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Ep 95: How Adidas Is Scaling Legal Ops with Alex Herrity, Director, Global Legal Solutions
71 Plays7 days ago
Where is the legal innovation space headed? Is this an area where European businesses are actually investing more deeply than their American counterparts? And how can you transition your team to focus more on innovation and a little less on the law?
Join Alex Herrity, Director of Global Legal Solutions at Adidas, as he offers expert takes on the future of legal tech and legal ops, including adopting new technology like AI, leaning into change management, scaling innovations globally, and more.
Listen as Alex discusses his transition from lawyer to “legal tech guy,” the growing acceptance of ops roles in inhouse legal departments, legal innovation’s big moment, hosting the Law://WhatsNext podcast, and much more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-95
Topics
Introduction: 0:00
A big moment for legal innovation: 2:33
Characterizing legal innovation: 5:28
From lawyer to legal ops director: 7:50
Adopting technology vs. change management: 9:12
Avoiding mistakes in legal tech: 15:41
Leading with AI: 18:52
Deciding to be a lawyer: 21:09
Becoming a “legal tech guy”: 26:18
Directing global legal ops for Adidas: 27:40
Managing teams in multiple countries: 30:54
The future of legal ops at Adidas: 34:21
Advice to future legal ops professionals: 36:50
Hosting the Law://WhatsNext podcast: 42:24
Rapid-fire questions: 46:02
Connect with us:
Alex Herrity - https://www.linkedin.com/in/legalopshezzle/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
I remember seeing um some ah talks that were like change management and the thing and I was like, this is just some corporate BS. Who needs this? like These are all great ideas and when I show them my great ideas, they're going to bite my hand off and we're going to implement and it's going to be like, oh, Alex is the best.
00:00:15
Speaker
Carry him out on our shoulders. but yeah i obviously then suddenly learned that no that isn't the case and change management is a real thing and process you know again trying not to use hacky cliches but you know process eats tech for breakfast and all that kind of stuff like it just bears out time and time again that um if you neglect those things if you want to shortcut those things um it comes to sting you and you've got to be so so lucky just to guess your way through and vibe your way through on this stuff and and i'm saying that as you know even stuff where i was working on where i was working on it pretty regularly as a lawyer
00:00:46
Speaker
So I felt like I knew everything, but I didn't know it from all angles. I didn't know the user experience necessarily. I didn't know what their concerns were. So when I'm advocating for that, it's definitely from the in there the experience of these things will fail more readily and they fail more often when you don't put in the pre-work.
00:01:08
Speaker
Where is the legal innovation space headed? Is this an area where European businesses are actually investing more deeply than their American counterparts?
00:01:21
Speaker
And how can you transition your career to focus more on innovation and a little less on the law? Today, here in London, we are joined for this episode of The Abstract by Alex Harity, Director of Global Legal Solutions at Adidas.
00:01:40
Speaker
Alex has been with Adidas for about 13 years or so and has held a variety of legal and legal ops roles, including serving as the interim head legal for Adidas' North Europe and Nordic businesses. That seems kind of cool yeah um Alex started his career as a trainee at a global law firm.
00:02:01
Speaker
was a paralegal before studying law, so you've been in the legal and legal adjacent space for for quite a while. and Thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of The Abstract. Yeah, really happy to be here in London in a really warm day, which is pretty rare. Yeah, it's gorgeous out. it's so nice. It's sweltering for me already. It's only like 15 degrees, but it feels super warm. But yeah, great to be here. Thanks for me. I wish we could record outside. I mean, I know the light and the sound and all that wouldn't work so well. And people wouldn't believe us. It'd have to be AI for us to be in the sun in London.
00:02:32
Speaker
um Okay, we're going to talk a lot about legal innovation today. um do you feel like legal innovation is having a bit of a moment right now? Or has this been building for for quite a while? Yeah, I mean, it's it feels like it's having a moment.
00:02:48
Speaker
I think it's had moments before. um You know, if you think back to like e-discovery back in the day was a big topic and CLM has had a moment prior to this one, I would say, that was kind of, you know, maybe five to 10 years ago and that's carried on bubbling away under the surface. Such a big topic.
00:03:03
Speaker
um But obviously we're into a very... Rich time now where there's tons of stuff going on. And I suppose the point of difference with this one is that it's happening at the same time as kind of other industries are having a moment with yeah technology. Like the the previous moments always felt like ah someone has used existing technology that might have been used in insurance or finance or somewhere else.
00:03:25
Speaker
And someone's had a thought to say, oh, let's disrupt legal or I'm a lawyer and I want to do something better. And they've taken existing tech and made it work. Whereas this feels obviously slightly different because it's everyone's getting this stuff for fresh kind of as it comes out and it's live.
00:03:39
Speaker
And I guess the other points are that at this point in the maturity kind of journey for legal is Now it's a different landscape than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, where those moments were happening, but there was tons of resistance, legitimate and illegitimate. But now there's, you know, there's people with my job, there's people with um tons of jobs that wouldn't have existed five years ago. And they're able to, you know, the environment's there essentially for the moment. So yeah um I think that's a massive thing that there's kind of fertile ground for people to sow ah so are the seeds, which hasn't always been there.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah. That's really interesting. um I hadn't thought of it quite like that before, which is you know, if your biz ops team is leveraging similar types of technologies or your rev ops team or or what have you, um that or underlying technologies, right, um that that would both sort of give you the ability to invest in a way that you might have not been able to invest before, um or maybe even like put a little bit of pressure on you to go and do something similar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely there that there's that, there's an uptake across the business for this. So you're having conversations in a similar language, which is really rare for legal, particularly on legal talking tech.
00:04:55
Speaker
We're coming to, you know, prior to all of this, we're talking about stuff and it's like, what do you guys want to do? You need to, that you need this, you need something for contracts. Like, This seems really confusing to us and like we don't really get what you want to do and it feels like you're trying to bring some old tech in and we we don't get it.
00:05:08
Speaker
Whereas now it's like, oh, okay, you've got some use cases for this stuff that we also have use cases for and we're talking about this, you know, in a similar way. So, okay, now you can come to the table a bit more and we're definitely seeing that where we're part of that conversation a bit more as a as a user, rather you know, amongst our peers, which is, you know, is different. Yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
um I'm curious how you describe sort of an innovation practice or legal innovation to other business stakeholders or or how you characterize that. I mean, it's obvious that sort of like tech or things that you're procuring or building are part of that. But is is this sort of practice of legal innovation broader than just technology? How do you think about that?
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm coming at it from an in-house perspective. So I guess private private practice might have their own view on this because that's their core business. But for us, it's kind of like, yeah, people might call it innovation or call it legal tech.
00:05:59
Speaker
I think I prefer to call it legal ops. Just feels like a wider ah sort of a broader church for everything. So that exists. So we we're able to say, yeah, it's in the house of legal ops. And within legal ops, there is legal tech or tech that's used within legal ops. It doesn't have to be legal, quote unquote, tech.
00:06:15
Speaker
I think all of these, again, because we're in the legal space, people really pour over the terminology. yeah Like, is that legal tech or tech? That's usually legal. You're like, does it really matter? But okay, I get it. People people want to get into the semantics of this stuff. um And then, yeah, it's it's a set of it's ah it's a philosophy. It's a discipline. It's a set of tools. It's it's all of the above.
00:06:33
Speaker
um But yeah, the cool thing is it is quite a broad church now. And like I was kind of alluding to, there's roles there that... ah just were never there before and there's really diverse roles because some people legal tech and legal ops means external counsel management and then for others it means like pure techie we're getting into the detail in the weeds and we have like we might have in our team developers we might have in our team data analytics data scientists there's others where it's like you're a legal technologist which is kind of a new role you're a legal engineer a document engineer where you're
00:07:05
Speaker
au fait with these tools and you're you're doing so i mean it's so wide it's almost impossible and almost pointless in a way to put a label on it so i would say it's legal ops and then that is all about making the the delivery of of legal services optimal and again optimal is subjective but let's say optimal because you know whatever that means for that business and that team and that service that's what we're trying to do right we're trying to put some some cognition behind it some thought and then deploy like sensible solutions that are scalable that are so maintainable that deliver you know people say efficiency i prefer effective because you can make something that's really bad efficient yeah but it should be effective right which is then again something you you contemplate and say yeah we're doing this the most effective way um rather than just the most efficient way
00:07:48
Speaker
I like that. um I mean, maybe maybe that's the answer to this question. um you know And we're going to talk about your journey a bit today as well. ah But you know you sort of stepped away from like the practice of law to focus on legal ops. um Why do you feel like this is such an important field? Or why do you think that it's so important for legal teams to have an ops function within them or working alongside them? Yeah, it's a good question. I think I think just from doing from daily practice, you just realize the bandwidth just isn't there. Like the reason lawyers do stuff in an archaic way sometimes is just purely because you're putting out fires.
00:08:25
Speaker
There's no better way to do it in the moment. You know, you need to ah whatever that analogy is that you kind of need to oil the saw, but you need to stop sawing so you have no time. And it's kind of like, it just doesn't make, yeah, it's it's so difficult. And I definitely felt that in my early days of trying to make that transition that um you can see that there's a problem, but you just cannot get out of the daily daily to to solve it.
00:08:44
Speaker
And now that there's all of this tech available and there's there's skills that are are really focused on this stuff, you realize, yeah, it probably shouldn't be the the daily job of a lawyer to do this on the side. There is definitely enough um tasks and and reasons and and benefits to having like a ah an an ops function or an ops team or a person or someone who can dedicate some time. and You know, if it's worth doing, it's probably worth putting some time to it and some resource. And yeah definitely feel like it's worth doing so.
00:09:12
Speaker
um One of the sort of debates in legal ops that I think is interesting and um I think is having a little bit of a moment right now is the importance of technology, yes, but also sort of not forgetting about how you're doing a lot of process management or change management and how you have to bring people along with you here as well.
00:09:35
Speaker
um Yeah, how do you think about those different concepts? And I don't know if it's a relative order of priority per se, or but but how do you think about making sure that you're focused on all of those things, that it's not just about the tech?
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's that's definitely true and something that you tend to learn the hard way from doing this. And when people warn you of it, they're like, yeah, okay. I remember going to the clock back in like 2018 in Vegas, which was the first time I ever went.
00:09:59
Speaker
I remember seeing um some ah talks that were like change management and the thing and i was like, this is just some corporate BS. Who needs this? like These are all great ideas and when I show them my great ideas, they're gonna bite my hand off and gonna put it in. It's gonna be like, oh, Alex is the best.
00:10:14
Speaker
Carry him out on our shoulders. But yeah, I obviously then suddenly learned that no, that isn't the case and change management is a real thing and process, you know again, trying not to use hacky cliches, but you know, process eats tech for breakfast and all that kind of stuff. Like it just bears out time and time again that um if you neglect those things, if you want to shortcut those things, um it comes to sting you. and You've got to be so, so lucky just to guess your way through and vibe your way through on this stuff. And and I'm saying that as, you know, even stuff where I was working on where I was working on it pretty regularly as a lawyer.
00:10:46
Speaker
So I felt like I knew everything, but I didn't know it from all angles. I didn't know the user experience necessarily. I didn't know what their concerns were. So when I'm advocating for that, it's definitely from the in there the experience of these things will fail more readily and they fail more often when you don't put in the pre-work.
00:11:02
Speaker
And that's frustrating because you get sold a really great dream by the ops people or vendors or whatever because they they show you how it can work. But there's tons of work to be done. And um yeah, if if you don't if you don't put the legwork in, it just doesn't work. Even with generative AI where you know there's a magic element to it, it feels like, yeah it still requires – it's a leap in technology. But I wouldn't say it leaps us past all of the groundwork that we had to do with all of the other technologies before.
00:11:27
Speaker
You still have to find out what's going on. you You still want to put the user experience at the at the forefront. um Because, you know, just because it can deliver something in a way that was different and we never perceived before doesn't mean that's the right thing.
00:11:39
Speaker
Doesn't mean that's going to scratch the itch. Doesn't mean you're not going to have pushbacks. um And we've had tons of interesting pushbacks. Like... document automation where we did something and the the we did it without really consulting so much because it was such a no-brainer. We felt like super no-brainer, this way better.
00:11:54
Speaker
And the feedback from one of the business stakeholders was like, oh, but does that mean you're not looking at these requests now? we We thought you used to review these. And we were like, we used to literally just put like the square peg in the hole or whatever. weren't looking at the detail. And they were like, we just felt better that legal were involved.
00:12:08
Speaker
And were like, we weren't involved. We were just doing the data entry work. No one was checking any of this work, but they thought we were. And it was like, now you we're putting it in here and it gives us something straight away back. They were like, we don't care. The time saving to go from immediate, from five days to zero. Yeah. We don't care about that because legal aren't in the loop now. And we were like, okay, well, what do we do? And we we joked, like, could we just come up with like a...
00:12:29
Speaker
a five ah you know ah a 10 minute delay or like a two hour delay and be like here's your document back from legal and it's like it never touched any of us but they felt better but that was just a you know ah a silly but kind of real example of you can do even no-brainer stuff but if you're not into the detail not in the processes not into the people side stuff comes out of the weeds and it really screws things up yeah so yeah Let's put the fine point on it around AI, actually, because I think it is interesting to think about um but a lot of legal tech solutions or a lot of tech solutions are really about workflows at their core, maybe, right? Definitely.
00:13:04
Speaker
And is AI going to change that or not? I mean, I guess I have a little bit of a perspective on it, which is that if the AI isn't tailored or if the sort of use cases aren't really clear, uptake is not going to be great because...
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, yes, some people really want to play around in a generic sort of Gen.ai tool and make something great out of it and use ChatGPT for figure out the prompting themselves. yeah But there's a lot of people who don't want to do any of that yeah legwork, right? um I don't know. what do you think about that sort of question of like, are workflows going to become less important with Gen.ai or not? I'm curious. I think workflows, again, it's one of those sort of pervasive things that every time I'm doing a project, it tends to be that the the question that the lawyers tend to have very quickly, as soon as they kind of get comfortable with the the basic premise, it's like, and then next we do this.
00:13:56
Speaker
And you're oh, we we just thought we were solving this part. And they're yeah, but the next thing is we put it over here and then we do this and this goes over there. yeah you're like, oh, we we need workflow for that as well. And quite a lot of like, particularly point solutions really struggle with that because they're solving like a real specific problem. And then, yeah, the if you're an expert, it's really easy for you to get the benefit and you're like, I'm crunching it in i get my thing back and then i know where to go but when you're trying to make things self-service or you're trying to make things enterprise people are like oh i i send send an email if it sounds sounds kind of weird and you're like you send two emails now and we're you know and we have to but they don't care right it's just the as the workflow kind of as you introduce more tech they expect more from the workflow side definitely um and i think yeah that is what we're seeing with some of the gen ai stuff it's still
00:14:38
Speaker
in its moment doing something incredibly powerful very well generally if it's a well-defined use case um but it's it's usually best in the hands of an expert in that moment um and then yeah the workflow needs to carry on so i am i'm really interested to see more and more of the tech like i think that's it because a lot of really great products that i've seen the concept of the thing they do in isolation is great But I can tell that they haven't yet had the experience of what it's like in ah in a legal organization and what would what would be adjacent to those parts of the process.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I think that's what they're going through now. So they've rushed something to market and they're kind of like, okay, now what's next? Oh, it needs workflow. It needs this. It needs to triggers. It needs kind of, oh, it's got to go off for signature and then come back somewhere. Like all of this stuff is kind of boring. Mm-hmm.
00:15:23
Speaker
So maybe not the sexiest thing that everyone who works in AI wants to work in, but it's the reality, right? This is still business. This is still function. There is a home for something once it's been done. There is an approval process. There is it like all of these things that are not sexy still exist. So um yeah, you have to kind of develop that side as well.
00:15:41
Speaker
One of the things that I'm thinking a little bit about on this topic, too, is um AI's ability to deliver on its promise, I guess. And I'm very optimistic over the long run.
00:15:54
Speaker
um But I also look at other sort of legal tech solutions. And I would even i would include CLM, which you know Spot Draft is in this in this category, right which is... um you know I think that there's a lot of amazing things that legal tech has done, but I also think that a lot of implementations, you know even maybe with folks who bought five years or 10 years ago, failed, and there's a bit of a trust gap there. and right um so i mean I guess one question to you is, you know but there are there mistakes that you think have been made with prior sort of tech solutions that we can avoid?
00:16:30
Speaker
with Gen.AI and also sort of a broader question here about youth like its ability to deliver on the the promise that it presents. Yeah, I suppose that is it in in in a sense kind of to the question. It's sort of, it promises so much and that is almost, which you have to do, you know, this it's it's sales, right? So there is an element of like, we have to show you the best of the best in class and we show you this stuff and we have to get you excited and show you what's capable.
00:16:53
Speaker
But it is that sort of the delta, the gray area of like, let's be realistic. And I've definitely heard stories from people where it was an ex-sales guy at some place and they said like oh how did it go and it was like oh it tanked and it was like the guy candidly said you know i knew you guys weren't ready yeah and i'm not saying you know plenty people wouldn't do that with you know there's plenty great vendor sales people totally that would say you guys aren't ready and we've had that before from people saying like oh you look like you still need to do this so That's what you should do. yeah Yeah, shout out to them for doing it the right way. But there's totally other people that are motivated in in other industries as well that would be like, yeah, you should do this and it could work or we could make that do happen for you. And it's it's to your point, even with the question, it's it's that sort of that gap between reality and just sort of being led down a path almost. you know I think sometimes legal departments might just feel like,
00:17:41
Speaker
oh, you said it was this and we didn't have to do anything. And the expectations were so high and the reality was so low. And I think CLM is a really great example of, you know, that you hear that phrase CLM readiness. That isn't just, you know, it's not like TVs when they were like, it's 4K ready. and you're like, I have no idea what that means. My my TV feels like it's been 4K ready for 10 years.
00:17:58
Speaker
I don't even know if I have four k But um you know is my organization CLM ready? There's a ton of work that you can do. yes And there's a ton of different approaches that you can do. And I think that's going to be the same for the the AI tools where it's like, yeah, it can we can show you in isolation this really cool thing you can do. But are you ready to do that? you know If it's a bot that's going to sit on top of your policies and tell people what's in the policy, are the policies ready? are the pop Do the policies need to be redrafted in mind for an AI to be optimal? Is there a workflow around that? Is there, you know, and what should the tone be? Do we want people falling in love with these chatbots? I'm pretty sad if you fall in love with your chatbot that tells you about like company policy, company policy compliance policy.
00:18:38
Speaker
and But, you know, we're already hearing that, you know, it's it's a complex and it's a new thing. So I think bridging that gap and really getting into the detail. Again, nobody wants to do it because it's kind of boring, but yeah it is the reality. Like you get what you put your effort in for, I think.
00:18:52
Speaker
how are you thinking about all of this in in your role? um And where are you leaning in or where are you sort of taking a we need to wait and see approach?
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah. like yeah how How are you actually sort of like practically leading the business through this, I guess? Yeah. I mean, the the sort of tone, I think for me at least, is kind of, we shouldn't be led by hey hi it shouldn't be It's the idea that because it exists, it in in just in the same way that it should have been before AI, because that tool exists doesn't mean we need to use it.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it should be more intentional about what is it that we're trying to do as a legal team? What are we trying to deliver? Why are we trying to do this? There's tons of things in that legal operations house that are not tech.
00:19:34
Speaker
And that can be processed. That can be, you know, is the biggest friction point. Actually, our templates are terrible or um our stance on this is is wrong. And that's what's causing all the friction. And actually, an AI solution or a CLM solution isn't really going to fix that for us until we fix this point. So it's, yeah, we're at the moment, we're thinking, being way more intentional, looking at like,
00:19:55
Speaker
What can you stop doing? What makes sense to automate rather than use um ah AI? What makes sense to um outsource? like There's still traditional models that it's like, hey, just because we could do it and we could buy some tech to do it, is that the best way? Let's throw it over to a specialist. Let's throw it some um to someone else. So what we're trying to do is yeah not get lured in by the the shiny lights.
00:20:16
Speaker
um But then to the extent that we are thinking about AI, it it is more like, I think most people are still in experimental mode, I would say. Again, it's so dangerous to to go on record and say stuff like that because there'll be people like, well, I do this and I do that.
00:20:31
Speaker
Of course, there are people that are doing stuff that's really cool and they yeah they know what they're doing. They feel really comfortable. um You know, speaking someone the other day, and he was like, people say you need to do all this one that and I built something the other day and it was really successful.
00:20:43
Speaker
And i was thought like, yeah, but you're like a lawyer of like a techie, a very techie lawyer with like 15 years experience. And you knew exactly what you're doing and you delivered something. That is not the bar. Like the bar is way, way lower. So I think, again, it's it's yeah, it's all about intentions, I think. So we're starting off smaller, um looking for use cases that um where the primary, the core idea makes sense. And then we have the infrastructure and the the sort of the the workflow to support it as well.
00:21:10
Speaker
I want to ask you a bit about your own journey into into legal ops. OK, let's start here. I mean, if we go back to the start of your career, um what was it that motivated you to become a lawyer in the first place or or at that point in time?
00:21:25
Speaker
I thinking about this before because I thought you might ask me this and I was like, do I have a really cool story about why I wanted to be lawyer? was like, I don't think i actually do. But like, as a kid, I always wanted to be a barrister, which for international folks is kind of the courtroom lawyer. yeahp Here we have two systems, who have the the solicitors and the barristers. So typically solicitors don't go into court.
00:21:42
Speaker
ah You can do it now. You can get like higher rights and do it. but yeah, I was always really fascinated that by that, like the criminal side of of law. um And in my family, i've got quite a few like police officers. So it was always something that was like sort of in my peripheral vision. yeah um And then I studied history and politics actually at university and was like, do I want to be a history teacher? I going to become a history lecturer? That's kind of all the the the options are.
00:22:03
Speaker
And I was like, no, but then law kind of to me, and I've said this to other people and they didn't agree with me, but I was like, history and law feels kind of similar. Like making arguments, primary sources, secondary source, all that kind of stuff. And politics, obviously, again, sort of adjacent in that world and becoming more and more relevant actually now, I would say.
00:22:19
Speaker
um So yeah, it just felt like kind of like the vocational practical version of being a historian in a way, sort of working with, and i there's tons of people in the UK at least who do the conversion from doing a history degree quite often, or one of the sort of humanities um into into law. So yeah that's how i ended up doing it and yeah super random just thought yeah let's go for it and yeah yeah it worked out i mean politics is just like history happening in real time right yeah exactly yeah the law underpins a lot of those discussions and debates and history i needed you with me when i was with this guy and he was like but you can say same about maths you can say and i was like maybe you could and i was like but to me anyway that was where i got kind of got the idea and was like yeah let's do it and
00:22:59
Speaker
I actually took like a, just a paralegaling job in like ah the first law firm that I found, which like kind of high, we'd call it high street in the UK, like very small, like maybe 40, 50 employees or something. So not mega small, but smallish.
00:23:11
Speaker
And they were doing like personal injury and debt stuff, like none of the glamorous like stuff. But at the time that's where it exists. Real lawyer. Real lawyer. Yeah, exactly. Lionel Hutz-esque stuff. And yeah, in that role just ended up doing like Again, i maybe we'll come onto this, but my personality has always been sort of, I always want to do something slightly different to what I should be doing. Sure. So always give the example of like, I used i i did Russian at school for one of language choice. Interesting. And every week that the teacher had a vocabulary test and you know set you this 20 words or whatever, you got to do it. But there was always a bonus question, which was like capital cities. Yeah.
00:23:50
Speaker
Because he was just like, oh, and for a bonus point for anyone struggling, where what's the capital law of blah. um And I would spend more of my time learning capital cities than I would the vocab test. The actual Russian. Yeah, and it'd be like, oh, Alex, you got four.
00:24:01
Speaker
And it's like, well, you did get the capital question, right? And I was like, yes. And I don't know if there's something weird in my brain that made me always wanted to do something different. Because when I was paralegaling, ended up like helping them run their website and then helping them do some of the IT type stuff just because I was like,
00:24:16
Speaker
the primary task that I was doing was interesting enough, but I always wanted to do something on the side that was maybe a little bit more techy, a little bit more alternative. So um yeah, just it's just kind of always been on the horizon in a weird way.
00:24:27
Speaker
um And then yeah, when I when i qualified as ah as a lawyer, um we had some, maybe a year or so in, we had a problem that we wanted to solve where it was it was a contracts related one. And it was like, we had all this data to fill in, to make all these contracts. And the minute we had the template,
00:24:43
Speaker
And we just needed to create like a thousand of these like bespoke, but based on the same draft. And yeah, it was like, there's got to be a way to get all this Excel data into a Word document. And it was like, well, there you go. You've given me like the earworm is in there now. And i don't know if my boss, the general counsel, again, really smart guy. don't know if he knew that about me and was like, what do you think about this, Alex? And he kind of nudged me a little bit. And it was like YouTube videos, forums, learning a little bit how to do like VBA coding. Because we had no budget. We had nothing to to figure it out.
00:25:13
Speaker
And it was like, yeah, six weeks later, I was like, I built this thing, and it works, and it creates these documents. And it was like, yeah, it works. And we've kind of made something happen here. And that was the concept. And in the end, it ended up being like rolled out to 20 different countries, all these different languages. It's generated like hundreds of thousands of these documents, which is crazy and really cool.
00:25:33
Speaker
But that was just coming up to time 2016, 17, when the final versions of that were happening. And that was when all the corporates started going for legal ops. And a different general counsel was like, we want to do it.
00:25:46
Speaker
ah You're now the you're the legal tech guy. And I was like, I'm the legal tech guy. and So I had the the interesting conversation to be like, do I want to stop doing law, which I've been yeah practicing law for like whatever it would have been, like five, six years then a legal counsel. Not an insignificant amount of time No, no. Like as a qualified lawyer at at least. so And then like maybe three or four years before that in terms of paralegaling and training.
00:26:06
Speaker
and So decent amount, like under my belt. And then it was like, yeah, do you want to get rid of this now and do the day-to-day like legal ops stuff and legal tech? And it was like, yeah, okay. let's So let's go for it. So that's essentially how I got into it.
00:26:18
Speaker
Take us through that decision a little bit. Like, were you apprehensive? or you Were people saying, did it look like this was the future, right? I mean, like at that point in time. Yeah. Talk to us a little about that. Yeah, I think I was lucky in a way. Like maybe it happened like just around the right time for me to be like, there's clearly legs in this. There's tech.
00:26:35
Speaker
The vendors are there. the seed rounds are happening people are putting money in it's like well money is the probably the biggest way of looking at it i guess in terms of like if people are investing in this someone thinks it's gonna go um and yeah so i was a little bit lucky there were definitely other reference points um and there were people in the industry that i'd met so i met um a lady called katherine bamford okay bam legal she's like a doc auto expert and she was just through one of the law firms she's really like Definitely worth looking her up because she's super smart. But um I was like, oh, she's doing it. And she's an ex-lawyer. She used to work for Pinson Masons in another big firm in the UK.
00:27:07
Speaker
And I was like, she's done it. And I've got this opportunity. So it makes total sense. I definitely had the the angst of like, oh, are you cashing in the lawyer card? Which... I've never been a big one for status or anything like that, but there's an element of like kudos and it's like, oh, you did this, you trained to be it and now you're getting rid of it. Like, ah why are you doing that?
00:27:24
Speaker
And I still have it with my grandma where she's like, what what do you do? And I was like, just tell people I'm a lawyer because that's totally, I still am a lawyer, so that's fine. and I still do legal work kind of still on the side. And I was like, there's no way to explain this to you. So yeah, yeah. So I just took the took the dive for it and yeah, it's worked out. So.
00:27:40
Speaker
um i I mean, I'm sure i guess we talked about this a little bit. You know, I mean, to this is a very large and very global legal org. um Actually, what is your remit been as you've done legal ops or how has that grown over time? Yeah. Yeah, I think typically if you're doing it like in an organic way like I did rather than like there's a mandate that's clearly given to you straight away, um it tends to be sort of you kind of start in the area you know and maybe this would be good advice for someone who's thinking about this. Like, yeah, I was my primary focus at the start was contract related type things because that's what I'm doing and when I was transitioning over and then it was kind of more.
00:28:16
Speaker
legal matter management type of things and or external counsel management because again i was doing that in my daily as as a lawyer so it was really transferable um but yeah in terms of the sort of wider org and things like that it very quickly became a global thing particularly for you know a global organization large one and that's thrown up like again tons of things that you wouldn't think about like we were talking about for you know cultural differences sure um you know I don't want to say good and bad, but challenging and and beneficial actually, like where, oh, this country over here, they have a way bigger appetite for this kind of stuff versus over here, they need something different.
00:28:50
Speaker
I was having a conversation with one my Chinese colleagues just this last week, and they were talking about their CHOP process. instead of signatures, which you must know, I guess, from CLM signature. Well, yeah, I'm just, I i spent a little bit of time in China when I was kid, so I'm familiar with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and if You can explain it to the audience for folks who don't know. It's really interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, yeah the the highest level, just that they, instead of using sort of signatures or an e-signature tool the typical way for a company to sign in china is using these things they call chops which are kind of like these little blocks or these these stamps that they they they apply and that sort of shows that the company is signed on on on its own behalf kind of thing kept in seats kept in safe yeah they have these like real these real devices that they do it with and again that comes out in a conversation because we're looking at our process for getting things signed and how we do that
00:29:39
Speaker
And the assumption is, oh, well, everyone's using DocuSign or Adobe Sign or e-signature tool. And then there's a whole swathe of the country, sorry, the globe, where they have a totally different process and it would not work because there is no digital equivalent of that. It has to be done in that way.
00:29:55
Speaker
um And the the law and the the culture hasn't adjusted at that point. Like it has in Hong Kong, but it hasn't in China. And Hong Kong, obviously, as we know, has such a different British connection for for so long. So maybe that's why the law there has been a little bit more... um happy to to use e-signatures. But it was just one of those, like, just literally happened last week where we're just talking about that. And it's like, yeah, of course, we need now need to think of, like, a sub process for the Chinese market. yeah And then it's like, I wonder if they have the same in Japan and in Korea. And they do have versions of that, but they also do have a different tolerance for e-signature.
00:30:28
Speaker
So obviously, I could just waffle on for hours about this. But that that thing about, that's the thing that makes it super exciting in a global context is, cultural challenges, language challenges. AI is kind of cutting through some of that. But again, if you're in a jurisdiction where the training set hasn't been trained on, you know, this very obscure dialect that's being used, then you can't make the assumption that it's going to give you the same results as in English, for example. So um yeah, it throws up lots of cool stuff, which is good fun.
00:30:54
Speaker
how In that example, obviously, you're going to need a different process in a different place. um maybe Maybe the lawyerly answer, it depends, is what happens here. But you know how do you manage needing, say, different processes around things where...
00:31:12
Speaker
maybe there isn't a strong cultural difference, but maybe the team in one country is just, doesn't want to change their workflow as opposed to a team in another country says, we're happy to do that because clearly we agree this is more effective or more efficient or whatever word we want to use. yeah i mean, I guess another way to put that question is like, how do you bring global teams along with you or sort of reconcile some of those differences? Yeah, it's ah again, a challenging one and I'm sure it does depend, but I would say my general answer would be,
00:31:40
Speaker
I prefer the carrot over the stick. Yeah. You know, I definitely in some organizations, in some cultures, the stick is just the way it would go. And it would be like, you're changing. It's mandated. The GC says so. So it is so. But I think majority of organizations just don't tend to work like that. And actually, the best way is to take them on a transformational journey.
00:31:59
Speaker
And actually, most of the... maybe more challenging like heads of department or legal or whatever that i've come across they kind of want to just see a little bit outside there like if you can show them outside their own sphere they can kind of get a bit more comfortable with it so yeah i would prioritize initially those people who are on board and show them and then make a special plan for those resistance we we used to have a colleague where we were like if we can get him on board and we've got everyone on board so he had like his own lane essentially it was like all these people are they going to be the adopters this is going to be the anti-adopter this person a couple people and we're going to bring them kind of both on the journey and the big ticket is like if we can get the antique person to give us a soundbite to give us the green light we're going to pr the crap out of that and it's going like you know person x is is into it yeah and we're going to celebrate that and push it and we've definitely had wins where
00:32:50
Speaker
someone's like, I would never do, you know, I want this to be a manual process. I'm, you know, it's my job is at stake. And it's like, no, it's not. But you've got a genuine concern. Let's let's work through it. And let's show you how it would be in practice for you and what your daily job would be now. And they're like, oh, I get it. And this is way better. And it saves some trees, like whatever. Some people are like, and this will save all these this paper. And you're like, oh, that's a driver for you. Yes, it will. So like, we've had tons of those experiences. And um yeah, it's I think that's what you try and do, right? Try and build that in.
00:33:18
Speaker
That's so interesting. Taking this sort of like person who's very skeptical, who you probably most likely be very frustrated by and instead kind of turning it into a a positive of like, if I can get this person on board. Yeah. I think it's dangerous to ignore them as well, right? Because it's like, you know, businesses are an ecosystem. It's still just the playground, essentially. like yeah And people will go against you if they if they feel like you're being, you know, again, more political organizations, the worse it is and and different cultures are different. But I think it's really ah you'd be remiss to ignore those people and just be like, we'll deal with them at the end and finally get them on board when there's like nowhere for them to go and back them into a corner. I don't feel that works because they'll they will work against you in the lunch queue.
00:33:58
Speaker
Like, oh, it's trying to throw curveballs at it and trying to break it and not in the way that you want them to. Like when you can when you can when you can get them to do that in a... you know in a nice environment, then I think that that makes sense. But yeah, don't forget those people at your peril.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if one person has a silent concern, other people will probably have silent concerns as well. and And they'll blow it up. They'll make it more of a concern. It'll be, we can't do this, you know, so yeah. you know ah One of the things I'm also really interested in to to hear from you is um where you see the Adidas Legal Ops org evolving over the next few years and also where you're hoping that – like having a – you have a very strategic legal ops career, right? i mean And I think that that's what a lot of folks who may be sort of like trying to get their foot in the door on legal ops and say, okay, I'm going to start as a CLM specialist or I'm going to start you know helping run our e-discovery platform or –
00:34:50
Speaker
But eventually I want to get to that point where I'm doing really sort of like org-wide strategic level work that's working very closely with the GC or the DGC or whoever it is. um So where you're hoping your org is going to go, but also where you're hoping your own sort of role and abilities are going to are going to grow and go. Yeah, I think every, again, i speaking speaking for people that I don't know, but yeah feel like everyone who's doing this, my role at this kind of level is is thinking, you think, you feel like that role should have a seat at the top table.
00:35:19
Speaker
Maybe everyone thinks that when they're doing it, like compliance or whatever. And it's like, It feels like that's the way it's going, that because we're delivering more data, we're delivering more insights, that you feel like you would be a really valuable partner on the the kind of the senior leadership team and sitting around with the other um DGCs or whatever with the GC.
00:35:39
Speaker
um So I feel like that feels the like the the natural way to go. um Definitely seeing more people where like... it feels like more and more of the actual work is kind of falling into the ops team's remit as well, I guess because it's all going through a machine a tool that they're in charge of. So there's an element where they're a bit more hands-on in a way. So that kind of, again, I think elevates you a little bit. um I guess in private practice world, it was always like the fee earner. you bring in the fees, then you've got a different level of clout versus just being back office. And it feels like maybe that transition will happen that where
00:36:12
Speaker
If your legal ops people are more directly involved, being doing like more detailed business partnering and and partnering with the lawyers, you're kind of part of that squad instead of the back but back of everything and running things behind the scenes. So for me, it feels like the journey for legal ops teams of in large corporates is to to get to that level and start influencing. And I have seen like job roles already where people talk about a head of legal ops also being kind of a chief of staff. Yep. Which seems really interesting to me. i had never considered that before, but again, kind of makes sense. And you could see that that that those skills do sort of, it helps the GC run the, you know, maybe focusing on the board and sure the CEO, and then they can delegate that sort of running all the activities that need to be run just to keep everyone...
00:36:55
Speaker
ticking over to to more of an operational team so um that's yeah that would be really interesting and then i would say personally for me i've never had a plan i'm not clearly not i'm not a planner which is probably bad for my my my role because we do have lots of plans and we we come up with stuff but in terms of my career it's like you know just keep going where the next weird earworm and the weird next weird problem comes to me um and adidas is such a great you know great place that um there's tons of stuff that you know plenty of rocks to turn over and figure out like oh do we need to go at this now and We've got tons of different practice areas within our our team. There's like 39 different teams makes up our larger team. So um yeah, okay, let's get into trademarks now. Let's get into IP. You know, stuff is happening in those places already, but there's always, you know, it's always resource. So if we got more people or we got new tools.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah. So right now there's plenty to keep me going, I think. In the US, s I think that we'd say you'd be a really great like Jeopardy contestant or you have personality for that. Okay, cool. yeah That's Do you have advice for folks who might want to try their hand at Ops?
00:37:58
Speaker
um And actually, I'd be curious to hear that from a couple different perspectives, even like maybe someone who has some paralegal experience, or right? And also someone who maybe is a lawyer and is working as a lawyer and is thinking to themselves,
00:38:14
Speaker
either I like this or I don't love this as much as I thought I would, but I feel like if I was doing something a little more businessy or a little more operational, that might be rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few different things, I suppose I would say. So if you're at the coalface doing stuff, then you probably have the best opportunity to fix a real problem, which is always nice. Like having something that isn't synthetic that, you know, just coming with a great idea is one thing. But if you're And it doesn't have to be a grand idea. It should be should be something real.
00:38:45
Speaker
If you solve a real problem and that could be something, you're a paralegal, you've come into a team. Typically, these teams don't have a lot of time to think about what they're doing operationally unless they've got a lot of support. yeah So there'll probably be rich pickings for you. Even it's super low-hanging fruit, I'm getting all the cliches in there. It it will be there. And, you you know,
00:39:03
Speaker
have a go, like start, start playing around with it. And depending on what kind of organization, organization you're at, that's something you'd probably do and then deliver and be like, look at this thing I did. And you might get some pats on the back. If it's not that kind of organization, just be a little bit savvier about it and be like, I noticed these things. I think we could do it like this, like choose the right person and and work together and and make it a success.
00:39:22
Speaker
That's kind of how you might potentially grow into a, a, a, that kind of role there where people realize you're the legal tech guy like they did with me that's that's possible um i would say in the and and and again for lawyers a similar kind of thing again harder to do potentially you might just be so overwhelmed with work but also you know now there's there's places that you could seek out like there's firms that have a really great reputation for doing this kind of thing so why don't you work for them instead of the firm that you're at or yeah There's companies that are doing this. They have a legal ops function. So, you know, you don't have to do everything from scratch. So maybe that would be a consideration you'd have for your next role that you want to take.
00:39:58
Speaker
like I don't I want to go meet an in-house counsel somewhere, but I want to go to a place where they're doing cool stuff. So that's going to be a criteria that you might put on your head that you wouldn't have done in the past because it's all pretty opaque. So I would ask that, at you know, those interviews like.
00:40:11
Speaker
what are you doing for this? Do you have a CLM tool? Like these are all legitimate questions because I think now and in the near future, it's going to massively change your role um in terms of like what a legal counsel who focuses on contracts does at an organization that has a state of the art CLM. It's totally, totally different to what it's going to be for someone who does everything by the sweat of their brow. and So again, if that's something that's relevant for you, try and seek that out. So um yeah and and and again finally maybe on the last one you know there's tons of stuff now that you can if you wanted to make your own product or you wanted to make your own solution there's tons of things that are you know the barriers are coming down for that i would say like you can do stuff with these no code platforms are a really good sandbox like even if it's just in your organization like a the power platform in microsoft but there's plenty of others where it's pretty cheap to play or free even to play And you can develop an idea, sandbox it.
00:41:01
Speaker
um And even, you know, all of the different LLMs now give you pretty good stuff in terms of like basic coding for you to be able to get like an MVP, minimum viable product that you could maybe show someone. So it is a great time to, if you want to do stuff, because there's organizations that are open to it now.
00:41:17
Speaker
There's places to go. There's investors that want to invest. So depending on whatever your jam is, I feel like you could find that now if you if you open your eyes to it. That's fantastic advice. um I really like your second point about thinking about sort of the culture of the team and the people that you're joining and where they are. I mean, whether they already have tech solutions or they want you to invest in that or... Yeah.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah that's that's actually really interesting to think about as a criteria ah yeah or as a question that you might ask at the end of an interview, like, yeah Ask the general counsel, in what ways do you use AI in your day-to-day? You'll probably learn a lot about them and just from a basic question like that. It's always a struggle to think of what that question should be. So that is a good one if you're thinking.
00:41:59
Speaker
But also, like it definitely has changed in the last five years and more so in the last two or three years where that isn't a weird question anymore. can imagine there would have been a time where the GC would have been like, we don't want this person. they want to they want to look under the curtain too much like forget him and whereas now i think they would be a little bit more open to it and they've been thinking about it i guess just be prepared for them to shoot it back to you and to be like what would you want to so do your research a little bit but yeah it's it's there um okay i know you've also started a podcast as well i saw you had my friend sean west on yeah um who has recently released a fantastic book um yeah tell us a little bit about the podcast
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, everyone has a podcast now. It's got to have a podcast. I mean, if I can do it, anyone can do it. I don't know about this. It's a really cool setup. It puts us to shame. and But yeah, with ah my friend Tom Rice. So he's a senior director at Travel Perk, a travel company.
00:42:52
Speaker
um So very ah strong lawyer background, but also he's super into tech, particularly AI type stuff. um And we just talk all the time. You shoot ideas around. Like everyone has their own little network tends to have. um You know, if it's if it's your legal counterparts or i mean, tons of groups with like GCs and stuff where people are firing questions. And yeah, Tom and I were just talking and we said, we go to these events and we talk to each other and that's probably the best thing at the event. No, no, no, no shade on anyone. There's still good content at these things, so go to it. But I guess maybe we're at a stage now where we're maybe a maturity level where some of the stuff on stage isn't that relevant for us.
00:43:28
Speaker
But the people who attend are is where the goal is. So we we talk to each other. We speak to people at those events. And we were just like, well, could should we just record them and make them available? So we didn't have just because people might be interested because yeah we're in a privileged position. We have really good access to interesting people yeah and they're willing to tell us some stuff.
00:43:47
Speaker
And if they're willing to tell it and put it on record, then we're like, well, would you do it that way? And typically I would say in the legal ops, and maybe you've experienced this as well with, cause you're coming up to like almost a hundred at the time we're recording. um People are pretty generous with their time and generous with their insights. And it's not, it's not very sort of nasty, even like vendor to vendor. Like I see,
00:44:05
Speaker
CLM partners talking to each other, sharing good ideas. want to give back, think. Yeah, it doesn't have that nasty kind of tone to it at all. And it's been like that for so long now. So that's great that that continues. But yeah, so we were just like, let's make it make this stuff.
00:44:18
Speaker
We will do it because we enjoy having the conversation, which we're going to have. it We'd have the conversation anyway. And these days, it's not a huge lift just to record that and quickly put it online. And yeah, we... that We have no agenda, I suppose. So we don't have the, there's nothing to put out there other than we thought this was interesting.
00:44:34
Speaker
you consume it at your will or or don't, which is totally fine. um So yeah, so we're like four episodes in. We've got another four that we've kind of done and yeah, we have no plans. So we're like, what do we do next? Is this good enough as it is? And we've had some nice comments and we have a sub stack as well. So trying to write some articles as well, just just our thoughts and put it out there and just let people consume it. Um,
00:44:56
Speaker
And think maybe that's where people are going with some podcasts, like podcasts that are like broadcast things that people regularly listen to, like this one, have their place. And then I think there could just be, it's just another way of, you know, I guess it's vlogging, it's vlogging, it's but's just in a slightly different way. So, and we do video video as well, because we want to try to push screen sharing a little bit. Sure. So trying to show people some stuff if we can. Again, we've had a little bit of uptake on that where someone can say, I'm happy to show what that means in reality. Oh, that's cool. um Which I think puts a bit of meat on the bones for some people.
00:45:24
Speaker
That's an interesting idea. um Yeah, wouldn't work in a setting like this, but I like but i like that idea. That's cool. yeah um And if people want to find it, I mean, they could find you on LinkedIn, find Tom on LinkedIn. How should they how should yeah yeah that? LinkedIn is cool. happy to i mean, LinkedIn is interesting. It's ah it's a fun place.
00:45:41
Speaker
ah Not for everyone, but yeah, link I'm on LinkedIn. Tom's on LinkedIn. um But yeah, it's called Law What's Next um because we just we're just very, very, very wide in scope. It could be anything.
00:45:51
Speaker
um But yeah, we're on Spotify. And by the time you see this, it'll be Apple Music and YouTube as well. i Just putting out that whatever people consume on. So, yeah. Fantastic. um Okay, I've got some closing questions for you. okay Sort of my traditional closing questions.
00:46:07
Speaker
ah The first one is if you could tell us about your favorite part of your day to day. Oh, wow. My favorite part of my day to day. um I probably say it's still checking in with my team and and hearing what people up to and it still blows my mind like the conversations that they have so even I think this is something that happens a lot in this space is it is still way people first um so hearing people um talk about like a new challenge that's come across their desk or hearing so the one-to-ones that we have or the little team meeting we try we've tried tons of different ways of doing it like everyone's got to be standing up everyone we we only got to do it in 15 minutes we're trying constantly to make it because we're a multi-discipline multi-location team um but that for me is always really really fun it's really insight interesting you see people excited about what they're doing and that kind of motivates me so yeah i would still say it's those that connection with my team and doing that virtually as well is is a challenge but also
00:47:00
Speaker
It's something, you know, we have a colleague in the US West Coast. We've got a colleague in in got colleagues in Europe. So it is a challenge, but good fun. Do you have a professional pet peeve?
00:47:13
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I think this is a fun one. Yeah. Do i have a professional pet peeve? Um,
00:47:21
Speaker
Well, it's it's so it's so abstract and so weird. and I really hate when people sign off their email best. I really hate that. I don't know why. It's just one of those things. write all the best. All the best is fine. No, no, just best, comma, and then their name.
00:47:34
Speaker
It really antagonizes me. Obviously, people spelling people's names differently than how they sign themselves off on, like just as a courtesy, really frustrates me. I'm really petty, so my pet peeves are like the most pointless and nonsensical things.
00:47:47
Speaker
um Yeah, it's all kind of just about respect, I think, for me. So I like the idea that everyone should be in the same level. Let's all be respectful. If they call themselves X, call them X. That's what they want to be called. That's totally easy to do. yeah So all of those things, just, yeah, just respect generally, I think, is my my biggest thing.
00:48:04
Speaker
And not in the sense of like, oh, I'm super important. and It's just we're all humans and we, you know, do working in this job, I think it reminds you, you know, to be human more often than not. That's a great answer. um Do you have a book that you would recommend? And ah this doesn't have to be a business book. It could be a fun book. You can have two or three books. and That doesn't matter.
00:48:22
Speaker
do you have a book that you'd recommend to our audience? Yeah. um I guess just reading wise, like just in terms of fiction, i read a read. i Probably everyone's read this recently because it was kind of ah a bestseller, but Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow. Oh, I haven't read this yet. Really good. If you're into this kind of space, it's all about like video games from like the 90s and a story around two developers making that. Really, really good.
00:48:42
Speaker
um so if you're into fiction, that's just one fresh fresh off my mind that I read recently and enjoyed. um And then kind of stuff in this space. um Someone who's really good is Alex Hamilton from Radiant. He wrote the book Sign Here, which is all about contract processes. And basically, he's he's that he's got a sort of fixed-fee style law firm.
00:49:01
Speaker
And it's all about kind of the... It's all of the non-techy part of the contracting process around like you know how how you can how how contracts should be. They should be these like relational documents where people... So you wouldn't you shouldn't draft them in an adversarial way.
00:49:16
Speaker
You should be drafting them with ah the least amount of friction while still protecting your needs. So if you again, if you're into contracting and tech and this stuff, it's not about the tech, but it's about the content in a different way, in a fresh way.
00:49:27
Speaker
So I totally um recommend that. um And there's one more that I'm reading right now, which is quite good, which is like how to build a second brain. but So I'm really interested in sort of knowledge management at the moment. and that's kind of one of my topics that's personally interesting to me as well as professionally. And his thing is just basically...
00:49:44
Speaker
just a concept for like how you what you should outsource to like ah ah to you know ah a database and how you might do that and have a process for that, but then how that might then work with like a team of different people. Again, I think super relevant for this era that we're now going in, where We're knowledge workers. like I never heard never got called a knowledge worker until ChatGPT. But it's like, yeah, I'm a knowledge worker. So it's like, what am I doing with all this knowledge? And where does it sit? And how is this AI going to work with this? So think if you're going to read anything about knowledge and how you might use your knowledge, that that's been cool. I'm kind of halfway through that one. So I'd get to give that a ah recommendation as well.
00:50:18
Speaker
That's great. That's a good mix there. I like that. Yeah, a few different things. Yeah, take your pick. Yeah. um My last question for you, Alex, my traditional closing question for my guests, it's if you could look back on your days of being a young lawyer just getting started, something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then.
00:50:39
Speaker
Oh, wow. I think um probably that people want want you to meet them where they are. And I think sometimes you can feel as a lawyer a little bit like a bit loyally.
00:50:50
Speaker
it's Sort of like, I need to produce this thing, which is a great tome, a great work that I've done. And actually, you don't always need the Rolls Royce job of everything. And actually, sometimes people need you to meet them where they are essentially there.
00:51:01
Speaker
This isn't always their priority. Like for them, sometimes getting the contract or the legal advice is part of their process so as as cogs in a machine sometimes or ships in the night all the other cliches um i think sometimes yeah the most important thing is actually to meet them where they are and that's to understand what's where their question's coming from understand what they actually really need from you rather than being like oh this is what i do and this is this is what you shall receive from me yeah and i it's attached to the email there you go also people don't care about when you list in an email the three attachments, you don't have to always go back and make sure that they're in the same order as you've attached them to email. I'm going back to pet peeves now, but it's like the amount of time that I spent doing weird legal stuff where you're like putting everyone in CC in the order of their seniority and stuff like that. And it's like,
00:51:47
Speaker
Oh, thank God I've never had to do that before. There's some weird stuff that people do. And actually, I feel like you can jailbreak some of that and be like, I'm just not going to partake in that. And actually what I'm going to do is just meet people where they are and deliver to them stuff that's actually going to help them rather than giving them what my idea of what a lawyer should do and what what I think is what people will expect of me. So.
00:52:06
Speaker
That's a great answer. um Alex, thank you so much for recording this episode with here in London. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. And we hope to see next time.