Constantly Loop and Improve

Tracey Yurko is the Chief Legal Officer for Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater is a global macro hedge front located in Westport, Connecticut, with 150 billion dollars of assets under management.

[01:14] Tracey's role, leading the hedge fund legal department. 

[04:18] Her role has evolved over the last year.

[06:57] ‘There's a whole bunch of work that needs to get done, we can't ignore it for loftier explorations.’

[07:35]   Place value on innovation.  Constantly loop and improve.

[10:00]   Successful personas that have a curiosity mindset, connect with the business and operate digitally.

[12:00]   We can configure everything like a machine.   If you have a good machine, you'll have consistent outcomes.

[13:52] Lawyers getting to their highest and best use through technology. 

[16:24] Do you want a bunch of different hammers or a toolbox with different tools? 

[18:30] When it comes to diversity, demand more from your law firms. 

[20:06] Don't be afraid to ask for mentorship and to seek mentors out. 

[22:24] Leadership in tough times requires …

Elevate.Together.Podcast.

Tracey Yurko – Get To Your Highest and Best Use

Communicate – You Can’t Build This Stuff in a Box

In this episode, Jake Hills, Vice President, Legal Operations at Elevate, talks with Gareth Hughes, Director of Strategy at the international law firm Reed Smith. Gareth and Jake talk about implementing widespread change, specifically restructuring law firm processes to meet today’s efficiency-conscious customers’ needs.

[01:08] – Driving innovation, embedding technology, and process design – it’s Reed Smith’s DNA

[02:03] – Clients were telling us they want accelerated delivery

[04:09] – “Let’s think about what a great delivery model will look like ten years from now… let’s see if we can make that happen in three years rather than ten years.”

[09:44] – The best bit is telling our clients we can do things better.  We hired our first-ever Head of Legal Engineering, focused on keeping us aligned to change, focusing on continuous improvement.

[12:08] – Clients don’t want to pay for us to reinvent the wheel. They want to see us moving faster, moving to the next generation of working.

[15:23] – When a client asks, “Can you help us solve this?” Four to five years ago; it would have been much harder than today.

[17:27] – Having continuous improvement in a role gives you that freshness. People are enjoying it.

[20:01] – Professional staff can sometimes underestimate a partner’s ability or willingness to adapt, to be commercially savvy, when clients drive change, it makes a difference.

[20:54] – Communicate, over-communicate. You can’t build this stuff in a box.

Enjoy!

Gareth Hughes – Adapting to Change and Enjoying It

ElevateFlex – The Bubble Has to Burst

This Expert series podcast highlights two leaders from Elevate’s flexible legal resourcing business, ElevateFlex. Elevate Director, Paula Forbes, talks with Dan Hogan, an ElevateFlex Engagement Manager, leading our Asia-Pac Initiatives for Australia. Paula…

Australia and Others Practicing More Flexibly

This Expert series podcast highlights two leaders from Elevate’s flexible legal resourcing business, ElevateFlex. Elevate Director, Paula Forbes, talks with Dan Hogan, an ElevateFlex Engagement Manager, leading our Asia-Pac Initiatives for Australia. Paula and Dan touch on two unique years, trends they are seeing today, and what’s next in legal resourcing.

 [00:47] Extensive lockdowns have marred the Australian market for legal resourcing.

 [02:47] Australia relies on resource movement in and out to refresh the knowledge and experience pool.

 [04:00] Talent in short supply becomes expensive.

 [06:09] Pay a competitive rate, make a decision quickly, condense the number of interviews to one, get the decision-makers on that call.

 [06:53] Talent wants an element of stability – longer contracts.

 [08:01] People are evaluating flexible work and how it works for them.

 [10:31] Work is underway on learning and development for junior lawyers working remotely.

 [12:24] Today’s location-independent jobs provide more opportunity.

 [13:47] The UK and the US legal talent is starting to move away from big law firms with big salaries.

 [15:47] Talent is heading back into the larger law offices, and there is a salary race to entice Talent into roles.

 [18:12] One of the patterns that we started to see over 2021 was the movement of Talent even from permanent opportunities.

 [19:39] There is an increase in opportunities in cybersecurity, and the corporate M&A sector is red hot in Australia and beyond.

Enjoy!

ElevateFlex Australia - The Bubble Has to Burst

An Expert series podcast, this episode covers data breaches from three angles – legal, technology, and services. Our host for this podcast is James Manari, a Vice President at Elevate, and our three industry experts introduce themselves at the beginning of the podcast.

[00:47] Meet our guests: Melissa Ventrone, the Business Unit Leader for the Privacy and Cybersecurity team at Clark Hill; Adi Elliott, is the COO at Canopy Software; and Megan Silverman, is a Director in Elevate’s Incident Response Practice.

[03:43] The evolution of incident response and where the industry is today.

[04:53] There is a consumer expectation that if you hand your information over, a company will take the proper steps to protect it.

[07:38] Laws are struggling to keep up with technology and change.

[09:55] Lawmakers don’t necessarily understand the scope of what they’re asking companies to do in response to these incidents.

[13:56] Affected entities are surprised at the amount of data they have and what it contains.

[17:05] Have a plan in place for what do we do when there is an incident, go on a data diet, understand where your information is, know your cyber insurance provider, and know who your attorneys are going to be.

[21:34] While consumers are becoming desensitised to these incidents, legislation is continuing to drive tighter security controls, and regulations will continue to evolve.

Enjoy!

The Evolution of Incident Response

Start Smart When It Comes to Your CLM Implementation

Executing your CLM implementation smart is the topic of this lively podcast. Listen in and hear how the CLM market has changed the world of corporate contracting. Join two of the industry’s most knowledgeable resources, Bernadette Bulacan, Chief Evangelist at Icertis and Kami Paulsen, Managing Director at Elevate, for this conversation.

[01:25] Meet Bernadette and Kami.

[02:25] Legal ops teams cut their teeth on technology. Today those learnings are being applied to CLM implementation.

[04:56] CLM presents an excellent opportunity to introduce legal technology across the enterprise.

[06:03] Big bang or a phased enterprise CLM implementation, what’s the best approach?

[07:12] Best practices include stage gates, iterating, starting with a smaller universe of agreements and creating a team of champions.

[08:50] Are you ready? Are your contract templates in order? Do you know where they are?

[09:50] Starting with a process like NDAs provides the experience to apply to more complex processes.

[11:20] The SOW process forces customers to look at Big Bang while starting small has the benefit of establishing and testing procedures for a larger rollout.

[13:42] The SmartStart offering brings harmonisation to customers with no time for harmonisation.

[15:35] Once you harmonise the content, developing workflows and KPIs are less daunting.

[17:02] Organising your information pays dividends.

[21:12] Prioritisation and understanding of organisational drivers, including consolidation and turnaround, can direct the implementation.

[24:47] CLMs fail when we give customers a faster way to implement their flawed process.

[26:31] Challenging process is imperative; you have to be ready to look at contracts, actual physical documents, the process, and the people.

[27:03] Technology is not a magic bullet; build a team of champions, have playbooks, and be okay with iteration.

[30:56] Programs like StartSmart and overall industry maturity have slowed the 3-year cycle of rip and replace.

[31:39] The last few years, with everything being in the Cloud, it’s opened an entirely new world of integrations.

[33:25] We are all moving very fast. Let’s take time, in the beginning, to slow down, look at the processes, and ask questions – before we take the leap of faith into CLM. We’ll benefit by having the ability to move much faster with reliable data.

Enjoy!

Experience CLM Harmony With Contract Harmonization

The Commute and the Hybrid Work Model

In the second two-part podcast series, Director Paula Forbes talks with Daniel Hogan, an Engagement Manager in our flexible legal resourcing who leads our Asia pack initiatives from Australia. Paula and Daniel touch on trends they’re seeing today and what’s next in legal resourcing.

[01:13] Work from home, return to the office, and hybrid work models – with office downsizing and talent preference – options and the hybrid work model *might* be here to stay.

[03:35] The office is a training ground for early career individuals, offering a social network and a suitable workspace. Then there is the commute.

[06:39] Many lawyers working overseas delayed their return to Australia as the borders opened, while lawyers locked down in Australia have gone overseas or are leaving.

[08:29] Rates have normalized in the last quarter of the year from the increases available post-lockdown as the battle for talent in Australia has turned to other factors besides rates.

[10:58] We’re seeing more uncertainty in the market going into 2023, and there is a consideration that there’s a bit of risk within the interim market. Longer-term contracts of six or twelve months and temp-to-perm or interim-to-perm opportunities are appealing more.

[13:20] The construction and energy industries remain strong and should continue due to the volume of investment in infrastructure, energy, and the switch to renewables.  There’s been a drop in the volume of M&A transactions and an increase in data privacy and cybersecurity investigations.

[15:07] There is a direct correlation between how interested a person is in talking to you about a new opportunity and how flexible the business environment is.

[17:07] Many organizations are coming up with creative solutions to differentiate. Considering who they are, how they want to present themselves, their brand and reputation are increasingly important because talent has a choice.

Enjoy!

Keeping the Flex in Australia’s Flexible Resourcing

How many contract templates is the right number?

This Impact Podcast features Mike Russell, the Head of Global Legal Operations for Expedia Group, and Steve Harmon, Elevate’s COO and General Counsel. Mike and Steve discuss two change initiatives and the impacts of those changes. The first outlines the deconstruction and rebuilding of litigation processes for a large manufacturing organisation. The second involves the process review and automation of buy-side contracts at Expedia.

[01:01] – Listen in as Mike Russell outlines his professional journey into Legal Operations and his role at Expedia.
[01:40] – Now, Steve Harmon elaborates on his background and path to Legal Operations.
[03:28] – We jump into one of our Impact experiences – reviewing, deconstructing, and rebuilding litigation processes, which resulted in measurable savings.
[06:00] – We connected dedicated national trial counsel, and discovery counsel, within a legal ops-driven process to keep track of all the different moving parts.
[07:40] – There was a shift in work from the law firm side to the law company.
[08:01] – While implementing tech is often the first step; our focus from the beginning was adoption and tracking.
[10:43] – There were measurable savings, and the project provided a study on how an alternate service provider can add value and be an extension of the team.
[12:22] – Our second impact experience was buy-side contracting at Expedia.
[13:29] – Over nine months, we unwound our templates, contracts, playbooks, attorney knowledge, and contract manager procurement knowledge and developed workflows with the platform vendor and our implementation partner, which was Elevate.
[15:21] – Realizing outsourcing makes sense.
[17:05] – Routinising and documenting a process can substitute for a SOX control.
[18:14] – People have enjoyed adopting the platform; they like interfacing with it.
[19:12] – A reduction in cycle time, resonates strongly with the business.
[20:01] – We are surprised by the benefits of having a strong contracting policy that dictates the minimum contracting standard, and minimum acceptable terms.
[21:38] – Take advantage of the knowledge your partners bring, allow time for education to happen.
[23:01] – Get involved in peer networking, CLOC, and ILTA, the ACC link, legal operators; there’s an opportunity to learn from your peers.

Enjoy!

Mike Russell - Virtual Law Firms and Boots on the Ground

Using Data, Implementing Change, and Improving Productivity

The Impact podcast you’re about to hear features Senior Director and Head of Legal Operations at Twilio, Andy Krebs, and Steve Harmon, Elevate’s COO and General Counsel. Steve, Andy, and Elevate CMO, Nicole Giantonio discuss planning for and executing a strategy to establish Twilio as a highly efficient world-class law department.

[00:41] – Andy shares comments on his career journey, including 21 years at Intel – from managing wafers to building a supplier diversity model and, ultimately, legal ops.
[01:39] – As the new leader of Twilio Legal Ops, Andy elaborates on tactical team priorities and strategy.
[04:08] – Steve Harmon asks about the relative distribution between the things that make the legal department run better versus Twilio’s focus to enable the business to make the business run better.I was intrigued to hear that your goal is to reduce the number of tools you’re using instead of expanding them. It’s often seductive when you start into a new role to say what’s the missing piece of technology we have instead of saying what’s the first extraneous piece of technology we can eliminate
[06:20] – Tracking basic foundational metrics, revenue per attorney, and working with internal legal leadership to understand the metrics they care about. Using data to make decisions.
[11:06] – Establishing a three-year plan, looking for short-term wins to get buy-in, then layering in and building out functions for longer-term impact.
[13:26] – Using data to support change, improve productivity and improve job satisfaction.
[15:45] – Connecting Legal with Legal Operations, present a strategy and plan for getting there, and bring your colleagues into the discussion.
[17:05] – A practical Legal Operations function creates a huge opportunity to make improvements.
[19:35] – Some days, you’re pulling your hair out, but that’s part of it. If it were easy, everybody would do it.

Enjoy!

Making Legal and the Business Better

In this Impact episode, Aarash Darroodi, Fender’s General Counsel and Executive Vice President, and Elevate’s COO and General Counsel, Steve Harmon, discuss implementing change, specifically the need to insist and engage to ensure inclusion…

From the Mailroom to the Boardroom, You Have To Connect With the Humans

In this Impact episode, Aarash Darroodi, Fender’s General Counsel and Executive Vice President, and Elevate’s COO and General Counsel, Steve Harmon, discuss implementing change, specifically the need to insist and engage to ensure inclusion and diversity within legal. The conversation continues with the discussion on legal professionals as business leaders and the recent appointment of legal leaders to executive business roles. The most compelling points in this podcast revolve around Aarash’s personal story and its impact on his career.

[00:14] – Aarash credits his life experience as key to successfully implementing change within Fender.
[07:45] – Approaching change as a General Counsel, the incrementalist, and the revolutionary.
[10:00] – In-house counsel is critical in ensuring fundamental positive change.
[12:00] – A differentiator between in-house and outside counsel is a greater expectation around business acumen.
[15:29] – The legal department’s role is to enable the business; to help the business design, build and sell its products in a legally appropriate way.
[19:52] – The highest compliment a businessperson could pay to the lawyer is to say, “I want you here to talk about the business issues.”
[24:18] – Unlike twenty years ago, today a general counsel may become the business leader.
Enjoy!

Aarash Daroodi – Lawyer Jokes as a Measurement of Success

Lawyers Spending More Time Lawyering

This impact episode podcast features Brett Durand, Legal Operations Director at Sempra, and our host for this podcast is Elevate’s COO and General Counsel, Steve Harmon. Brett and Steve discuss implementing positive change, featuring two projects at Sempra, implementing iManage, and adopting Elevate’s invoice review solution.

•	[00:55] – Brett Durand from patent law to audits to legal tech and legal operations.
•	[01:44] – Implementing change and iManage.
•	[03:17] – The cloud has changed how we implement new solutions.
•	[05:37] – Ease of use has resulted in a tenfold increase in creating and saving content for greater accessibility, record retention, and risk mitigation.
•	[08:15] – Don’t assume that people would see the benefit of technology platforms and naturally gravitate towards them.
•	[10:14] – The choice between a phased-in approach or a big bang launch – migrating everyone over on a particular day.
•	[14:29] – Build a safety net with your current solution and take the time to assess your documents and reduce your data footprint.
•	[16:47] – Executing a well-thought-out communication plan and having an active champion network.
•	[18:57] – Making invoice review easier for attorneys – by inserting a third party into the conversation.
•	[25:10] – Internal initiatives like invoice review can create savings to fund the implementation of other programs.
“Invoice Review is about balance, and we’re pleased to offer attorney discretion to adjudicate and adjust the invoice.”

Enjoy!

Brett Durand - Opportunity Cost and Opportunity Savings

You take no risks; you make no money

This Impact episode features the Chief Legal Officer of NetApp, Beth O’Callahan, and the podcast host, Steve Harmon, the COO and General Counsel of Elevate. Beth and Steve discuss implementing change, how change can both motivate and challenge a team and that success should be measured not only by looking at metrics but at the organisation’s values to ensure qualitative priorities are not missed.

[00:46] – Beth shares her journey from litigation to corporate law and her current position.
[02:48] – Developing your knowledge of the business will help you support the legal needs of your colleagues.
[04:47] – One advantage of being in-house is you are closer to the business and the people conducting business.  Your role is translator or interpreter of that legal risk.
[07:43] – Part of leadership is assigning responsibility and a charter appropriate for an individual’s skillset and experience.
[08:28] – Contracts is required for first-year law students, but remedies is optional. If the remedy doesn’t matter, does the breach?
[10:55] – NetApp needed to reorient the legal team to support a new area. They used legal outsourcing resources to help right-size their organisation to support new areas.
[12:49] – Engaging underrepresented groups regionally required working with outside counsel, to establish different goals, for each region of the business. ‘Think globally, act locally.’
[16:49] – Some professionals raise their hand and say, “I want to go after this new thing.”  As leaders, our role is to make people comfortable taking risks.
[19:44] – When implementing change there’s a certain level of winging it. It’s not all buttoned up and drawn out with rules and responsibilities.
[23:22] – The way to assess good versus poor legal performance is to understand how your clients are being measured.
[27:39] – Evaluate opportunities to push things to legal operations. As a general counsel, we must address resource allocation, and how much of our internal budget is allocated to tasks.   There’s a finite number of resources and budget to allocate.
[29:32] – I could be your favourite lawyer if I agreed to everything you wanted.

Enjoy!

Beth O'Callahan - Solve Business Problems, Not Just Legal Problems

The Impact Podcast features Dan Coll, Senior Associate General Counsel and Caleb Bendix, Deputy General Counsel at Jabil. Our podcast host is Steve Harmon, COO and General Counsel of Elevate.

Five-day turnaround trimmed to 24 hours

The Impact Podcast features Dan Coll, Senior Associate General Counsel and Caleb Bendix, Deputy General Counsel at Jabil. Our podcast host is Steve Harmon, COO and General Counsel of Elevate. Listen in as our guests outline two examples of implementing change within Jabil. The first features a procurement centre of excellence and support model about efficiency, including intake, triage, playbook support, and staffing. The second features the build-out of a fully automated NDA process.

[01:00] – Introduction to Dan and Caleb.
[02:36] – Jabil’s Center of Excellence to support indirect and direct procurement.
[05:31] – A perfect storm of a major acquisition – and launching the centre of excellence.
[09:03] – Our colleagues aren’t sure which of the team is Jabil and who represents the LPO.
[11:39] – The in-house team had been supporting 100% of the global NDAs, so we could immediately reduce this low-value add work to 25%.
[14:15] – Jabil recently signed another SOW to support their commercial team, something they previously wouldn’t have considered.
[16:21] – We look at automation to free up time to be strategic and work on projects that move top-line revenue and margin for the company.
[20:35] – Legal operations journey is thinking about centres of excellence and things we can routinise.
[24:03] – We’ve processed 8500 incident NDAs over the last three years with zero legal contact and zero variation from our standard template.
[29:35] – Today, Jabil is ready for … the next template.
Enjoy!

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Jabil - Routinise and Standardise Legal Operations

The Elevate.Together.Podcast. Voices of Change in the Business of Law.

Each 20-minute weekly episode is an interview-style podcast with thought leaders from law departments, law firms, and law companies.

We’re launching our podcast with episodes from our Expert Series; putting a spotlight on industry leaders executing bold positions. These Experts offer unfiltered viewpoints, practical insights, and suggest changes to implement now.

Building on the success of our video program of the same name, the Elevate.Together.Podcast. will offer an Impact Series featuring Elevate customers. These are Voices of Change in support of business stakeholders or the clients they advise.

The Next Normal Series features Elevate’s Chairman and CEO Liam Brown talking to forward-thinking General Counsel, law firm Managing Partners, and law company leaders – about the challenges – and learnings – resulting from this new normal and what’s ahead within the Next Normal.

We round out our program with the Elevate Debate. Featuring industry leaders and Elevate Experts supporting and defending an approach, a viewpoint, or a practice.

To hear what’s happening and what’s next – tune into the Elevate.Together.Podcast. Voices of Change in the Business of Law.

Elevate.Together.Podcast

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