In-House Outliers

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.

On this episode Daniel Zinn (General Counsel, Chief of Staff, and Corporate Secretary at OTC Markets Group) discusses the expanding role of the modern general counsel. Dan shares how his role has evolved organically from pure legal counsel to encompass strategic business partnership, operational leadership, and business development.

The conversation explores how Dan's multi-faceted role allows him to be involved in strategic discussions from the ground up, rather than just solving problems after they arise.

On this episode, legal operations leader and industry icon Mary O'Carroll joined Brightflag's Anna Richards to discuss the evolution of legal ops roles, the differences between in-house and law firm AI adoption, and the importance of community. Mary also shared practical advice for CLOs looking to build a legal operations function.

On this episode, Dimitri Lucas (Legal Operations & Digital Transformation Manager at Sanofi) discusses his approach to developing an effective legal ops function in high-pressure corporate legal environments.

Dimitri also shared tips for navigating change management, thoughts on the benefits of building upon small wins, and insights into the customer success principles he's found to be effective in legal operations.

On this episode, Lindsay Schuyler (Outside Counsel Strategy & Spend Manager at John Deere) joined the show for an in-depth discussion about how to effectively select, manage, and evaluate outside counsel at scale.

Lindsay also shared her insights into how to demonstrate the value of the legal department to the broader business, and how legal ops can position themselves at the forefront of technological innovation.

In his final interview as host of the In-House Outliers podcast, Alex Kelly sat down for a candid conversation with Brightflag's Head of Community Anna Richards, who will be leading the show going forward.

During their discussion, they touched on the value of community for legal ops professionals, how legal teams are balancing "efficiency vs. effectiveness" when evaluating AI tools, and ways to strengthen relationships with outside counsel.

On this episode, Adam Becker (Director of Legal Operations at Cockroach Labs) joined the show to discuss the current legal technology landscape, how generative AI will impact outside counsel partnerships, and the unique challenges of building out a legal ops function.

On this special episode of In-House Outliers, Brightflag's Kevin Cohn returns to share his annual legal operations and legal technology predictions for 2026.

On this episode, ⁠Tim Parilla⁠ (Strategic Advisor and former CLO at ⁠LinkSquares⁠) joined ⁠Alex Kelly⁠ for a fascinating conversation about:

• Why legal leaders need data to effectively manage their legal budget and strengthen outside counsel partnerships

• The impact good financial acumen can have on legal strategy

• ⁠Tim⁠'s incredible career journey and his biggest takeaways from serving as a GC and CLO