In-house legal operations pioneer Mary O’Carroll has rejoined the world of private legal practice, signing up with Goodwin as its new chief operating officer.

As a longstanding director of legal operations at Google, O’Carroll co-founded the influential Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), serving as its president for five years. 

She is joining Goodwin after a three-and-a-half-year spell at contract management company Ironclad, where she was chief community officer.

At Goodwin, she will lead a global operations team of more than 1,000 business professionals, reporting to managing partner Mark Bettencourt as part of the firm’s management team.

“Mary is a deeply experienced, well-respected and well-known legal operations executive with a proven track record of leading change and disruptive innovation both in-house and within law firms,” said Bettencourt, adding that the global ops team played “an increasingly sophisticated role” in providing “strategic advice and integrated solutions for our clients”.

O’Carroll replaces longstanding COO Michael Caplan, who left in March to join top 200 US firm Lowenstein Sandler as COO. 

O’Carroll, who will be based in Goodwin’s Silicon Valley office, began her legal career as strategy, operations and profitability manager at Orrick before joining Google, where she is credited with establishing its legal operations team as well as putting that discipline on the map through her work with CLOC.

She pointed to Goodwin’s strong technology-focused client base as a key reason for joining the Boston-based firm. 

“Goodwin’s platform is unique in that it serves clients across the most dynamic industries, and where they converge with one another and with the power of exponential technology and disruptive innovation,” she said.

In an interview with GLP in 2021, she reflected on her role in challenging traditional law firm practices. “There’s a scene in Zoolander where Will Ferrell says, ‘I feel like I’m taking crazy pills’,” she said. “That’s how I felt when I came up against the tradition-bound mindset in law firms. When I asked about compensation not being aligned with clients, people looked at me like I had alien eyes coming out of my head. The idea that you could try something differently with a new lens was preposterous.”