Built to Scale: Alice Davidson & Jenna Hunt on Evolving Legal at a Global Fintech

Legal ops automation starts with contract playbooks. Tipalti's legal team automated NDA playbooks and workflows so lawyers focus on strategic work. Alice Davidson, General Counsel at Tipalti, and Jenna Hunt, Head of Legal Operations at Tipalti, built a legal function that supports payments across 200 countries, 120 currencies, and 50 payment methods without adding headcount. In this episode they explain how. About the guests: Alice Davidson is a securities and M&A lawyer by training who previously served as Chief Legal Officer at Mogo, and Jenna Hunt built Tipalti's legal operations function from the ground up after starting in an administrative role, drawing on a customer success and sales background. What you will learn: How a legal operations function starts, including why the right legal ops hire is often a non-lawyer What practicing at the top of the license means in practice: contract playbooks, pre-approved NDA workflows, and self-service for sales Lessons from a failed CLM implementation, and the questions to ask before buying legal software How a general counsel sets legal department OKRs around three pillars: a thriving legal team, strong business partners, and operational excellence How Tipalti uses legal AI to turn signed vendor contracts into plain-language executive summaries for business owners "Lawyers negotiating NDAs is not practicing at the top of their license," says Jenna Hunt. Her team built playbooks and automated workflows for pre-signed NDAs so legal only sees the exceptions. CZ and Friends is hosted by Cecilia Ziniti, co-founder and CEO of GC AI, the legal AI platform built for in-house counsel. Tipalti's legal team uses GC AI and discusses that work in this episode. Chapters: 00:00 Inside Tipalti's legal team: a GC and a head of legal ops 01:41 What a fintech general counsel does all day 03:02 How a legal ops function starts: from admin role to formal function 04:13 Contract playbooks and NDA automation: practicing at the top of the license 05:29 Scaling a legal team without adding headcount 08:29 How a GC and a legal ops lead divide the work 11:54 Why effective legal teams include non-lawyers 14:53 Lessons from a failed CLM implementation 18:15 How to choose legal software: define the problem first 22:09 How to set OKRs for a legal department 27:56 Prioritizing legal work when everything feels urgent 31:44 Bilingual in business and legal: translating legalese 36:21 Using AI for legal comms and vendor contract summaries 40:50 Where AI takes legal teams in the next three years 41:43 Advice for starting a career in legal operations RESOURCES MENTIONED Contract playbooks in GC AI: https://gc.ai/features/playbooks After the failed CLM, a matter management guide: https://gc.ai/blog/legal-matter-manag... How to structure a corporate legal department: https://gc.ai/blog/corporate-legal-de... CONNECT Cecilia Ziniti: https://gc.ai/company/cecilia-ziniti GC AI, legal AI for in-house counsel: https://gc.ai Subscribe to CZ and Friends:    / @czandfriendspodcast   Try GC AI free: https://auth.gc.ai/sign-up?cta=youtube Book a demo: https://gc.ai/book-a-demo?cta=youtube Free legal AI class: https://gc.ai/learn-ai Follow Alice & Jenna: ⁠@Alice Davidson⁠ on LinkedIn ⁠@Jenna Hunt⁠ on LinkedIn Follow us on all social platforms and subscribe to our newsletter to get each new episode when it drops. ⁠@Cecilia Ziniti⁠ on LinkedIn ⁠@CeciliaZin⁠ on Twitter/X ⁠@GC AI⁠ on LinkedIn ⁠GC AI website: gc.ai