Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep 42: Legacy Legal Ops v. Start-Up Legal Ops: Susan Packal, Head of Global Legal Ops at Atlassian
2 Plays6 months ago
How does the nature of an organization change the design of its legal operations program? How can leaders of all types embrace innovations that legal ops professionals are bringing to legal ops departments? What are the most important things legal ops leaders need to know about the business?
Susan Packal, Head of Global Legal Operations at Atlassian, learned the most important aspects of legal ops leadership serving in director and chief of staff positions at dynamic start-ups and legacy brands like Hilton, eBay, Uber, and Twilio, in addition to running her own legal ops consultancy. Along the way, she’s developed methods for building legal ops teams that leverage their proficiency to serve the needs of the core business.
Hear from Susan as she sits down with Tyler at CLOC to discuss ways to establish a strong culture in your legal team, elevating the GC role, and recognizing the importance of tough feedback to help guide your career.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-42
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Building the first legal ops teams at Hilton: 3:06
Contemplating the chief of staff role in legal departments: 9:51
Running legal operations as director and chief of staff at Twilio: 12:49
Setting a strong culture in the legal department at Atlassian: 15:58
Comparing and contrasting Hilton, Uber, and Atlassian: 19:36
Considering past career missteps: 22:10
Book Recommendations: 29:00
What you wish you had known as a young lawyer: 32:07
Connect with us:
Susan Packal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanpackal/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
Recommended
Transcript
Feedback on Numerical Skills
00:00:00
Speaker
A piece of feedback I got when I you know sat down very earnestly with the GC and said, I think I really want to take on the operating budget. And without a pause, she said, well, but you're horrible with numbers. I can't keep you the budget. And you know my you know very paper-thin ego at that time was just you know mortified. But I, to this day, would not be where I was without that feedback.
00:00:36
Speaker
The abstract is brought to you by Spotdraft, an end-to-end contract lifecycle management system that helps high-performing legal teams become 10 times more efficient. If you spend hours every week drafting and reviewing contracts, worrying about being blindsided by renewals, or if you just want to streamline your contracting processes, Spotdraft is the right solution for you. From creating and managing templates and workflows, to tracking approvals, e-signing, and reporting via an AI-powered repository, Spotdraft helps you in every stage of your contracting. And because it should work where you work, it integrates with all the tools your business already uses. Spotdraft is the key that unlocks the potential of your legal team. Make your contracting easier today at spotdraft.com.
Nature of Organizations and Legal Ops
00:01:24
Speaker
How does the nature of an organization shape the design of a legal operations program? How can legal leaders of all types embrace the innovations that legal ops professionals are bringing to legal departments? And where is legal operations as a profession headed?
Guest Introduction: Susan Packle
00:01:42
Speaker
Today, we are lucky to be joined by my friend, Susan Packle, head of global legal operations at Atlassian. We're live here in Las Vegas at Clock. Susan has had an illustrious career leading legal ops functions at companies including Hilton, Uber, eBay, Twilio, SNCC, and now Atlassian. Quite a few household names in there. She also had her own legal operations consulting firm for a little while, and that was when we first met.
Growth and Impact of CLOC Conference
00:02:10
Speaker
So Susan, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks. Hi, Tyler. How are you doing?
00:02:13
Speaker
Good, I'm really excited to be here with you. Live from clock. Live from clock. It's a thing. Yeah, it absolutely is. You've actually been to quite a few clocks. Tell us about how clock has changed over the years, grown. How much bigger is it than when you first started attending? Well, I remember the days back when Clockorg had like monthly or quarterly calls with the Clockorg, and it was really mainly West Coast. So I was one of those East Coast people trying to get in on the call, just trying to get in with other people doing the crazy jobs that we were doing. um They let me in eventually onto some of the calls, which is good. But no, i you know i mean back in the day, we didn't have over 3,000 people here in attendance. um We didn't have as many GCs. he's attending at that time. It was really just a bunch of operators getting together. So yeah it was a whole new day at clock now. When clock was started, do you feel like that was an important inflection point in defining legal operations as a term or a profession? or and what How was legal ops perceived at that time? Yeah, 100%. I think at the time, I hope I'm getting my history right here, but I do remember the two
00:03:25
Speaker
big places where we were starting to bring some structure to the field was ACC and CLOC. And really those two groups working you know sort of independently, but a lot of people floating back and forth were pulling the industry together, starting to bring common terms around what we did, what the job was, and then also helping each other with competencies that we needed to develop. So without those two organizations, we wouldn't we would not the field would not be where it is today.
Starting Legal Ops at Hilton
00:03:55
Speaker
Let's talk about what it's like to start from scratch. You were at Hilton. Yes. You were the first one to do legal ops there. Yes. As I said, that's a huge organization and I don't think that's surprising to anybody listening in. How did you get going? How did you begin to build a legal ops program at Hilton?
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, certainly a theme throughout my career has been GCs that were really forward-thinking. that knew They might not have known everything that legal ops would bring, but they knew enough to know that needed to be one of their hires. And so I was fortunate at Hilton that when I joined Hilton, it had been bought by private equity. The Hilton family was no longer involved. They moved their headquarters. to out of Beverly Hills to McLean, Virginia. you know All of the big hotel headquarters were were in that space, so Hilton had a huge presence. And the GC that had come there was fairly new, and she had had a legal operations senior person in her last role, and so she knew that's what she wanted at Hilton. So again, somebody who already had that vision somewhat laid out of what she wanted, um But since my career started in HR, that's actually how I started working with her, was as an HR VP. And during that time, she had she was recruiting for a role for a legal ops person. So I was helping them recruit for their first legal ops hire.
00:05:11
Speaker
and We could not find anyone. I mean, I don't know if it was me. I didn't understand what she wanted. They didn't quite, you know, we were missing the mark. We talked to attorneys. We talked to senior paralegals. We were all over the place. And finally, I just sat down one day and just said, I got to be honest, I'm not sure I know what we're looking for. Like, we're missing the mark. I know this is taking longer than you'd expected. And she said, well, I don't know why you're not interested in this role. Like, let's just talk about that for a minute. So really, yeah it was sort of turning the tables on me. But again, it was from pulling from, you know, 10 plus years at law firms to doing operations to having some HR in the space. I think she just had enough experience under her belt to know, like, that's a good combination. Let's get there. You know, you should do this role.
00:05:54
Speaker
And so that was my entrance officially moving from ah HR into an actual titled legal ops
Building a Diverse Team at Atlassian
00:06:00
Speaker
role. And it was a it was a it wasn't even a player coach role, it was a player-player role. So building a function from the ground up, I did everything, and it was you know just starting to build those relationships with finance and technology, and that's where that's where it all started. That's great. Is that something that you've done then later on, which is find someone maybe in an adjacent function or someone who's playing another role in the legal team and bring them into into legal ops? Yes. In fact, I'm doing that more now than I ever have before. I'm building a really different team at Atlassian than I ever have in my career. And it is a joy. It's new, taking risks. But I'm looking for just those certain competencies out there to fill my roles. And they're people are coming from.
00:06:45
Speaker
you know, outside council management focus or program management, those ops, you know, they're coming with different strategy and transformation backgrounds, agile yeah and pulling all of those skill sets under operations. And it has just been a force multiplier. When you were at Hilton, so so you're you're getting started, right? um You're learning the role as you're embarking on it. Learning and stumbling and learning and stumbling. Building a plane while you're flying it or whatever the the right analogy is. Over the course of the years that you were there,
00:07:19
Speaker
How did you think about where you wanted to get to? like what What were the big accomplishments and also maybe what, in the environment of Hilton, private equity owned, what were the sort of roadblocks that you anticipated you were going to need to navigate around on your way? What what was the North Star? Yeah, so I think back then, you know, I probably didn't have enough career under my belt to know what my North Star was for building operations. This was I did not have a roadmap at that time. Being owned by private equity expense management and cost efficiency was A, number one.
00:07:52
Speaker
which I know we just had you know panels at clock today of how that shouldn't be, you know our number one focus, but in ah in a role like that where you're building from the ground up, it had to be, that's absolutely. And that is where i I tell this story a lot, where I got the best career feedback of my life. So to your point, I knew I wanted to grow
Chief of Staff Role in Legal Departments
00:08:11
Speaker
legal operations at the time, wanted my career to advance. So I wanted as much responsibility and different projects that I could get. ah So one of those was I wanted to advance more into a chief of staff role. And so having full, you know, oversight over the operating budget for Hilton's legal department was where I wanted to go, but had been historically run by their deputy general counsel. And the piece of feedback I got when I, you know, sat down very earnestly with the GC and said, you know, I think I really want to take on the operating budget. And without a pause, she said, well,
00:08:46
Speaker
ah But you're horrible with numbers. I can't give you the budget. And, you know, my, you know, very paper thin ego at that time was just, you know, mortified. But I, to this day, would not be where I was without that feedback because I immediately picked up my ego, my bruised ego, left the room and just put an action plan together and said, oh, no, no, that cannot be yeah That cannot be where my reputation stands. So I threw myself on the mercy of FP&A, but that's really where I learned like how to read a P and&L and diving into how the company makes money and you know how can you focus on reducing outside counsel spend, like literally move the numbers. yeah um How can you give a GC at that level of a company dashboards? So she was very patient with me, but I have to say once I
00:09:36
Speaker
took a couple, I think it took about a quarter to get that skill set under my belt. We beat budget every quarter after that for the time that I was there. And I did have oversight over the budget by the time I left, but that skill set <unk>ve literally taken it with me now to every single role. I want to get to Twilio in a minute, but let's talk about the chief of staff idea for for a second. I actually think that's for folks in legal ops, but also more broadly just a very interesting role in legal departments. um You've done that a few times. Can you tell us about what Chief of Staff means to you and also maybe how the GC that you work with, the GC that you serve, shapes what the Chief of Staff role ends up becoming? You've been Chief of Staff, is it three
Scaling Legal Operations at Twilio
00:10:21
Speaker
times? or Three times, three times right yeah that's right. And not currently in the role that I'm in now.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think what's interesting is I think just again talked about this at clock today with even just with legal ops Chief of Staff looks different at a lot of different organizations yeah and particularly when I look across the enterprise at at a company like Atlassian Chiefs of Staff come up through R and&D. They come up through engineering. I mean they come from and they're very they're Solid program managers like these people can run a program, you know, they're agile, you know, they're lean Six Sigma means these are experts but it can look different at different organizations and I think some of the GCs I have worked for are leveraging my experience having run the operations function like a business and for them and now they want to turn that skill set into like, okay, I need you to run all my affairs to that same degree. So that's yeah running their leadership team, you know, the agendas for that. How do you raise a legal leadership team's competency from here to here if they're leveraging 20 some years experience in that role? It's not a program management role that I've experienced. Right. When you've done that successfully, do you feel like you've had to bring in program managers into your ops org to help you? Right. In other words, if you're serving almost as the COO chief of staff for the GC, do you almost need like your own program manager, your own little COO in your department too?
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I think Atulio was a good example. So when I joined that legal team, we were 26 people in legal and we were 175 when I left. And so there was ah an inflection point in there where we where the GC and I had a real conversation about, you know, can you continue to do ops and chief of staff because this is, you know, I need more of you than that. So that to your point, then getting People that had legal operations experience who could run the day-to-day and me step back and you know run strategy for it But obviously today was absolutely necessary. I couldn't have done the chief of staff role Well, if I hadn't made that decision So you do reach a point where it's very very difficult to do to do both but to have a GC say You know tell me how I can be better and whether it's personal branding and making to sure they're attending the right conferences and And taking everything we know about operational excellence and applying it towards the office of the GC, that can be really powerful for a GC who is wanting to who wants that. And and not at not every GC wants that. It elevates them.
00:12:48
Speaker
They can. Absolutely. can Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about Twilio. What did you focus on when you showed up? whileler Building it. Watching the door. um No, but it was like a case of where um like most companies just really operational-minded, solid, smart folks had been you know doing it as a side job you know until they decided to make the investment. So I was fortunate enough when I walked in the door, there was an e-billing system in place. So um not not a whole lot else, but you know there was that in place. And so just to had something to just stick your toe in and and build from there. But those were the days pre-pandemic where it was you know it was all about scaling.
00:13:28
Speaker
And so when you have a company that was doubling in size every year and just could not keep up with the growth, the legal team was just, that's what we were doing. So everything I touched, it was, okay, is this gonna get us to, you know, three more years? Is this gonna get us to like, I just didn't have time to invest in something that I was gonna have to rip out or replace a year later. um And so then as I built the team under me, a lot of program management, a lot of just putting things in place. But again, it was a building environment. yeah So it was ah very much a player coach role. We all had our hands on something at the beginning. But then to see that growth and see how the team had evolved by the time I left, that was that just gave me a lot of joy looking
Building Legal Ops Culture at Atlassian
00:14:11
Speaker
back.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah. What would you say some of your biggest successes were at Twilio? Things that things that you would point out on maybe on your resume if you were interviewing at a place like Atlassian? Well, I'll give you some non-standard typical answers, yeah other like yeah technology. but you know I think putting the right leadership team in place, that was a challenge. and And I think for a company that's growing where maybe at the time a lot of those lawyers had worked together for quite some time and and now you may be going external to put people on your leadership team. You're not necessarily bringing people up through the ranks. That has its own challenges. sure But I think walking away and knowing that you know a lot of those leaders are still there, they were the right people to come in and bring Twilio to the next level. and so yeah you may you know, we don't always hire right the first time, but when you get it right, it can be just a game changer. So I'm just really, really proud of having been part of that yeah evolution. And then I would say, too, the only time in my career actually had the opportunity to transition one GC out and a new GC in. So I was in charge of running that transition. First time I'd done it, but I had been doing, you know, the Chief of Staff for four years, so I knew it better than anyone else.
00:15:23
Speaker
But again, I had to then switch my lens and say, okay, I'm a new GC coming in. What do I need to know in my first 30, 60 days so that I can get in and start doing this job? sure They can handle the C-suite, but what do they need from legal? And so that was a challenge, but I'm really, really proud of that. And I hope I get a chance to do that again. to None of my current GCs take that as any kind of you know wish. i guess I hope at some point I'll just have a chance, at least maybe even be on a transition team to do that, because it takes a lot of work, but I'm really, really proud of that. I just thought of it. I used to work in compliance, and I thought about compliance work and privacy work and policy work as being very important for helping set a culture for a legal org, but also for sort of the wider organization. How much have you felt like in your different roles leading either LegalOps or as a chief of staff
00:16:15
Speaker
part of what you're doing. I'm asking this because you were at this period of hyper growth at Twilio. How much did you think about, hey, one of the really important things that we're doing here as legal ops is we're helping build a legal team with a particular culture or we're helping Twilio scale with a particular culture in mind. Was that something that that you thought about? i would say I would answer it maybe not how you would expect. I think yeah in that environment at that time, we were less concerned about joining hands with other teams that were also scaling and like approaching things the same way and leveraging each other's successes. I do feel like at the time, while those were cross-functional partners, you know legal was just, we were just plowing forth and doing and executing and just keeping up with the rest of the company.
00:17:03
Speaker
I think now I have the luxury of being able to leverage all of the other work that's been that's happening in at Atlassian, whether it's strategy, BizOps, or finance and transformation, these big teams where they're brilliant people working in that space. is Why would I go at these things alone? But to join hands with them and say, okay, let's talk about AI utilization for this GNA function. What are we doing? What are we thinking? What are we going to prioritize? like I feel like that's just working smartly. yeah So I think, again, two different experiences, different time, different company, culture, different macroeconomic environment. yes um But I feel like now, just to answer your question more directly, I feel like now I'm much more looking across the the company and saying, OK, where are we seeing wins? You're facing the same issues I am and running your function like a business. yeah How can we leverage each other's work and not going it alone? And I think that's incredibly rewarding as well. You can move much faster.
00:18:02
Speaker
yeah right I mean, at Atlassian, Atlassian is a software company, as I think most people probably know, and it builds tech that is directly relevant to LegalOps. I'm sure that there are LegalOps leaders out there who've built a large part of their workflows or tech stack or you know ticketing systems, et cetera, i loved you built built it on Jira, right? yeah Our product team, by the way, is a big fan of Jira. With that in mind, have you really had to evolve the way that you're approaching the legal ops role? And and I'm also curious about hiring as well, right? Yes, 100%. I was just talking about this with someone this morning. You know, you're always learning. And so this was no different. And coming into this role, I am building a team like
00:18:48
Speaker
I've never built before. So I am just taking risks, stepping outside of my comfort zone and doing it because it's what we need at the company. So what does that translate into? is i'm hired I've hired the most technically proficient team I've ever had. I really could not have the luxury to take be able to take time to train people on our products. So when you put out there that you have to know Jira to a certain degree on a job description for ops, right You know, a certain percentage of those applicants fall away, unfortunately. So, but I needed to do, I knew it was the smartest thing to do, not to train people up, but bring experts in. And it has been a game changer. I mean, the lawyers notice our ops team knows way more about our technology than we do. i think that' That's obviously what we want in order to add more value. So yes, building it differently now than I ever have before.
Importance of Business Understanding
00:19:36
Speaker
We've talked about sort of three different companies, three different approaches. Would you be willing to compare and contrast those sort of experiences? Maybe like summarize for for the listeners, you know, like something that worked really well at Hilton worked well because Hilton was an environment like this, something that really worked well at Twilio was an environment like this and then at least in still somewhat early days at Atlassian. but yeah And it could even just be this sort of way that you approach other stakeholders in the business and the way that you go about getting buy-in for your work.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a great question. And I think there's a lot of different ways I can answer it. But I think what's speaking to me at the moment on how to answer that is knowledge of the business has just is king yeah or queen. um And I feel that had I been able to master more, like a company like Hilton, it's 95 years old when I walked in the door. it We had 12 different blank brands at the time, different hotel brands. and we had hundreds of attorneys. And so to have the luxury of time onboarding there to really dig into how the company, the intricacies of how they made money, I just did not have the luxury to do that at that time. And I think each subsequent role since then
00:20:50
Speaker
It has been more and more and more of a focus. And then Atlassian was one of the first companies I with where they were like, please don't do any work for the next 60 days. Please love our business.
Knowledge Transfer Across Companies
00:21:00
Speaker
please Just you know leaders coming in, you've got to take that time to really understand it. The answer to your question is they were they were different in that respect. Each company was different. I feel like Uber at the time was the height of just Uberness and what was going on in the world at the time, right? And they were all, you know, scaling and and and every month, every week, there was something new happening there. Didn't have luxury to be able to do that. So again, coming into an environment where it's like, we're already behind. We have 300 lawyers. We have the largest outtake counsel budget I've ever seen in my life. yeah There just wasn't the time to be strategic in some of those ways. And I feel like now
00:21:41
Speaker
call it macroeconomic, call it maturity, whatever you want. you know Now, taking that time and the value that's placed in that is coming in as a new leader is exactly where i where I want to be. If I could take myself now and bring myself back to Hilton in those days, king changer. They would have been even luckier to have you. They would have been, you know, fully resourcing you and your full potential. That's right. You can do over, but you don't get the second chance, but you can learn, pay it forward. With that in mind, any mistakes you think that you've made along the way or the org has made along the way that you think if you put it out there, others would be able to avoid making it, right? Or things that you might have done differently with hindsight.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you know, the the the conversation wake up moments of about the finance side of operations yeah you know probably came a little late for me and I wish someone had cared enough or or gotten pissed off enough, let's say, or what have you to like have brought that up earlier for me. So, yeah again, sometimes those rude awakening moments are your pivotable pivotal points in your career. So certainly not having the foresight to prioritize that before I did that time, I would call that a mistake. But now, i'm since I have gone through that, i don't let that's not how I want my team to grow. So now that's an area for me where I'm always you know wanting to impart more knowledge there and have people learn by doing in order to sit in my seat
Refining Hiring Practices
00:23:11
Speaker
one day. It's really important that I say to that to people all the time is if you're waiting to really understand how to read a P and&L and understand the business till you're ready to become a director, yeah you've waited too long.
00:23:23
Speaker
Do you read the, to the extent that you are able to access them at public companies, do you read the 10Ks and 10Qs and listens to the earnings calls? I read every shareholder report that comes out. I attend every earnings call. I think that's required of us to be good leaders. I think back to you, so I didn't answer the rest of your question. Sure, I've made mistakes. I think we made some hiring mistakes along the way. I think hiring for what I thought I needed but then later realized what the business needed is more focused on where I thought ops needed to help and less about what was going to get the business of legal where it needed to go. These are all things that you just learn through trial and error, but what is exciting then is when you
00:24:13
Speaker
to be as old as I
Building Trust with GCs
00:24:14
Speaker
am doing this. You you get to a point where it starts make set making sense and so again I feel like the team I'm building right now is the team that my company needs to take them to the next five, ten years and that's the best feeling ever. Yeah, maybe just one or two more substantive questions and then I have a couple of kind of fun wrap up ones. okay I think of you as someone and brought up the finance example. We've talked about chief of staff. I think of you as someone who really is able to build trust with your general counsel and and understands that that's a very important part of doing the ops job well. How do you do that? And maybe also keep in the back of your head as as you're answering. Let's say that you're not hired in as the head of legal ops.
00:25:01
Speaker
to build a team, maybe it's a smaller legal org and you're hired as a legal operations manager level, right? And so you might not be seen as, say, a peer to the associate GCs who are really working closely with the GC on a day-to-day basis, you know, given that context too, right? so how do you How do you think about building trust with with GCs or CLRs? Well, people who know me and who know my career know that you know it it that hasn't always been an easy journey. it really I think being younger and ambitious in your career, you want more and sometimes you're not ready for more. And so those are lessons you learn along the way. And I think that over time,
00:25:41
Speaker
when that relationship became sacrosanct and when you fade into the big background, you sort of check your ego at the door as the chief of staff, you know, it's a thankless job, but it's just so needed and so valued and appreciated. But in general, it's very, very, very behind the scenes. But people see the mark that you leave and see, you know, the before you, ah how things went. And then the after you started doing that role, how things went. And yeah it's good when people say, oh, It's so much better. um So I think you know over over time, i've I've had to acquire the body of knowledge that was more than my GC had in a certain space. right So I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to know more about 10Ks and like you know employment law than our lawyers do. sure But I know more about operations, typically, than than most of the GCs. Not all, but most of the GCs I've worked with. And that's what they're that's what they've hired you for. So I think you know having and understanding how other GCs you've worked with have been successful, how they play into the executive team. Are they reporting to the CEO? That can be an important factor. um How do you help them raise their visibility? Getting in with the other chiefs of staff for the other executives so that the GC is getting the same level of chief of staff support as everybody else on the exec team. You'd think that would be a no-brainer.
00:27:03
Speaker
Not always the case, you know, those are all things that just took me many years to figure that out And then once I was able to start delivering results that in itself starts building that trust and I think that just took years Years to get there and after some stumbling around, you know was able to find some pretty amazing GCs that pushed me trusted me and challenged me to say, you're not doing your job, Susan, if you're not making
Storytelling in Legal Ops
00:27:28
Speaker
me better. like I need you to really tell me. Not every GC is is going to want that, but the ones who did you know made me a better chief of staff. So ah those are people I still carry with me. They're very dear to me. But I think back to the other part of your question, you know I don't care what level you are in legal operations. I think when you come in and you get
00:27:48
Speaker
that you can talk, talk, talk and say, say, say as much as you want. But until you start showing some results, yeah you know, people are going to look at you a little skeptically. And so I think someone a manager of legal operations who takes that one big project they're responsible for and delivers results. and can show the impact, that's your first that's your first battle. And then just keep doing that. And if you can deliver results but also show the impact and have people understand that, that's how you start moving your career.
00:28:20
Speaker
I think what was one of the messages this morning we heard at clock two was about storytelling. And I know it's something we talk about the leadership level a lot at Atlassian is we need to be better storytellers and legal office is no different. And as we talked about this morning at the keynote, we talked a lot about how do we continue to move this career feel forward, well, we have to be better at telling stories. And so that's something that I personally, right now, am really focused on developing that
Recommended Reading for Professionals
00:28:49
Speaker
competency. I know I can be better there.
00:28:51
Speaker
Super insightful. In summary, you have to earn it, but then it's worth it in the end. Yeah. Be ambitious, but at the end of the day, yes, you got to earn it. Yeah. Okay. Just a couple of more questions for you. I'm a big reader and people have heard, have listened. I like to read on airplanes when I'm traveling and I don't like to respond to emails on airplanes. Any recommendations for books you would have for me or for the audience? For this audience? For this. Well, I mean, it could be just a fun book that you've read recently too, but a business book works too. Okay, I'll give you a business book. Okay.
00:29:25
Speaker
Radical candor. I think it is one I probably put off reading for too long thinking like, oh, everybody's reading it. I'm sure I'll pick it up. yeah um Loved it. yeah I haven't read that one. it yeah It's excellent. And then Smart Brevity. And actually it's something I have put in with my team. we're We're using the methodology. It was something that our Team Anywhere group within Atlassian, they're known for making us a remote remote first company and having the data to back it up. They started using the smart brevity principles and it has they can show the data on how much more effective they've been with communication So we've put that in in our own team Interesting sort of changed how we do blast communications and how I send out leadership updates and so forth, huh?
Interest in True Crime Media
00:30:10
Speaker
But on the fun side anybody who knows me knows I am a huge true crime fan. Okay a little probably scary
00:30:19
Speaker
I'm not homicidal, but at all, but I i probably listen to true crime three hours a day. Wow. Every day. Podcasts. Podcasts, Dateline. Yeah. um Special cases that come up in the news, you name it. If it is a true crime that has happened anywhere around the world that has made it in the news, I've probably know about it or read about it or listened to it. Amazing. So if you want some true crime recommendations, okay I'm your person. What's the best true crime? Call it like streaming TV show series that you've seen recently. That I've seen recently. wow Well, I will say this, and and you know this, this is one you know, I rewatched O.J. Simpson.
00:31:06
Speaker
Oh, the, yes, the FX one. The one on Netflix. The one on Netflix, yeah. Yes, we just rewatched it. Okay. And it was very interesting just going back to understanding what was happening in the US at that time. Right. And how, again, the courtroom drama is what you're really into. Right. Less focused on the horrific murder, but the courtroom and just the prosecution's tactics, and I get so into that. And understanding what's happening in the US at the time, I think we forget what we were living through. at the time. It's a cultural story as well. It is a cultural story. And it was filmed, I believe, by the same people who do a lot of the NFL sports documentaries. That's right. So it was done really, really well with the historical context.
Interview Wrap-up and Future Aspirations
00:31:48
Speaker
All right. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch that. You think you know the story, but do you really know the full context and story? And I'll read Smart Brevity, too. I read Axios every morning, so I haven't read the book. You're already into Smart Brevity, you didn't even know it. Exactly. Yeah, it's a game changer. I would highly recommend it. Last question for you. I like to ask this of pretty much all the guests. If you could look back on your days getting started in legal operations, something that you know now, that you wish that you'd known back then. Wow.
00:32:23
Speaker
So much. How much time? We don't have much time. My guest earlier offered to write a book. Okay. I have something else I'm working on that maybe you can talk to me about that in a year. Exciting. But no, I'm at the risk of sounding repetitive. I probably am biased on the finance piece because it again has sort of been one of the keys to how I've grown my career. But i if I had done it earlier, if I had focused on it earlier, I think I would even be stronger. yeah And I don't know, maybe might have moved over into a finance operations role, I'm not sure. But certainly a COO role, ah shout out to Akshay. That is certainly things I've considered for my future career. And so I just feel that
00:33:07
Speaker
the understanding the finance side of the business is is the top. That's fantastic. That's a wrap. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun. Yeah. And to all of our listeners, thanks for tuning in to our episode, Live from Clock. And we hope to see you next time.
00:33:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd recommend that you give my interview with Jen McCarron, president of Clock, a listen. We talk about how to grow in your legal ops role and where the legal ops profession is headed. You can also subscribe so you can get notified as soon as we post a new episode. And if you liked this one, I'd really love to hear your thoughts, so leave a rating or a comment. If you'd like to reach out to me or Susan, our LinkedIn profiles are in the description. See you all next week.