CLOC Member Spotlight: Neil Cook
The CLOC Member Spotlight series profiles the incredible individuals within our community who are driving transformation in legal ops. Each spotlight provides inspiration, fosters connections, and gives readers a chance to learn more about their peers. By sharing these stories, we celebrate the diverse voices and talents that make CLOC a vibrant and connected community.
December 2024 Member Spotlight: Neil Cook
Neil Cook is the Legal Operations Director at Computershare. An active member of CLOC Australia, Neil also served as faculty for the Legal Ops 101 workshop at the 2024 APAC Summit. Keep reading to learn more about Neil.
About me:
I started my working life as a construction engineer, followed by many years in facilities management – which is how I ended up finding my way to working for Freehills in Australia, where I spent 15 years in both facilities and in a commercial management role in the corporate practice group.
As a result of being made redundant in 2016, I was fortunate that through my network I landed a legal operations role with an in-house team – one of the first in the Australian market at that time – and the rest, as they say, is history.
If I reflect on my career, especially as it relates to legal ops, you never know what’s around the corner and having a diverse background and set of skills really helps if you want to move into ops. Also, cultivating and valuing a good network is all important.
Why I love being a CLOC member:
As mentioned above, having a good network is very important. Not just from the perspective of it being a potential pathway to finding your next role, but most importantly because you can never have all the answers. To be successful and grow, you need to surround yourself with great people – people who are better at some things than you, and the CLOC Community gives you an opportunity to do that. The willingness of the community to share knowledge and experience is second to none, and I am incredibly grateful for those in my network for their patience and insights.
My advice for other legal ops professionals:
Find ways to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. If I think about those times in my career where I have grown the most, both professionally and personally, it has always come when I’ve been at my most uncomfortable. This could be through taking on a new project, building knowledge in an unfamiliar area, or tackling that interpersonal skill that you know you are weak on.
A fun fact about me:
I originally came from England where they don’t have many 50m swimming pools. So, when I had been living in Australia for a few years and thought it was a good idea to take up triathlons (as you do), I jumped into my local 50m pool and subsequently nearly drowned about 25m into my first training lap. But a few years later, I went on to complete three IronMan races where the first leg is a 3.8 kilometer swim. Through discomfort comes growth!
CLOC Member Spotlights provide an opportunity to showcase members within our community who are making a difference in their organizations, in their CLOC groups, within the CLOC community and/or the industry as a whole. Do you know of a really cool thing a CLOC member is doing? We invite you to nominate a member of the CLOC Community for a future feature in the CLOC Member Spotlights Series.
