Helen Lowe on the role of legal ops

In this episode of Lessons I Learned in Law Scott Brown speaks to Helen Lowe, Head of Operations for the General Counsel’s office at easyJet. Helen is an operational change and transformation specialist with experience both as a consultant with KPMG and in industry with Sellafield Ltd and the Co-op.

In this episode Helen reveals what legal ops is, what her role can involve and how legal ops can shape and enhance a business.

Helen also shares some of the lessons she learned in law including:

·      Think harder! You need to be able to explain yourself clearly, think through any proposal and consider that there’s always something new to be learned.

·      The relationships with law firms can be fractious, but they can also be really fun! Learn to know how, and when, to respectfully push boundaries. 

·      Be patient! Legal teams can be very busy so make sure you allow projects sufficient time to develop and progress. 

Presented by Scott Brown of Heriot Brown Legal Recruitment. 

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Transcript

Scott Brown  (0:00) 

Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Lessons I Learned in Law. I'm Scott Brown, founder and Managing Director of Heriot Brown In-House Legal Recruitment. We're a legal recruitment specialist. And our mission is to provide lawyers and legal professionals with fulfilling careers in house. And this was really my inspiration behind the podcast lessons I learned in law because on a daily basis, I'm chatting with people and I get to hear all about their experiences of working in law. And I just thought that would be great insights to share with a wider audience, you the listener. So with any luck, you'll get the opportunity to leave the podcast or leave listening to this episode, more informed, inspired and armed with a bit more knowledge along your own career path. My guest today is Helen Lowe. Welcome to the podcast, Helen! 

Helen Lowe  (0:49)   

Hi, great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. 

Scott Brown  (0:51)   

Thanks for joining me now it Helen is a head of operations at the General Counsel's Office at easyJet. I'm fascinated to learn a bit more about what that involves and hear more about legal ops and the changing environment, which is a massive growth area in the profession as a whole. So really excited for Helen to share more about her position there. We'll move straight on and kick off if you don't mind. Helen, what was your first lesson, please? 

Helen Lowe  (1:16)   

Absolutely. So I think my first lesson really is around thinking harder. So it doesn't really matter how hard you've thought about something, something will always trip you up. And there's always something new to be learned. And I think a great example of this, one of the things that I learned in consultancy was it's all about telling a huge story, and selling a big idea, and the leap of faith and that vision. And then I came to law. And I didn't realise lawyers are not very keen on really big ideas, really exciting ideas. They want to know how the steps are to get to the really exciting ideas, and what they look like, and what those individual steps look like, and any kind of risks and the opportunities and all of that kind of stuff. And so that was kind of the very first thing I think I learned probably in like week one of working with lawyers at the coop was you have to think harder. You have to think through whatever you're proposing. And you have to articulate those steps. It's not about the huge idea. Huge ideas important. It's just, it's not all about that. 

Scott Brown  (2:25) 

Yeah, right. Oh, so let's dial it back then. So you're, you're a consultant or from consultancy, how did you get into legal ops or explore that career path 

Helen Lowe  (2:37)   

entirely by accident. So I trained with KPMG, I spent nine years with them. I moved to a client and did some programme management work that up at Sellafield, Ltd. and then anybody knows Sellafield knows that it's on the far west coast of Cumbria. And there's not much further you can go before you kind of drop off the side of the country. And there was not enough mobile reception. There was not enough Harvey Nichols and Selfridges presence for my my liking. And so I felt like after a couple of years there, it was time to move back to Manchester. And so the co op is obviously a huge kind of stalwart in the Manchester employment market and has a massive presence. And so I applied to them, actually, for a finance role. I'd never even thought about looking at anything law related, certainly wasn't in any way shape, or form, the kind of linked to being a lawyer. And so I I applied for this finance role was unsuccessful, they actually presented it internally. And they said, oh, we'll keep in touch. And I thought, well, you know, love recruiters, but they've got a lot of people to keep in touch with. And then I heard from them about three or four weeks later. And they said, Oh, we've got this great role that we think could be perfect for you. And I read the spec. And I thought, this is absolutely not the right role. For me. They want, I knew nothing about the law, they want a lawyer. And so I just completely by accident fell into the role. I had no idea how I ended up there I sat in the interview, I'd prepped for business facing law. So I prep for the consumer side of the business doing probates and wills and everything else. I didn't even know what an in house team was I didn't know businesses had in house teams of lawyers. And so I just kind of stumbled into it because they said your skill set is exactly what we want. We want somebody who's going to bring something different to our leadership team to challenge us to make us think differently. And it turns out that person was me. And so it was it wasn't it was entirely by accident. I certainly didn't look at it at the time and think, oh, legal Ops is where I need to be. Because it wasn't a big thing here. That was in 2015. And it just wasn't a big thing here that at all. Yeah. in 

Scott Brown  (4:37)   

its infancy. So was that just that it was that that was a newly created function position within the coop? It 

Helen Lowe  (4:43)   

was absolutely. The coop has gone through a huge restructuring shortly after the bank collapse. And the coop had gone through a huge restructure. And so they were in a position where they looked at that legal team and they thought about how it needed to be shaped and they brought in quite a bit of external power. From law firms that had worked with them, so had quite a bit of history with them. And Jim Tolley was brought in as the general counsel for the retail business. And he was kind of in charge of, of setting it all up. And he'd seen this role work in Addleshaw, Goddard, where he'd been a partner previously, and they called it a business manager. And so, you know, I sort of came to it thinking, you know, well, let's just see what what this is all about. And it really quickly became apparent what a difference it can make. Thinking differently, looking at things differently, looking at numbers, and knowing what they mean, lawyers can look at contracts, and they can get under the skin of them in, you know, five minutes, I can look at a spreadsheet and get under the skin a bit in five minutes. And make it really clear and start to communicate some informative messages to the wider team. And you know, that that was, that, for me is always a great jumping off point. Because finance, you know, training at KPMG, finances my comfort zone. And so that's always a great kind of jumping off point, because it adds a huge amount of value. But it's also something that I understand really, really well. Yeah. 

Scott Brown  (6:02)   

Amazing. So, so day one, you're, you're thrown into that surrounded by perfectionists lawyers, the one in the detail. You're sticking around, like taking people along on the journey. What have you learned along the way, in terms of bringing lawyers along? How do you do that? 

Helen Lowe  (6:19)   

I think there's a lot of code change management theory around how to bring people on board. But I think the one that is most powerful when you are working with lawyers, is this idea of ambassadors and getting some are often the most challenging people who are really going to push you quite hard to be the ambassadors for what you're doing. And any change that you are trying to make, whether it's big or small. So you know, can be anything from you know, we've got an update going through on our computers, and it's gonna move where the icon is for Outlook. And it's making sure that the right people are bought in so that they understand that change, they're not caught off guard by that change. And then they can share that more widely with the team, you know, right, the way through to maybe having a team of 1015 kind of people who work with you on a project are bought in right the way through from the very inception of it right the way through to a big kind of change at the end, who cascading out that information constantly and making sure that people know, we're looking at it, we're on it, we want your ideas, we want you guys to be comfortable with it. So I think ambassadors is probably the biggest the biggest piece I've kind of taken through my career working with lawyers. I think the other thing that I did, and I do it a bit less now because I'm a bit more intuitive about it when I first started out and was completely caught off guard by how lawyers think. I used to write decision trees. And so I used to start with where we are now at the bottom, I used to be where we want to end up and I used to write down every single challenge every single point that I thought that we can encounter, so that I could make sure that I had an answer for everything. I mean, an answer for everything is a bit of a big ass. So I never had the answer to everything. But what I did have was a much more robust framework to hang my idea off. And so you know, there's always a question or two that come at you with something, you know, completely left field. But for the most part, I had a really strong thread that I could talk all the way through while I was trying to sell my big idea, 

Scott Brown  (8:31)   

right. Sounds good. Yeah, a lot of change for the lawyers I'm sure that you've worked with along the way and a lot of change to get get used to in that new new position. And a lot of that, like the stuff that the lesson on thinking harder. I think a lot of the people I speak to on the guests, other guests of the podcast, talk around like perfectionism, and I think even as a tree or something that's been trained into them during their their trading contract and harnessing it for the good. Have you learned that? Is it something you've taken on as a strength or a sort of checking yourself to ensure that you're not slipping down that path, 

Helen Lowe  (9:07)   

I am never going to be a perfectionist in the nicest possible I've got something behind me here that says Don is better than perfect I am, I am the tick off the list. I am not the perfectionist, and I'm never going to be but what it does make me do is pay more attention to detail. So things that would trip me up further down the line and catch me out. I think about much earlier, because I know that before they get to that point and they tripped me up and catch me out. Somebody's gonna ask me a question about it. And one of the lawyers will already have seen it. And so I think there's a real value in really taking all of the skills that you absorb through a career and incorporating them into your own style. And I think the idea of thinking harder is something that is super valuable for anybody who is outside the legal profession because you can and really start to deliver value. When you do take that step back and think a bit more creatively about a challenge. 

Scott Brown  (10:15)   

We'll move on to lesson two, if you could share that with us, please. 

Helen Lowe  (10:18)   

Okay, so lesson two is all about law firms and pushing boundaries. I think the relationship with law firms can be really fun. I think they can be really fractious, I think they can be quite difficult with in house teams. But they can also be really, really fun. And I think it's important to think about how boundaries can be respectfully pushed with law firms to make that relationship really hum. In house teams have spent a long time saying that they want law firms to be an extension of themselves. And I certainly know, it's something that was said to me a lot in my first couple of years working in legal ops. But I think nobody really wants to let them in. It takes a lot of time to get a law firm up to speed with your corporate strategy with your recruitment approach with your ways of thinking with your ways of working with how your board likes to be communicated with all of these different things. And if you don't take that time, you're never going to get that value out of law firms that you partner with, because you're always going to get something that comes in that's 15 pages long when you wanted six bullet points. And then you're like, why didn't they understand what I wanted? Because you've never told them. And so I think it's really important that you find that kind of space to create those conversations, but make it fun, and make it engaging, and make it challenge the firm's to think in a way that adds value to you as a business. So for easyJet, when we do our repel exercise, part of that was a business simulation exercise that we developed with the OSHA lawyer. And that was all around popping them into them in it not into the actual Himalayas to be put into an imaginary version of the Himalayas, and getting them to think through five predicaments they were called, so that they could get down the mountain, we've all done exercises like this, we've all been at, you know, been in a situation where everybody says just go off and do it. And that's exactly what we did. We didn't want a beauty parade, what we wanted was to see how they were going to work together. Was it a very hierarchical structure? was the most junior voice in the room disregarded? Or was it embraced? And how did they work together to solve the problems that they were faced with? And it was really unsettling for the law firms, because they didn't need to bring any legal expertise. That wasn't what we were looking at challenging. Yeah, we were meeting with law firms that are consistently in the legal 500. And if they cannot do the lawyering bit of their jobs, then there's bigger problems going on, in the kind of profession as a whole. So for us, it was all about how do they work? And, you know, how are they going to work with us on how are they going to approach us? And that was kind of the fun bit of how we we push them to think differently, but also, right, the way through that process reinforced the message of who we are as an organisation at easyJet? 

Scott Brown  (13:12)   

sure a lot of a lot of people were outside their comfort zone in that, in that pitch must have been it might have been a fly on the wall. Should have recorded one of them. Yeah, absolutely. So for people that aren't that familiar with legal ops, because it's a very changing area of the profession, and something that's evolved a lot since that time that you got you you're in 2015, at the coop, what does your role look like at easyJet in that position? And how do you how do you support the legal function? 

Helen Lowe  (13:44)   

So I saw somebody give her absolutely brilliant answer to what legal upsets at a panel I was part of it The Economist conference, and I can't remember the gentleman's name right now. But the response was, that the lawyering is the what legal Ops is the how, and then together, we answer the why. And so that, for me was so kind of succinct and powerful. And it really captures that partnership of, of how you you work together with the lawyers or with people in wider functions. So, you know, in terms of how I support the team, I'm responsible for everything from working with the GCo functional leadership team, to develop strategies to develop functional plans to develop roadmaps, and all of that kind of big thinking around where do we want to be when what do we want to be famous for as a function? How do we want to be known as a leadership team within the team? And how can we best ensure that they are cared for that they have the progression that they want that they are nurtured in their careers and that they have the opportunity the right opportunity? Is as well as really kind of delivering some powerful outcomes for the business. And so there's that kind of, you know, big thinking role. But there's also a huge piece around things like budgets, where I'm responsible for all of the budget and financial planning for the team. And for also tracking that and making sure that not only do we stick to our budgets, but also that the wider team are aware of where we're performing against budgets, I'm responsible for our technology infrastructure within the team. So I'm the person who it come to when we're cascading changes out. I'm also one of the testers. But I also think about what technology we can use as a function and how we can integrate it across some quite different practice areas, because, obviously, we've got the lawyers but then we've also got a litigation and claims team who deal with bulk claims, primarily, we've got cosec, we've got competition regulation, we've got digital safety, and data protection. So all of those teams have quite different needs. So it's really thinking about how we can pull it together under a single banner and make sure that the technology solutions that we're putting in it doesn't have to be a one size fits all. But it has to work in some way or integrate in some way with everything else. Another area I'm responsible for is HR resourcing. So I work very closely with our HR business partner, and our resourcing teams to make sure we're getting the right people in at the right time. And to make sure that we are focusing on the right people messages, so that we don't get kind of lost in our functional aspirations and forget about the bigger picture and the fact that we're part of a much bigger corporate with easyJet. So those are kind of just a flavour of some of the things I get involved in. I usually say to people, it's basically anything that doesn't involve a professional qualification. Most of the people in the team have got some sort of professional qualification, you haven't got a professional qualification, it usually ends up with me Yeah. 

Scott Brown  (16:53)   

For someone like so I was, when I was a lawyer and looking for a career change to out of practice, it would have been the definitely the type of thing that I had to try to explore. I was looking through Gmail mail gmail account last night, actually, the amount of harassing of people in legal ops and then in sales positions before falling into recruitment that had been doing when I was in living in Australia, the legal ops landscape is changing and growing and opportunities presenting themselves. someone looking to get into legal ops, what what do you think the best route in there is in what what sort of skill set are people looking for? 

Helen Lowe  (17:29)   

I think it's actually something that the vast majority of people will do in some way, shape or form anyway. So particularly if you're already working in house, I was reflecting on this the other day, because I don't think you need a legal ops person in every single in house team, because some are going to be too small, some are too immature, and not ready for that level of change. And they're just growing. But what I do think is you need legal ops capability in every team, and that might be split amongst different lawyers. And there's this kind of perception that the side of the desk have never delivers the real transformational value. And that's right, it's very, very difficult to do a massive m&a deal and kind of slide through a technology project, or get through budgeting periods. At the same time, as you're trying to either sell off half of your estate or something, you know, you can't, you cannot manage lawyering with a huge piece of legal ops work. But a lot of legal ops work is actually quite small. So there's no reason why you can't have a monthly conversation with finance. There's no reason why you can't take an hour a week to start to think about, well, what technology solutions might work for us? And how could we leverage technology to deliver value? How can we change this process? So that it, it delivers different benefits or it delivers more value into the business? And I don't think it's always about necessarily having a single person who has that capability. It's about thinking about those skills that lawyers use every single day around problem solving, around fixing things around meeting deadlines around driving projects, through negotiation, seeking compromises, all of those kinds of things are called lawyer skill sets. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason why you can't do something like that. In the legal ops space, I think there's a couple of mistakes that people make. I think they think that by understanding the law, they have an advantage over somebody who doesn't. And I would say that that's probably incorrect. I think, actually, it's a pretty level playing field once you get into a legal ops role. I am not afraid to ask stupid questions. But I also come at things with no assumptions, and no preconceived ideas of how things are going to work. And I think there's also an assumption that legal Ops is all about tech, and that you have to understand something about technology in order to make it work. And the only reason that I am good at tech is because I've actually spent a lot of time building up my capability. I'm not a naturally tech apt person. I don't look at technology and think, Oh, I could code something like that myself, you know, coding is way beyond me. So, you know, I think the idea that you have to have that technology understanding is absolutely not needed. Yeah. But an open mind, maybe Absolutely. The Open Mind and playing on the strengths that you've got in the work that you already do, and kind of reflecting on what it is that you do on a day to day basis. And what value that deliver I think, is really important. 

Scott Brown  (20:25)   

Yeah, and the point I'm not being a lawyer, I think can definitely be, I can see the advantages to not being a lawyer in those preconceived ideas. But it sounds like having the legal ops, or having touched on key legal ops, as an in house lawyer, is the skill set, that agenda should really be on that general counsel's agenda. So anyone that has aspirations to become a general counsel as well should really look to touch on it, at least, as a skill set. 

Helen Lowe  (20:50)   

Absolutely. Because I think, even if you're not actually going to be delivering some of it yourself, you're gonna have to be an ambassador for that person, because other functions won't understand what that role is delivering and have a role is delivering value. And so when they look at it as a concept, they're not going to get it. So you have to understand it. And you have to really intrinsically see the value that that role is going to give, because then you can be ambassador for that role. And I've been really lucky, Jim Co Op mica, and now Rebecca at easyJet have always been very much of that opinion is that this, this role is going to deliver huge amounts of value. And that has stood me in very good stead for some of the changes that I've made. 

Scott Brown  (21:36)   

We'll move on to lesson three. 

Helen Lowe  (21:38)   

Okay. Lesson three is be patient. Because things take time. And I am used to where I used to be used to an environment where a client was paying you a huge amount of money to deliver something very, very quickly. And the quicker you delivered it, the quicker you would ultimately, they would have to stop paying your bills. So you know, from that point of view, that was always that pace and getting things moving. And the client was always very, very heavily brought into that. Whereas I think now, sometimes you have to drop an idea and leave it for a bit, let it settle, like really have a bit of a think about things before you circle back to it, and see how it's landed and see how it seeded and see what the team think and see what the function thinks. Because if you're going in there constantly, we'd like rapid fire ideas and expecting them all to land and or to be delivered. That's a very, very big ask from a team that is always phenomenally busy. And I don't say that. Simply easyJet, that's, you know, if you put 150 lawyers into any business tomorrow, they will be busy within a month. You know, it's just it's just one of those roles. And so I think it's about being patient and letting things seed and seeing what grows. 

Scott Brown  (22:56)   

Nice prioritising it says like as well, what's the sort of average timeframe of if you're, at the start of the year looking to complete a project? What are your guess? What are your goals and objectives then, on delivery? 

Helen Lowe  (23:11)   

I think in terms of goals and objectives, I, you know, we would probably say, around about 12 months to land any piece of technology. And that's usually after a good three to six months of seeding it with the team of going through an RFP process, thinking about, you know, who's the right partner for us to go with, and then you've got to go through internal processes, then you've got to land it, and then you've got to embed it. And that's the bit everybody always forgets, is that you don't just tick a box and go, Oh, our shiny new tool is alive, you've then got to make sure everybody's using it every single day. Because otherwise, it's just another shiny tool that you're paying for, you're not actually delivering that value from it. And so yeah, I think in my head, you know, you sit through a lot of pitches in this role, and a lot of sales people telling you that it's going to take, you know, 3060 90 120 days to get this amazing product in no problems. But every single in house environment has got more complexity to its technology, infrastructure, unless you're in a startup, it's going to be really, really difficult to get technology through the door. So you've got a huge amount of stakeholder management, you're going to have come up against barriers that you never in a million years could have seen, that will pop up, whether they be technological, whether they be people related. And I think you know, some of the other challenges just around process and visibility. Not all organisations have got processes laid out, put in a perfect map, that you can just flow through nice and neatly and pop out the other end with your technology solution. And most of them are kind of, you know, navigating through trial and error and trying one thing and then did that person gives the right authority Oh, no, actually only this person as well and kind of working your way through all of that. So I think there's a really huge piece to think about when you're looking at some of these timescales and it can be really fast racing when you can't deliver the kind of 6090 120 days, and you know, you're sort of find yourself questioning Well, what am I doing wrong, you're actually not doing anything wrong. You just need to be patient, you need to trust the process. And you need to let things happen when they happen, you can keep pushing it forwards, but don't push it to the point of exhaustion. Because then nobody really gains from it. Yeah. 

Scott Brown  (25:22)   

That's good. Good advice, I could definitely hit some of that as well. I'm quite opportunistic in putting rolling out new things and getting excited without, yeah, without getting all the buy in. But yeah, that's, that's great. What's the sort of most exciting thing happening in legal ops for what you see in the market? 

Helen Lowe  (25:39)   

I think I think there's a couple of things. I think one is the move away from technology, I think it's becoming a role that is much more expansive. And taking on a lot more responsibility, we're seeing some really high profile roles. I think there are some real opportunities to start to think about what that next level after a head off looks like how you can play into that C suite space, within the confines of of that kind of operations type role. And I think it's really exciting that this growing up, I think the more people that we have in the profession, the more ideas we'll generate, the more different routes will go down, the more we'll be able to share the pain or the challenges and the frustrations, but also share the successes, and share the brilliant things that are happening. And that makes everybody's lives work so much more brilliantly. If we can all kind of share the great ideas that are happening out there. So for me, it's really exciting that there's there's more legal ops professionals knocking about in the UK, for sure. 

Scott Brown  (26:41)   

Brilliant, what is the general perception from the law firms? If and when a legal ops person comes along? Is it is it a bit of dread, but fear? 

Helen Lowe  (26:50)   

I think they're kind of dread, I really do think there is a bit of dread, because it can be a really adversarial relationship, if you don't look at the law firms as an ally. And you look at them as the enemy. And you're constantly trying to push their rates down, and you are constantly trying to demand freebies left, right and centre, without spending anything, or, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to extract value from that law firm, and you're not giving anything back to them, I think that is a really, really difficult position to put the law firms in because they want you as a client, but they've got to justify their investment back to their business. And so, you know, one of the best pieces of feedback I've ever had, is that it's really nice to work with me because they don't feel like, you know, I see them as the enemy. And that, to me is really important. It's not about always caving, it's not about being like, oh, you know, well, they can just charge whatever they want, it's fine. It's about being able to have an open dialogue about why it's not okay to charge whatever you want, and say, Well, I know this piece of work is coming down here now. So can you please do this really important piece of training that we need tomorrow? So, you know, it's about it's about balance. And I think one of the great things that the kind of the legal ops team can do is when you're managing a group of law firms, whether it's a panel or not a panel, you have a view that very few other people do, because you're in the detail of a lot of that you're in the detail of the span during the detail of value out and you're in the detail of that how that whole relationship is functioning. And, you know, I think it's a really unique perspective, that can actually drive a lot of collaboration from it. And I think it can deliver a huge amount of value for both the law firms and for the business. 

Scott Brown  (28:34)   

Great. So I like to ask all my guests what interested to hear your take on this as a non lawyer coming into the profession from the consulting background, but what lesson Have you learned in law that you wish you hadn't learned? 

Helen Lowe  (28:52)   

Oh, my goodness. What lessons have I learned in law that I wish I hadn't learned? That people actually read contracts? Oh, my God, I was I was blissfully blissfully unaware thinking. Everybody just ticked boxes on things and saying things without reading them and was just largely unconcerned and thought, I'll deal with that when people read these things. They really do. I was I was quite taken aback. So that I think, is probably one of the one of the things that really surprised me was discovering that. Actually, yes, lawyers do really read contracts. And that is a whole other detail. Which I did say, I did say when I first started in legal ops, I had to go ask somebody what a commercial lawyer was, this is the level of knowledge that I was coming into the into the profession with, I had to go and because I was like, is it just a lawyer who's had some training and commercial things and how businesses when I had no idea what a commercial lawyer was, so to discover that there's whole teams of people who sit there and actually read contracts was quite staggering, to be honest. 

Scott Brown  (29:54)   

Brilliant. Good there. Someone's there doing that. I have covering things off 

Helen Lowe  (30:06)   

probably is I was blissfully unaware. 

Scott Brown  (30:11)   

Excellent Bow. Thank you for joining me today, Helen. It's been great to learn more. A lot of blind spots, I think for people who don't don't work with people within legal ops, but I nearly have real interest and growth in the profession. So thanks for your take on that. 

Helen Lowe  (30:24)   

Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. 

Scott Brown  (30:30)   

Thank you so much, Helen. That was great to hear those insights into what it's like to work in a legal ops department supporting general counsel's and the great legal team at easyJet Helens a bit of a pioneer in that space having got involved in it in 2015, as you heard, it was a much less sophisticated area of particularly of in house legal teams. But we've seen a massive increase in that and demand for people not just from a legal background, but in projects and project management and operations to move into that and really wicked sophisticated legal teams. Private Practice also is a strong area for that. And a couple of my previous guests have also shared a lot around legal ops. If you listen to my episode with Alex Sue, in series two, I think Alex is is Head of Community at ironclad which is which which is a contract automation tool. Fantastic insights from from Alex in that as well. He comes at it from a sales function so slightly different. So why not check out that episode with Alex and many more that are in the back catalogue of the lessons learned in law podcast, some fascinating lessons that have been shared. You can check that out over on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you wherever you stream your your podcasts from, or why not. We'll head over to heriotbrown.com/podcast. Thanks again for listening. I'm Scott Brown. See you next time.