I recently sat down with Lucy Bassli, former Microsoft assistant general counsel, legal operations and contracting and founder of InnoLaw Group, PLLC, to talk with her about her upcoming series for Corporate Counsel Advance on steps legal teams can take to reduce the challenges of increasing contracting volumes and limited capacity to scale. In these series of articles, she will address legal risk tolerances and setting thresholds for legal review to templates, playbooks and outsourcing and automation, and effective tactics for reducing the legal workload and increasing business satisfaction. Below is an introductory Q&A on her background and an overview of the guidance the series will provide. 

Heather Nevitt, Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Counsel:  So that people understand why you are putting this series together, can you first share a little background about yourself? 

Lucy Bassli: I am a commercial transactions lawyer by training, but a legal operations leader by nature. I practiced in big law and then in-house at one of the best companies in the world, Microsoft, where I spent the majority of my career. At Microsoft, for the majority of my time there, I was fortunate to have managers who gave me a great platform early in my career to be independent in how I did my work and empowered me to experiment with [sometimes] crazy new ideas. During my time at Microsoft I completely redesigned how we handle the company's procurement contracts. I realized that as much as I liked negotiating contracts, it turns out I really enjoyed the bigger picture of how contracts were handled from start to end, and whether there was a more efficient and predictable way of handling the legal support. After a brief stint heading up the developing Legal Operations function at Microsoft, I left to start my own business and help other corporate legal departments with their contracting problems. At InnoLaw Group, PLLC we can handle the legal support for contracts, take over the contracting operations or advise legal teams on how they can become more efficient. We do all things contracting: legal+consulting+operations.