76: Creativity and the Legal Ecosystem with CLOC Leaders Connie Brenton (NetApp) and Mary O’Carroll (Google)

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Putting An End to the Mundane

Today’s guests are not only leaders in the field of legal operations – but are on the forefront of transforming the legal ecosystem – through their leadership within CLOC – the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium.

The first of two guests on Episode 76 is the Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Legal Operations at NetApp and CEO of CLOC, Connie Brenton. Connie has a JD and MBA, starting off her career in operations and subsequently legal operations at Sun Microsystems, Oracle and now NetApp. She’s passionate about the need for transformation in the legal industry, through the use of technology and the application of tools, programs, and processes for greater efficiency.

Connie Brenton on LinkedIn

Joining Connie is Mary O’Carroll, the Head of Legal Operations, Technology and Strategy at Google. Transitioning from a career in investment banking and consulting Mary experienced law firm life joining Orrick in 2003 as a Profitability Analysis Manager – an experience that 5 years later led to her role at Google.

Mary Shen O’Carroll on LinkedIn

• Within legal operations, change management is a daily activity.

• Having the data has allowed in house counsel to be run in-house legal like a business.

• Legal Tech vendors, make your solution easy to understand. Be clear as to how it will allow in-house legal to be better, faster and more efficient.

• Today members of the legal ecosystem are co-creating solutions – law firms and in-house legal departments are working with legal technology and legal outsourcing companies to deliver solutions that work and are more effective.

• By adding technology and right sizing in-house legal departments the mundane work has been redirected allowing more creative work to take place.

• The thread of CLOC is the inherent challenge of change management. Law firm operations professionals share that challenge.

• We’re experiencing a tipping point within the legal ecosystem. It’s critical that legal tech firms and legal outsourcing organizations understand the business of the in-house legal client.

• Law schools are a critical component of the legal eco system. More and more law school graduates are heading straight into business – they need the skill set to ‘get the job and keep a job’ when they graduate.

• In 2027 the information accessible to the ecosystem as a result of strong data collection is likely to allow a price check on legal matters at the push of a button.

This episode is sponsored by Axiom Law: