Day in the Life of a Legal Operations Manager

Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. We tried to make the, podcast recording studio nice and cozy, so hopefully everything is good here.

Great. I will start from the beginning. I started my career as a web developer for IBM straight out of college. So I did that for about three years, and then as I was new in marriage.

I actually ended up leaving to spend a year as a stay at home mom. And a year was about all I could do. He really wanted to get back to work. So That actually led me to kind of restart my career.

So I started out working in Boston. It was actually Lotus had just been acquired by IBM, so I started as web developer there. But when I restarted back in my career, I actually started an eDiscovery again. And this time I was in New York City, a small vendor.

And I really, really learned eDiscovery literally from the bottom up. So I was basically burning discs and, burning the midnight oil. I'd really was working. It it felt like twenty four seven.

Correct? No. No. I was, yeah, not that early in my period. No. So yeah. I just, I mean, I didn't really have a lot of experience with the floppy disks at home because my dad was a mainframe guy.

So I did get to, like, play with some of that stuff at home, and I learned, you know, to code in Das and stuff like that. So I really got to see some of that, but I really didn't start working until we were up to CDs. And, even DVDs were kind of like the new thing, like, don't use it until you really need it.

Anything over seven hundred, you know, megabytes or something like that. We were just, yes, the discs were still kind of like, you know, do we need a deliverable that large? Do we so that was, yeah, still early days in eDiscovery.

So let's move forward to where I ended up as an on-site vendor managing eDiscovery for IBM. What happened was I that was kind of I did a lot of hours in New York City, and I decided, let me why don't I go to Westchester of New York? And that's where IBM is headquartered. So I managed their on-site discovery team for that vendor. I worked there for about a year and a half in IBM's headquarters running as their kind of their vendor on-site.

After about a year and a half, they asked me, Hey, could you, like, do the what you're doing, but, like, for us directly. So then I, I basically started running the IBM discovery department. I guess that's, you know, they called it that, but really that was a little little bit of an intro to legal ops in IBM. So that led me, basically, to have a team where we really got into the crux of in house operations.

So, well, basically, I was there for ten years managing the IBM way in a discovery then in twenty twenty one. They decided to spin off, basically, to get their services implementation department to be a completely separate company, completely separate from IBM. So that basically meant that now I became instead of just eDiscovery and maybe a little bit of legal ops, now I'm full legal ops in terms of getting our data, getting our workflow into place figuring out what we're gonna use from beginning to end on all of this stuff, creating templates, creating a team. And also a smaller team.

I might add. But at least now I can Well, it sounds like you're enjoying the new job. So that's great. Yeah.

So We took the worldwide retention management schedule that was basically created in IBM, I would say, probably twenty years ago, So what we have now is first, we took out the parts we didn't need. So there are a lot of, like, smaller interesting pieces that we could take out right away. Easy peasy. But then we have other parts where we're like, why are we saying we need to hold data for twenty years for the, you know, something that is basically what amounts to a log file, something like that.

So I'm working with CIO teams directly on implementing through a vendor a system where we can not just so my job is to create something that makes sense for retention codes, not something so complex where people aren't gonna use it. And a lot of that work is really, I get questions each day from different teams. So we have to exit from IBM. We have, you know, Basically, our deadline is approaching very quickly.

We have over four hundred applications that have to leave where they sit now and either come over completely onto a kindle environment or completely sunset and start from scratch. And then I've also got retention schedule to build before any of that data moves. So it's really been about what makes sense? Do we really need to hold things for twenty years?

And how far back do we go? Do we go back to the day that Kyndryl became a completely separate company, which is November three twenty twenty one, and so that might be good from an information governance side of things, but that's what we're figuring out piece by piece, department by department, that's one of those things that's on my plate as soon as we have our vendor up and running. We've sort of gone through the codes, made everything consistent. So far, and then we'll work with each department to really make sure things make sense.

And, of course, we also have country variants data privacy issues to take into account This is a very modern problem within corporations. Right? And the genesis of your role, legal operations.

It's for what it's worth, it's a fairly new role that has really blossomed over the last, I wanna say twenty years, because I think it started happening. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but it came about really around, you know, the early two thousands I think corporations were starting to realize, hey, we've got an increasingly complex landscape of data now. And as a result of that complex data types, and the volume of data, we need somebody to be able to control this, and we need somebody to, so you're talking about, how do we improve efficiency? How do we manage risk, which is some of the themes that you were just referring to and how do we stream processes?

Risk is probably the thing I worry about most each day. And I guess we'll get into that a bit more when we talk about maybe some burnout issues because when you have every day, you're responsible for saying yes know, maybe, on all these different items. By the time you get through a week, you're like, okay, I've made twenty decisions this week. Three of them were garbage.

The other ten were okay. And then, like, the last few, I'm thinking I know I've made mistakes and, you know, the teams that I've worked with, the people I've talked to this week. I mean, it's every day in eDiscovery, and I'll call it legal ops, actually. That's the better term for this.

Every day is so different from the day before. We really have A Maria had of issues. I just I can't say that any day is always the same work, and that's what leads to the burnout that we'll talk about later. So how my role has changed or how this role has changed, not just mine.

Everyone now has to be cognizant of how much data, where it is, how can my company be fined for this type of data, where we hold it, where we review it, who has left it on some random hard drive, who has tried to go into an airport, with this data traveled with their phone somewhere. I have to think about all of this because eventually I either have to collect that data for a regular legal matter, or I have to help think about these things for our incident response team. So every team is a little bit more interconnected through my role. So legal ops basically is now kind of the connection between cybersecurity, eDiscovery, You've got trust and compliance, investigations.

I mean, we really touch upon all of those different legal pieces within one role right there. It's just every tool that I have to bring online has to be managed from all five of those perspectives.

Because everything that happens ultimately, like you're saying, and we'll touch on this, but it's on you and every decision, right, that happens. I mean, there's other people that are helping, but it's the hub and spoke model. Is that right? Right. Right. A lot of emails. If I go through my emails, I'll see a bunch of questions that maybe some of them are luckily, I have a great team of attorneys that help me with these decisions, but it's a lot of it is collaboration.

A lot of it can't even be answered through email because we've gotta think, well, there's this, then there's the gray area. Nothing's black and white anymore. Everything is really gray area. Yes, we can collect this in this country, but in this other country, we have to consider well if that person was responsible for HR roles, that's got a completely different set of compliance rules than, let's say, just and something on your laptop.

So, yes, my inbox is pretty, pretty crazy. And not only that, but in teams, and, you know, we're people ask questions, they send documents, and, you know, like, could you not send me anything just yet? Let's look before he send me anything and, you know, violate some export issue. Let's talk about it first.

So a lot. I say that where most of my job used to be, I could just run on my own and just like, get a question answered via email and then just get going. Now it's got to be at least five meetings.

At least ten different chat discussions, and then maybe about thirty emails as well. So that's really what the changing environment for the role is a lot more collaboration than it used to be. A lot more thinking than it used to be, and a lot of me saying, well, that might be above my pay grade.

I like saying that because at least then people can stop putting all that pressure for an immediate answer. And I say, wait a minute. Before I say yes to this, let me go check with this trust in client's attorney, or let me go check with the attorney for that particular matter, or, you know, it's just a lot of hold on before we go any further. We have to make sure that this is making sense.

Well, I say the what has worked for me is definitely not email. Email is something that people may look at. They'll instantly, their heart rate will increase depending on what's in that email, and then they'll decide So I really wanna respond to this now. So I and I know how that goes.

So what I do is my first step is an email to say, hey, I'll reach out at some point or you let me know when is good for you. So that can be an email or a quick Slack or or teams, you know, whatever is the communication point for your business. But I really feel like it has it's a combination now. Of, you know, if they don't reach out directly to a quick chat, you know, prompt, that means they're really swamped so I'd put it in email.

However, if if it's somebody I've worked with, like, for at least two days in a row in one week, then I already know, hey, they're still trying to get through this, swamp. So I just, I think a phone call sometimes as my last resort, But really, that's what gets things done. That's like, I really need an answer now. I'm just gonna have to call you.

So it's got to be all three. Sometimes, That's just the way it is. Sometimes they hear your voice and they're like, oh, yeah. You know what?

Is that amazing. It it's a phone, right, picking up the phone sometimes just solves everything. I don't know if a lot of people know how to actually pick up a phone and dial a phone number anymore. Yeah.

And and when I say call, sometimes it's just a team's call or a Slack call or whatever it might be. So, you know, it's a definitely I don't like to bother people. That's a that's a personality Street, but I implement that at work as well as everywhere else. I do not like to be the nagging part of anything.

You know, I'll do a couple of follow ups. I, you know, that's fine by me. I really feel like the more time I spend following up gives the other person more time to think about it, to lose sleep, and then we all come together after, you know, it's fully ruminated.

So I think that's on a good day. But, you know, when you're talking about, you know, sleep is important. Sleep on it. It's like, Jared, do you ever written written one of those emails and just, like, save it in your drafts folder?

Like, maybe I send that email. Right? And it's the same thing. Right? It's having that time to percolate on and think about it.

Right? Really be mindful of the words that you're using.

It's like with the schedule of matters and how they go through each year. You might have a couple of months where things aren't so crazy. So you get to catch up on like those administrative items, and you're like, oh, I could do this for, like, twenty five more years. No big deal.

But then you have weeks and months that go you go through and you're like, am I ever gonna get to breathe? And you just you realize as you come through it, like, Wow. I haven't actually, like, looked at my clothes or haven't, like, spent real time with the kids or, you know, whatever is happening you get through those few months, like, on the other side, you're like, okay, I did it, but can I do that, you know, really sustainably for the next twenty plus years? And, when you did mention before we started the podcast about how someone said that AI will replace some jobs in ten years.

To be honest, I think it's only what AI will do is help people who use it to replace those who don't use it. And that's really all it is. We're still gonna have our jobs, but the problem is that we are gonna have to think more just as I'm talking about now, how each day, instead of just being able to really tackle the to do list. Each item is, I've got to think about this.

I've got to get other people to think about it with me. That's the issue. It's we're becoming more think workers And that was a big deal at IBM, of course, because, you know, the slogan was think. What does that mean?

What am I thinking about? But it really is what we have to do every day to be successful. We really are becoming more thinkers rather than doers, and that becomes more stressful. Really?

Because if you're actually doing stuff, I notice when I have a day where all I have to do is, like, transfer data from one set of areas to another, like, if it's a day to day, I'm good. I'm okay because I can actually see a progress bar things are working as they should. I mean, I love data days, but when it's a think day, which I'm having more of, I think more of us are having those days where you can't, you can't just sit down and edit something. You can't just work on a document.

You're actually getting constantly interrupted with questions. You got to think about your responses. My favorite part is when someone asks, oh, can I get a workflow diagram? I'm like, okay.

Back to my coding days. Fine. I'll do that. You're gonna have to wait at least two days for that because that means I have to stop and think.

I cannot be interrupted while I'm trying to figure out if then statements you know, and figure out how does this make sense, how does this team use the data? Where's the output going? I've got to it's so many pieces to one small project. Somebody may think they've asked you for something small, but it's large in terms of the think process.

And thinking is actually pretty stressful when you're trying to do that with multiple interruptions with regular things that you've got to do every day administrative or not. So I think that's where the burnout comes in more and more. Yeah. It's an interesting point to think about all this new technology that in many ways has improved our lives so much and particularly in eDiscovery.

You know, it's gonna be no day to days next week. You know, what how are you preparing yourself for a week like that? I don't wanna sound like one of those positive thinking sort of gurus, but I think what works is, like, for me, I just have to get up earlier. Like, if I've gotten a heads up of about something that's coming, I literally have to prepare for it.

I had a friend that once would always make me laugh because he would be like, I'm not mentally prepared for this. But that's the problem. We're just sometimes we're not mentally prepared to receive the challenge, so that's what gets us more stressed. And I and I actually have a person on my team now who and I have a very small team.

So this person knows eventually who I'm talking about, but this is the problem is that once we're we get multiple requests, like, if you get one or two requests you know, in the morning. There's, you know, and you're ready for it. That's perfect. You're ready to go.

There's no stress in that, but the stress comes in when you get the third request And that one suddenly is telling you I've got to prioritize this to become number one instead of the place it really is, which is three. And that's where the stress comes in. And then of course, well, while I'm in the midst of doing something that's already on my plate, I'm a manager. So I've got that person calling me, hey, I've got to talk to you.

I, I don't understand how we're supposed to do this. What is the issue? Or why does this outside counsel attorney think they can boss us around and, you know, and their question is valid But what they don't realize is that I'm already stuck and mired down with my own issue here in what the problem is for that person is just that priority becomes confused, and you got to be mentally prepared for it. And really there is no there's no trick to it.

It's just it's just got to just get it done. And I feel like getting up earlier is one piece. Like, if I if I have a heads up, most of the time, there's just you just get stuff on your plate. There's no heads up given, but sort of taking a break from the laptop on the weekends.

I that's my favorite. Like, somebody can email me at ten o'clock AM. I'm up. I see my laptop.

I keep it open. I have my office. I passed why it's get to the kitchen. I purposely am not stopping in.

Until I feel like, you know what? It's a Saturday. Okay. It's twelve thirty. Alright. Fine.

I got up. I went to do something outside. I'll come back. I'll respond. And I'm gonna take my time.

I wish every day could be like that because that that means I can take my time and no one is expecting, oh, wait, This is a Wednesday at three pm. They certainly should still be at their desk. That's the stressful part because you know that people are expecting these immediate decisions, but you've got to think about it. The these that's the problem.

Our jobs are more thinking now. And I like to you know, take a few minutes on that. And so that's I'm certainly not somebody who likes to rush, but when I have to, hey, sometimes I just work through the weekends and it kind of helps me through the as well. But I don't like to do that.

Maybe I should wait till this afternoon and really, you know, not just set expectations with my client or whoever I'm working with, but also for my team. To see that they don't need to respond to everything right away on a Saturday morning. So, I mean, I think that, you know, the whole industry is feeling these pressures right now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's I just feel like it's gonna be increasing in terms of the amount of pressure because as we get more technology, we're actually getting less people.

You know, more is expected to be done. You're expected to have all systems up and running at all times. We're getting more passwords. That's for sure.

It would be so great if there was on thinking days of progress bar also. Right? You could actually see, like, okay, I'm almost there. There's something about you had said, and I think it's a cultural thing that we can set as, you know, you are a leader within Kyndryl, Right? And Jared, you know, here at BDO, there's something to be said about being able to take those breaks, those mental breaks five to ten minutes between meetings. Not have those back to backs, walk away from the desk, and just, as corny as it may sound, just breathe.

Right? And as as everyone knows about me, I like to get another cup of espresso, but not everyone has to do that. But just have a moment to breathe and being able to take that break over the weekend, and and when we attack those emails over the weekend, maybe not send them over the maybe delay send if your email program can allow that. That way as leaders, we're not setting the expectation to others on the team that they have to respond.

Like, oh, no. You know, Jessica sent me this email Saturday at twelve thirty. I have to respond to desk now. So there's something to be said about this idea of taking that break as well, right, having this moment to just breathe, relax, and when maybe when we get up in the mornings and we get up early, like, I'm a four thirty riser.

Right? And the first thing that I like to do is make sure that I'm breathing. Right? There's something to be said about having the ability to just pause, right, and breathe.

All we have to do is give ChatGPT an example.

And, inevitably, it came up in this podcast recording. It always seemed to And I'm glad you were able to figure out a way, being able to do it. I mean, I that's, one of those things that, as I mentioned earlier, that the people who will have those jobs in ten years that supposedly are being taken away. That it's just those folks are gonna use AI to do their simple tasks.

There's simple, you know, morning emails or any administrative items that kind of get backed up right now. That's really where it comes in. And, you know, people get really scared of new stuff, you know, when it's ten years out. And, you know, Chad TVT, of course, it's been released without full testing.

You know, we are literally the testers on it. And, I just got invited to I think it was barred, in Google. So I'll check out how that goes. I mean, at at this point, it's just something to use personally more than at work, really, you know, and of course, Kendall actually is one of those companies who released the policy that we should not be using AI for anything.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think every company should be wise to keep that until further notice. Well, Jessica, we're about out of time. Thank you so much for joining us today on videos Legal Tech Talk podcast. Been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.