCs and CLOs about how to effectively use legal ops and work with legal ops and leverage legal ops. I think the same can be said for CEOs and boards. How do we help educate a group of people about what lawyers are capable of doing, what legal teams are capable of doing?
00:49:16
Speaker
It may be that there's some problem in your business that your legal team is really uniquely situated to pop in there. And that legal team shouldn't be limited to the, please just manage legal and stay over here in a box. As we continue to educate more folks about how legal teams can be business impacting, I think you see those limits kind of erode away and you see GC and CLOs take on a different and difficult functions, whether or not their title reflects it.
00:49:45
Speaker
Absolutely. I love that. I often talk about sort of tone coming from the top and it's certainly important for the GC to be a person who's setting the tone for how legal is perceived within the business. But it's also those other exec team members as well. It comes from the CEO, it comes from the CFO, it comes from the CRO.
00:50:04
Speaker
how they perceive legal and how they publicly communicate how they perceive legal, I think really determines what the limits or limitlessness of legal is. And that was not scripted. That was just a thought that I had building on top of what Megan had to say.
00:50:27
Speaker
One more fun question before we conclude today. I wanted to ask each of you, out of all the companies you've worked for and you've worked for some cool ones, what company had the best piece of company swags? What's your hoodie, t-shirt, mug? And also, which had the worst? And you can say worst first and then start at the end with the fun one. We have to name the company when we say the worst one?
00:50:55
Speaker
You can, we can keep that confidential. I received a company branded candle once that had our values on it. And I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be the, you know, undying flame of our values, but wasn't my favorite. I have to say it wasn't my favorite. Best people's flag for me is anything that I can eat or my dog can eat. And I did once receive company branded dog treats.
00:51:23
Speaker
That's good ones. I love that. What did the people receive if they didn't have dogs?
00:51:30
Speaker
I think it was a choose your own adventure one, and there was some human edibles as well. Choose your own adventure. Edible items. Human edible items. Edible. I was just going to say edible. They had music there on the team there, so. Scratch that. Brenda, how about you? Worst piece, I don't know. Maybe do they still give those? Or you said, I guess at any time we're at a company, maybe those koozies, those things that keep your drinks.
00:51:55
Speaker
It's cold or something. The thing with nitric is a big old margarita and a big old Yeti cup and the coozie doesn't even fit around it. So it's like, I don't know. It's not helpful in any way. Note to tell, have friend or bigger coozies. Coozies that fit Yeti cups.
00:52:14
Speaker
I don't know if this is because it's the most recent, maybe the best swag or it actually is a really good cause you were saying sweaters, right? So this blanket, this beautiful navy, navy colored blank throw, like this throw from a blanket company that I think it was our EA from Coinbase that gave to like the trust and risk team. It's so soft and I love it. It's the best thing. It's kind of like Megan, I think before we were talking about sweaters, comfy sweaters, but it's,
00:52:43
Speaker
It's nice. Brenda, you reminded me of another like awkward piece of swag I received, but I do still own because it was very high quality. I did receive a law firm branded towel, which is like bath towel, extra large bath towel, very high quality from like Pottery Barn or something. So we still have it, but it's a little too intimate of a moment for me to be thinking about my law firm. That's funny.
00:53:10
Speaker
Well, Megan and Brenda, thank you both so much for coming for this first episode of The Abstract and joining us today and for such a fun conversation and an insightful one too.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:53:24
Speaker
Thanks to all of our listeners. What about your favorite swag? Oh, my favorite piece of swag.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah. You were waiting. Holding me accountable. Holding me accountable. That's a good question. I would have to say I have a really good champion hoodie that I got from a company that I worked at, like high quality, actually would wear it out on the street, keeps me warm. My girlfriend has been eyeing it and is mad that she has not been allowed to steal it yet. That's probably the best one. I should have thought of a worst one.
00:54:01
Speaker
No pressure. Some were heard. He queued for episode two. And. Where's the blog? Come back forever for episode two. The swag will be revealed. If someone ever, you know, puts it together, I think there could be quite the collection of tech swag graveyard. All of the items that never saw past receipt and you immediately sent them to Riverdwell. Just me? Or Secret Santa. Made a website or a blog in and of itself.
00:54:31
Speaker
Many years ago, before I became a lawyer, I was working in rule of law and human rights, and I had interviewed for a position at Yahoo on the human rights team of all things. Didn't know they had a human rights team. They did. Don't want to get into why they had to do it, but didn't take the job. They did send me a Yahoo branded bottle opener.
00:54:53
Speaker
that every time you open the bottle cap it screams Yahoo! It is a piece of technology history. It could be in a museum until I can valley someday. I still have it and we use it pretty often. Does it still say Yahoo? Does it still say it? Yes.
00:55:15
Speaker
That's great. That's amazing. Well, thank you again, Brenda and Megan so much for joining us today and to our listeners for joining us as well on this first episode of The Abstract. Next time we're very excited, we'll have Doug Luftman joining us. He was the former deputy general counsel at DocuSign.
00:55:39
Speaker
And we've got a great lineup over the course of the next couple of months as well. So hope you can join us for future episodes. Looking forward to very much. Amazing. Thank you both.