The changing of the guard at Twitter announced Monday threw the spotlight on outgoing CEO Jack Dorsey and his successor, Parag Agrawal, who’s been the company’s chief technology officer four years.

But behind the scenes, legal experts say, much of the nitty-gritty work to help make leadership transitions like this go smoothly falls on a company’s legal chief—in this case Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde, who has held the role for eight years.