Tom Schwyn

Title: Vice President, Global Legal Operations and GPO General Counsel

Company: Whirlpool Corporation

How did you get into legal operations? 

My role began in 2014 in response to a few trends we observed in the law department.  For many years, it had been our vision to operate as a more global legal team and we felt that legal operations could be an enabler.  At the same time, the CLO's role was shifting to more strategic matters with the CEO and Board, requiring some operations tasks to come off her plate.  My role was created to focus on strengthening legal operations and to partner with the CLO to accelerate our journey towards being a more global law department.

When and why did you join CLOC? 

I joined CLOC about 3 years ago.  I heard about CLOC through my peers and was interested in checking out the best practices that members were sharing.  

What has been your biggest legal ops challenge and how did you overcome it?

Our biggest challenge was leveraging legal operations to help us operate as one global legal team.  A simple but powerful example is the work we do to track and report our global legal work. Several years ago, we established common global definitions for recurring legal activities, and then we began tracking internal and external resources using the global definitions.  Basically, the data we collect and provide insights that lead to actions and behaviors that help us work as a global team. Best of all, our global tracking system was created using simple homegrown tools, which proves that you don't need major investments or fancy technology to have an impact.

How has CLOC helped you be successful in your legal Operations role?

CLOC has been a resource for me and members of my legal operations team to research solutions to common problems, obtain benchmark data to see how we compare to others and to make connections with others in the legal ops field.

What is one thing you would say to inspire your fellow CLOC Members to become more involved in the development of the legal operations profession?

The field of legal operations is still fairly new and rapidly evolving.  Most of us are working on similar problems: optimizing legal costs, managing legal vendors, implementing legal technology, and empowering our law departments to be most effective.  Solving these problems alone can be intimidating and often involves a lot of trial and error. We all stand to benefit when working together to find common approaches that advance the field of legal operations.