Episode 17: Legal Ops with Matilde Montanari, Legal Operations Officer at TomTom

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Stine: Today, I am joined by Matilde Montanari. I hope I pronounced it correctly. Welcome Matilde.

Matilde: Thank you very much for having me today.

Stine: So Matilde, for the listeners out there, they might not know you, but you have a very interesting background when we're talking about legal operations. And again, this is a topic that is on a lot of people's minds, but maybe not necessarily that familiar. 

So I was thinking, what about telling the audience a little bit about who you are and your background and maybe how you got into legal operations. 

Matilde: Yeah, absolutely. Perfect pronunciation for my surname, Montanari. I'm currently based in Amsterdam and I'm the legal operations officer at TomTom. TomTom is currently a technology company. Maybe most of you might remember for the GPS.

Everyone at some point had a TomTom GPS and it was actually very revolutionary. But yeah, now they move more in the space of BB and building maps and licensing maps to other companies. My background, I'm Italian from Pisa, so from Tuscany.

I've graduated in law and then started in, worked in house for a law firm in private practice for a law firm for a couple of years. But after a couple of years working there,

I soon realized actually that I really wanted to have a bit more business exposure. And then maybe that wasn't my actual path. But I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And I wanted to go back to study. So I found and I did an LLM here in Leiden, which I highly advise everyone to visit. It's an amazing little town in the Netherlands.

It's a student city, very, very, very nice. And after that, I found, ended up finding a job as a legal commercial consultant in MessageBird, which is a tech startup, very, yeah, very hectic, like really the classic startup environment that everyone thinks and everyone sees in the movies. So it was very, very fun and very, very exciting. Back then, my GC was very into legal operations. Then in the back, it was very, very, you soon realized that to scale a team, you also have to have the proper tech stack and tech setup to actually support your team, especially when you're going at that speed and that growth. 

So you really wanted someone that, yeah, could focus on ops as well. And I've always been very interested in operations, like in general, my friends, they always like to say that, yeah, I like to fix things and that's the reality. So I started focusing % of my time on legal ops. And then, yeah, I fell in love and I was like, oh my God, I want to do legal operations.

So I went, my next step in the career was indeed to find a % focus on legal operations position. And I moved to booking where I was doing legal operations by financial management. So yeah, budget, external counsel. So I need such a big team and inspiring team. That was very, very interesting. So yes, that's a few words, my life, I end up here. So from booking.com, you then moved into TomTom where you're now the legal ops officer. 

Stine: Just because legal ops is for some new and maybe also a little undefinable. 

Could you maybe just give us a little insight into what are you doing as a legal ops officer? You're probably doing so much, but what is that? 

Matilde: Yeah, definitely. So I think indeed it's quite new and the entire legal operations community is still working and trying to define what we really working on. But I like to approach legal operations as, I mean, it's still an operations role and we have seen operations role in other different departments.

So when I approached it and when I was the lead, when I started my work at TomTom, I really wanted to be inspired or take inspiration from other departments. So I really approach it as the classic way you do operations by focusing on data and technology, people and processes. So that's the kind of like three big cores that I like to focus on. And then under that, obviously there are sub topics or a sub focus.

But yeah, I would say that in few words, legal operations is really trying to make the life of legal counsels a better life and a happier life, I would say. Yeah. Make them more efficient. Make sure that they can provide their best without like thinking to admin or processes things that like just slow down their work. So you're going in and like taking a holistic view of whatever you're doing within the legal teams.

So, and then looking at how you can optimize it, how you can work smarter, how you can save cost as well, or. Well, definitely. So yeah, all of them. I mean, when, when usually approaching when started at TomTom, also like booking, there is a big period of just trying to understand what they're doing and how they're doing it. 

I always think that they're the first period that they're always quick and little wins that we can always have. So without having to engage in big projects or being changed management into new technologies, everyone wants technologies is always, but there are a lot of things that we can already do to improve the way we are working just by asking why, why we are doing a certain way and why certain things are like this. So usually that, yeah, the first step is just literally to speak with the team, trying to understand their struggles.

So like, yeah, like therapy session, what are your problems today? And then from there, like, yeah, what we can do in the short term, like quick fixer and what would be part of a bigger project and a bigger approach, maybe introducing technologies and improving like, yeah, processes and yeah. 

Stine: Let's say that you're sitting and you are considering starting to hire your first legal operations person. In your opinion, what should you be looking for? 

What type of skill sets and what type of person should you get? Should you get somebody who has been working in the in-house legal team and promote that person to the legal ops? Should you try to find somebody who's good at that? Project management or should you try to find a finance controller type character? What's your recommendation? What should we be looking for?

Matilde: Wow, it's a very interesting question. So I definitely think that I was just recently speaking with other people in legal operations that I'm aware that in Europe, we have legal operations, we have legal operations, we have legal ops professional with most of the time with a legal background. That's very common in Europe. Why in the US it's completely the opposite. All the legal operations professional, they're not coming at all from a legal background.

So that's a very interesting split there. I feel like that, at least especially when it's a new position, when someone that has done legal or coming from a legal background, there is some sort of like trust that it's really in place. I felt that by saying, I know what you're going through, because I've been in contracts, I've been a legal commercial counsel. That always kind of was a big step ahead in trusting that I would support them in doing the right thing.

But at the same time, I think that operations, such a wide different type of skills that, yeah, maybe having someone that has a bit of knowledge into other analytical skills or like project management skills, that might be very a plus. And if I have to think now what would go ahead, if I have to hire someone in my team, I will think someone that maybe does not have fully legal background just to bring in new ideas or a new perspective or a new, yeah, a new point of view into the team.

Stine: So let's say now you've hired your first, like, I'm just trying to get like all the goodies out of you because you have such an interesting background.

So let's say that you're going in at a new company. The first hundred days or give and take, right? How would you start? What would you do? Or what would you recommend?

Let's say that you're sitting out there and you're considering going into legal operations and you've maybe persuaded the general public that you have a lot of experience and you've maybe persuaded the general council to, to promote you. 

What would be like your focus the first hundred days?

Matilde: Yeah. And as I said, which is a patch rate, which is what I've done now at Tonton. There are a series of, I mean, especially general councils, they, they, they do want to show the value of the legal team. Historically, like legal teams has always been seen as yeah. Cause centers or, or maybe like most of the time, the company is not really fully aware of what legal team is doing, which volumes and how they're doing certain things. So something that we indeed done in the last six months at Tonton was reallyto focus on quick, the quick wins. So yeah.

Maybe making sure that the legal team is in control of their budget processes that can be improved and then also showing the work. So really like we implemented a quickly within the two months, three months ticketing system to really show, what's the type of work that we're doing in which volume. And everyone was so surprised and it was like, ah, okay, this is actually what you're doing. It's a lot. So that there were things that suddenly like create the, the background for us to go for bigger projects and go for bigger things. 

So having different conversations, like now you see what we're doing. We need this support or we need this technology to be able to continue doing like this. So, yeah, my, my advice would be in the first, in the first period. So literally that in the focus on quick fix or like, yeah, just making sure everyone is aware of the type of work in volumes that the legal team are doing. Yeah. If you were to kind of give a little insights into how your daily, like not specifically at TomTom, but the type of work that you do as a legal ops officer.

Yeah. So there is definitely, there are definitely a series of tasks on a day to day because as legal ops, I'm owning, let's say the entire technology stack of the legal team. So I'm owning all the tools that the legal team is implemented has in place are under my view. So there is a lot of like day to day, things that I have to look after on these, on, on the different platforms, things might not be working or things that we want to like check if they're doing the right thing. 

So there is a lot of day to day, little tasks that I'm doing. But then yeah, what I make sure is that I always align with the GC on his priority. And then my projects are aligned with his priorities. So if one of his priority is literally for a certain business unit to like close contract faster, I will always make sure that half of my time is put to work on those projects and I never lose the sight on what is actually what we're trying to achieve here and what is the bigger mission and vision that we have for the legal team. So something that I've done for TomTom was to build a maturity plan.

As soon as I was in and after four months in, after I spoke with the entire team was literally to have a rough plan on what we want to do in the next three years. That's a long time, but it helps you really like stick to, okay, these are my priority and these are the things that are not our priority. And it really helps you in your day to day and yeah, to make sure you stick on your objectives. The future of legal operations. And where you're going, now we're talking about today getting in and the quick wins to begin with. 

Stine: Where do you see legal operations going?

Matilde: I think the legal operations future is very bright. I think legal operations more and more is becoming obvious that it's an essential role in the legal operations.

It's literally the right harm of the GC. It really helps the GC in making the right decision and supporting the team. I mean, let's remember that a big part of it is to ensure that the team is working at their best. So I feel legal ops will have way much more prominent role in companies and also having a more assertive role in the legal operations.

And also having a more strategy role, helping the GC really working on which are the strategies and which are the right strategy for a legal department and the objectives of a legal department in line with the company's objectives. Yeah.

Stine: So in your view, given the fact that legal operations are becoming more and more critical, especially in-house, what tools do you use or would recommend?

I'm not talking specifically like contract management or any like specific tools in terms of like supporting the legal teams, but the way you are working because your role is so different, right?

Normally when you're in in-house, like the first tool you start working with is well, maybe word, then it's Slack. And then you have a contract management system.You might have a e-signing system, but as a legal ops person, how are you scaling you and how are you working smarter? 

Matilde: Oh, wow. Absolutely. That's, that's so interesting. So, I mean, being such a, such a new position and being such something that you can shape in the way you want. I also feel like sometimes, yeah, I need to get a step up and look at how other people are doing things or other departments and doing things. So what I've been trying to work now in Tantamma or I want to initiate this year is literally to build a community within the company of operations people.

So everyone has someone doing operations or like working remotely in, or doing re-operations, not knowing and doing operations. So really trying to bring people together and yeah, I have conversation on how they're doing things, how they're approaching problems.

So I might think something is really legal related, but most likely it's not. Someone has been doing similar things before. So I'm trying to, yeah, remain inspired and learned by others within the companies. Yeah.

Because sometimes we forgot our companies have so much knowledge and so many people and so much talent that we can, yeah, we can share. So that's my approach. Yeah. If anybody is sitting out there and thinking, Hmm, I actually would like to go into legal operations.

Stine: That could be an interesting career path. How would you get started?

I found that everyone has always a bit of interest in legal operations, in fact, even in the team right now, I always have everyone like telling me, yeah, like if you need any help on this project,I love like working with tech, let me know. I'm always happy to support.

So my suggestion would be like, literally raise your hand. Definitely there's always need of support in legal ops. Like one person cannot do everything. So ask to join us a project or support in a project and get a sense of like what legal operations will look like. And it's something if my interest, interested you. 

I was very lucky because indeed I had a chance to work on implementing contract management very early and it was a completely new thing and definitely was a very cool project as a first project. But yeah, get a sense, work on different. I mean,

I was something that I like to always think is that a lot of legal counsels do a lot of operations job every day without realizing it. They do a lot of project management thinking like when they engage several external councils or within the company, they have different stakeholders that that's project management at the end of the day. So they have a bit of exposure and they have a bit of some talent that they can share. 

Stine: Is there any resources or courses or anything that you would suggest or recommend?

Matilde: Well, definitely like clock and the ACC doing massive work around like legal operations and making a given visibility to legal operations and providing the basis to understanding your version. So definitely like having to look at those resources is a good start.

There are few well known names in legal ops, which very active on LinkedIn and they do workshops or shares material, which is always very useful. I know that they're starting now some courses but I think legal operations is something that you can learn along the way. Yeah.

And just having to like being, yeah, share ideas with other people doing the similar things is probably the best. Yeah. Every conferences or everything when I speak with someone in the same network, I come up and I was like, Oh my God, it wasn't, I never thought about that. So there's so much to learn.

And just by, yeah, just by having a conversation with someone that's doing something similar. Then let's say that you're then transitioning yourself and then like you building out your career.

As a general counsel, what should be in your opinion, their top priority when it comes to scaling their legal team? So, well, there are definitely different things that GCs can do to scale the legal teams.

Obviously depends what the scope of work they're doing. When we, there's so much admin that sometimes legal teams are doing that you can free up their time and have their time to invest them in something else, to invest in their, not only work related, but also in their development.

And that's also something that scales legal teams. So if you free up their time to make sure that they have more time to focus on learning something new or boosting some of their skills, that it's something that will come back. You know, they will use that, that learnings into their day to day job.

So really what I think about how I can support the legal team is that, yeah, how can I make sure you also have time to dedicate to your development? And that's where the people part comes in. Yeah.

That's how I feel that, yeah, a GC always should have the focus on making sure that they have the time to scale and can develop from a personal perspective. If you look at that, I had a really interesting conversation with a consultancy partner that is very much looking in scaling legal teams.

And she said that it's a lot about delawaring.

And I was kind of like, delawaring? What does that mean? And she said, well, there is a lot of things that we can do to help you scale your legal team. There is a lot of things that the in-house legal teams are doing that has nothing to do with being that in-house legal teams, that they're doing admin stuff, but maybe many are afraid to lose control and giving those assignments to the rest of the business. 

Stine: Is that what you mean by taking the admin side of things?

Matilde: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's true.

There's much fear in losing control. And it's all about building the right narrative behind that. It's making sure they understand why certain things have been done and it's for their benefit so that they gain more time to focus on other things.

I mean, we're pretty sure that a lot of the lawyers have studied all of those years to feel payment details or in a contractor. That's the type of things that technology or a correct process comes in and then can fix and free up and make sure that you have time to focus on real legal substantial work. 

Stine: So, Matilde, now you're inspiring the listeners out there and really giving them insights into how you built your legal operations role and also like what you've been working on. The quick wins, as you said, where do you get your inspiration? 

Matilde: Yeah. As I mentioned, I did have a GC, which was very, very, very inspiring. He was always, he always taught me that to always be very business oriented and to make sure that the, I always had a focus on the end user and that's the, that's I think it's also the focus of legal operations, not thinking who is your end user and yeah, how can we make sure that they have the best experience.

So definitely my first GC was always very inspiring and he always guided me and he pushed me eventually to change and switch finally careers to legal operations. And then, yeah, also my boss at booking, she, Mipi, she was absolutely amazing.

She had a lot of experience into the business and she had a lot, a lot, a lot to share with me. So that also I think has been such an amazing and brought me where I am today. And most of the things that I know I own them to them. I have to end the mindset. I own them to them. Yeah.

Stine: You mentioned that there were some that were posting some really good contenton LinkedIn as an example. Are there any people that you can recommend that others start following or reading blogs or articles from?

Matilde: Yes. There's, that's, that's what I've done. There's Lucy Basile. She's a CLM expert mostly, but she's an operation expert that she knows everything about everything. And she also has a blog. She's a blogger and she's a CLM expert.

So she's a really good blogger. She knows everything about everything. And she also wrote some a couple of books on, yeah, legal operations, really practical, like yeah. How can you approach project management with a question you can ask your team when it comes to about implementing a new technologies or processes really, really. And so on, on yeah. Practical advice.

I think I was a legal consultant when I was still a legal counsel, just to understand what a CLM is in the first place. So that's something that, yeah, she's amazing.I follow her and she always shares a lot of content and webinars. So that's, that's something that I would be advised. Yeah.

Stine: Well, Matilde, that was my last question. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for joining the podcast and for giving people a little bit of a sense of what legal operations is and, and the career path that is an opportunity in that regard.

Matilde: Thank you very much for having me. This is super, super, super fun. And yes, I hope more people, more and more people want to legal operations. Yeah. We need people definitely.

Stine: And on that note, well, thank you for joining and listening in to Inspiring Legal.

Thank you so much for listening to Inspiring Legal. Remember to subscribe and if you want more information, you can always go to openli.com/community.

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