Evan (00:05):

Welcome to go with the workflow where we interviewworld-class legal leaders in workflow automation to learn from their hardearned experiences in making work more efficient and more meaningful. Today wehave a first of its kind special episode filmed live here in Vegas at the ClockGlobal Institute, the largest legal tech conference in the world and with alive in-person audience too. And joining me as my guest is Jen McCarran. Jen isa podcaster, musician, change maker, influencer and legal operations leader.She was the leader for legal ops at Netflix, Spotify, and Cisco, and iscurrently the president of Clock. In this episode we talk about Jen'sbackground and career progression, big life changes, legal ops 3.0 as thefuture of legal ops, generative AI and its impact on the legal industry, whystorytelling is such a critical skill for change makers and how to develop itand why workflow is a core and foundational technology for legal teams. Today'sepisode format is inspired by hot ones, but instead of eating spicy hot saucechicken, we're going to work our way down a line of Aussie snacks with Jengiving her honest review for each one. You may want to watch the video whileyou listen for this one, it should be a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoy it.

(01:28):

This is a go with the workflow. It's part of a video andpodcast series that we do. Today is a very special episode, the first of itskind where we're doing it live in clock, CGI, Vegas, and with a live audienceas well. So I want to start with this actually, Jen, I did a little bit ofdigging and I found a photo of you. Oh my God.

Jenn (01:49):

That's like, that's like this is what happens when you letpeople follow you on Instagram. Geez, that is me drumming in a band rehearsal.

Evan (02:02):

And this is where you kind of started even before he looksright.

Jenn (02:05):

I really hate the camera. I really hated it. Yeah, this isfree legal ops. Lemme see how much baby fat I have on my face. Yeah, maybe thatwas 2012. That was the denim Chambre years. So I was new in legal ops. I wasmaybe one to two years in and still out because I would run out of my day joband run out at night and be out all night playing music with

Evan (02:30):

People. That's where you started. It's a big part of yourlife still. Yes. How did musician gen become legal ops Gen

Jenn (02:37):

One piece of constructive feedback at a time Death by athousand cuts? I don't know. So I was at this startup then and I was literallya temp making $9 an hour. And I remember when I got up to 11 an hour, I waslike, God, I'm killing the game. This is like 2010, 11 ish. And the generalcounsel and I would chat a lot and he is like a lot about technology. I'm like,yeah. And he is like, but you're really bad at work. And I'm like, well, I'm anoffice manager, what do you want from me? And he is like, but I know you'resmart. And I'm like, I'm tired. I'm playing drums all night or whatever. So Idon't know, it was like one cut at a time. He is like, write this brief. Iwould turn it on and be like, okay.

(03:30):

And then he was a baby boomer general counsel and he'd getstuck at the printer a lot and his IBM ThinkPad would just seize and I wouldcome along and do the classic, I'd be like, reboot. And they're like,everything about computers, how do you know that? I'm like, I don't know. Sofast forward Cisco acquires, well fast forward, he offers me full-time work asa paralegal, contracts manager, compliance manager and tech person. That's whythat was my title. And I'm like, yo, if you got dental, dental benefits, I'mmeant call me whatever you want. And I'm like every three months about I needto go out on tour. Cool. And he's like, cool, I'll pay you the least amount ofmoney possible. I'm like, I'll do the least amount of work. It was so weird. Ihope he listens to this and we can laugh about it. And then Cisco comes alongand acquires and I spend a year or so helping map some of this legal techworkflow, SharePoint stuff over contract spreadsheets, et cetera to Cisco. AndI'm walking him out after his retirement party and I'm counting banker's boxesof his files. And we get to the elevator, I'm like, bye Steve. And I drop theboxes and he goes, you work about as hard as a government worker.

(04:56):

I'm like, great, thank you. He's like, if you wanted totake this seriously and try a tech career, he's like, you're brilliant. Youcould go be a patent lawyer or Cisco's going to suck you guys into the vacuumnow. And he goes, I plugged you in higher than I should have. So if you wantit, go for it. Turn it all on and try it. You're really smart at tech andpeople are drawn to you. And I was like, okay. And was like B by and I walkedback to the empty office, a bit of a fork in the road and I went into Cisco andpretended I never sucked. And it was around 2013 by the time I got in there andI was very tired of staying up all night, rocking out with everyone and thentrying to be useful during the day in my day job.

(05:50):

And I ended this band I was in, we put out a record and Iwas tired of project managing and I said, let me put the bass guitar down. I'mgoing all in at Cisco and I'm going to turn every bit of my brain on and I'mgoing to be really uncomfortable because I was like all these corporate peopleand the lingo and the letters and Cisco is notorious for it, but I'm going tolearn it all and figure something out and I never want to be at the bottom of apile again. I was going to flip the whole thing and try to come out on top. Andit took me years to get that system in order for myself at Cisco. And I did notcome in strong. I had to learn this field from people in 2013 who were expertsalready. Farhad, who is my guy, he's on my team at Netflix.

(06:39):

He was like leagues ahead of me. And that guy taught memostly everything I know with such care. And I pulled out front, I came out ofCisco with a brand and products and everything. And from there who knew thatCisco was so advanced, I was working in the future. They didn't have DocuSignthen we built it all in house. So I got all these IT chops, building, breakingdown, buying, licencing, the whole thing, Cisco, Spotify, Netflix, almost tostartup skirt. And then I was there for seven days. I was in a WeWork and thenNetflix called. I was like, bye you guys. Bye. This was really fun. And I'mlike, kombucha's on tap, but I'm going to Hollywood to work at Netflix. Andthat's the story in a nutshell.

Evan (07:35):

And I want to talk a little bit about that evolution inyour career actually. But before we do that, we do have a plate of snacks. Weforget

Jenn (07:40):

To tell me where to

Evan (07:41):

Start. So do you want to start with something?

Jenn (07:45):

I'm a sweet person.

Evan (07:46):

You want to start with something sweet? Less

Jenn (07:47):

So chocolate. And I just have to say, if anythingresembles Nutella, I don't have an allergy, so I won't die out in front of youall. That'd be a show. But just steer me away from Nutella stuff. Buteverything else is good.

Evan (08:02):

Gotcha. So it's It's not Nutella.

Jenn (08:05):

Yeah,

Evan (08:05):

It's

Jenn (08:05):

Not. Oh my God. It's worse. It's fish. It's like fishshair.

Evan (08:12):

Wait, so do you want to start with sweet or not Sweet?Let's

Jenn (08:15):

Start with sweet.

Evan (08:15):

Okay, fine. I

Jenn (08:16):

Need some fuel.

Evan (08:18):

We'll start you off with something that's pretty safe.Does anyone know what this is called?

Jenn (08:22):

This looks right up my alley.

Evan (08:24):

Very bread. So today we're taking a journey through Aussiesnacks. This is fairy bread. It's kind of what you grow up with in primaryschool. You go to parties and the moms would make this for you. And it's Whatdo you think?

Jenn (08:36):

It's really weird. There's a butter. There's a butter hitand it's like you don't know if you should allow that. Wait, but it's endingup. It's like you start down, you're like, where are we? Mystery, substance.But it ends up because in the end that's butter with

Evan (08:59):

Sprinkles on it. Correct. Yeah. I actually haven't had onesince I was a kid, so this is a bit of a throwback for me.

Jenn (09:06):

I can get down with that. Yeah,

Evan (09:08):

Very good. Alright, so you talked about starting at Cisco,I was your first legal ops, Spotify, the Netflix. You recently put out anarticle, you said you know the future of legal ops. Yeah, I do space HI

Jenn (09:19):

Do. I know the future. That's what I was trying to tellyou guys this morning. And in the article, I think what happened at Netflix, Ileft there in March and so I'm really processing on thousands of people's ears.Thank you. We worked at triple speed at the Netflix's, the tech companies, it'sso fast and so info chaotic. It can literally make you motion sick if that'snot your style and there's no rules and few approvals. And I was there in atime where the budget was ready to go and back whatever ideas we had. It wascrazy. It was crazy. And they went just go put it all in. And so we did thatand I'm coming out now, I'm looking at my guy for hot at dinner a couple ofweeks ago. I'm like, what did we do there? And he's like, dude.

(10:12):

And I'm like, dude. He's like, dude, I'm like 55 techproducts, nine tech platforms. We got this contract repository out ofengineering's hands, they didn't want it. And we put in an AI powered CLM. I'mlike, bro. He's like, bro, I'm like, you built 2000 generative AI models in thelast two years live running across those contracts. It's when you step out ofthings like this and you go, we did 11 years of work and five and a half years.It's when you get to step back from that and go, whoa, EER is 9 million datapoints on our hundreds of thousands of contracts with 2000 miles. I can'tbelieve it. And it was at that moment when he said him and Devin Clark werereading out to me, I was like, that's career for us forever. If we wanted tojust take a hard right and go into AIing gen ai, prompt understanding and howto make stories out of that data as well.

(11:19):

I had a big revelation. It's turned me total optimist ongenerative ai. And those environments are great for density of output likethat. And now I'm trying to reflect and write more but the future because I gotto do so much work. I know the future. And because Netflix is sort of apressure cooker of a chaotic environment, they're always shaking you andchallenging your thoughts and they're like, well, why is tech here not inengineering? I'm like, I don't know because we're here. It made sense to starthere. And they're like, well, should you go there? And I'm like, well, maybeone day after we hit a certain in the tech, maybe it should go. Or a portiongoes over to engineering so those guys can grow in a new and different way intheir careers. But there's an inflexion point and we were trying to find it andthen someone was like, well, why isn't finance OCM in finance?

(12:09):

And I'm like, I know the words sound alike, but there'sthis domain experience thing that we evolved because finance doesn't have that.And so we're here in legal now and they're like, well, don't you see a placewhere it could go over there? I'm like, I do. It's not today. But the way wewere just thinking and the shape of all of this was so amorphous, it challengedall my thinking on the way we've been kitchens, sinking our roles for the lastfew years based on what some of our predecessors shout out there in the otherroom. That's how it started. They kitchen sink. A lot of us were like, I'll doit. Started with financial outside console management. I'll do the tech, we'llbring our project, we'll bring km. And it all came in. But I'm finding, I foundin the last year at Netflix, I was struggling to love the breadth and I wantedmore depth in the tech.

(13:01):

And I'm a technologist, so you guys know I skew that way.And so that's why I see the future because they're so fast and chaotic thereand they challenge your thinking and that means that's the thinking we're allgoing to be challenged with over the next few years. Hopefully they don't allmove psychotically as fast. It was so fast. And I had a lawyer say to merecently, well they said to me, well, I don't understand why finance outsidecounsel management, what that even has to do with legal ops. Shouldn't thatmaybe sit in my function? So litigation spend heavy, that kind of thing. And Isaid, well, interestingly, the whole thing started as financial OCM, outsidecouncil management, but you don't know that you're a litigator and you don'tcare. And I'm not here to give you a history lesson. But then I went into herhead and looked back at myself through her eyes and I'm like, oh, you thinkthis whole thing's tech?

(14:01):

And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, I named it legal opsat Netflix. When they brought me in. They're like, it's legal tech. And I'mlike, well, it's legal ops. And they're like tech ops ops, tech ops. Andthey're like, well, what is ops? And I was like, tech tech, tech tech, techtech. Well, we call it ops and I'm going to bring in a financial outsidecouncil management team and let those guys show you how much money you'rewasting. And they're like, okay, so some of this is tomato, tomato or some of thisis they don't get it. But all of this to me means I think the technology andthe data of all of this and the people that can make stories of that first willwin the next best jobs in our fields. I think we always will need financialoutside council management.

(14:44):

I don't see a lot of people alone with that ascending intoexec ranks. You have to ascend with breadth of all of this stuff or techbecause tech is very hard. It is extremely hard, extremely unknown. You needcoders and engineers. It's a higher resource budgeting. So I hope I answeredyour question. That's why I think I see and know the future and I think it'sgoing that way. I think our 1.0 predecessors, which is so meaningful thatthey're just in the other room listening to me as if I'm something big. Thoseguys made me make the app at the first clock institute. Nobody thanked me.

(15:27):

Thank you. No

(15:28):

Acknowledgement.

(15:29):

Thank you. No credit. I recognise you.

(15:32):

Okay, you guys didn't know me from Bob. I remember beinglike, hi Mary,

(15:36):

Mary o' Carroll.

(15:39):

Yeah. But yeah, it's okay for it to have started with FOCMfinance outside council management. And it's okay if the shape of how it sitsor where, and it's okay if it's not all square under one litre, you're notfailing. If it's not under one kitchen sink leader, we can still achieve allthe things. And I'm just, I don't know, going back to depth or maybe I justwant to do tech, but we have a captive audience. So I'm going to tell you whatI want

Evan (16:14):

And I want to talk a little bit about your change in viewof gen ai. You said it's really a change of view after implementing what is agreat success story, probably the last thing that you did before you letNetflix, but again, we've got to hit the plate. Hit the plate. So do you wantto do something a little bit more challenging or you want to still ride?

Jenn (16:34):

I think we should put the hard stuff first.

Evan (16:36):

You want to do it first?

Jenn (16:37):

That's the kind of person I am. The hard stuff first andthen we'll coast. I'd like to end at the Tim Tam. Okay,

Evan (16:45):

That's a good idea. Alright.

Jenn (16:48):

What is this? Poop on a spoon.

Evan (16:52):

You want to try that one now? Sure. Okay, so this is, oh

Jenn (16:56):

God, say a prayer.

Evan (16:58):

So this is usually what we give to Americans to prank themwhen they're into Aussie foods. So this is known as Vegemite. Oh,

Jenn (17:08):

This is Vegemite. I've been talking about this. So yeah.

Evan (17:10):

All right. Cheers. One shot, whole thing. Oh, whole thing.Whole thing. Whole thing.

Jenn (17:22):

What does my podcast producer think I should do? Not doit.

(17:42):

It's fish, salty

(17:43):

Fish. I don't have words.

(17:54):

It does taste, I dunno if this is, but it taste a wholelot better with that.

(18:01):

Who chooses to eat this?

Evan (18:03):

Australians actually for breakfast. So normally, yeah.Yeah. So it's a spread that you put.

Jenn (18:11):

Thank you for not letting me eat the whole thing.

Evan (18:15):

So normally what it's meant to look like is you put a thinlayer on top of butter, on top of bread, and then you just eat this asbreakfast. It's really healthy. To who?

Jenn (18:26):

Well, it's really healthy because you stopped eating.

(18:30):

So this is the same thing on bread.

Evan (18:32):

Yeah, let's try with the bread. It's better though, right?It

Jenn (18:41):

Is better.

Evan (18:41):

It is better.

Jenn (18:42):

That's a relative term. Yeah.

Evan (18:45):

Better.

Jenn (18:45):

That's challenging.

(18:47):

Is that what you need on a Monday morning? Start your,

Evan (18:50):

Yeah, just the hardest thing on the Monday. Get it overand done with. Everything else is easy. Everything

Jenn (18:54):

Is up

Evan (18:55):

Until exactly

Jenn (18:55):

Cold.

Evan (18:57):

That's right. That was probably either the worst or thesecond worst.

Jenn (19:05):

My body temperature is up. It's like a vinegar in therewith the fish. I

Evan (19:13):

Think it's like,

Jenn (19:14):

What

(19:15):

Is the burn?

Evan (19:16):

That's what it is. What is

Jenn (19:17):

It? It's

Evan (19:21):

Like yeast.

Jenn (19:22):

Yeah. Oh, it's the yeast.

(19:24):

Disgusting.

(19:25):

Disgusting. Oh my God. Okay. Hard thing out of the way.We've tried it and I never have to do that again. This is the matter managementof the veggie of the plate. I never want to do to, I'm just shots fired mattermanagement. I still have never done matter management and I hope to never doit. Yeah, but we need it if you're doing it, we love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Evan (19:54):

Alright, so Jen, ai, you were a sceptic at first were I

Jenn (19:58):

Was a sceptic because, well, I don't like sitting aroundlistening to everyone pontificate. I have half of a science brain. I'm likeshow me or STFU. And there was just too much I think going on and I didn't sayanything other than I'm sceptical, but I'm from New York, I'm sceptical. Ithink everyone's trying to steal my phone

(20:23):

Or harm me and the glass is always half empty. So I waskind of coming at it from that perspective and I wanted to see proof and Istarted seeing proof in the last five months and I started seeing how agenerative AI feature inside the contract lifecycle management solution eversort did what was taking years to build and not get to fully complete thatfeature. We turned it on and it did that in minutes and I was like, oh. Andthen when engineering and product saw it, they were like, oh, believer. Andwhen you start to see how people see that the customer of the applicationthrough their eyes, you're like, whoa. They can just sit and hammer through agen AI combo bot and get everything they need. Search is over, search is overwith that feature. And when we get to the place when they're ready to see itgenerate and take over their first draughts, that's going to be a moment intime. But I think we need a few more months on that or quarters.

Evan (21:36):

So I was at the same link event you were, I think twoweeks ago in New York and we were talking about gen ai, you were talking aboutthe procrastination of a blank canvas and gen AI being able to bridge thatbecause it helps you very quickly turn that blank canvas into a starting point.So how do you think about the user experience that this impacts for legal?Because in my view, gen AI is a complete transformation of how we interact withtechnology. To your point, search is dead in that context. How do you thinkit's going to impact legal as an industry at whole? What are some pockets, youtalk about cl LM, what are some other pockets of impact do you think it'll makein the coming years?

Jenn (22:18):

I think it's going to be well in legal. Whenever peoplesay, what about legal? I'm like, well, what about productivity? I saw the wholewhat's Google's gen product? There's a Gemini. Gemini, yeah. I saw anend-to-end demo of Gemini in the G suite by Google Engineers in New York lastyear. And mind my head fell off my shoulders, it fell off the way. He movedfrom an email to across his G drive to bulleted out slides to a pivot table toback to an email just talking to a bot making, and I'll put that into a slidedeck, spread it out over five. And when it started going into Excel, I waslike, bro, this is crazy. There's no more, more blank docs if we don't wantthem. Or you're telling someone your new assistant to make it for you versusyou when you're at the beginning of a spreadsheet at a new job, you're like,here we bingo and you procrastinate because it's hard and it takes so manyiterations.

(23:26):

Slides take a lot of iterations. Imagine you had, if I hadmy 500 slide decks from Netflix and I can sit with Gemini and go give me theone with all the Grey's Anatomy gifts in them for the Gen X lawyers so I canconvince them again, like don't worry, I'm putting an iManage. If they hate it,you're the son legal. I'll just take it out like Derek with the bus and put aflight and this all the things. It was a real slideshow, but I built slidelibraries for other storytelling. Imagine that first crafting is done by themachine. That's what's coming. So it's going to be like that in all legalbriefs, in all contract drafting. And I think this younger generation is goingto never know the blank doc and that anxiety, they're just going to be like,well, I just got it from the machine. Why would I waste my time on it? Andthey're going to think that was so 1970s.

Evan (24:18):

Totally. Yeah.

Jenn (24:18):

Why did I waste my time? Gen X? That's my Gen X voice. Idon't know why. I don't know.

Evan (24:26):

You mentioned storytelling just now as well. I know you'rea big fan of storytelling and how it's really, really important for us as aprofession to be good storytellers,

Jenn (24:33):

Right? Yeah,

Evan (24:34):

Totally. How do we become better storytellers? I know youtalk about data being a core part in telling a compelling story, but what aresome tips you can give to us in crafting our own stories, whether that'sadopting gen AI in our organisations or elevating the value of legal to 3.0?How do you think about it?

Jenn (24:54):

How do you develop the storytelling? Yeah. Ability. Well,there's inside the data world, you need the superstar in my team at Netflix.Hope you guys aren't listening to this. I love you all equally like you were mychildren. But I felt the superstar one in the most recent quarters was the datascientist deep data analytics person skill because you can unleash that personinto a data warehouse with millions of tables and it's very messy. And everyenterprise solution connects in there and that person will sit there and go, Iknow this table. I know that join, join, join. Oh, you want contract and dealvolume version one for the first time ever at Netflix. True story they asked meto do. They come at me in my second year and they're like, can you do a deal contractdashboard on two systems I never put in that were built internally by productand engineering?

(25:52):

And I said, I fainted actually. And when I came to, I toldmy deputy general counsel, can you give me one year? And she's like, yeah,sure. And I came back in a year and it was him and he mined all of the data andevery time he found a messed up table, he'd go to that team in engineering orproduct or data science who owned it and go, we have to clean up how the datacomes in from pitch tool, contract tool, this, that, the other. And then he'dcome out and came out with version one of a dashboard that let leaders seetheir own legal team's throughput for the first time ever in Netflix in legal.So I think that's a skillset that I don't, if I focus on it full time, I can doit. I mean, I took statistics three times, not bragging, but I can do it.

(26:42):

I love, and I was that weirdo in all my stats classes incollege who just sat there like this and I'm like, what is she doing? And I waslike, it's called getting an A because my brain just, I love it, but I don'tspend my time there. I have to hire for it. That skillset I spend my time afterhe or she comes out with a story of this is how they relate. I spend the timearcing the whole story around it and how to get them in the room and engage thepeople and going, here's why you're here today and what you're going to learnand where we're going. And I set this end point in the story and help arc it toget there. So it's more strategic storytelling with their solution, with thesolution. So they're different. And I don't know, you know how to do the datascience.

(27:28):

You got to just be deep on statistics, data science andall those, that's very technical stuff, mathematical stuff. And then this isall practise, do very bad presentations. You guys should all be presenting allthe time. You should always be going around legal going, who wants to hear it?And getting in there and going, I want legal ops and we are here to make moreand did practise these pitches. Louisa can speak to this. Do not show them theclock core 12, right? Louisa, we talked about this. That's for us to know andto pick and to decide what to do. That's not for them to menu pick off of orunderstand at depth what that means. But you have to go in and tell them whereyou're going to take them. And it's narrative reading really helps. Writing,helps practising on slides, taking comms courses.

(28:26):

Even sitting on YouTube and taking a comms course, peopleare always like, well, you're just out of talented. I'm like, no, I rehearse900 times and I have had many bad presentations. So that all just comes withserious reps, getting a story framework and then repeating a billion times whatI wrote for this morning. I rehearsed that probably, probably 50 times. Andthat's a light rehearsal for me. Wow. When I'm going in to sell legal for thefirst time on the big message, 300 plus rehearsals. That's how you get good atthat is rehearsal. And I rehearse in front of my spouse and she is shreds me,shreds me. She shredded me last week she was like, stand still on stage. She'slike all this moving. You're like a firecracker. She's like, your guys' work ishard enough now they have to watch you on stage. So be vulnerable and getshredded and take those notes in and modify your behaviour. That's how you getgood at the storytelling part of it. Yeah,

Evan (29:37):

That's a good idea. I used to also rehearse for differentpictures and things like that. I should had a real human being to give mefeedback. I used to take my little teddy bear and put it on the bed and I usedto pitch at a teddy bear, which obviously didn't tread me to pieces. It gave meactually overconfidence. But

Jenn (29:56):

Evan just admitted he is talking to stuffed animals.

(30:01):

This podcast just took a turn. But look, if you don't havesomeone that's going to do that with you, just get over yourself and recordyourself. We have the best tool right here. Just record yourself and don'thate, nobody likes seeing and hearing their voice, but watch it and go, my God,I'm stiff. Loosen up. My God. I never look up from the thing. Look up more whenyou play sports coaches make you watch your own tapes back of the game. AndI've done that a lot and I do it with audio. I hear all my own podcasts and I'mlike, I got to stop at that thing I do with that tick. So you guys have to, Idon't know, not to take another turn, but love yourselves a little more and bewilling to just put yourself on your own camera. If you don't have a spousewho's willing to shred you. If you have a spouse who's like, love you babe, itwas amazing. Forget them. You need a spouse like Emily Stone, my wife, thewriter who was a drama person, a teacher, and now she's a professional writer.So she just cooks me.

Evan (31:09):

Love that. You ready to get some of the Vegemite tastesout of that, please. All right, let's

Jenn (31:14):

Nauseous.

Evan (31:14):

What should we, okay, so we have either a chocolate, whichyou said let's avoid, right? No,

Jenn (31:19):

We have to avoid it. Okay, just explain what kind ofchocolate.

Evan (31:22):

Okay, so we have two, a carrot milk wallaby and a caramelkoala. Both Australian animals.

Jenn (31:29):

Let's try the caramel wallies

Evan (31:31):

Koala. Let's do that. Alright. This should be nice.

Jenn (31:33):

Cadbury stuff is nice.

Evan (31:35):

Yeah, it should be good. So eat along if you haven'talready devoured your own chocolates before we start it

Jenn (31:45):

All. Oh,

(31:50):

That's good. Good.

(31:52):

No, I like

Evan (31:53):

That it tastes familiar to some of you. Is it like anAmerican equivalent? Yeah,

Jenn (31:58):

A

Evan (32:01):

Roll. Alright, so I've got another photo of you actuallythis is from, is from a webinar that we did years ago as well together.

Jenn (32:10):

Oh my god, we crushed. Is it the moment? Is it the momentthat Magically came together with my girl Kim? Oh

Evan (32:16):

Yeah, you got it. This is the one. So we were doing apodcast and Jen basically ends it with pulling up Kim k saying get your, Ithink that's a bleep.

Jenn (32:28):

It's an expletive that starts with F that she said to allwomen and got roasted for get your effing A to up and work. And then at the endof the webinar I wrote flow and it turned into your new slogan basically.

Evan (32:47):

Basically. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit aboutworkflow. It is go with the workflow. So this, I know that you've said beforethat if you were stranded on a desert

Jenn (32:58):

Island, but it's still the first thing. It is. It's stillthe first thing I would do. I'm in some wonderful potential combos aroundconsulting. Someone's like, will you come in legal apartment and do something?I'm like, are you sure? Because it's going to be lit. We're going to do stuff.Are you ready to go? And I got off the phone with them and I called Justin hecnow at Harbour Labs and I said, get ready. If I go in anywhere, I might callyou and you're bringing in either a checkbox with me or a tap or whatever theworkflow is because that stuff is always first. It's small solutions you canprove out, put in people's hands at a cost that isn't like this. And I startwith workflow many times in a row. Now

Evan (33:53):

I feel like people understand CLM, we talked about thatmatter management, dare I say as well. But workflow seems to be a little bit ofa term that isn't right. People are like, what is a workflow? How do peoplewrap their heads around that? How do you explain that to show of

Jenn (34:10):

Hands, who's built workflows in here on workflow onlysoftware? Fewer Which one? Power. Power on me. Yeah. What's that on Microsoft.Microsoft, yeah. Okay, okay. It counts, right? We'll let 'em in.

Evan (34:25):

So there's a lot of people who understand workflow, butworkflow within an existing system. But you are talking about workflowautomation as a platform.

Jenn (34:32):

Standalone. Standalone as a platform. That's one of thenine platforms my team and I brought in while I was at Netflix. And from nineplatforms, we were able to build 55 tech products and Workflow was responsiblefor probably a third of those. And you can start nesting them within oneanother so much. And I have a great guy on my team for hod, who thank God youleft Facebook because I was coming for him. I was going to steal him from BrianHuff. Just kidding. I knew I couldn't win in that battle. Well I had to fightagainst now me's, adult playground benefits for HODs, do you have dry cleaning?I'm like, you wear T-shirts. What? Dry cleaning? I was like, get out of here.Is there a valet? I'm like, for hod, just I'm the Netflix. He is a masterfulworkflow builder and he knew the TAP platform then and now possibly stillbetter than Mitra Tech.

(35:37):

He's just such a tinkerer. And he came in and we juststarted sucking up problems in there. And when you have a platform like that,you go in the room and when the woman who I worked with said, I wantSalesforce, and it was my fourth day and I'm like, Jocelyn, we can't. I can't.It's not a Salesforce shop here. I was like, but how about a deal memogenerator? And I'm like, how many data points does your team fetch? And she'slike 80 and I'm manually, and she's like, yeah. I'm like, let's draw the processSpaghetti bowl. I was like, nah. And I'm like, let's try something very smallwhere we take a workflow and pull in 10 data points from those six teams,including external casting agents. And she's like, okay. And we showed her andit couldn't have been more than 10 or 15 K to show that and develop it.

(36:31):

That's pretty cheap to get going with. And she was like,keep going. I'm interested. And we kept building and we kept building you guys.This workflow had workflows. The workflows had workflows. They were nesting offof each other. It was very big. By the time I left Netflix, it was running on,let's see, 260 Netflix productions currently up and running for guest castactors, which background actors, big crowd scenes. It started as, let me showyou how it can find five or 10 things. And we iterated to more than half ofNetflix productions had it on tablets on sets. And I was at a Netflix dinnerprobably seven months ago in Los Angeles with a bunch of production people thatI met and I'm like, Hey, and we're socialising. And this one woman turns to theother and she goes, I love Netflix. We have these great tools here. And shejust started talking about Maniac. And I was like, you're not going to believethis. My team built that and we built it with workflow, not with going tomarket to buy a Salesforce or custom build. And sure it's not a one for one,it's not the database, but the malleability we got with it and the way we bentthat software, we built calculators and things. It was so creative and you canuse this software to do that, be really creative and solve in a very bespokeway.

Evan (38:01):

If people remember actually a few years ago, the phrase nocode kind of blew up and all of a sudden all of the vendors had no code intheir marketing. Now it's all ai. But no code actually came from the workflowtools because the whole concept was how do you build custom solutions withoutneeding to code? And that's what you're talking about because it's sort of thisgeneric horizontal tool that solves hundreds, thousands of different use cases.It's not tied to contracts, it's not tied to outside council management.

Jenn (38:32):

You can just tie it to anything across the business, anykinds of workflows. And sometimes it's directly legal stuff. Sometimes it's aworkflow you build to keep legal out of it. We built an offer letter workflowat Netflix and employment legal was like, cool, I can be bothered less. Andthey felt empowered with the data and the analytics that got to take off ofthat. So it was really fun. I'm a big fan of workflow first.

Evan (38:58):

Yeah, you'd do it again if you were to

Jenn (39:00):

Yeah, I would do it again. Start with workflow again forsure.

Evan (39:02):

Interesting. Yeah. Before CLM.

Jenn (39:05):

Oh, who wants to put in a CLM ever again? Not me, but Iwould do it for benefits guys. Just kidding. But CL, M's. Big. It's hard, it'sexpensive, it's long. I mean, I would do anything. I'm even crazy enough, Itried doc management, I tried it, I tried it at Netflix when I told them no onthe third time for the third time on the interview there I was like, docmanagement in G Suite environment will never work. Thanks for the offer. I'lllet myself out now. And I still tried it anyway to prove it out in there. OnceI said yes and they were like, come to Netflix, I was like, okay. I tried it toprove it out and I failed horribly and miserably putting that in. So I wouldtry anything in tech just because it's fun and if you're in the right place andpeople are into failure, it's cool.

Evan (39:58):

Absolutely. Very cool. Alright, back to the plate. We hadsomething nice. We're going to have something that's not so nice next. Yeah,this is the one that I was saying could be worse than the Vegemite, but maybeyou'll like it more. Yeah. You already know which one you just picked it up. Sothis is known as Wheat Bix. Yeah, go for it.

Jenn (40:21):

I kind like that. Yeah,

(40:25):

This tastes like some kind of cereal my mom would get orsomething.

(40:33):

Yeah,

(40:34):

Or weened.

(40:35):

Yeah, it's like the wood chips and Ikea

(40:39):

Or that.

(40:40):

It's so funny.

Evan (40:41):

This

Jenn (40:41):

Isn't so bad.

Evan (40:42):

Well yeah, it tastes okay, but it gets really, really dryif you try to finish the whole thing. So normally what you're meant to do isyou're meant to eat this with milk. Yeah. So it is actually a cereal breakfastfood again. So it sit

Jenn (40:57):

To milk. I can see that with some milk or some yoghourt. Ihaving a fun time.

Evan (41:01):

Usually you cut some fruit in as well. So fruit whi picksmilk.

Jenn (41:06):

It's taking all the terrible other flavours away. It'swashing the fish away.

Evan (41:13):

I feel like I shouldn't have taken a second bite.

Jenn (41:15):

I like this actually, if there's nothing else here, Iwould keep munching on that.

Evan (41:24):

I think we're getting to, we've got, what do we have left?We have the Tim Tam, but we also have, before we hit the Tim Tam, shall we do adouble hit? So there's a piece this here, you got one of these. So I think youposted, you commented on one of our posts for this event and you said TimTam's? Yes. Yeah, kangaroo.

Jenn (41:49):

That's kangaroo. I could just smell like something reallybad happened here. It's beyond beef. Will you guys eat kangaroo? I thought youbought

Evan (41:59):

Them. We do. They box us. We ride in them to school

Jenn (42:04):

And then you hunt them and eat them.

Evan (42:07):

So I don't know how it works, but I know there's a lot ofroad kill. I dunno if that is what ends up here.

Jenn (42:14):

This is like a road kill jerky.

Evan (42:17):

I'm not sure. I'm not a kangaroo hunting expert. Butusually you eat it either as a jerky or you can have it almost like a steak.

Jenn (42:26):

A sausage. Like a what?

Evan (42:28):

Or a sausage breakfast.

Jenn (42:29):

Sausage. Oh, a snack. Not a snake.

Evan (42:32):

A snack. A snake. A snake. A

Jenn (42:35):

Steak. A steak. I thought he said a snake. I'm like, endof podcast.

Evan (42:40):

Okay, so here's the thing. We don't actually eat kangarootoo often in Australia. I certainly don't

Jenn (42:46):

As president of clock. I don't know if I can eat Kangaroo

(42:52):

Bold.

(42:53):

I'm going to take a really small bite. I'll be bold. Don'tdo it. Don't do it. Fortune favours the bold.

(43:01):

I can't.

(43:03):

No, it tastes better than it smells.

(43:07):

Tastes like rabbit rabbit.

(43:09):

It's not the worst, but the smell is weird. You're like,something happened here. Yeah,

Evan (43:15):

It's kind of gamey.

Jenn (43:16):

That's what it is. It it's gamey to put gamey meat insidejerky. It's tough. Strange.

Evan (43:21):

Yeah.

Jenn (43:23):

Alright. All right. I tried it.

Evan (43:26):

One last question for you and then we'll hit the Tim Tamand celebrate legal ops. What should we do less of and what should we do moreof as an

Jenn (43:36):

Industry? I was like, start, stop, continue. Are we doinga start, stop, continue right now in legal ops?

Evan (43:41):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jenn (43:42):

What should we do less of? What should we do more of? Idon't know. What do you guys think? What should we do less of? Tell me what tosay and then we'll go out on stage and say it and then we'll change theindustry. Just kidding. Just kidding. Ooh, that. That's a really good one.

Evan (44:01):

We finally stumped her.

Jenn (44:02):

Yes. You guys stumped me and you didn't send me anyquestions in,

Evan (44:06):

This was not prepped at all by the way. This is completely

Jenn (44:09):

Candid. Even if you sent me questions in advance, Iwouldn't have read 'em. So just guess what, I don't prep. I don't prep payroll.

(44:15):

I don't prep for these kinds of commas. They're betternatural. Well, I guess I'll just draw a point from what I said earlier todayand what I wrote about with legal Ops 3.0 in this idea, I think we need to bedoing controlling more of the tech strategy and agenda. And I think with that,I mean this is bias, but you're going to have to hire, probably you'd have tofavour tech resources in your hiring strategies in the future and or beg thatproduct manager of yours to be your best friend. You take her to dinner, lunch,breakfast. I can tell she's your superstar. Building the biggest alliance andtrust partnership with them. I just think that the strategy and the future forlegal is in the tech side. I don't think cover your ears coats, savings is nota strategy. Thanks.

(45:22):

It's really important and it's financial hygiene, but Idon't know that it's, it depends on your leadership, but I don't know that it'sgoing to get us to the new promised land. I think where we are now is anamazing promised land that those guys got us to, we all are online with careersand kind of these unknown new endpoints coming in to fruition and we're drawingthese career paths and I'm going to spend the rest of my unemployed yeardrawing literally career paths for us all. I just think that with the tech andthe AI stuff, we have a lot to figure out there. And it's only figure outablemade that up with experiments and doing the actual work. We can't sit on panelsand be like, I think gen ai, that's not going to work. You have to get in thereand go, whoa, what? And learn how an LLM works and then put it in your lawyer'shands and let them have their reactions and then go from there. So I thinkthat's my start, stop, continue. Did I say what to stop? Yeah. Saving money.

(46:29):

Keep innovating. Keep innovating. I mean keep innovating.Look, I'll close with this. I don't say this on stage. It's not for stage. Andthis is an okay setting to do it. We all have to be willing, this sounds weirdto kind of kill last year's version of your job if you're really doingtransformation. I learned this at Spotify. The CEO said to us, if you're doingyour job right at Spotify, it will be different in 12 to 18 months. It has tobe, that's how fast we're moving and experimenting and figuring it out. And Iwas like, no way, Daniel Eck. And it was true. And in 18 months I had two otherjob offers in the company in engineering and five in the open market. And wehave to be willing to build the financial programme outside council management,scale it up. That analyst becomes the manager because she just packaged it allship level one to elevate and you get out of there or move over and do it overhere. And I believe if we're all doing our roles, we get to move around thespectrum. But you have to be willing to walk not from your jobs, but from thatscope and keep going. So I think if you're doing that, we're doing it rightbecause we have a lot of unknown to solve for with innovation.

Evan (47:49):

It's amazing. I was at a conference the other day and a GCwas talking about her legal ops and saying that, she says as a resource, shedeploys over here, fixes problems, comes back to legal because if there fixesproblems, come back to legal. And that's kind of what you're talking about,

Jenn (48:04):

Okay. To stay static. And if you're a person who likesthat, do that. And you can stay in your corner and design your thing, yourworkflows or whatever for a long time. But your leader might have to and do allof that. So be comfortable with change. We're not done drawing this thing andwe're trying to figure out new endpoints for all our careers and be willing tolet go of scope and go solve the next problem or give it to the next person. Iwas always like, take it. And Netflix, I was like, you want this? It's allyours. And that was even hard for me a lot of the time because we're all humanand we wanted yank our cheese back. But yeah, I think keep evolving.

Evan (48:48):

Amazing. All right. Shall we finish off with the final TimTam?

Jenn (48:56):

This is a good sn. This is why we ended here. This is whywe ended here. We started it like the matter management plate and we ended withthis is as easy and smooth as an NDA generator. Come on, God.

Evan (49:16):

Built on workflow.

Jenn (49:17):

Built on workflow. I built my NDA generator on workflow.No, you don't have to buy a CLM for that. No. Save like a million dollars. Notliterally. I'm like a million.

Evan (49:29):

Amazing. Alright, well thank you so much, Jen. You've beenvery generous with your time and candour.

Jenn (49:34):

Thank you guys. This was fun. Thank

Evan (49:35):

You everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to thisepisode of Go With the Workflow. If you found it valuable, you can subscribe tothe show on your favourite podcast app like Spotify or Apple Podcast. Also,please consider giving us a rating or leave a review as that really helps otherlisteners find the podcast too. That's all for now. So we'll see you at thenext episode.