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EP 11: From Yahoo to AI: Ron Bell on Reinventing Legal Operations
3 Plays5 days ago
In this episode of SpotDraft’s Beacon Voices podcast, Akshay Verma sits down with Ron Bell to discuss the evolution of legal operations and the future of legal teams in the AI era.
Ron shares how his experience at Apple and Yahoo shaped his thinking around collaboration, systems, and legal strategy, and reflects on the early days of legal ops alongside pioneers like Connie Brenton. The conversation explores how AI is changing the role of lawyers, why legal teams must think beyond legal advice, and how legal ops professionals can drive smarter, more scalable business processes.
They also discuss the need for law schools to evolve, the importance of systems thinking, and the story behind the upcoming documentary on the rise of legal operations.
Topics
Introduction and Ron Bell’s journey in legal operations: 00:00
Early legal career and the growing need for collaboration in legal teams: 01:40
How paralegals shaped operational thinking in legal teams: 04:54
The origins of legal operations: Connie Brenton, Yahoo, and building the first legal ops community: 08:34
Advice for legal ops professionals on getting leadership buy-in: 13:22
Rethinking legal education, AI, and the future role of lawyers in business and legal operations: 15:07
Apprenticeship, hands-on learning, and preparing future lawyers: 18:58
Comparing the impact of AI to the rise of email: 21:30
Using AI to automate procurement and legal intake workflows: 24:40
Why people and process must come before technology in legal ops: 26:34
How AI will reshape legal careers, legal teams, and legal operations: 30:24
The story behind the legal operations documentary and the future of the profession: 42:27
Connect with us:
Ron Bell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronsbell/
Akshay Verma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-verma-esq/
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
Introduction to Legal Operations and Key Figures
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm standing there with like the real life version, you Gandalf of of legal ops. And she's sort of laying it out for me. And it's like one of those things where like, now you say legal ops and people go, yeah, of course.
00:00:13
Speaker
Right, like of course, it's obvious. Why wouldn't you run the function in this way? Why wouldn't you be thoughtful? Why wouldn't you have processes and systems and think about things systematically and work out your strategy? But at the time, like nobody was thinking this way. And she's like, well, we've been doing this at NetApp and some other companies are starting it. And would you like to get, you know, one started at Yahoo and get involved in some of these meetings? And I was like, huh, yeah.
Meet the Host and Guest
00:00:44
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is Akshay Verma, the COO at Spot Draft and your host for the Beacon Voices podcast. And excited to have a conversation today with a legend in our space, Ron Bell, who is currently the chief legal and administrative officer at Collective Health. Ron, thanks for taking
The Legal Operations Community
00:01:01
Speaker
some time to talk with me today.
00:01:02
Speaker
Thank you for having me. How's it going? How are things going for you? Good. Good. Thanks for asking. I have obviously known about your work for a long time as we were catching up before the recording. We're just kind of catching up around when we may have first met. And it reminded me like how small and insular this world really is. And especially here in the Bay Area, I mean, there are a ton of lawyers and legal ops professionals in the Bay Area. And the fact that you and I may have crossed paths at some point in 10 years down the road and still remember that interaction in some fashion, I think was a testament to how closely knit this community of lawyers and legal ops ops professionals are.
00:01:39
Speaker
And so I'd love to talk to you a little bit about your journey today. i want to talk a little bit about what really drew to Legal Ops. And then we've got an exciting surprise coming up at CLOCK, which is still under wraps. But I think by the time this episode airs, it'll be out there in the public. And I want to talk a
Early Career and Technological Evolution
00:01:56
Speaker
little bit about that project with you as well.
00:01:58
Speaker
Great. All right. early days as a lawyer, is there anything that spoke to you back then about the operational side of being a lawyer? Is there anything that drew you in that said, you know, there's got to be a better way of doing this, or we should really keep an eye towards these things that have nothing to do with lawyering and are more about the business side of the of the law?
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, well... um The early days of lawyer, I mean, maybe to put it in perspective of it, I i i became a lawyer back in the early 90s, right? So for some of the people listening to the podcast, that's when they were born. um and And email in law firms was a new thing back in the early 90s, just to put this all in perspective. so Yeah. ah Was there a way to do things better? Heck yeah, but the the technology didn't exist. And ah business was really, really very different back then. The the pace was was still fast, but it was much slower. Things were less global, less fast. There was less intensity. And um I don't think that ISO much...
00:02:57
Speaker
thought like, oh, there's a bunch of things we could do better so much as I was like, wow, you know, we're still doing things a lot of the same way that our predecessors did them back in the early nineteen hundreds right? Like so yeah the computer may spit out the draft, right? But like instead of a typewriter or or a typing pool, but still going to the partner who prints it out and then writes on it and then hands it to somebody and then they and then they work with it. um But what was becoming obvious even then, i think as a young associate,
00:03:26
Speaker
was technology's ability to connect people and the interdisciplinary nature of a lot of the work that was gonna get done. And that that just accelerated as the 90s went on. Obviously the internet came about
Collaboration and Innovation in Law
00:03:39
Speaker
as a as a thing. ah But then when I moved in-house originally from law firm to Apple,
00:03:45
Speaker
um I realized just how collaborative, many people have to work to get a product out the door, right? Not just the legal people, but the um yeah the people in product and operations and marketing and so on and so forth. And they all need to be able to collaborate. They all need to be able to communicate. They all need to be able to synchronize their negotiation strategy. And there were tools and people who were doing that, sort of managing the business and whatever. And in legal...
00:04:11
Speaker
we had nothing, right? Again, you know, we were we were not far from the typing pool, right? um and ah But you could see that there was a need, right? i think that that i And I won't say that I was the first or even even come close to identifying that need because it was others, but i could feel you could feel the gap, right? And there was so much need to get on the phone and just have conversations with people all the time and just try to communicate about what was going on that the sharing of information, the coordination of information and strategy was just like a huge part of the lawyering process, which nobody teaches you
Technology and Legal Background
00:04:48
Speaker
in law school, right? It's all about like Hadley versus Baxendale, you know? Absolutely. Great. Absolutely. Did you pick up on any of that in your law firm days? I mean, yeah I was a paralegal before i went to law school. I practiced big law and medium law before I made the switch over to the business side of the law, you know, almost holistically. 14 years ago, and it wasn't anywhere near on my radar in my law firm days, but was that something that you were already kind of picking up on as you're working with clients? So my brother and I, in in our early days, before we we went to college, ah had a
00:05:22
Speaker
a software business where we were making what were called electronic bulletin board systems, right? Those
Role of Paralegals and Legal Ops Evolution
00:05:27
Speaker
were dial-up systems. People would dial into your computer and they'd leave messages for each other, do whatever. And we were creating some of the stuff that did that. um And so I had a taste of what it was like to collaborate and use electronics for that, but I had not, just to be perfectly clear, connected the two in any way beyond like, oh, this is interesting and someday you may be able to do this at scale. But I hadn't connected that as ah as ah as a legal concept. um
00:05:53
Speaker
What I did see, and which which plays nicely into some of the discussion we're going to have though, is the paralegals knew everything. yeah Like the lawyers knew the law, but the paralegals knew how to get stuff done. They knew how the systems worked. They knew how to like find things out. They knew how to put together the PowerPoints and presentations for the clients. Like they didn't get a lot of the credit, but they made the place work.
00:06:17
Speaker
And I think in some ways, ah you know, in legal ops is sort of the the successor to some of that to some of that generation and that and that role. Yeah, it's a great point. You you see so many different disciplines and backgrounds that go into legal operations. You
In-House Experience at Apple
00:06:34
Speaker
at my team, at Facebook, I don't think I had a single person who had a similar background on my team in legal ops. Somebody had come from IP operations, somebody had come from finance. I had a terrific direct report who came from the nonprofit world, slightly in an operational role. So all these multidisciplinary entry points that come into legal operations, which I think just speaks to the diversity of thought that's required in order to succeed in that function and to make it successful.
00:07:04
Speaker
But then
Emergence of Legal Ops as a Function
00:07:05
Speaker
you make the transition from the law firm life into your first in-house role. Are you basically hit over the head with how multidisciplinary you have to be at that point? Yes. i mean, i i i had spent my years the law firm. first of all, I was making a transition, so I'd spent my years the law firm doing litigation. When I came in-house at Apple, it was all transactional. So that was actually pretty helpful in a way because while I was learning how to write deals and so on and so forth and learning Apple's business processes, being a litigator teaches you pretty quickly what matters when disputes come up, which is a lot of the reason people write deals. is not the only reason, but it's an important consideration. a great way to learn, though. Yeah, it's a great way to learn. so But i was I was immediately hit over the head by like, wow, you better talk with operations. You better check with engineering. And you know what' what's the product rollup? And these schedules that would get put together that were like these Gantt charts from hell that with everything was connecting. And realizing like,
00:08:00
Speaker
Nobody, it's it's not your deadline. It's the company's deadline. Like you miss that. And then all these, like, you know, you can see these, everything trails off into disaster, right? Like it's all written that way. yeah And that was, you know, that was immediately apparent and, but also exciting. Like you feel like, oh, wow, I have a stake in this. I'm building something. I'm helping to make products people use. I have a role. People are relying on pet me. People are depending upon me. I can see that connection much more grand and orderly. than I could you know when i was when I was working at a law firm, yeah for sure. And and i'm I'm guessing it's still a little too early for legal operations to be a coalesced function or a standalone function or anything like that. When did that first get on your radar? like what was it What was it like when you know the world decided that this was a function and it was going to be a thing?
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's funny because I i would say probably the early 2000s, somewhere around there, I had a meeting with with Connie Brenton, who's very well known in these in thesey circles. um And she kind of reached out to me because I was doing a bunch of different things at Yahoo, and we didn't yet have a legal apps function, but we were a good-sized company, and we were known for being pretty entrepreneurial and open to new ideas. And she reached out and said, hey, can you want to have breakfast. So we got together and she was like, I think there's going to be this thing.
Building a Legal Ops Community
00:09:21
Speaker
Right. And it's going to be all the, it was like that scene. There's a scene in, um, I think it's the, uh, the Charles Lindbergh, you know, where ja Jimmy Stewart comes out and he's like,
00:09:32
Speaker
he's like He's like, well, someday there'll be airplanes and they'll carry people over the ocean and they'll do whatever, right? like And they have that scene to demonstrate not only like they they the history of what happens afterwards, but also to show this very smart character, except this was happening in real life. So I'm standing there with like the real life version, you know Gandalf of of legal ops. And she's sort of laying it out for me. And it's like one of those things where like now you say legal ops and people go, yeah, of course.
00:10:00
Speaker
Right? Like, of course, it's obvious. Why wouldn't you run the function in this way? Why wouldn't you be thoughtful? Why wouldn't you have processes and systems and think about things systematically and work out your strategy? But at the time, like, nobody was thinking this way. And she's like, well, we've been doing this at NetApp and some other companies are starting it. And would you like to get, you know, one started at Yahoo and get involved in some of these meetings? And I was like, huh.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think I would. So, you know, went
Advocating for Legal Ops within Companies
00:10:24
Speaker
off and chatted with our then GC and we were we were just dipping our toes, like looking around. And our big problem at the time, which seems very mundane now, was was legal billing.
00:10:34
Speaker
Like everything was on one you know piece of paper that would get passed around the department and it would never get paid. It would get lost. Someone would go on vacation. It would be, there wait, has anyone seen the bill? right it be gone It was a terrible way to conduct business and made it really very hard for us to plan.
00:10:51
Speaker
And so um that was where we started. But it it all started from that, just sitting down with her and having someone just sort of say like, well, have we ever thought about doing this differently? And immediately realizing, oh, yeah maybe there is an opportunity. And that led to ah you know hiring our first person to do legal ops at Yahoo, Jeff Franke, and then starting ah to participate in a group of about but initially about six, seven companies, and then it became like 12, and then it grew, that were just almost like, it was almost like, I guess those salons in Paris must have been, you know, and back in the day, where like, I have brought my beautiful painting, right? Like, everyone would come, I call it impressionist, right? You know? And like, we but we were all coming together, and everybody's like, well, what are you doing?
00:11:35
Speaker
Like, what's working for you? Or how did you get approval for that? Or where'd you get the budget for that? yeah And, it you know, it wasn't like,
Effective Communication with General Counsel
00:11:43
Speaker
this anti-competitive action where people were sharing trade secrets or anything like that. It was literally like, how do we do this better?
00:11:50
Speaker
And just sort of marveling that there was somebody else out there who was facing those same challenges and trying to do it. So um that that, I think, is when things really started to take off, at least for for Yahoo and for me, was what just that realization, oh, there's an entire community of people right, who who think this is an interesting thing, who can come together and we can share ideas. So it's not, we're not just, you know, ah single voices yelling in the hurricane. We're a chorus yelling in the hurricane, if you will. Yeah, slightly louder. Slightly louder. But yeah, well you talked about um one of the first things after your conversation with Connie was going to your GC to have a conversation about, hey, should we do this? And here's why I would advocate for it. Was that a tough conversation to have at all?
00:12:32
Speaker
No. And and and and and i I give Mike full credit for that because um i Yahoo was always a pretty entrepreneurial place. And Mike was always the type of GC who was like,
00:12:45
Speaker
Okay, you got an idea. If it's a good idea, go do it. um I'm not going to give you any money for it. I'm not going to give you any resources for it. But you go, buddy. And if you can come back with something that makes sense, let's talk about it, right? And then eventually, of course, there would be those things. But he was always willing to let us run with an idea if he thought there was some merit to it. And he could immediately see things like e-billing and things like that really were... Obviously, as I say, you could show some some savings on that pretty quickly by adding some process to it and like, hey, I've created on my own budget. Now, can we do a couple of other things? Right. Well, there are plenty of legal ops professionals out there who still have difficult conversations like that with with the GCs or CLOs that they might report to. you have advice for them on
Interdisciplinary Training in Law Education
00:13:32
Speaker
how they should tackle those conversations? Right. Well, it depends with everybody. Everybody's different, but I think start with the need, like not just the opportunity of what other people are doing, but like, Hey, here we are.
00:13:43
Speaker
We have this challenge in our case, it was e-billing, but it might be getting contracts done or coordinating the workflows or, you know, whatever it is. Um, Start with that and relate it to the company strategy and what the department's trying to do. Like you want to lower costs and be more efficient. Here's this way we can do this, right? Here's this process. In fact, we don't even have to start from scratch. You know, I happen to know some people over at Blunk, you know, did this and I'd be happy to talk to them, come back with a proposal. You don't have to agree today, but is it okay if I explore that and come back to you with it?
00:14:16
Speaker
um And start a conversation because i think I think where things fall down a lot of times with any proposal is not just legal ops is like people come in with an idea and they're like, I'm going to sell the idea.
00:14:27
Speaker
And was like, no, don't sell the idea. You don't know yet if it's a good idea. You you think it's a good idea. Ask, you know hey, do you think this would be good idea? what would What would make it a great idea? What would you need to see to feel comfortable proceeding forward? you know like Have I captured the things that are on your mind and of most concern right now? Is there anything right now that would make you say like,
00:14:48
Speaker
Let's do this not now, but later, right? Like just have that conversation and ask more questions than you start pitching. Make them a part of the process.
00:14:58
Speaker
And then you're not selling, you're bringing them along, right? You're, you're, you're, you're right. They're already with you. Absolutely right. um You talked a little bit earlier about kind of being ah a fresh lawyer, going to law school. We talked a little bit about how it was such a transition to go from the law firm life to um ah to the in-house world
AI's Transformative Potential in Legal Practice
00:15:20
Speaker
and learning all of these different things. um So if you were to go back and take a look at law school and advocate for this, what would you do differently in law school? Like how should it be taught differently, if at all, in your mind?
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, I think the one of the challenges we have with law schools, it's only three years, right? So they try to get everything in there and it's like, it's a little bit of this and it's pastiche and you go off to the law firm and or whatever and you you you're sort of trained in everything.
00:15:46
Speaker
But I think the cycles are getting faster, so there's actually less training going on at the companies than people think or imagine in law school that it might be. So I think one you know one thing is having more tracks, and there're this is increasingly happening happening, for people to learn about the technical disciplines and things that they're going experience out in the the working world. like A couple of years ago, there were very few privacy programs, for example, at at major law schools. That's starting to change, right? Few security programs, right? Fewer AI programs. yeah all All of this is is, it's helping people to get familiar with the technology and the types of issues that they can raise so that they can think intelligently. And then on the legal ops side of the fence, bringing it back to the audience, right? Like,
00:16:29
Speaker
The role of lawyers is changing. Like it is not just to dispense legal advice. Legal advice is the tool by which you advance a business interest. It happens to be your tool and your particular skill set, but marketing is also trying to advance a a business interest. They used to have a different tool.
00:16:47
Speaker
So you have to start with the legal advice is my reason reason to be at the table. But once I'm at the table, the question is what value am I driving? And am I so thinking systematically about the challenges the business and how I can improve it?
00:17:01
Speaker
And AI is going to accelerate the getting the information and the knowledge. There's plenty of hallucination, but we'll get past that. We'll get enough past it that people are comfortable with what the decisions are, or the output is.
00:17:15
Speaker
But it is it is, if you imagine a world in which the first draft of things or the first output from putting a contract in is going to be the AI takes a pass at it and flags some stuff for you, you're not just managing a tool, you're managing an architecture. You're managing an ecosystem. What do I need to tell the tool to make sure that it will do things correctly, right? how can i even you know How can I ensure that it's incorporating all the interests? What background information do I have to give it? What documents do I have to feed it? And so on and so forth. People right now are at this nascent stage where people are like, I use Gemini to do X, Y, Z. Well, yeah, in the next stage, though, people are going to be building, you know gems and agentic AI to go out and do functions and simplify things in the department. So what I wish that that law schools were were doing a little bit more of is think systemically about the law
00:18:07
Speaker
as part of an ecosystem. An ecosystem of legal interests, yes, but also business interests, societal interests, social interests. And think about how you frame and structure legal conversations in a way that is architectural. That will then translate over to some of the work that people are doing in legal ops, which will be about like how do you design systems and processes for legal teams and so on and so forth. By and large, I might say,
00:18:35
Speaker
Lawyers are generally not the leaders, like starting with that stuff. It often is somebody, as you were saying, who comes from a different background. And I think that's that's fine. It can be complimentary. But I think lawyers, that the where lawyering is going is going to be managing all of these disparate pieces and inputs and and sort of helping to mastermind and coordinate the output.
00:18:53
Speaker
Like that's that feels like where the where the profession is heading. Yeah,
Practical Learning in Legal Education
00:18:58
Speaker
I think you said a couple of things that I want to double click on. One, um three years is too long for law or not long enough, maybe for law school. And I wonder if you have any thoughts around the level of apprenticeship or the lack thereof that's required by the programming.
00:19:15
Speaker
um You look at almost any other profession in the post-doctorate world or in the post-grad world, doctors, even CPAs, there's a level of apprenticeship that's required in order to earn your license. We don't really have that. Do you think that changes the game for lawyers when they come out? If we if we require that for a year or a year and a half, of course, that requires you to maybe condense down the classes even more so. But what's your what are your thoughts on that?
00:19:41
Speaker
ah it I haven't thought a lot about it. Let me just say that front. But I do think i do think um a lot of lawyers are getting that anyway because they're sort of picking a firm and they're picking a a a part of a firm and they're being trained and brought up to speed on clients and client issues. What they're missing is a bit more of that systemic thinking like, cause you, even in a firm, it's like you're in the IP group and you're thinking about ABC issues and that's, and that's your apprenticeship. I think it would be great if there was a program and it doesn't have to be like a law school, like law school, it could be like director's college or the equivalent, right. Or you can go on a regular basis to like enhance yourself, learn more about these types of issues. i'm not talking about like just general MCLE. I'm talking about like a much more structured coordinated program, kind of like what Berkeley is trying to do right now with AI. yeah where you can Where you can really steep yourself in a problem and get to learn it and be get and get better at it.
00:20:38
Speaker
um that's That's what's missing. it's the Now, some people can do that. They can just sort of take, I had this issue here and this issue here and this issue and put it all together for themselves. But most people need a little bit more structure or could benefit from that. So that's what's missing.
00:20:53
Speaker
I'm very much a hands-on learner. Yeah. I can learn enough from a book and words on a page and a YouTube how-to video, sure. But I think until
AI as a Transformative Tool
00:21:02
Speaker
I get in there and I start manipulating things and I really start feeling what it's like to put in a prompt or check an output or recalibrate a prompt based on an output that I've received from from AI, until I actually get in and do those things, all of this will be very conceptual in my mind. And concepts are not typically very helpful for a practical exercise like the practice of law. So that's why I'm a huge proponent of of doing hands-on work as early as you possibly can. um
00:21:31
Speaker
You said one other thing which kind of gets us into the next topic, I think ah is a really nice segue. We talked about email early on as email. And I am old enough to remember when email was not a thing. And I'm old enough to remember how email broke onto the scene. I was in college. I started using email, I'm pretty sure my freshman year to communicate with my TAs and professors. And then a little bit more across campuses. I went to Cal, had some friends at Stanford, Lord knows why. But we would communicate over email. And that felt like a really cool thing because we didn't have cell phones. We weren't texting each other. So the only way you really could communicate with each other was either written medium, like a letter, which we weren't really doing, or the phone. So email was very revolutionary from that perspective. And when it came out for lawyers, Richard Susskind had this very famous line and everybody laughed at him for it. And he said, you know, one day and within five years, this will replace how lawyers communicate with their clients. Everyone said, no way. Who are you kidding?
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, lo and behold, we couldn't think of practicing law, really doing much else these days without email. And so that brings me to this tie-in. I love this analogy. Do you think of ah of AI in a similar fashion, or do you think that it is poignantly different and we should think about it differently?
AI in Automating Legal Processes
00:22:48
Speaker
Well, I think it it's going to be just, ah it it is already just as revolutionary as email and transformative. um there's There's literally... And nobody who doesn't have a strategy or isn't thinking about it. and i think 92% of legal departments have deployed some sort of AI technology. Yeah. I think what's different about email, email is like one person communicating with one person, sharing their ideas or their thoughts. And it's like this one-to-one sort of narrow channel.
00:23:17
Speaker
AI, you can create AI tools that somebody else can interact with. right And so you're effectively, you're almost becoming a programmer or world builder to start with. right um You can use it, of course, the same way where you it's one-to-one and you're you're interacting with it. But where I think the opportunity is and what makes it so exciting is you can also create a gem and a gem or an agent, let's say,
00:23:41
Speaker
and have other people use it. Like i i I built one just to test it, right? Like I haven't deployed it yet, but i at at Collective Health where I was like, huh, one of the challenges we have, like any company is we have a lot of things that come into procurement.
00:23:55
Speaker
And um a lot of them need to be looked at and somebody needs to look at it. And often the default place is, guess what? The legal department. The legal department, of course, has 10 million other things to do. Right? Because one of the one of the sad things about email, if we can just say it, and communication is it's made it really possible for there to be 100,000 different inputs into the legal team. Right? Now you get it from tickets and Slack and messages and you know email and meetings and in-person conversations. Everybody's input inputting it. um
00:24:29
Speaker
But, oh, I lost my train of thought. Where i was I going? um you You were talking about the connection between email and AI and how is- Oh, yeah, yeah. So, so ah yeah, thank you. So, you know, I created um a tool that would, instead of saying to people, here are the rules for when you should talk to legal, run through this checklist, here's our policy and practices, which frankly, no one ever follows. And, right, they come to legal anyway. I created a tool that you could drop a contract on
00:25:01
Speaker
and answer some questions and it would say you need to go to legal for a b and c or you're good to go right and it would in the background it's running a threshold like dollars issues right types of stuff looking at yeah does it have approval is there budget approval and so on and so forth and there are plenty of reasons and things that have to be worked out before you would deploy something like that to make sure You know that somebody actually followed what it said and you're seriously confident and there's no privilege issues. But my goodness, like there you're changing. Now you're changing it. You're you're actually using a tool that people would like to use because it's more interactive and they get you know answers faster that saves the legal team potentially time and worry and aggravation but gets a good
Leveraging AI for Efficiency in Legal Ops
00:25:44
Speaker
result. Like that's exactly the kind of leverage that legal ops exists for. Right. It's it's driving not just cost savings, but value and efficiency.
00:25:53
Speaker
Right. And so like I look at AI and I'm like, wow, what a great opportunity. And at the same time, like there'll be plenty of dead ends and things people do that they're like, well, that's right. But that's what I think is exciting about it. I i love that example for several reasons. um and let's Let's talk about a few of them one at a time. Number one, um and I actually think you said this in the documentary, and was really glad. Hopefully it wasn't prompted. but i'm sure I'm sure it wasn't. I really hope it wasn't.
00:26:20
Speaker
people and process before technology. Yes. Right? And you already had that in this example. um You knew from a department perspective which of these contracts needed to get escalated. You had an existing process in place, which is that you have playbooks, you have documentation. Presumably, it was rolled out with respect to training. If somebody new joins on the procurement team, like...
00:26:45
Speaker
Hopefully they get this document and say, hey, before you send something to legal, just take a look at this to make sure that you do need to send it to legal. But the reality of so many legal ops initiatives, and this is such a legal ops dilemma, is that you still really only get to meet humans where they are.
Aligning People and Processes for Tech Adoption
00:27:02
Speaker
And no matter how clean you think your process is, and no matter how well you think you have attached the right people to those processes, sometimes it takes the magic bullet of a special kind of technology. I'm sure you had some technology already attached to this process, whether it was email or some other kind of thing.
00:27:19
Speaker
But along comes this new kind of technology. And to to me, this is the next level of unlocking legal operations. leveraging this kind of technology to take away the chore that really prevented the process from working in the first place, which is that no one looked at the document in every single instance. And now all they got to is drop this thing in and answer a question. It makes the determination for you.
00:27:42
Speaker
It makes the determination And think to that really encapsulates how powerfully those three pieces fit together. Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's also, it's what I find exciting about it is exactly that. it's It's not just using it to make yourself more efficient in any given task, because we've all been through the ringer on that in legal. Can you people do more with less? Can we make you more efficient? You know, like, we must be, at this point, the most efficient function. Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker
Ascend to the heavens at this point because we we know everything. But um it but it's it's making other people more efficient and effective while reducing your own workload. Like that to me is the key, right? Like, wow, if this could save me time and save the business time and result in, as you said, a better outcome, yeah why wouldn't we do it? But it starts, as you said, start with the people, understand and the process of and then move to the technology because, know,
00:28:37
Speaker
You don't want to automate a bad process, first of all. That's stupid. and you and And having a technological solution doesn't mean people are just going to rush out to adopt it, even if it's cool. like You may think it's cool, but it sounds like I have to change my practices and learn how to use your database, Sakshay. Not interested in doing that. I'm going to keep doing everything the same way I was, you know um because that's the way I learned it in law school in 1940 or whenever. And so...
00:29:02
Speaker
um You know, people tend to be very consistent, which is why a large part and an understated part of the ops function is asking questions, getting buy-in and interest, validating assumptions, and then bringing people to it so that they feel like it's their solution, their answer.
00:29:21
Speaker
they can see the value in it rather than somebody coming to the door and doing the equivalent of what happens on LinkedIn. Hey, I'd like to be your friend. Oh, okay. Hey, I've got a product I'd like to sell you. Right? Like yeah that's yeah right. That is too often the, the, the impact. The other thing it does, frankly, and having those types of conversations, I think is it takes you out of being an IT manager, which is a lot of what can, that can happen to legal ops. People think of it as how you manage the legal tools and it makes you more a problem solver, a strategist, a strategist, a you know a a partner in having some of those ah those difficult decisions and and discussions. And that's where the value lies like long-term.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think the architecture of that um enablement, I think, is probably what interested me the most in going into operations. And I think as I as i talk to ah more junior folks who are going into that profession, i can see the ones that are really interested in heading in that direction and others who are who are more interested in in going strictly into the technology side and yeah being super technical and connecting systems and so forth. Well, kind of brings us very nicely ah into the AI discussion a little bit more.
00:30:29
Speaker
um So I'll ask a super broad question. How do you see AI changing the profession at all? And let's talk start with lawyers first, and then we'll talk about legal ops second, because in my view, I think there are two very important distinctions to draw there between the two. But but in your perspective, like how do you see AI really changing the profession?
00:30:48
Speaker
ah Wow, that's a big question. um Let's break it down into pieces. So one thing that has traditionally been a hallmark of the legal profession is the lawyers have known more law than the clients, right? We have been like the spice traders in Dune. You must come to us and we will get to where you need to go. And um more people are going to be querying AI first, right? Or it'll be built into the tools they're using like Word or you know Excel or Google Sheets or whatever it is that they're using. And so it'll be a natural part of the workflow to get some of that input. um Should they be putting privileged things into? No, right? We can all agree on that. But let us also agree that it's going to happen, just like people are putting things in medical history and whatnot into ChatGPT. So people will come hopefully with a better perspective on some of the things that they need to do and some ideas, and you will have to respond to those ideas. And and it hopefully hopefully can make it less, oh, great, you know you read a book last night and now I have to deal with this, and more of a dialogue, right? Which can really be valuable because then you're having a conversation and it's not like, I will now bless you with my knowledge. It's more, let's talk about how we can achieve a goal together, right? And that that can hopefully make...
00:32:03
Speaker
the profession both more collaborative and more rewarding, right? and The second thing is it will introduce a whole bunch of issues that didn't exist before. Yep.
00:32:14
Speaker
um like the people who record everything, everywhere they go. Like they're having, we're doing this now for however long we're gonna do it, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. But like there are people who are wearing medallions and everywhere they go, they're recording everything and they don't think anything about the fact that they just took and you know and so Aunt Sophie to the hospital and stood next to someone who was telling them about his his medical problems and whatnot.
00:32:35
Speaker
and But the lawyers, right? The lawyers are like, you did what? And you recorded it. I like, oh my God. So that's gonna be like a whole set of issues for us to parse through as a society. yeah um It's going to change the profession, I think, in terms of Maybe the training, but certainly the the hiring initially. Like I think what you will see initially is people say, oh, we have these tools. They allow us to leverage and do things that maybe some of the the the less experienced people couldn't do previously. And either one of two things will happen. um They will hire more or less experienced people to do more sophisticated stuff.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah. Don't think that's going to happen. Or they may move more toward the middle and the top and say, I'll hire senior people, but I'll expect them to do twice the work and they won't have any junior people to help them. yeah This will then create a gap because as we were talking about, like you learned, right? You were saying, I love learning. I learned from, I'm a hands-on person. I learned from doing things.
00:33:35
Speaker
There will be a gap there, right? Because the the next generation won't have that apprenticeship experience. So what how will we fill in that gap will be a real question for the profession. um But bringing it to legal ops, because that's I know that's where we are, right? Yeah.
00:33:51
Speaker
I think legal ops will be a critical function in helping to shape like how do legal teams communicate, decide, inform, um strategize, like what what are the tools we're going to build and how are we going to deploy them to to really enable the next group of professionals to do more, more effectively, um in a way that doesn't, frankly, kill them. Because all those inputs coming in are not going to go away. It's not going to be like when you can do the contracts faster, people are going to go, great, now you can leave at five.
00:34:25
Speaker
yeah know That's not going to happen. They'll just do more contracts. More contracts. More contracts, right? Or they'll throw something else in. So it's it it'll help us to scale, but the legal ops people will be a big part of thinking about, like how do we do that? How do we strategize? How can we Are there ways we could, for example, um you know, use these tools to do legal work or legal review that actually empowers the business in ways it hasn't been done before, like running the HR questions, standard interview questions through AI to see if they are ah friendly to people who might have learning disabilities or be on the spectrum, right? Like,
00:35:02
Speaker
That's an easy thing that AI should be able to do. You assign it a role, it can turn that out. That work might not have gotten done before, but how empowering and helpful to the organization to have a tool that can do that. And legal ops has the opportunity to build it, right?
00:35:16
Speaker
Or helping to look at the workflow and decide what's most important and what's critical and what's coming in and give the GC or or senior leaders a dashboard to understand and connect make connections they might not be able to make today. right that'll That'll be a bigger part of it, I think.
00:35:31
Speaker
And we're starting to see, i think, the makings of this now. And I've been reading, i don't know how applicable this is. It kind of goes on both sides. I've been reading a little bit about the economic theory of Jayvon's paradox, which is that, you know, when a new technology comes in to replace certain tasks or people or roles, it ends up proliferating them more than it actually starts suppressing them or or eliminating them. Again, there are ah two schools of thought. It doesn't apply in the context of AI and or it does still. and And so that's what we'll see. You're certainly starting to see some of the data come out saying that it is creating new jobs. um
00:36:07
Speaker
In our profession, what do you see for law grads as they come out of law school in the next you know two or three years? Are we looking at completely different titles and types of roles? Do you see anything differently with your crystal ball?
00:36:21
Speaker
um Well, for the profession, it's it's already becoming important that you you have people who can do data analytics and really look thoughtfully at like spend and time and you know prioritization and communication and all of that. And that that absolutely is going to be a big part of legal ops. For the people who are in law school who want to be lawyers,
00:36:41
Speaker
I think it's going to what's going to be interesting is there will be more information at your fingertips, more insights. And the question is just going to be, how can you use them? Like when I was a lawyer, everybody always wanted to know how to judge so-and-so rule. Have they ever looked at a case like this before and but bla blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they would deploy some schmuck, usually me, ah to go off to the law library and you know read everything the judge so-and-so had decided on. Like now a tool should be able to pull that up for you in a second.
00:37:10
Speaker
Absolutely. Right? And um it should be able to look at your brief and say, like, I've tried to write this brief for judge so-and-so based on his rulings or her rulings. Can you look at it and see if it's consistent with the type of logic that might appeal?
00:37:25
Speaker
You know, what questions might he or she have? Like, that's such an empowering thing to be able to have in your toolkit. Yeah. So that i think will be i think will be an amazing part. for the On the other hand, I think the problem of technology just leads to more input.
00:37:41
Speaker
We'll absolutely be there. There'll be more lawsuits filed by people using ChatGPT because it'll be easier. right So you know there'll be benefits and burdens. right But on balance, I think for the people who are in law school,
00:37:54
Speaker
The opportunity is is is still there to do the lawyering, but it won't be just pouring through the cases and writing the briefs or writing the drafts. It'll be thinking strategically about the business interests and the legal interests, being able to have a better source of input and comparison and contrast, and have someone more or less you can, in theory, bounce ideas off of, right? A tool that can help you help you shape your ideas.
00:38:20
Speaker
should lead to to to better output and and better briefs and better decision making. The risk, of course, is people get overwhelmed with all of it, but we'll we'll have to see how that how that plays out.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah. I'd love to to hear your thoughts on on kind of how I think about this and and whether this this resonates with you. Over the generations, i I just see this with my own kids, the baseline with which they start their thinking is significantly higher than what I started with at their age.
00:38:48
Speaker
And that's, to me, is a function of the foundational information that they were fed at a very, very early age. And I wonder if that is a leg up for so law students who start coming out and going into law school in a couple of years, where the foundational elements of what they learn and what they come out with allows them to punch, for lack of a better term, at a slightly you know higher ah weight class than they would have 10 years ago, which then allows them to get into some of the strategic conversations and thought processes that you just mentioned. My only concern there is goes back to one of the earlier questions i I asked, which is, does that mean that law school has to be taught a little differently? The one thing that you said, which which I think ah really kind of solidifies a yes for me on that ah on that question, is everything that you talked about in terms of collecting that information, whether it's judge decisions or how certain districts lean a certain way or contracts that are negotiated in a certain fashion, that's all data.
00:39:47
Speaker
It's all data. That data is out there. It's just a matter of how do you collect it? How do you harness it? How do you analyze it? And then how do you um turn it into something actionable?
00:39:58
Speaker
We don't do any of those kinds of things in law school. We don't learn how to do any of those kinds things. So if law school can somehow package that up into one skillset that I would love for law students to have coming out, it would be that. Thoughts on that from you?
00:40:13
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. um Well, i think that's right. I mean, first of all, I think that um the... the the The technology is only like a – it's funny because like people after the the wheel was invented had a different view and a different empowerment from people who lived before the wheel, right? And that is true of many types of technology. It provides you with leverage and an opportunity to use it for something. So I think the the tools that are available to now from when you know you and I were were were in law school or or around that age –
00:40:45
Speaker
are so much more advanced and empower you to do so much more more quickly and more easily, then yes, there's absolutely a lever up. the The interesting counter to that has been like, there's some data I've seen that like attention spans are getting smaller because people are used to bite-sized information from social media and so on on their tools. And a lot of the type of work that we're contemplating and in law is attention-based. You have to spend the time.
00:41:12
Speaker
You've got to roll up your sleeves. Like, yes, you know, AI can give you a summary of what it thinks the issues are or whatever. but At some point, you've got to read the opinion and you've got to really wrestle with it. And if you don't, you end up, you know, in law.com with an article about and some such.
00:41:27
Speaker
doing a sanction, right? you know like So so you know with great power comes great responsibility, as Uncle gentle Uncle Ben said. I i do think it is it's exciting that the technology is finally has been in the process of and is now finally really reaching the law, right? Because like even 10 years ago, if you were to say, let's talk about technology,
00:41:52
Speaker
you know legal software, people would go, you mean like Word, right? Like, and now, right, how many how many companies are there that are really, you know, focused on that? So I think the tools are getting better. i think it it would be helpful for law schools to to steep people in some of that technology, help them understand the implications of it. give them some practical applications of it, maybe put it to use, you know, in things like the legal aid clinics and other things. doesn't have to be, you know, and and let and let people use it and understand it and get comfortable with what the possibilities of it are, right? That would be really exciting, I think.
00:42:26
Speaker
Awesome. All right. Let's talk a little bit about the surprise coming like up a clock for a few minutes and then and then we'll wrap up. um The idea for this documentary came from Susan Packle. She grabbed me in 2023 at a conference and said, I have this crazy idea. i need you to tell me it's dumb or we should do it. I said, okay. And within about three seconds of her starting, i was like, we're going to do this. Like, we've got to figure out a way to do this. So for me, there's a really kind of personal story about why I wanted the story of legal operations to be told, because it spawned an entire second phase of my career that has given me a significant level of joy. But what was it about for you to be a part of this and to tell this story about the legal profession?
00:43:13
Speaker
I think there were a couple of things that really appealed to me. and And one was just that it's a story that deserves to be told, right? um Not just for historical reasons, but for present contemporaneous reasons, right? It's a story about in in a profession where not much changes very quickly, right? And there is a, by by rights and by design, a fealty to precedent and continuity and thoroughness, right?
00:43:41
Speaker
to a time when people realized there was an opportunity to do more and to accelerate the function of the legal departments and the teams and the business in a way that hadn't been done before.
00:43:57
Speaker
And you look at what we're going through right now, we were just talking about AI and how what is all the impact it's going to have. Like, nobody really knows. like yeah you know You can ask me, which is very flattering. Like, um you can get anybody on this podcast, everyone will give you a different opinion about where it's going. as well Great perspectives, though. Yeah, and and what is and what is happening. but But it's a time of change and time of times of change, some people find that very, very scary.
00:44:18
Speaker
um other people see and this i find myself more in this this camp other people look at it and they say like this is opportunity like suddenly the old rules don't apply like i can figure out like all this stuff and um i've got all these tools i didn't have before what yes i've got to figure out these issues privacy and security and all that but like what would that mean if i could figure that out how could i use these to make my life easier to make the business more effective and and more efficient And so I feel like this is the moment where that opportunity really exists for legal ops professionals and for departments. And so to go back and say, well, actually, this isn't the first time there's been a revolution.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yes. You know, and there was there these early days where people were kind of just figuring it out off their desks, part time, we're honest, like most of the time. Yeah. And to go back and look at that and and not...
00:45:11
Speaker
not as a, oh, let's you know reverentially look at that time and those people and and and all of that and celebrate you know the founding fathers kind of idea, but more, oh, like what's different about them?
00:45:23
Speaker
like Why can't I be that person? Why can't I think about what the next generation would be? And now that I have these tools available to me that they didn't even have and and and organizations that have whole benchmarks and standards and groups that I can go to, like how much can I achieve? How much can I do? And like, that to me is super exciting, right? That's, that's the story I hope people take from it, right? Like not the story of what happened, but the story of what happens next.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think there's a ah different takeaway ah for lawyers or legal ops professionals, depending on who sees the film? a Well, I haven't seen the whole thing yet. So with that caveat, but just for my, my segment, I think for legal ops professionals, it's,
00:46:10
Speaker
It's you're not alone and there's a lot that can be done even in small ways over time. um But now is your moment and your your chance to make a big difference.
00:46:21
Speaker
For lawyers, I hope it is stop thinking about legal ops as just the IT t department, right? Like start thinking about them as your strategic partners who can really make an impact on how you show up, how you tell the story of your department, how you show the value to the business, how you generate results. um You know, think of them as as your your secret weapon, right? Like that's where the opportunity is. um I don't think everybody thinks about it that way.
00:46:51
Speaker
And that's probably always going to be true. Not everybody is the same way, but like I hope more and more people will begin to think about it that way. Yeah, I do think you're starting to to see that trend if the number of legal ops roles that are open right now is any indication of that.
00:47:07
Speaker
Right. There's certainly a wave towards feeling like this role has really arrived on the main stage and and the early adopters are have have transitioned and given way to kind of the mainstream. So I think we're all kind of hoping to see more and more of that as we as we proceed.
00:47:24
Speaker
Yep. All right. Ron, thanks so much for joining me today. It was a fantastic conversation. I really honestly could have gone for another hour on this. You have such a font of information and history and background on these issues. It was really a pleasure to talk with you today.
00:47:38
Speaker
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. All right.