Lucy Bassli (@lucybassli) is an attorney, adviser, speaker and soon-to-be author who successfully implemented alternative resource models, automated legal tasks, transformed her traditional transactional legal practice to an industry-leading contracting operation, combined the latest technology with smart risk-based approach to contract review, and brought data and objective measures to the practice of law. Recently having left an in-house job at Microsoft, Lucy has started out on her own with mission to inspire change in the legal industry.
In this special episode, Lucy Bassli and host Ian Connett (@QuantumJurist) with co-host Dan Lear (@RightBrainLaw) discuss Lucy’s entrepreneurial journey from BigLaw to remaking her in-house contracting department at Microsoft (and building a team to support those herculean efforts) to starting on her own with a broader commitment to change how lawyers think and operate.
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Connect with Lucy Bassli at https://www.innolegalservices.com/
Connect with Dan Lear at http://rightbrainlaw.co/
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Show Notes
- Lucy’s journey from biglaw attorney to someone with an unhealthy love of contracts.
- Lawyers don’t exist “to lawyer” they exist to advance the business of their clients or the business of which they are part.
- Welcoming words to her at Microsoft from her clients were “[w]elcome aboard, it’s death by paralegal here.”
- The goal of legal operations is to encourage the regular practicing lawyer to start thinking just a bit more about “the how.”
- There will always be room for the niche work that requires hard core legal analysis and expertise, but Lucy is focused on rethinking the repeatable, scalable legal work.
- Lucy’s success “convincing with data” in the Microsoft legal department.
- Challenging attorneys at Microsoft with “so what?”
- Legal operations and legal practice professionals can be living very separate lives although in one house.
- Evolving her team from one focused on traditional legal process to operational excellence.
- “Give me someone smart, eager and hungry. I can teach them legal work. But I couldn’t teach project and process management.”
- “I loved my job at Microsoft unnaturally. I was one of the last people standing with a Windows phone.”
- One can’t overstate the importance of having a genuine, authentic, healthy, team dynamic. It makes the work easier. Coming into the office is fun. The work is challenging, the substantive work is challenging, but the idea of dealing with challenging work and a challenging culture is a killer.
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