Mipe Okunseinde, the Global Head of Legal Operations for Booking.com, is widely recognised for her ability to imagine, create and build where nothing existed before.

With over a decade of experience across three continents, she has founded a law firm’s practice group, an in-house legal department’s operations team, and a business unit’s voice of the customer function. This and other work led the Association of Corporate Counsel to name Mipe one of the Top 10 30-Somethings of 2022.

IQPC Exchange talked to Okunseinde about her journey building Booking.com’s legal operations team and strategy, her view on implementing new technology, and why ‘challenge’ is the wrong word to use when discussing the hurdles of building new operations functions.

Okunseinde will be talking at the inaugural Legal Operations Exchange on the 6-7 December in London and taking part in the expert panel discussion on “Taking A Holistic View of Your Legal Department To Establish A Legal Operations Strategy”.

Why is a defined legal operations leader currently a new role in many organisations?

It is natural for any organisation or discipline to evolve. Part of that evolution comes from necessity. Part of that evolution comes from learning about and incorporating what others are doing. The increasing prominence of defined legal operations leaders is a mix of both those things.

To be a part of the company, the legal team needs to understand – and, to some extent, mirror – how other teams think and operate. In addition, by observing how other teams operate, the legal team has the opportunity to integrate some of those same approaches to evolve how the legal team works.

Download the full interview below.