Pearls On, Gloves Off: The Legal Innovation Podcast

On this episode, Lisa Gilley , Chief Legal Officer at Higher Logic , joins Mary to talk about, among other things, community and engagement and how the Higher Logic platform allows organizations to give their community a home where they can interact, share ideas, answer questions and stay connected. Engagement with customers is critical for customer retention in any community, and the legal commun...

On this episode, Katherine Roseveare , General Counsel - Global Functions, Global Operations and Legal Solutions, and Alex Herrity , Director - Global Legal Solutions at Adidas , join Mary to talk about managing technology in a global setting, the creative mindset of their legal team and building out a legal tech department and team from scratch. They talk through their creation of new legal techn...

On this episode, Liam Brown , Founder, Chairman and CEO at Elevate , joins Mary to talk about the evolving legal ecosystem, the importance of mentoring, the ways technology continues to help legal department professionals and much more. Liam talks about how his way of thinking about the legal ecosystem has changed over the years. He says the days are gone when business and law were completely sepa...

On this episode, Cai GoGwilt , Co-Founder and Chief Architect at Ironclad , and Alex Su , Head of Community Development at Ironclad, join Mary to talk about generative AI and its effect on the legal industry. ChatGPT can change how people work in many different industries, and legal is no exception. Cai sees this as a valuable tool for legal professionals, but he says there are a lot of shortcomin...

On this episode, Terrene Collins , Director of Legal Operations and Chief of Staff to Chief Legal Officer at Panasonic North America ,  joins Mary to talk about her career path. Like many legal ops professionals, Terrene is seeing massive rate increases from law firms, and she is pushing back, as difficult as that might be. She will look at rates from prior years, and if she sees a budget-busting...

On this episode, Bob Mignanelli , VP/COO Legal at Haleon , joins Mary to talk about the ever-expanding role of the legal ops team, the ways he and his team contribute to strategic and tactical initiatives, and the importance of asking for an expanded role within the company. Bob sees the legal ops role as a crucial partner for many departments within a company but admits that sometimes leaders in...

On this episode, Michele Lau , Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at GoDaddy , joins Mary to talk about her career path, the evolution of the CLO role, and the company's embrace of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. One of the core values at GoDaddy is diversity, something that drew Michele to the company in the first place. The leadership team spends a great deal of time togeth...

On this episode, Jason Barnwell , General Manager for Digital Transformation of Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs at Microsoft, joins Mary to talk about his title. He describes it as being a professional cheerleader, meaning he is creating the vision for the future of the company. The way Jason sees it, law firms are starting to feel pressure to show value. The problem is value is determined...

On this episode, Mel Scott , Senior Legal Counsel (Global) at Megaport , joins Mary to talk about her career path, which started in private practice and moved quickly to her current in-house role. Mel starts by talking about her podcast: Counsel - A Podcast for In-House Lawyers. One of the reasons Mel started the podcast is to share information and stories that she wished she had access to when sh...

On this episode, Scott Westfahl , Professor of Practice and Faculty Director of Executive Education at Harvard Law School , joins Mary to talk about his career journey since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, including his time at McKinsey and then at Goodwin Proctor before returning to Harvard where he occupies his current post. Scott talks about the importance of feedback for growth in...

On this episode, Lesley Garafola , Managing Director, Global Head of Procurement and Vendor Management at Barings , joins Mary to talk about her career history and how it led her to fall in love with procurement, much to her surprise. Lesley began her career at Wells Fargo as a paralegal, with the intention of going to law school. Then she started analyzing data and organically growing the operati...

On this episode, Jill Kelley , VP of Legal Affairs at the New York Jets , joins Mary to talk about the many twists and turns in her career which eventually led to her position with the New York Jets. Something that might surprise people is just how small the legal department is at the Jets. It consists of Jill and a paralegal, so it's a department of two. As Jill says, it is a highly visible and f...

On this episode, Reese Arrowsmith , VP, Head of Legal Operations at Campbell Soup Company joins Mary to talk about his career in legal ops that started before legal ops existed. We talk about his time in early legal ops software, long before we called it legal ops. This included selling matter management software in the late 90s and early 2000s and building a system for The Home Depot in 2003 that...

On this episode, Lisa Mango , General Counsel at One Medical , joins Mary to talk about her career journey, through her move to the Bay Area for litigation work, which expanded into an in-house position, to her current role at One Medical today. Now, as a tech-enabled healthcare disruptor, Lisa has to pull on all her experience and knowledge just to deal with the regulations in healthcare that don...

In this episode, Ryan Marks , Head of Legal at Airtable joins Mary to talk about all ways to create an efficient LegalOps department, the importance of data, and how to avoid the reputation as the "Department of No." Ryan started his career in litigation, working on a variety of different cases over the course of several years. While doing this, he realized that instead of solving problems by work...

On this episode, Shana Simmons , General Counsel at Everlaw , joins Mary to talk about Shana's career journey. From how Shana got a job as a law firm associate in London to why she left that job and moved to California to work as a contract manager at Google. Shana waxes lyrical about her deep love for Google and what it was like to work at a company that was growing so rapidly. She also shares th...

In this episode, Mary is joined by her friend Niki Armstrong , Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary at Pure Storage , to talk about optimization and innovation in the legal ops space.   Niki has had a long and successful career, first as a lawyer and now as a CLO. She runs through her career and how she got to her current position. Then she and Mary walk down memory lane and talk about how th...

In this episode, Mary is joined by Fergus Speight , General Counsel at Royal London , and Jenny Hacker , Head Of Operations - Legal & CoSec at Royal London, to talk about how they created and innovated a legal ops department before it was an established industry. Fergus explains how he started to see problems in the legal processes at Royal London but lacked the creative thinking to come up with i...

In this episode, Mary is joined by Mark Ross , Principal and Co-Leader at Deloitte Legal Business Services , to discuss his impressive career and his best practices in the legal ops space.   Mark began his career in England as a personal injury lawyer before emigrating to the US. Here he started his career in legal ops to avoid taking the California Bar Exam. Since then, he has become a powerhouse...

In this episode, Mary is joined by her friend Dr. Larry Richard , Founder & Principal Consultant at LawyerBrain LLC , to talk about all things lawyers.    Many who work in legal operations, or anywhere dealing with contracts, often feel frustrated by their lawyer colleagues, leading to a lot of bad jokes and poor communication. To help, Larry explains the psychology behind a lawyer's brain, and wh...

In this episode of Pearls On, Gloves Off , Mary is joined by Mike Haven , Senior Director, Associate General Counsel, and Head of Legal Operations at Intel , to talk about how he went from being a partner in a law firm to filling Mary's shoes as the President of CLOC.   Being close friends, Mary and Mike spend some time catching up and raving about the new Top Gun movie before diving into the real...

In this episode, Mary is joined by Alex Su , Head of Community Development at Ironclad . Alex is somewhat of a celebrity in the legal operations field; his TikTok account @legaltechbro has nearly 75,000 followers.   Alex talks about his success on social media, where he gets his ideas, and how he deals with trolls. He goes into detail about the advantages of TikTok versus LinkedIn and explains how...

In this episode, Mary is joined by her long-time friend Jenn McCarron , Director of Legal Operations and Technology at Netflix . The pair discuss Jenn's career trajectory, the growth of legal ops, and the massively successful CLOC event they attended recently.   Jenn takes us through the timeline of her career. Starting from when she was a child and wanted to be a cartoonist all the way to her pre...

Smooth operations keep businesses afloat but what makes them successful? Join Mary O'Carroll on her new podcast, Pearls On, Gloves Off , where she is not holding back. Mary is diving into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to run high-performing businesses. Mary will be joined by leaders of some of today's best high-performing businesses for insightful conversations about what it takes to run one o...