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

02/28/23 • 26 min

Legal Operations is on everyone's lips. But what is it actually all about? What are the best practices, what are some quick wins - and how does one go about pursuing a career in Legal Ops? Join us in a conversation with TomTom's Legal Operations Officer, Matilde Montanari, as we dive into the specifics of this fast-moving legal field.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:35] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Today, I am joined by Matilde Montanari.
[00:35 - 00:52] I hope I pronounced it correctly. Welcome Matilde. Thank you very much for having me today. 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.
[00:52 - 01:08] 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.
[01:09 - 01:26] Yeah, absolutely. So, hi Matilde. 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.
[01:26 - 01:43] 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 B2B and building maps and licensing maps to other companies.
[01:44 - 02:02] 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.
[02:03 - 02:21] 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.
[02:21 - 02:40] 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,
[02:40 - 02:58] 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.
[02:58 - 03:14] 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.
[03:16 - 03:37] 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 50% of my time on legal ops.
[03:38 - 03:55] 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 100% focus on legal operations position. And I moved to booking where I was doing legal operations by financial management.
[03:55 - 04:12] 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,
[04:12 - 04:32] you then moved into TomTom where you're now the legal ops officer. 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
[04:32 - 04:50] you doing as a legal ops officer? You're probably doing so much, but what is that? Yeah, definitely. So I think indeed it's quite new and the entire legal operations community is still working and trying to define
[04:50 - 05:07] 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,
[05:07 - 05:25] 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
[05:25 - 05:42] on. And then under that, obviously there are sub topics or a sub focus. But yeah, I would say that in few words...

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

Previous Episode

Episode 16: Bridging the gap with Jonathan Keen, Head of Legal at Figma

Today, Inspiring Legal is joined by Jonathan Keen, the Head of Legal at powerhouse software company Figma. Listen in as Stine and Jonathan dive into Figma's legal operations, their approach to privacy, and Jonathan's own Legal journey.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:17] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. So today I am joined by Jonathan and you'll get to hear more from him in a second. But Jonathan is working for Figma, a fast growing, amazing tool.
[00:17 - 00:34] If you ever used it, you know what it is and you know how good it is. But Jonathan also has a background working for tech companies that are growing fast. And today Jonathan is joining me to have a conversation about privacy, expanding into new markets
[00:34 - 00:56] and how you're managing that when you're working for a company both headquartered out of the US, but also working in Europe. So welcome, Jonathan. Hi, thank you for the warm welcome. I'm delighted to be here. So Jonathan, for the listeners out there that don't know you, I think they should get to know you a little better.
[00:56 - 01:13] So I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about yourself, where you are from and what you do. Sure. So where am I from? I'm based out of London in the UK and have been for some time.
[01:13 - 01:38] And I guess my legal career started in a traditional way. I worked for a well-established English firm to do my training contract, which is a two year kind of training period, which we do in the UK, before qualifying into a number of US law firms in their London office,
[01:38 - 02:01] but headquartered in New York. So I had that exposure to working with US organizations very early on in my career. So I had kind of that insight into working to tight deadlines and to working with a US centric kind of work culture and kind of the pace and the requirements of that entail.
[02:01 - 02:18] So the first US firm I worked for was Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. They're one of the big white shoe New York firms. And when I was working for them, we were in the middle of the financial crisis in 2000, then it was the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
[02:18 - 02:35] And I joined kind of towards the end of that. And they were actually the official counsel to the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11. So working on really high profile corporate insolvency work as part of their financial restructuring team, which was hugely interesting.
[02:35 - 02:51] And a lot of new case law was made at the time because obviously a bank of the size and complexity of Lehman Brothers had never gone insolvent before. So it's a hugely interesting project and I'm delighted to play a very small part in that.
[02:51 - 03:12] Subsequently, I realized that kind of in the long term, private practice wasn't really the area for me. I am interested in studying new areas of law. I'm interested in a breadth of work. And that doesn't really traditionally tie up with a private practice career.
[03:12 - 03:36] So relatively early on in my career, I made the move in-house working for a portfolio technology company, a very small bespoke software house working in the energy sector, and then gradually made my way into into the West Coast technology scene where I've kind of been specializing for the last five years,
[03:36 - 04:03] helping West Coast typically headquartered hyper growth SAS companies expand into the international market. So I've been the first non-US lawyer now. The last two organizations I've worked for. And the first kind of pair of feet on the ground outside the US. And I'm there to help enable that rapid growth into Europe and beyond for these for these companies.
[04:03 - 04:20] And yeah, Figma has been my home for the last 18 months and seen a exceptional pace of growth. We've opened offices in London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and now Singapore is next on the list during that time.
[04:20 - 04:38] So kind of the we have this phrase that kind of a month in Figma is like a year at other companies because so much, so much changes. And that's part of the excitement, but also presents its own challenges as well. I'm normally saying working at a tech scale up is kind of like dog years.
[04:38 - 04:58] So you're multiplying it by seven. Here we're multiplying it by 12. And I think it kind of gives a good understanding of the growth of Figma and where Figma is going. So if you don't know about Figma out there, take a look, because if you're working at a tech company, you are most likely using their products.
[04:58 - 05:19] And if not, most likely going to, especially the product teams and the dev teams are madly in love with it. And I'm not getting commissioned for saying this, and I don't use your product, but my dev team does. I am not creative. I'm not able to do anything that just resembles something smart when it comes to technology. <...

Next Episode

Episode 18: What a CEO needs from their GC

In today’s episode, we discuss (some of) the qualities of a successful general counsel. At an Openli Community event, Stine asked Trustpilot CEO Peter Mühlmann what he looks for in a GC. His answer? Listen to find out.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:36] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Welcome to this episode from me, your host, Stine.
[00:37 - 01:00] You're listening to the podcast called Inspiring Legal, and you might have heard about me talking a little before. Today, well, it's me talking, but it's actually more me referring to a conversation I had with a CEO that I really like, that I have a close relationship with.
[01:00 - 01:17] And that is the CEO and founder, Peter Hultman from Trustpilot. So I worked together with Peter for six years. I came on board Trustpilot when there were 70 employees. And the first guy I met was Peter.
[01:18 - 01:37] He gave me a big hug the day I came in. He was wearing the classic, you know, Silicon Valley t-shirt, tennis socks, and some classic H2O slippers. And I was kind of like, OK, nice to meet you.
[01:37 - 01:53] You're very different from what I've known at the law firm, where everybody was wearing, you know, the classic blue shirt and the nice jacket. Maybe tie if you're going out for customer meetings, but otherwise, you know, the suit.
[01:53 - 02:24] So I met Peter and we bonded in the sense that he was a person and he is a person that is caring, outgoing, and always honest in his feedback. So not that long ago, I asked Peter to join an event we had here in Copenhagen for some of the members in the community.
[02:25 - 03:04] And I asked Peter to give feedback, feedback to the community on how he would like his general counsel to give good advice. What he preferred his general counsel to do when facing, let's call it complicated situations, and how the general counsel, in his opinion, get a place around the decision making table, you know, make a difference, become that business stakeholder that so many of us, well, are, but also would like to be.
[03:04 - 03:21] And continue improving on. So I asked Peter, wouldn't you just join this event and tell people some of the things that you've been saying to me for so many years? And by the way, it's not just me and Peter having a conversation.
[03:22 - 03:42] It was Peter having a conversation with the entire room. And it was super insightful. And I think what he said was very common to what CEOs are looking for. What Peter said that he's looking for is a general counsel that understands the business.
[03:43 - 04:02] That was his key element. As he said, like, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. Jump on customer calls if sales is an important element of your business. Sit down with the marketing team on one of their weekly meetings and hear how they're generating leads.
[04:03 - 04:26] So that when you're having these executive management meetings, you, as the general counsel, know more about the business than the majority of the people around that table. That also means that you will be able to identify risk in a completely different way than what you would otherwise expect from the general counsel.
[04:27 - 04:56] But it also makes you more appreciated by your peers, but also by your CEO. What Peter then said, in addition to that, was when I'm asking for your opinion on something, I don't need a long memo. I don't need long, kind of like, on one hand, you know, and on the other hand, well, I need you to tell me yes or no.
[04:57 - 05:16] I trust that you know better than I. I trust that you, with all your knowledge of our business and the legal rules, are much better equipped to make that decision than me.
[05:17 - 05:34] And of course, sometimes decisions need to be escalated to the CEO. So when you escalate it, explain why it is that this scenario is being escalated and come up with your proposal.
[05:35 - 05:57] Don't leave it as, this is the, you have the blue pill and the red pill. Which one do you want to take? Tell me what pill would you prefer to take? And then, of course, me as the CEO is responsible for, if we take that blue pill, that we've taken in the pros and the cons.
[05:58 - 06:16] But I want to hear what you think. I want your opinion. And then what Peter also said is that, have opinions. That's not a bad thing.
[06:17 - 06:33] But remember, it's not just about saying yes or no. It's about being there for the business. And that your management group is the most important group. That is your peers.
[06:34 - 06:50] It's not your legal team that is the most important. It is not you as the general counsel that is the most ...