Demand for legal experts was strong in 2020, and that`s unlikely to change this year, even among the country`s leading tech companies. Willie Hernandez joins Coca-Cola`s legal department with more than two decades of experience in the legal departments of tech titans Facebook, Amazon.com Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. and IBM Corp. Regardless of the size of the company, Legal Ops can add great value through the integration of technological know-how, knowledge management and process optimization. Janine Dixon, who most recently led Legal Ops at Fannie Mae, announced in a LinkedIn post last week that she has joined Facebook Inc. in “the new role of Head of Legal Operations, Spend Optimization.” She is now responsible for Facebook`s cost management programs, assisting the legal team with financial and budget management, as well as planning, forecasting and managing programs related to external lawyers, according to her LinkedIn profile. You know, you walk into the house or you`re bombarded with a million things, you could literally spin your wheels for years and not feel like you`ve accomplished anything. So I am fortunate to be confronted with a mission that allowed me to really understand the landscape and a legal department and to understand the issues. In building these programs, I also researched how you know how we work. How is the work delivered? Where are the biggest gaps? And that led to a greater formalization of Obs` legal team, which moved under the leadership of alm Mos, who is now my manager, and really started to address these issues from a centralized and holistic perspective, which is the path we`re taking now. Our costs have continued to rise. That`s it, you know.
We have more external threats than at the beginning. So we want to make sure we stay up to date at least on that aspect. And, Haddie, do you feel almost three in all three of my roles in their role, the progress you`ve made and really what you think is ahead of your parties in the next few years, what are you going to focus on? Yes, it`s still a journey. It`s. Yes, let`s look back. Let`s look back and I`ll know you, you have to start with how we are, how is the success? Would you consider it a success? Yes, I would say that some aspects have been very fruitful. We have programs across the department that I have championed and that my team has developed and is now running that are incredibly beneficial on many levels. Right. And the more you discover, the more you are like wow, the mountains get bigger.
We`ll find out. Here`s what I`d like. I`d like our department to be in a place where people focus on the most important strategic work, right, and that`s often one of the most important from my perspective, it should be one of the biggest priorities of a Legal Ops team. How do I create this for our legal department? Knowledge management, cohesion, how do we work as a team? Where do we reduce redundancies? Where are we actually reducing, automating and eliminating administrative tasks? That`s right, and it all comes together when you try. Size of you, fifty or hundred? Yes, I was able to surround him pretty quickly. But for us, you know, that was six years ago. Yes, and it`s not like our growth is slowing down, like we`re always skyrocketing. As the company that named our profits today, business is going very well.
Certainly more external threats. It`s not going to stop properly. We operate in one hundred and sixty countries or something like that, so I`ve never seen or experienced anything like that, which is scary and exciting at the same time. When I come to work. You know, I talked earlier about wanting to work on current issues in the legal industry. What better place to try to solve these problems successfully than a company like Facebook? So, yes, I know. I would say we`ve had a lot of success along the way and we still have a lot of work to do to create the atmosphere, the kind of legal service that I just articulated. Yes, and if you only really think about it because it is a problem, I talk to a number of general counsel and general counsel.
But when they think about their outside spending, the relationship with their external board, which are of course key relationships, there`s pressure to change and make sure it stays under control. How do you balance those kinds of competing factors? Because they have a strong relationship with you legal movies. You want to make sure that law firms are motivated and that the teams you work with are motivated, but at the same time, you need to be accountable and you need to make sure that you lead the department and spend as efficiently as possible. And I love what you`re actually wearing. I`ve seen on your LinkedIn page how Facebook Legal primarily helps you spend less green, and I like that these priorities compete with your external priorities in these types of relationships. When I started at Axiom, we talked a lot about the depth of the legal industry`s roots in precedents. In fact, the economics of how law firms work with their clients hadn`t changed, even though other industries were evolving and were in their 5- or 10-year development cycles. For episode 9 of #LegalMatters, we talk to him about the radical changes in the legal department and the legal industry, Facebook`s commitment to diversity and inclusion, his motivations throughout his career and discuss some gems of his personal life. that.
We have a wider selection of talent. So that`s one aspect. The only thing I think there`s a privilege for Facebook, which isn`t necessarily true for many businesses, is that we`re using technology, even before Covid, to communicate and deliver work. Even in Menlo Park, with a huge campus, I had, you know, cross-functional stakeholders who were a ten-minute drive away. Well, I`m not going to get in my car and drive to their building, which has a face-to-face meeting. So we would even use VCs in the psychiatric park office. So we were used to it. So let`s move on to logistics, because there is also our distinct aspect, which I would like to address. Yes, logistics. I think we`re fair, and again, I can`t speak for the entire company, but for my team for most of the legal department. I think they would share the same sentiment.
The part that is really difficult is the human aspect of you and me.