Pearls On, Gloves Off

On this episode, Shana Simmons, General Counsel at Everlaw, joins Mary to talk about Shana's career journey. From how Shana got a job as a law firm associate in London to why she left that job and moved to California to work as a contract manager at Google. Shana waxes lyrical about her deep love for Google and what it was like to work at a company that was growing so rapidly. She also shares the tools and skills Shana learned at Google and why she didn't learn them as a lawyer, such as...

In this episode, Mary is joined by her friend Niki Armstrong, Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary at Pure Storage, to talk about optimization and innovation in the legal ops space. Niki has had a long and successful career, first as a lawyer and now as a CLO. She runs through her career and how she got to her current position. Then she and Mary walk down memory lane and talk about how their 20-year friendship started at a poorly put-together event in San Francisco. Niki also...

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

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

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

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

Smooth operations keep businesses afloat, but what makes them successful? Join Mary O’Carroll on her new podcast, Pearls On, Gloves Off, where she is not holding back. Mary is diving into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to run high-performing businesses. Mary will be joined by leaders of some of today’s best high-performing businesses for insightful conversations about what it takes to run one of these businesses. Mary O’Carroll spent 13 years as Director of Legal Operations at...

In this episode, Mary is joined by Alex Su, Head of Community Development at Ironclad. Alex is somewhat of a celebrity in the legal operations field; his TikTok account @legaltechbro has nearly 75,000 followers. Alex talks about his success on social media, where he gets his ideas, and how he deals with trolls. He goes into detail about the advantages of TikTok versus LinkedIn and explains how the communities on each platform are different. As a former lawyer, Alex’s career hasn’t gone...

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

Smooth operations keep businesses afloat but what makes them successful? Join Mary O’Carroll on her new podcast, Pearls On, Gloves Off, where she is not holding back. Mary is diving into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to run high-performing businesses. Mary will be joined by leaders of some of today’s best high-performing businesses for insightful conversations about what it takes to run one of these businesses. Mary O’Carroll spent 13 years as Director of Legal Operations at Google, 11...