In 2014, Mike Russell was offered a golden opportunity: the chance to build a legal operations function from scratch at a major global manufacturing company. A former software engineer and IT director, as well as a recognized legal tech expert, Russell was working in operations for the legal department at Liberty Mutual when he got an offer from Ingersoll-Rand plc to join the company as lean leader for legal operations.

Ingersoll-Rand, which is based in Ireland but has its U.S. headquarters in Davidson, North Carolina, already had a lean manufacturing mindset, according to Russell, but it needed help getting its law department moving in the right direction.