Bridging Legal Ops and Finance with Generate's Michelle Garza

In this episode, legal ops leader Matt Jezierski walks through the pyramid framework he uses to organize a legal department, with regulatory change flowing down through matters, e-billing, and knowledge management, and makes the case that it's time to stop using AI for one-off, discrete tasks and start using it to connect the dots across the whole thing.Matt also breaks down the AI-driven outside counsel engagement manager he had started to build, which used historical spend and industry benchmark data to help attorneys make more informed decisions instead of relying on personal relationships alone, with an estimated 10% in savings per matter. He closes with concrete advice for listeners: get calls on the calendar with your cross-functional partners, understand what systems they use day to day, and actually try one of the new AI tools your company already has access to.

In this episode, Flock Safety's Dan Haley shares the leadership philosophy that's guided him since a former CEO handed it to him on his first day: make every person you interact with a little happier for having had the interaction with you or your team.Dan also offers career advice on maintaining peripheral vision, cautioning against tunnel vision on a single target role and encouraging listeners to stay open to opportunities that come from outside their direct line of sight, since the best one rarely turns out to be the one they were already chasing.

In this episode, Sonnedix's Heather Torres argues that legal training isn't required for legal ops , but it's an unlock, and she's got eight and a half years of experience to back it up.Heather explains why legal background changes how lawyers trust you, and how it's shaped her ability to communicate, build credibility, and think strategically inside her legal department. The conversation also covers the chip-on-the-shoulder dynamic between lawyers and legal ops, where legal ops experience can lead next, and closes on AI: as technical fluency becomes table stakes, Heather argues the real advantage is layering human judgment on top of the tools, and legal training is one of the clearest ways to build it.

In this episode, Legal Operations Professional Joe Lewis shares why getting lawyers to adopt new technology has nothing to do with the technology itself.Drawing on experiences that stretch from teaching seniors how to use YouTube at a public library to building change management infrastructure inside a fast-moving legal department, Joe makes the case that the real work of adoption happens in casual moments, not formal training sessions.The conversation covers how to break down the "lawyer face" that goes up the moment a work conversation starts, what genuine influence actually looks like in practice, and why acknowledging the downsides of AI before selling the benefits is the only way to get lawyers to actually listen.Joe also shares his approach to long-term efficiency: working backwards from the result you want, and accepting that the slow path upfront is what makes everything faster later.

In this episode of the In-House Outliers podcast, Anna Richards speaks with Frances Dupree, Principal Customer Success Manager at Agiloft, about what e-billing implementation actually takes from someone who learned it the hard way.Frances spent over a decade moving through legal operations without knowing it had a name, working as a paralegal, procurement specialist, contract manager, and e-billing specialist before the title caught up with her work. At Inmar, she led a ground-up Brightflag implementation while simultaneously learning the company, and that experience became the foundation for everything she now teaches.The conversation covers why documenting your manual workflow is a prerequisite, not a starting point, for any system implementation, how to map a stakeholder landscape you can't fully see yet, and what happens when a GC doesn't recognize the work that just got done. Frances also shares what prompted her to launch her LinkedIn series, Legal Operations Playbook, to fill a gap she kept seeing in available resources around outside counsel spend management. She closes by reflecting on how her years as a customer will shape the kind of CSM she intends to be.

In this episode of the In-House Outliers podcast, Anna Richards speaks with Federico Vicente, Legal Operations Specialist at LUMA Energy in Puerto Rico, about building a legal department from nothing.Federico joined LUMA three years ago to find a department running on email with no intake, no spend tracking, and no formal processes. His first move was implementing a legal service request system in Brightflag to separate legal questions from business decisions and that single starting point created the foundation for everything that followed. The conversation covers how strategic insourcing and a liaison program that upskills internal attorneys drove over $2.5 million in savings, his approach to technology evaluation on a constrained budget, and his advice for anyone starting from zero: silence the noise, find your baseline, and let the domino effect do the rest.

In this episode of the In-House Outliers podcast, host Anna Richards speaks with Dan Wate, Legal Operations Manager at Associated British Foods, about managing legal operations solo across a global team of 150 lawyers in 14 countries.Dan shares his journey from joining ABF before legal ops had a name, to building a function that spans a complex, multinational business. He covers two core strategies for scaling as a team of one: having a clear plan to stay proactive rather than reactive, and building an unofficial team through trusted relationships across finance, IT, HR, and procurement. The conversation also touches on why being nice is a genuine professional skill, how to approach vendor and outside counsel relationships as partnerships, and what those new to legal ops should know about building transferable skills.

In this episode, Michael Francony, Senior Legal Project and Operations Manager at Novartis, shares what it really takes to transition from buyer to true partner when working with legal technology vendors. Drawing on experience from both sides of the table he offers a grounded perspective on what makes implementations succeed or fail.The conversation covers how to define the "why" before jumping into execution, and Michael's four F's framework for vendor relationships: friendly, fair, firm, and fun.The discussion also touches on stakeholder management, the challenges of measuring ROI without baseline data, and how AI is reshaping the legal technology landscape — from established vendors to AI-first solutions built at a pace that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.

In this episode, Michelle Garza, Legal Operations Manager at Generate, discusses how she built a deep and productive partnership between her legal ops and finance teams. She shares her journey from executive assistant to legal ops, and how she transformed a chaotic, email-driven accrual process into a streamlined, centralized system using Brightflag.The conversation covers practical strategies for gaining finance team trust, including learning their tools and language, implementing consistent project coding, and providing real-time visibility into legal spend.The discussion also touches on vendor management, invoice processing, and how accurate, timely accruals became a credibility-builder with finance — ultimately saving an estimated 20 hours of work per department, per month.

On this episode Elly Meenan (Legal Engineering Evangelist at Wordsmith.AI) discusses the rise of the Legal Engineer role and what it means for the future of legal work. The conversation focuses on how legal engineers use technology to automate legal work and build scalable systems, bridging the gap between legal expertise and technical execution.Elly also shares insights on breaking into the field, offering advice on developing technical skills, building a portfolio, and establishing a personal brand, alongside her experience creating a legal operations job board.