“Pearls On, Gloves Off” is a podcast where Legal Ops legend Mary O’Carroll and a motley crew of guests share their insider knowledge from running high-performing businesses. Join us for insightful conversations with some of today’s most respected leaders and luminaries on legal innovation. We dive into what’s broken, what’s changing, and what it will take to reinvent how legal services are delivered from technology to talent to new business models. If you’re tired of how things have always been done and ready to explore how they should be, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the conversation.
About Mary O'Carroll, host
Mary O’Carroll is a senior executive, advisor, board member, and frequent speaker focused on transforming how legal organizations operate, scale, and innovate. She is known globally for building modern legal operating models, advancing legal technology adoption, and challenging traditional approaches to talent, incentives, and service delivery across the legal industry.
Most recently, Mary served as Chief Operating Officer of Goodwin, where she led global strategy and operations for a 1,000+ person professional services organization and partnered with firm leadership on large-scale transformation initiatives spanning technology, data, pricing, and organizational design. Prior to Goodwin, Mary was Chief Community Officer at Ironclad, a leading contract lifecycle management platform. Before that, she spent 13 years at Google, where she served as Director of Legal Operations, Technology, and Strategy, building and scaling one of the world’s most advanced legal operations functions. While at Google, Mary was a founder of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). During her five-year tenure as President, CEO, and Board Member, the organization grew from 40 members to more than 3,000 globally, helping define legal operations as a discipline.
Her work has been featured in two Harvard Law School case studies, and she has been recognized by the Financial Times, American Bar Association, San Francisco Business Times, and LegalTech News for her leadership and impact.