InView Digital Magazine for in-house legal professionals | Issue Three

T H E C O M M U N I T Y FO R I N - H O U S E L E G A L P R O F E S S I O N A LS TO L E A R N , C O N N E C T & S H A R E

ISSUE 03

From the creators of LawVu

Bring your personality to work

CONTENTS & TEAM

INVIEW

Contents Career Progression

Macro Impact

5 – No one wants to work with a textbook

20 – What to do when the world goes mad

8 – We are not second-class lawyers

23 – Combating inflation as a lawyer

11 – Is the grass really greener on the other side?

27 – Let’s talk pay equity

14 – Being a Web 3.0 lawyer

29 – Contributing to business goals

17 – Defining your own success

30 – Data and privacy in a globalized world

25 – Taking a chance on change

40 – Is getting political a risk worth taking?

33 – How to get the top job

42 – Being connected is the only option

36 – One great leap to General Counsel 39 – Unlearn to unlock your potential 41 – The value of mentoring 45 – The five Cs of in-house counsel

InView team Special thanks to: Sian Simpson EDITOR

Connor Amor-Bendall SENIOR WRITER

Reginald Matthews, Shaun Plant, Courtney Dick, Stephen Drysdale, Jason Xu, Pier Luigi M Lucatuorto, Anna Grafton-Green, Seshani Bala, Adam Wardel, Kristen Corpion, Lauren Zajac, Fabien Bonavia, Helen Doukas, Danh Nguyen, Ryan Zahrai, Megan Lutes, Asim Khan

Heather Kidd SUB-EDITOR

Chris McGavin WRITER & EX-LAWYER

Emily McCormick DESIGNER & ILLUSTRATOR

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Disclaimer The views expressed in InView are those of the article’s author, contributor or interviewee (as applicable). Except where clearly stated otherwise, these views are not to be taken as those of or endorsed by LawVu Limited. No responsibility whatsoever is accepted by LawVu Limited for any opinion or information contained in InView.

Copyright All rights reserved. Any form of reproduction of any content without the permission of LawVu Limited is strictly prohibited.

EDITOR’S LETTER

INVIEW

Editor’s Letter Dear Reader, We are back with another issue of InView, the magazine created especially for our in-house legal community. In this issue, we explore salient topics within our community: how the legal function responds to its macro environment, the unchartered value of counsel, and alternative career pathways and progression.

We delve into alternative pathways to success and the importance of authenticity and personality. There is a common consensus that the age of the textbook lawyer is well and truly over, and if you want to be a great in-house counsel you need to be technically excellent, commercially savvy, and emotionally connected.

Just as the world was finding its feet, opening up as it came to terms with Covid-19, it felt like the kitchen sink was thrown at us once again with the world gone a little mad. Whether it’s politics, wars, talent shortages, climbing inflation, the figuring out of how to operate in a hybrid/ remote set up for businesses - over the last six months we could be forgiven for saying we’ve seen it all.

Our contributors question the narrative of success itself.

A fancy office and powerful title aren’t trappings that drive our community members. What’s important is finding a role in a business that allows for both personal and professional fulfilment along with working in unison with the organization to achieve better business outcomes.

On a more positive note, we have watched and listened optimistically as our InView community – which has doubled in size to over 3,000 members around the world – has thrived, changing jobs, pursuing new options and reaching new levels of peak potential, driving the industry forward from the front lines. One thing is certain, it’s never been a better time to be an in-house lawyer.

Life will always throw us curveballs, and the global macro environment has felt shaky of late. No one can be certain which way the scales will tip, but the murmurs of tough financial times ahead are becoming louder. Areas of law such as data and cybersecurity are growing increasingly complex, requiring more action from counsel and the business itself. Our community is impressively cognizant of this, aware that in-house functions must prioritize efficiency, effectiveness, and adding value more than ever.

The unique position of legal leaders within a business is a recurring point in discussion within our community.

A General Counsel (GC) has business oversight and an intimate understanding of the inner workings of the business that make them an asset to any C-suite. The potential this provides GCs with to add genuine value to their business is limitless.

Our community is growing, and we invite you to take the next step. Join our networking program, InView Connect, which connects you with relevant and experienced peers around the world. We also extend to you an invitation to join our inaugural InView Conferences due to be held in Sydney in August and London in October.

I hope these pages bring you something to ponder, provide insight, connection and a reprieve from your day to day.

As always, you, the reader, are the lifeforce of our InView community. Please don’t be shy to reach out, we welcome your news, views and feedback.

Thank you,

Sian Simpson sian.simpson@lawvu.com

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INVIEW

Reginald Matthews, Contracts Administrator at Calendly

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INVIEW

MINDSET

No one wants to work with a textbook

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Reginald Matthews was excited about a career in law, but over time he got ground down by the pressures of trying to fit the mold of a stereotypical lawyer. Reassessing what sort of lawyer he wanted to be has helped him reignite his passion for the law.

When Matthews’ looks back at his time in law school, he views it as all-encompassing. “You can lose your sense of humility and personality in achieving your goal. Because legal training is so focused on students acquiring and comprehending legal knowledge, it’s easy for them to lose sight of themselves in the process - which results in bookish lawyers.”

While there’s an element of the philosophical when Reginald Matthews says no one wants to work with a textbook, the statement also says a lot about his experiences – good and bad – in law, and what, to him, are the traits of those who make good lawyers.

The step from bookish lawyer to socially awkward lawyer, one who regurgitates legal information without thinking about how they communicate it, isn’t a big one. And while there is nothing wrong with being bookish or even a little socially awkward, communication is key when trying to explain information effectively to clients. Coming across as human, approachable and easy to understand helps foster the lawyer-client relationship.

Humanity and effective communication skills are qualities he values, and he’s inspired by those he regards as his legal icons, people who don’t set out to win but rather come to an agreement, and those who genuinely want to help others. “Good people make good lawyers. They pour their heart and soul into the community, not into the prestige of their career,” he says.

He mentions his mother, Mary J Fair Matthews, Esq., and Professor Curtis L Mack, the 2020 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of Michigan and Partner (now retired) at McGuireWoods LLP, and Mike Binns, Associate General Counsel, Head of Patent Portfolio Strategy at Meta, and Justin Bouchard, Associate General Counsel at Calendly, as positive influences, people who have helped him to shape himself and his career.

His journey from law school to his current role as Contracts Administrator at US technology start-up Calendly, has been challenging, the road to success proving a somewhat bumpy ride. Trying to fit into the stereotypical lawyer mold nearly broke him, and he became disenfranchised with his line of work. But it was also a learning curve, an opportunity to adopt a fresh approach, one that sat more comfortably with him.

“Because legal training is so focused on students acquiring and comprehending legal knowledge, it’s easy for them to lose sight of themselves in the process - which results in bookish lawyers.”

But the hamster-wheel high-stakes, fast-paced legal world, all the while trying to fit into the lawyer stereotype, led to Matthews’ burning out. The setback made him take stock. “People sacrifice a lot to fit the lawyer box, and in doing so lose traits that could help them be better lawyers.

Some people become lawyers for the money and prestige, some because they want to help others. What I want to do is to interpret the law to problem solve and help others, be that the business or an acquaintance.”

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Since working in the legal department of Calendly, Matthews’ eyes have been opened to a different way of practicing; he has become part of a more informal and vibrant culture. “Being in tech, I realized that I can be a legal counsel who is smart and effective but still make friends in my company and want to turn up to work every day.”

He also believes in applying a healthy dose of humanity to his work. “Clients want to have conversations with human beings, not a textbook on civil procedure, torts or data privacy.”

“If you can communicate legal advice to your business in a way that is easy to understand, it’s likely people will be more willing to call on you more often.”

Matthews is often surprised yet amused when people find out he works in law. He enjoys telling them, “you can make jokes about lawyers, I’m not going to sue you! I’m a human being, we can have a normal conversation, my job does not dictate how I treat you.”

And while Matthews strives not to be a bookish lawyer, he describes the realities of practicing law as “having a book of knowledge”, and he strongly believes that knowing how to wield that knowledge is what makes a great lawyer.

We’ve all seen fictional stereotypical ruthless lawyers, characters such as Harvey Specter from TV series Suits or Martin Vail in the movie Primal Fear, lawyers hellbent on winning no matter the cost. Real-life lawyering is different.

Matthews makes the point that aggressive litigation makes up only a small percentage of the law; most lawyers and in-house counsel focus on negotiating an agreement or providing clients with comprehensive legal advice.

Which isn’t an easy task as legal documents, be they ten pages or 60 pages, can be daunting to people.

Matthews says lawyers tend to be very direct and literal with their interpretation of the law and it’s easy for them to forget that their clients do not share their comprehension.

He believes it’s important to communicate necessary legal information to clients in as few paragraphs as

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possible, or in a tailored document. It’s about utilizing the “book of knowledge”, lawyers interpreting the law and communicating it to others in a way they can understand.

The way in which information is imparted shapes how clients interact with their lawyers. Effective communication is particularly pertinent when working inhouse where lawyers want a relationship with the business where they have a reputation as a trusted advisor. “If you can communicate legal advice to your business in a way that is easy to understand, it’s likely people will be more willing to call on you more often,” says Matthews.

Essentially, in-house lawyers want to help rather than be a handbrake, an asset to the business they work for.

INVIEW

Join our community

Welcome to InView InView is a growing community for in-house legal professionals to learn, connect and share. We want to create a place where all of us in-house can be one with our peers

“I love being part of a community where I can share my experiences and learn from others who have faced similar issues.”

Theo Kapodistrias – General Counsel and InView community member

We are not second-class lawyers

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Law is an innately hierarchal practice steeped in tradition and competitiveness. In the past, this culture of competition blighted the relationship between in-house counsel and private practice lawyers because rather than appreciating both parties existed in a symbiotic relationship, private practice regarded in-house as mediocre, not able for the real legal world.

“Your legal career is over. Once you go in-house, you can’t go back into private practice.” These were the exact words said to Shaun Plant, LawVu’s Chief Legal Evangelist, when he made the move in-house from private practice. Such a dismissive remark reinforced the fact that despite the rise in numbers of in-house lawyers and the increasing awareness of their value, the old-school attitude that they were second-class lawyers prevailed.

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The root of private practice lawyers’ superiority complex was likely based on the mistaken idea that in-house farmed out all their demanding work to external counsel, dealing only with routine and low-complex work themselves. This meant private practice regarded themselves as true legal heavyweights, and in-house as less competent lawyers unable to hack it in private practice.

“While it is correct to say some specialist work is outsourced, there are many other reasons that influence a decision to use external counsel,” says Plant. “Capacity is a huge factor. Sometimes in-house teams get pushed beyond a limit they can resource internally without burning out their people.”

Independence is another biggie. Companies sometimes make decisions that need supporting advice from an independent source external to the business, not because they don’t trust the advice of their in-house team.

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Thankfully, the perception of in-house lawyers is changing, which is resulting in more lawyers making the move inhouse. In fact, recent reports show the in-house profession is growing steadily and at a faster rate than growth in the profession as a whole.

“A recent LawTalk article reveals that in-house now represents 28 percent of the profession. It was 23 percent in 2016,” says Plant. “The reality is that in-house lawyers are adapting better to practicing law in the modern world, developing skills that their private practice counterparts do not have. They become multidisciplinary, legal-business advisors and not just lawyers.”

Working in-house places huge importance on soft skills such as project management, lateral communication, transactional execution and hard skills in technology, business and industry specific areas. The result is more well-rounded lawyers who genuinely understand how to look at things from a business and client perspective.

“It’s a more modern way of practicing law, rooted in the commercial real world,” says Plant.

“In-house lawyers are adapting better to practicing law in the modern world, developing skills their private practice counterparts do not have. They become multidisciplinary, legalbusiness advisors and not just lawyers.”

Private practice lawyers are often stuck in the black-letter law, the unavoidable litigation and work that requires learned legal practitioners and lengthy legal opinions polished to precision. However, there is a volume of other areas of law where private practice tends to follow that same behavior and provide the client with a superfluous amount of information and use of academic- rather than business-speak.

The reality is that clients aren’t interested in their lawyers showing off their legal knowledge or marveling at the elegance of their language and the eloquence with which information is conveyed. They hate it when ‘accordingly’ is added to every second sentence when referring to yet another legal point, usually followed by the dreaded

CHANGE

semicolon. As an in-house lawyer, Plant has had his company ask multiple times, “Can you please translate the advice external counsel gave us into normal speak so we can understand what it means?”

Of course, the client has an interest in understanding how the law affects their matter, but what they really want is to be told what they need to do about it. No more, no less, just fit-for-purpose advice. In-house lawyers get this: they understand business because they are in business.

“I’m not talking about producing poor quality work, because like lawyers in private practice we are always committed to delivering work to high professional standards,” says Plant. “But quality is relative. In some cases, we need to leave no stone unturned, but more often than not a quick review, a qualified opinion or even an emoji is all that is needed to keep the business wheels moving.”

The good news is that in-house teams are growing, and businesses are hiring more special counsel and harnessing legal tech to automate much of their high-volume, lowvalue work. They are intentionally giving their in-house counsel more time to focus on strategic matters, to be business advisors not just legal counsel. It also enables in-house teams to focus on the highly specialized work that is of strategic importance to the business, and which more often than not would have been outsourced.

“Bespoke legal services are what businesses demand,” says Plant. They want highly tailored and practical solutions delivered specifically for the business and in language they can understand and implement. And inhouse counsel are much more agile and better suited to delivering this than private practice because they are at the heart of the business; they have a better understanding of the business risk appetite.

The new generation of lawyers doesn’t believe in-house counsel are second-class lawyers. ACC reports that 12 percent of law graduates move straight in-house.

While this number is still small, it is increasing. Larger corporations are beginning to establish legal intern and graduate programs, and we can expect to see more of this in the future.

What entices the graduates in-house is the full package of not-just-legal challenges on offer. Lawyers can learn commercial skills, management skills and industry-specific knowledge, and benefit from being involved in a less hierarchal structure than is commonplace in law firms.

“If private practice could adapt and follow in-house’s lead, maybe we’d see a migration back,” says Plant.

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Stephen Drysdale, Jason Xu, and Courtney Dick

INVIEW

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Is the grass really greener on the other side?

by Connor Amor-Bendall

In law, there are two camps - private practice and in-house. Moving between the two is usually a big decision, and often looks like private practice veterans opting for better work-life balance. Our interest has been piqued by an emerging trend of young inhouse counsel moving to private practice.

In recent times, three members of our valued InView community decided to jump ship, leaving their inhouse roles and moving into private practice. Jason Xu, Courtney Dick and Stephen Drysdale all began their careers in-house, where they made their mark within their respective industries. What has been the driver behind their move to private practice? Are we looking at a future where moving between in-house and private practice becomes the norm?

Jason Xu is the newly appointed Legal Operations assistant at MinterEllison. Xu was a Legal Operations assistant and Junior Corporate Counsel in his previous inhouse role. His reasons for making the change were career driven, he wanted to be challenged, to build his personal brand and was fearful of becoming complacent.

Xu’s in-house colleagues tried to dissuade him from making the move. “Don’t go into private practice, we escaped that place,” “billable hours suck,” and “being inhouse is the goal.” Yet despite the warnings, he felt going into private practice was an itch he needed to scratch. He also chose to focus on a legal operations role, which he says negated any concerns about billable hours.

“I wanted to see the legal innovation scene in private practice,” he says. The beast of private practice means a new way of legal ops, and Xu is interested in what serving

a firm of one hundred lawyers looks like compared to his usual in-house team. “I am excited to see how the resourcing private practice puts into legal operations manifests, what kind of technologies are more valuable for private practice than in-house, and what are beneficial to both.”

Building a personal brand is important to Xu, especially as legal operations is a relatively new space, and he wants to become respected within this burgeoning field. On a nontechnical level, he believes working within a large firm will help him to develop better stakeholder and relationship management skills, especially when it comes to dealing with hierarchy and authority.

Courtney Dick is the Senior Legal Counsel at Nano Digital Home Loans. However, before taking this role, she spent five months as a senior lawyer in private practice after leaving her three-year tenure at Rocket Lab, where she was Senior Legal Counsel.

Dick’s move to private practice was very strategic.

“I realized once I became Senior Legal Counsel there were areas I would have to improve on if I ever wanted to be a General Counsel,” she says. She thought private practice could help polish her experience, specifically training

“I am excited to see how the resourcing private practice puts into legal operations manifests, what kind of technologies are more valuable for private practice than in-house, and what are beneficial to both.”

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her in more formal ways of communicating, client interaction, and opinion writing.

A non-traditional law firm was her choice. Dick wanted to be in a tech-savvy environment, and she knew fitting into a traditional firm’s way of working wouldn’t be easy after being in-house for over seven years. She’d spent two-anda-half years of her life at Rocket Lab, so the full-on hours of a traditional private practice firm weren’t appealing.

However, Dick quickly discovered that for her the grass was not greener. “I was frustrated by how restricted you are in the ability to help your clients as how much they can afford to spend dictates every interaction.” She missed the holistic involvement and integration that in-house counsel have in business matters. “Time recording was also a massive issue for me. You spend way too much time stressing about it.”

For Dick, the reality of private practice was frustrating, and being an innately commercial person, she realized she was better suited to in-house. “Although I had needed to pivot, I’d pivoted in the wrong way for me.”

“People don’t always want to admit that as in-house counsel we are generalists. We have a high level of knowledge in many legal areas.”

After an interview with Stephanie Olliver, Nano’s Head of Legal, Dick realized that perhaps some of the skills she needed to become a GC could be taught by a senior mentor. She seized the opportunity to work with a mentor who inspired her and left private practice behind. “I love being part of the business and being able to step in and help as much as I can, so I’m always going to think the grass is greener in-house.”

A combination of internal and external pressures motivated Stephen Drysdale to move to private practice.

He left his role as In-house Counsel at ZURU to become a lawyer at LegalVision. He says the impetus to move was fueled by the fact “if I didn’t move to private practice now, at the three-year in-house mark, I was cutting off the pathway”.

Like Xu, Drysdale wanted a challenge. “As a young lawyer, I want to be in an unpredictable environment with diverse problems to solve that challenge me,” he says.

He had a great hold on supply, marketing, distribution, and consumer agreements having worked in-house, but wanted to develop a specialist skillset.

“People don’t always want to admit that as in-house counsel we are generalists. We have a very high level of knowledge in many legal areas such as employment, intellectual property, and commercial law.”

Drysdale wants to develop a level of specialist knowledge akin to what the external counsel he previously outsourced work possessed. He hopes that being in private practice and dealing with similar problems countless times will progress his development.

Style was also imperative to Drysdale’s move. He hopes that being exposed to many different lawyers within the firm and learning by osmosis will help him to develop a particular legal style.

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Money shouldn’t be overlooked as a motivating factor to change lanes. It’s well-known that private practice pays better, albeit it often comes with an extra load of stress. Xu wanted reimbursement that would better reflect the contributions he makes to organizations in legal operations, saying, “I can’t deny it’s not important,” and when looking to move he considered management consulting firms and law firms. He found remuneration to be significantly higher at the latter.

Dick points out that as a young person in today’s economic climate, money is an important factor, and as an in-house lawyer company stock is a great goal. Employee Share Option Schemes in start-ups are a great way to build your wealth. Tech companies at initial or scale-up stages often offer them. Many lawyers are still unaware of the potential opportunities ESOPs present. Imagine how the early legal counsel of Afterpay is doing today? Perhaps ESOPs will become as coveted as partner positions in the future?

Private practice lawyers benefit from in-house lawyers’ ability to understand clients’ needs.

Discovering Kaizen A colleague once pointed out to Pier Luigi M Lucatuorto, GC of Modula S.p.A, that he had a “Kaizen way of working”.

Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy meaning “change for better” or “continuous improvement”. It is based upon the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements. Developed in the post-World War II manufacturing era to minimize defects in Toyota’s vehicles, Kaizen soon caught on in the rest of the world.

Drysdale notes that the certainty of remuneration in private practice is reassuring. “You have a nice little security blanket roadmap,” he says. He sees the reward ESOPs offer as exciting and something to be considered but says the risk-averse nature of lawyers would make many hesitant of start-ups.

Kaizen promotes taking a holistic view of a circumstance or problem so that the root problem may be determined and solved. It can be applied to all facets of one’s life, instilling both patience and faith in one’s ability to overcome mental blocks as minor incremental improvements snowball into profound change.

When it comes to what private practice stands to gain from their in-house recruits, Xu, Dick and Drysdale share a common opinion: private practice lawyers benefit from in-house lawyers’ ability to understand clients’ needs.

They all found the everyday client exposure in-house was unmatched at their equivalent private practice level.

“Kaizen educates us to be consistent, and value the steps we take every day. By doing so, we can always straighten the shot if something goes wrong, to keep our motivation high and stress low,” says Lucatuorto.

“When you’re in-house, you become used to people coming to you with a problem they don’t really understand or know how to explain, so you become quite good at teasing out what actually needs to be done,” says Drysdale.

There is no doubt lawyers are challenged in a private practice environment, dealing with an endless barrage of issues, hierarchy, high expectations and billable hours.

But let’s not forget the feeling of having the entire business kitchen sink thrown at you as a small legal team. Both have their challenges and their rewards. Xu, Dick and Drysdale believe that a future where moving between the two camps is more normalized could create better legal outcomes for everyone.

As much as it is a tool for self-improvement, Kaizen is also a springboard for self-reflection: “We cannot control the rhythm of our changes, just as we cannot identify the precise moment in which we finally learn to play the piano, speak a language or ride a bicycle. We simply have to trust our mind, which will eventually acquire a specific skill or habit by obeying the instructions we sent.”

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Being a Web 3.0 lawyer with Anna Grafton-Green

by Chris McGavin

Web 3.0 and the underlying distributed ledger technology has the potential to fundamentally change every aspect of how we engage with the digital world. Anna Grafton-Green, Regulatory Head of Legal at Blockchain.com, talks us through the world of Web 3.0 and what it means for lawyers.

The internet has had two distinct phases, pre and post social media. The initial phase, known as Web 1.0, was a digital playground where creativity and imagination reigned.

Monetizing users was uncommon, and most web pages didn’t even allow advertising.

Social media was the tipping point which saw economies move from human to data capital. Every man, woman and child could become a content creator and tap into this new revenue stream. Data was the new gold, and the internet was leveraged to extract as much of it as humanly, or digitally, possible. Web 1.0 became Web 2.0. And now Web 3.0 is making its presence felt.

At the center of Web 3.0 is Blockchain, described by Investopedia as, “A distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format.

The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.”

One of the best-known applications of blockchain technology is Bitcoin, which since 2009 has gone from $0 in value and relative anonymity, to a peak of $64,000 USD and the centerpiece of a $3.1 trillion cryptocurrency market.

A new era of technological evolution is undoubtedly underway as Web 2.0 makes way for Web 3.0. Given the degree of technical expertise and the relatively sparse regulatory environment, this shift necessitates the involvement of audacious counsel who are not afraid to grapple with the consequent avalanche of new information.

Blockchain.com is a financial services firm that caters to both retail and institutional users in the crypto asset space. Anna

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Grafton-Green’s role is to “look holistically at the business across both the retail and institutional space and ensure that the business is supported in navigating an increasingly complex regulatory environment”.

Grafton-Green believes increasing regulatory and legal certainty is a positive sign for lawyers interested in this space. “If you think about the underlying technological concepts in distributed ledger technology, we’re going to see increasingly more use cases for it. We will definitely need more involved expertise on how some of the legal issues surrounding that technology get resolved.”

She says certain skills are essential. “We are always hungry for people with transferable skills. It’s about building an interest and an understanding of what’s going on in the legal and regulatory space and articulating well what transferable skills you can bring across.”

Web 3.0 is one of those rare opportunities where you get to be less reactive as a lawyer.

According to Grafton-Green, one of the most captivating challenges is how to map virtual activity around real world rights. “One of the really interesting questions we’re working through, is how we create and what kind of rights we can create in the digital universe,” she says. “There is a question to be answered conceptually about how you map those into the real world, how you ensure they’re properly enforced, and how you ensure they operate well.”

Web 3.0 provides the opportunity to forge fit-for-purpose regulation as well. “It is a terrific opportunity to help contribute to the legislative and regulatory agenda. There are regulators who really want the industry at the forefront helping and educating them,” says Grafton-Green. “It’s one of those rare opportunities where you get to be less reactive as a lawyer, and a little more focused on working through interesting and innovative solutions.”

The advent of Web 3.0 is providing an abundance of opportunities for counsel looking to shift gears and move into a field that is as challenging as it is diverse.

Seshani Bala, General Counsel of KPMG New Zealand

Stephen Drysdale, In-House Counsel at ZURU

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LEADERSHIP

Defining your own success a Q&A with Seshani Bala

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Blending in is not for Seshani Bala, General Counsel (GC) of KPMG New Zealand.

A Sri Lankan-born ‘Kwaussie’ who has lived in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, she is a trailblazer in legal leadership and a change catalyst who has worked hard to get her seat at the executive table. Bala has held multiple GC roles in a variety of industries, with a global remit across Asia-Pacific and Europe.

Why did you become a lawyer?

I watched too much Boston Legal in my day and law, according to TV, seemed exciting. I’ve learned it’s not like that in real life. Growing up, I was science focused but I also loved art, design and photography. I wanted to explore this further but fell into the trap of assuming I needed to study something that guaranteed a paying job. I went into law because I wanted a change. I liked the opportunity it gave me to think analytically and present different points of view. There’s a lot of grey space in the law; you have to find answers within the grey and translate that to the business or your client in a way that enables them to take action.

I saw that as a lawyer I could be the conduit between theory and practical application to help businesses get better outcomes.

How do you define success? Is it purely professional or a mix of holistic and professional aspects?

Definitely the latter. The holistic side of success is being fulfilled in what you’re doing, personally and professionally – it’s knowing your ‘why?’. The professional bucket is a significant component of our life as we spend all day at work. If I’m unhappy professionally, that will impact my personal life.

To me, success is having a voice at the right table. It’s inclusiveness - both having a sense of belonging and being able to open channels of inclusiveness for others. My lived experience as a lawyer wasn’t always great. When you reach

a position of influence, there’s opportunity to speak up, give back and do things the way you wish you experienced them. I see a lot of vulnerability in people entering the legal profession today, particularly due to a tough economic and disruptive environment. I want to support young lawyers, particularly those from diverse backgrounds, to give them the resilience to keep going through all the ups and downs of life.

Success is not about a title or the size of a deal. Continuous learning is a huge part of success for me. You learn so much when you become a lawyer, but equally important is unlearning things that are no longer relevant and relearning different ways of doing things.

What are your strengths?

I have an appetite for change, and I tend to naturally embrace innovation and disruption. I’m fairly comfortable navigating new environments and tackling challenges.

Having moved around a lot while I was growing up and then travelling and working across different jurisdictions and cultures helped me develop my ‘cultural competency’ as I learned about different ways of doing business. I love being an in-house lawyer and believe in-house success depends on your EQ (emotional intelligence), soft skills and the UX (user experience) you give your stakeholders, especially in leadership roles.

Once you get the top job, such as GC, is it the be-allend-all?

I’ve been in GC roles for quite a while now. Rather than focusing on the title, I look at what I am contributing and learning to gauge if the role is relevant to my professional development. I get satisfaction from being in an engaging environment, a culture I enjoy, working with talented teams and continuously learning. Being in an environment that fosters innovation and creativity is just as important as the role to me. Being in-house, I’ve learned so much about business development, technology adoption, continuous improvement, relationship building and governance from different stakeholders I’ve worked with. It all comes back to relationships. As humans, despite all the AI and tech we use, we get our energy from others.

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Continuous learning is a huge part of success for me, but equally important is unlearning things that are no longer relevant and re-learning different ways of doing things.

Moving industries allows me to learn regardless of my job title. In FMCG, I loved learning about different consumer products, markets and supply chain. In the coffee industry, I learned about the bean-to-cup process and the product lifecycle from coffee farms to retail outlets. The education and tech sector taught me about the importance of offering a seamless digital experience and intuitive SaaS products, while working for a regulator provided insights into governance, culture and compliance. Professional services has been a whole different ball game, so it’s all about being open-minded and willing to learn.

How did you learn to back yourself and your experience?

It’s one thing to bet on yourself and another to be able to communicate that to your next employer and say, ‘this is my journey, my story and this is how I can deliver what you want’. It’s not always easy. For instance, when I decided to move back to New Zealand after 14 years in Australia, I wanted to be closer to my family, but I was nervous about leaving a terrific role, and a great network in Sydney. It was a hard decision, but a good friend said I needed to back myself and know my past experience would help me adapt to the next challenge. It took time, but I did make the move, and it’s been good so far!

Do you look for roles that allow you to care for your wellbeing and career goals?

I do now but it’s taken a while to realize the importance of this. It’s an essential part of what success looks like to me. When I was a M&A and private equity lawyer in private practice, I worked very long hours. I loved the work, but I would get very few weekends off a year and that wasn’t sustainable. We were trained to think that is what you do sacrifice wellbeing, family events and social gatherings.

Nowadays, things are different; the focus is on people and wellbeing. It’s great there’s so much thought leadership and role-modeling of flexibility. I’m better now at seeing signs of burnout early on. I’m focused on ensuring we create environments that are psychologically safe,

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supportive and inclusive for our teams. That’s how the legal profession will change. Being vulnerable can be hard, but having honest conversations is crucial.

Have you actively hunted out opportunities or trusted they would come to you?

I’m proactive, I do hunt them out - and not just legal opportunities. It’s important to build your network, to have good relationships, and to give back. I’ve been lucky to have had some great mentors and I’ve mentored other lawyers throughout my in-house career. Prioritizing relationships is important, many of the roles I’ve got have been from people referring me or connecting me with a potential employer.

It can be hard, pioneering conversation or inviting someone you respect professionally for a coffee. But the worst that can happen is people say no.

When do you know it’s the right time to move on from a role?

When I don’t feel I’m learning, I feel I’ve delivered everything I can or it’s no longer the right environment. Moving isn’t a bad thing, it’s good for the business to get a fresh pair of eyes, and it’s healthy to diversify your skillset by entering a different

industry or stepping up to a new challenge. If you don’t feel you’re learning new things, you need to change the room you’re in.

What would you like your legacy to be?

I hope when people come to me with a legal, business or other problem, they feel supported and have a good user experience. It comes back to being that trusted advisor who can help navigate a good outcome, supporting people.

If you have great relationships with colleagues, you can have difficult conversations more easily and stay friends long after leaving a company.

What do you know now that you wish you knew back then?

Very few mistakes can’t be fixed, failure is a critical component of learning, leverage your strengths and embrace what makes you different. Be brave as you can always change paths. There are so many options out there. Be open to things and don’t worry if you didn’t follow the traditional path. You don’t have to start out in large law firms. Be flexible and receptive to other people’s perspectives and viewpoints. See what you can take from others because it opens your eyes to a world of possibilities.

Very few mistakes can’t be fixed, failure is a critical component of learning, leverage your strengths and embrace what makes you different.

Has your idea of career success changed over the years?

Absolutely, I came to realize that combining my legal skills and passion for technology and business transformation made me better suited to being an in-house lawyer than working in private practice. I seek roles that enable me to learn, contribute, innovate, help others and give back.

Do you feel like you’ve achieved success, and what do you still feel you need to achieve?

I don’t put as much weight on career success; it’s just one part of my life and it’s not the be-all-end-all. It’s much more about continuous learning for me and being exposed to different experiences. I’m grateful for my career path to date – it’s given me opportunities to travel, experience different cultures, meet amazing people and learn lots of different things. Hopefully that will continue!

Lateral moves Making a lateral career move is often the last thing lawyers want to do, but ironically it can be the best way to elevate one’s legal career and is no longer taboo.

“There’s a common school of thought that any job move has to be a promotion, but I’ve often learned the most from lateral moves,” says Seshani Bala. She points out that “filling the gaps” in your professional toolkit is essential to career development, and sometimes a new role with a more senior title doesn’t always do the trick.

For instance, specific skills such as innovation intelligence, relationship management, communication, specialist industry knowledge or business literacy aren’t necessarily gained by rising through the ranks. Moving to a similar role in a different country, industry or type of company can provide invaluable experience with different services or products, or lessons on how to navigate a big corporate versus a rapidly growing start-up.

“Being pushed outside of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to new experiences doesn’t always come with a fancy title,” says Bala. She points out that people are often dismissive of moving laterally in business, but if you think strategically a lateral career move can be akin to a long-term investment. “Be less afraid of that, and take opportunities because things aren’t black or white, up or down.”

Whatever career move you make, you can also change paths and diversify your skillset, so be open-minded to the benefits of lateral movement and don’t have tunnel vision on vertical progression – there are heaps of options!

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BUSINESS

INVIEW

What to do when the world goes mad

by Chris McGavin

It is safe to say the world has well and truly thrown the kitchen sink at us over the past two years. Pier Luigi M Lucatuorto shares his insights from these turbulent times and how they’ve impacted not only how to be a GC, but what the title even means.

In 1939, a slogan was developed by the British government to prepare its people for impending air raids. While the poster didn’t make it onto many walls, it now adorns T-shirts, web pages and memes as an expression of resilience. The slogan reads: “Keep calm and carry on.”

In-house counsel are no strangers to complexity as it is an inherent part of their trade: from multi-jurisdictional agreements to negotiations and the rest, on strict timelines, with high stakes and an expectation of quality that few other professions could match. To be an in-house counsel is to embody that 1939 slogan.

Pier Luigi M Lucatuorto, InView Champion and General Counsel at Modula S.p.A, defines business complexity in the following way: “A business is ‘complex’ when the realization of its purposes needs to take into account multiple factors, both endogenous and exogenous to the business itself. The more factors that must be considered, and the more involved the organization is in considering these factors, the more complex the business is. I believe complexity cannot be prevented, rather just handled.”

True enough. Complexity knocked and the world answered.

Pandemics, inflation, war and supply chain issues are having a profound impact on the way we work, in ways no one could have imagined.

This era of complexity is a call to arms for in-house counsel and GCs around the world, who have the added responsibility of helping their companies navigate these currently uncertain times on top of their already full plates.

“The role of the General Counsel is absolutely crucial in managing these complex issues, working side by side with top managers to support them in developing strategies to face the challenges brought by such complexities,” says Lucatuorto.

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“A GC has the merit of being a deep connoisseur of internal dynamics within the organization who also knows how to untangle external issues. The combination of these two features makes the GC the right professional to navigate the complexity because they are able to face external dynamics with the internal vision of the company.

“A GC’s cross-cutting competence allows them to give suggestions and solutions even to issues that are only indirectly legal. Once a company understands this potential, they will allow themselves to be guided by the GC in the maze of complexity.”

Which demonstrates that the best asset any GC can have is comfort with ambiguity as it enables them to apply that crosscutting competence and to coolly and calmly steady the ship.

In-house counsel are no strangers to complexity as it is an inherent part of their trade.

It’s that same slogan once more: Keep calm and carry on.

In the face of uncertainty and complexity, the aforementioned enables any GC to approach challenges methodically and respond accordingly.

Lucatuorto believes the recent complexities have brought GCs into the spotlight and enabled them to showcase their true abilities: “The pandemic and additional complexities that have arisen, have given great visibility to the legal function. It is clear that GCs who have proven to be capable of managing complexity and the emergencies connected thereto, are increasingly well-considered by their colleagues, engendering trust. The recent events have expanded this vision. ‘Have an issue? Tell your GC!’” Yes, even in dire global circumstances there exists an ability to draw positives and to learn. The leadership shown by modern GCs during these times has created more trust and buy-in, enabling the legal function to become more connected and more effective.

When the world throws the kitchen sink at you, there is not much else to do but trust yourself and trust your team.

Keep calm and carry on.

The first truly connected legal workspace for in-house legal teams.

www.lawvu.com Matters | Contracts | Spend | Insights

Combating inflation as a lawyer

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Adam Wardel, Chief Legal Officer at nClouds

INVIEW

Global inflationary pressures are making themselves felt, and no business department is immune to their pinch. For the in-house legal function, it’s a great incentive to ensure they are genuinely adding value, not acting as a cost center.

In 1978, Americans were at their wits’ end as the dollar spiraled out of control and living prices soared. Thankfully, due to shrewd thinking by the Federal Reserve, American society overcame this period of double-digit inflation and empty wallets. But nothing is forever, and inflation has returned, this time making itself felt in established economies across the globe.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices rose by 7.5 percent in the year January 2021 to January 2022, a spike not seen since the 1980s. Reuters states that the UK is seeing its worst jump in three decades, with prices rising by 5.5 percent. New Zealand is in the same boat, with a 5.9 percent hike, according to Stats NZ. The EU is not faring any better, RTÉ reporting a 7.5 percent rise. We hate to be pessimistic, but the numbers are grim.

You may be thinking, how does inflation concern our InView community? We all know in-house legal teams are fighting hard to change the ‘cost center’ label they get slapped with, but that fight is extra pertinent in times of inflation.

“People assume lawyers are inflation-proof, that the business will always need them,” says Adam Wardel, Chief Legal Officer at nClouds, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Inflation creates a tighten-the-coffers mentality for businesses, and expensive lawyers are often the first to go.

A leader should recognize the stress inflation puts their organization under and combat it with innovation.

In-house counsel now more than ever need to prove that legal can be a revenue driver and not just a cost center.

(We are looking at you, legal leaders). “You want to be seen as a hero in the eyes of finance,” says Wardel. Sure, inflation may not impact your day-to-day tasks as a lawyer managing compliance and risk, but it has many secondary impacts. A leader should recognize the stress inflation puts their organization under and combat it with innovation.

INSIGHT

In short, it’s time to trim the fat. We’re not just talking about the unnecessary costs in the legal department but across the entire business. Wardel believes there is an opportunity for GCs to step in and help the company out by being, as he terms it, “the bad guy”.

You may balk at that statement, as no lawyer wants to be the bad cop. In times like these, however, Wardel believes “lawyers have the authority within the organization to have the hard conversations and not ruin relationships the way other manager or executive level people may do”.

Legal is a costly business unit, so creating efficiencies is critical when ‘trimming the fat’. If you haven’t already introduced legal tech, now is definitely the time to do so.

The catch is in the onboarding cost, but Wardel advises creating a business case that shows the long-term cost savings. “If you can prove that you’ll save 20 percent costs, you’ve just beat eight percent inflation.”

Legal needs to make sure they are a solution, not a problem. That means getting involved with other business units at an earlier stage, being on the front foot to prevent costly legal issues from ever arising. If legal looks at itself as a tool to make the business much more efficient and compliant, it will inadvertently combat inflation.

Legal needs to make sure they are a solution, not a problem.

Times like these call for what Wardel refers to as “smart business”. He advises taking the time to analyze your business operations and compare them with competitors.

You want to have your finger on the pulse of innovations in your field, gaps in the market, things you are doing well and things you could be doing better.

Knowledge is power, and in this case it informs a business how they can keep driving forward and reduce costs and operations that don’t serve their goals. Wardel applies this same thinking to the legal team. If a task is onerous of counsel’s time and not serving a business goal, get rid of it - bring in tech, automate, outsource to an alternative legal services provider.

As counsel, you want to spend as much time as possible working with the executive legal team on achieving goals, not getting bogged down in contracts. Times of inflation call for in-house counsel to step up and prove their worth, to put their critical-thinking minds to use, and to trim the business fat.

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VALUE

INVIEW

Taking a chance on change

by Heather Kidd

VALUE

INVIEW

It took courage to deviate from the pathway Kristen Corpion thought would define her success. But by being true to herself, she has emerged a stronger and happier person and created a legal business that reflects her enduring passion for small business.

Growing up the daughter of a working single parent shaped Kristen Corpion’s view of the world. Born and raised in Florida, she spent her early formative years watching her mother juggle running her own small business while also raising a family. It cemented her determination to get an education that would provide opportunities to earn a six-figure salary. If she could achieve that, she would have made it. Or that was her thinking when she got into Berkeley Law School, the first member of her family to go to college.

Lawyers who hail from lower middle-class backgrounds in America are a rare breed (according to the Law Society in 2021, only a third are from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds) and those who are prepared to step away from the security of a big salary scarcer still. But then nothing about Corpion’s career path is usual.

“Growing up, a six-figure job sounded really good to me,” she says. “And I got one of those jobs and then discovered it wasn’t for me. I hadn’t put enough thought into the fact I wouldn’t have a deep connection with Fortune 500 companies. And that was my fault, not the company’s.”

The realization that the dream job wasn’t making her happy led Corpion to some serious soul-searching; undergoing professional and personality tests was a revelation. “I realized a formal corporate hierarchy is not a good fit for my personality, I like a looser structure. I love things to be disorganized. Being involved in a start-up or building something from scratch is what I find meaningful.”

While getting to that place of awareness was hard, it proved to be the catalyst that led Corpion in a different direction – still in law but combining her legal prowess with her innate entrepreneurial flair, brick-by-brick Corpion built her own law firm, CORPlaw, to serve small businesses and people who inspire her.

“Given my background, I have a strong connection with small business owners, and they are who I most respect and want to serve.”

CORPlaw, the law firm she created three years ago, has its headquarters in Miami and works mainly with high-growth start-ups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. The staff of nine have 125-150 small businesses on their books and Corpion’s role is that of fractional General Counsel.

While it can be tough to get buy-in from business owners, Corpion says the onus is on the legal profession. “Business owners often don’t respect lawyers because they don’t know crap about business. To an extent that’s on you as a lawyer. You need to get yourself up to speed to know what it takes to run a business.”

“It seems obvious, but so many lawyers look at the journey of personal growth as something that’s not worth their time. I’d argue they’re 100 percent accountable for that choice.”

Business owners too, are often unaware of the value to be gained in engaging the services of a legal firm, seeing lawyers as a net negative that doesn’t make the company money immediately. “We’ve positioned ourselves to work around that and have what we call an outside General Counsel plan where our clients pay an upfront activation fee that gets them an account for a year. It’s not a retainer, we don’t do them because our research and experience has shown that our clients hate them. We don’t charge any additional monthly fee because we’ve found that to have diminishing returns in terms of the overall happiness of our clients.”

For Corpion, happy clients represent success on both personal and professional levels. “I’ve worked since I was fifteen, and what I’ve learned is that it’s not your employer’s job to know what makes you happy. If you don’t know why you aren’t happy in your work, it’s because you haven’t invested time or resources or gotten help. You need to ask yourself, ‘what do I enjoy, what makes me excited to get out of bed in the morning?’”

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VALUE

INVIEW

Kristen’s dos and don’ts How much lawyer is too much?

Bedside manner is the term staff at CORPlaw use when referring to how best to interact with clients.

“We have scripts, we do training on hypothetical situations,” says Corpion, adding that it’s important to pitch conversations with clients correctly. While lawyers are comfortable with a direct speaking style and getting right to the nub of a problem, it’s important to tread carefully in conversation with clients such as entrepreneurs because you’re dealing with their dreams.

“They’re often figuring out their dreams as they’re building them, and they’re sharing them with you.

If you pop that bubble without a certain level of empathy and sensitivity, I’d argue that’s too much lawyer.”

Making a hybrid transition

If you’re working in private practice and are keen to transition into a more hybrid-type role or move to a hybrid company, Corpion says it’s a definite advantage to be already working for a big firm. “They have such powerful brands and platforms and the resources to help you invest in having certain opportunities. I suggest doing pro bono work with local organizations that specialize in working with small business creatives to start picking up that skillset in a way that’s not offensive to your current employer. It will also allow you to start appreciating what a budget-conscious, less sophisticated consumer of legal services thinks about so you can tailor your services and your expectations without necessarily making the jump across first.”

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How to position yourself The way you position yourself in terms of your brand and how your colleagues perceive you, will be affected by two crucial factors: the quality of your work and the trust you engender in both colleagues and clients. “You’re only as good as your last mistake, it’s something I’ve heard said many times in a Biglaw setting - which is a dangerous and unhealthy way to live your professional life,” says Corpion.

She stresses that it’s important to consider institutional dynamics and to be able to read the room, particularly if you’re working at a large firm.

“There has to be real intentionality to position yourself to get quality work, to be the trusted right hand. Go into any setting and be quiet, listen, get a feel for the dynamics that are happening around you. We call this culture – and institutions have culture. Once you understand it, whether you agree with it or not, you can navigate it more effectively.”

As Corpion says, that may mean you move towards what you like, or it could mean getting the heck out of there!

Don’t play the blame game Taking ownership of your feelings is important when it comes to making decisions about your career. Corpion says when she was unhappy working in a formal corporate hierarchy, she initially blamed everyone but herself. “Not taking accountability was my fault. I Googled I hate the law. My enemy was the law, it was screwing up, and my thinking was that no one’s happy as a lawyer. But that’s BS. Plenty of people are happy in the law, and they are people with a good sense and intentionality of who they want to serve.”

INVIEW

TRUST

Let’s talk pay equity

by Chris McGavin

It’s difficult to believe that in 2022 the discussion about equal pay and pay equity is ongoing, and that for many women working in the legal industry financial imbalance continues to be a thorny issue.

An important part of progress is accepting where you’ve come from. For legal, this involves acknowledging its male-dominated past in order to forge a more equitable and equal future.

While legal is moving to a better place thanks to the work of many courageous women and supportive men, vestiges of this bygone era remain. In particular, pay inequity.

For the uninitiated, pay equity differs from equal pay in that instead of men and women being paid the same amount for doing the same work, men and women should be paid the same for doing work of equal value.

For Lauren Zajac, Chief Legal Officer of Workhuman, pay equity is about more than just compensation - she says it’s about “equity, fairness and creating true inclusion” - all of which are desirable goals. So why aren’t we closer to them?

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has released data showing that for full-time employees in Legal Services the gender pay gap is 35.6 percent. Which means we can say with confidence that pay equity in Legal Services is similarly misbalanced.

Legal has been historically slow to adapt, but this isn’t the sole reason for these statistics. Zajac says corporate’s unwillingness to change is also a factor. “In the corporate world, there is great hesitation to do the fundamental thing.”

The fundamental thing in this case is auditing and better transparency around pay, which would help greatly to close this gap. Both are becoming requirements in many other industries and something top prospects are looking to as an indication of good culture.

“If you don’t, you’re going to miss the boat,” says Zajac. “And if you do, you’re going to attract better employees, create a better culture, and be able to have a better employee brand.

That’s better for the bottom line and for the people who work for you.”

Another factor which may help to alleviate pay inequity is visibility. “There is, especially for women leaders, an obligation for us to tell those stories. If you’re a man in corporate America, or in any situation, you hear that kind of story, and it blows you away.”

A story Zajac shared was the acute change she felt when returning to work after parental leave. Nothing was overtly said, but it didn’t need to be. She felt a fundamental shift in her relationship with both her workplace and employer.

“I saw that discrepancy myself. I did not think it was going to be as dramatic as it was.”

Pay equity is about more than just compensation - it’s about equity, fairness and creating true inclusion.

Making pay inequity more visible through conversation, and most importantly pay auditing, will go a long way to help push the space. It will not only give women evidence to assist this discussion but also ensure that employers cannot avoid them with a dismissive “that doesn’t happen here” comment.

If women are courageous, if they speak up and share their stories, it is only fair that men listen and be supportive.

Without support from anyone nothing will change. Which is a situation Zajac has faced many times. “There have been multiple opportunities where I’ve already set the context and blown someone away by sharing an experience, and yet that person has missed opportunities to support, to amplify or to encourage. If that support isn’t there, we aren’t all rowing in the same direction.”

Once again, it is time for women to show courage to attain what should be theirs by right. To not only have the courage to share stories of less than desirable circumstances, but to also stand up and make a case for that promotion or wage increase, to confidently declare their value.

“You want to truly believe in what you are making the case for, and the only way you can do that is to truly believe what you have to offer,” says Zajac.

Her message is clear: Back yourselves, back each other, and help to forge workplaces that are better for everyone.

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Fabien Bonavia, Senior Director, Legal and Transaction Management at OakNorth Bank

BUSINESS

INVIEW

Contributing to business goals

by Chris McGavin & Connor Amor-Bendall

Once a lawyer steps in-house they become much more than a just lawyer, they also become a driver and facilitator of a business success. Fabien Bonavia, Senior Director, Legal and Transaction Management at OakNorth Bank, discusses contributing to business goals.

When Fabien Bonavia joined OakNorth Bank he received the following advice: “You need to stop thinking of yourself as just a lawyer and start thinking of yourself as an individual within an entrepreneurial business who is there to achieve very commercial goals.”

These words of wisdom would go on to shape not only his definition of success, but also how he sought to achieve it.

“It’s about formulating and framing your role as a lawyer within the wider company, so you’re highly valuable to the organization,” he says.

In framing that role, Bonavia recommends that lawyers not only wear the hat of legal advisor, but crucially that of a financial advisor as well: less about spreadsheets, and more about understanding that as well as being a lawyer they work within a profit-based organization and must bend their role to match those outcomes. “Lawyers need to be commercially minded, not just legally competent,” he says.

What constitutes business success? Bonavia says that while profitability is very important as creating an exceptional customer experience is our priority, times have changed since the ‘80s and ‘90s when things were only about profit.

“Businesses today need to deliver more than just shareholder value.” And he stresses it’s important to recognize that the definition of success is as subject to macro trends as anything else in the world.

In defining the best path to success, it is integral to ask yourself what your role is in the business. This question prompted an epiphany for Bonavia. “The reality is, teams are incentivized and motivated to largely achieve the same goal, in so far that it is maybe building a book of business or achieving success in that respect. Everyone is being pushed in that direction.

“You contribute to the business success by identifying how the objectives of an organization evolve through time. Most

successful organizations have objectives that evolve through time. It’s important to have some element of self-awareness and ask yourself, ‘Am I doing all I can to contribute to this and promote these objectives?’”

Identify ways you can be simultaneously a driver and facilitator of a business success. The Covid-19 pandemic provided Bonavia and his team with the perfect opportunity to put their methodology to work and think outside the box.

On a normal day for OakNorth, success is, among other things, being a credible lender - creating access to finance, especially for those who haven’t always had it - and fostering good customer experiences. And while every organization has differing values, OakNorth’s are centered around its quality of service, speed of execution, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) objectives.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, Bonavia’s team’s definition of success changed. If they were to simply apply the usual blunt instruments such as standard contracts to their clients’ Covid-ravaged businesses, it would, in his words “probably ruin the customer relationship and also not benefit us or our own balance sheets”.

“It’s about formulating and framing your role as a lawyer within the wider company, so you’re highly valuable to the organization.”

Success evolved to involve looking carefully at data and customer relationships, picking up the phone and talking to clients, and finding the best way to assist those businesses: from blunt tools to more bespoke offerings. “We took a more human, rather than just a technical textbook view,” he says.

“Don’t rely on documentation and data alone, actually speak to your clients.”

Bonavia’s definition of success is as varied as the work he undertakes at OakNorth Bank - sometimes unpredictable but that is what’s required to be a value-add function within a modern agile business.

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TECHNOLOGY

Data and privacy in a globalized world

by Chris McGavin & Connor Amor-Bendall

For Helen Doukas, General Counsel at LawVu, data is an uncut gem. With the right analysis and application, it can become the jewel of insight atop an organization’s crown. Without, it will remain full of latent potential but only useful as a paperweight.

Data is omnipresent in our lives, defining, informing, and measuring nearly every action we take. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2025, the world will produce an incredible 175 zettabytes of data. To put that in context, one zettabyte is equivalent to one trillion gigabytes, with each gigabyte comprising of one thousand megabytes, roughly 33 songs or one TV show, depending on the quality.

There’s no escaping the impact of data on business and the law. Data is a prized asset that is spurring legislative change. And although Helen Doukas refers to the law as “a slow-moving beast”, rapid technological advancements coupled with globalization and tightening regulations, have figuratively lit a fire under the law’s derrière in recent years.

The fields of data privacy, regulation, cybersecurity, and risk are ever-expanding, giving both in-house counsel and private practice lawyers a whole new raft of work.

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There once was a time when data laws and regulations were relatively loose: the age of the digital curtain - a veil that hid industry data consumption practices from legislators and the general public - was a wild west where fortunes were made. The aptly named digital curtain enabled data to be seen as company property, even though it was created through individual behaviors. In fact, the use of personal data from electronic transaction trails and other sources built the foundation of some of today’s most lucrative businesses. Think Meta (once Facebook), Google, Amazon, and Spotify.

The digital veil was pulled farther and farther aside with each scandal and high-profile misuse of data, until the veil was lifted and the true value of data and its many uses were revealed. It forced the hand of regulators, producers and market forces globally and tightened the reins on data ownership. The gold rush slowed, and the unregulated wild west became a more regulated and safer market.

Doukas believes data privacy is at the forefront of the minds of most legal leaders, due mainly to the complexity, risk, and opportunity it presents.

While this regulation was clearly necessary, the burgeoning web of regulatory frameworks presents new challenges for in-house lawyers. “Technology has forced

TECHNOLOGY

the law to refresh and solve new problems, not only because more data has been collected than ever before in history, but the systems needed to protect it have become increasingly complex,” says Doukas.

An organization’s entire business model can be built around data, as such their entire reputation is built around data.

The consequence is that it is more important than ever for businesses to invest in cybersecurity and adhere to data privacy frameworks. The European Union implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018, its aim to give individuals control over their data and simplify the regulatory environment for international business. Compliance standards such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 also provide frameworks to regulate the collection and use of customer data.

Much of the value of data is tied to how businesses interact with it - from gathering, to storage, to management and analysis - all crucial to turning it from zeroes and ones to gems.

Doukas says if businesses choose not to follow these standards, they are doing themselves a disservice. “You are just reducing yourself to an increasingly small pool of customers with lower security requirements.”

Customer consent is vital to this process, and imperative if you want it to be done so legally, which means fostering and maintaining customer relationships is more important than ever before for businesses.

These new regulations not only add layers of protection, but also highlight risks to businesses. As Doukas points out, “an organization’s entire business model can be built around data, as such their entire reputation is built around data.” A company that suffers a significant breach whether culpable or not, is presumed to have been reckless with the data of those affected, which can result in reputational damage which may have lasting detrimental impacts on that company. “Some businesses may never fully recover from a data breach in today’s cancel culture,” says Doukas.

Data must be collected with consent and explanations given to customers about what is being collected and how it is used. Harvard Business Review states: “The more robust and thorough your consent practices are, the more valuable your customer database becomes.”

Cybersecurity is fast becoming one of the most critical aspects of an in-house counsel’s role, one which extends further than any of their other responsibilities, requiring they protect not only their company’s data, but also the data of their customers as well. And with dire consequences for a breach or leak.

Looking to the future of data and privacy laws, Doukas is fascinated by the nexus of national regulations and international business. “One of the challenges with having a nationalistic approach to data is that it complicates and slows down global deal making,” she says.

The increase in regulatory hurdles will no doubt be a challenge, but they are a fair price to pay for the potential value of data. And counsel will meet them head on to ensure both their company and its customers are protected.

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Lauren Zajac, Chief Legal Officer, Data Protection Officer, and Corporate Secretary at Workhuman

The Airways team (L-R) Christina Hopovihi, Claire Adams, Helen Doukas, Katie Bhreatnach, Rachel Choy, Kate Johnston, Sarah Alderson

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CAREER DEVELOPMENT

How to get the top job

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Business, law and leadership enthralled Lauren Zajac even as a child and she has managed to successfully combine all three in her stellar career. She discusses how to get and keep the top job.

Lauren Zajac knew earlier than most that she wanted to be a lawyer. The story goes that she was an argumentative little kid who grew up hearing, “you’ll make a great lawyer.”

She was also interested in the world of technology and says, “tech is in my blood.” Her father was a successful tech CEO which meant she grew up in a home with the latest computers, software, and gadgets.

Combining law and tech was a natural path for Zajac and, unusually, going in-house was her goal from an early age.

She remembers going to her father’s work and meeting the General Counsel. “I was exposed to this role that fused business and law, and realized that is what I wanted to do,” she says.

Fast forward to today, and Zajac is the Chief Legal Officer, Data Protection Officer and Corporate Secretary at Workhuman, a Social Recognition and Continuous Performance Management technology platform. She has been in the legal industry for 25 years and held GC positions at companies such as MKS Instruments, Metatomix, and Riverdeep. She has a great reputation in tech and is a council member at Forbes Technology Council.

“I won’t squander this opportunity.” Those were Zajac’s words to her first boss. This ethos has been her North Star throughout her career and allowed her to reach the coveted positions of GC and CLO. She believes what sets lawyers destined for leadership apart is their “willingness to roll their sleeves up and do what needs to be done to move the business forward”.

Early on in her work life, Zajac realized the importance of gaining a breadth of business experience to develop the skillset of a legal leader, and she made strategic career moves that exposed her to different companies and business models. “I think the best GCs are the ones

who have seen multiple leadership teams and stages of growth,” she says. “You don’t necessarily need to be moving between industries because we all have specializations and niches. Still, the more ways of working you can experience, the better prepared you are to handle whatever comes along.”

Getting the top job is, in many ways, only the beginning.

Zajac found that being a GC required a different skillset to successfully lead a team and act as an advisor to the business. She says soft skills are crucial, as is continually honing your individual work and leadership habits.

“I often liken the role of GC or CLO to that of an in-house therapist,” she says, adding that a legal leader is uniquely positioned to be the great protector of a company as they are privy to information many executives don’t see and handle problems most employees will never hear about.

“That lends itself to being someone people confide in.”

What sets lawyers destined for leadership apart is their willingness to roll their sleeves up and do what needs to be done to move the business forward.

She has found that being a good listener goes hand-inhand with being openly vulnerable, as this is the foundation of building trust, and she’s emphatic that lawyers aren’t robots and shouldn’t be treated or act as such. “If you want people to tell you what keeps them up at night, what they worry may become an issue six months from now, you have to build trust.”

She is also adamant that deconstructing the lawyer stereotype helps build your credibility within the company.

Being the kind of lawyer that causes people to go quiet or censor themselves when you enter the room is a recipe for disaster - yet this is a typical reaction legal leaders receive in a company. Working actively to build trust, be open, and be collaborative are high on Zajac’s to-do list.

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Vulnerability was an issue that became more important than ever to Zajac during the Covid-19 lockdowns. To make sure her team felt supported, she was candid about her struggles. “I told them about my mistakes. For instance, when my Zoom crashed in a meeting with the Chairman of the Board,” she laughs. Having a leader be open allowed her team and the business to feel safe to admit if they too were struggling.

“I’m seeing more of an acceptance in business that we are all humans, that we all have struggles and foibles. Being honest about this makes more connected teams,” she says.

Something that surprised Zajac about being a GC, is the potential the role provides for supporting other executives, specifically the CEO. Zajac points out that being a GC is a lonely role: you are privy to a large amount of confidential information. “The only other person in the business who has that level of cadence is the CEO,” she says. Zajac has developed a solid relationship of mutual and professional support with her CEO. Once you get the top job, it is by no means yours for good.

Zajac cautions that it can be even harder to demonstrate your value if you’re a GC running a cost center function that can’t demonstrate the bottom line and revenue growth.

“Every executive position should always be thinking about how they can continue to demonstrate their value to the business,” she says.

“If you want people to tell you what keeps them up at night, what they worry may become an issue six months from now, you have to build trust.”

Her solution is to present your value as other business units do. Harness data to show insights, set KPIs… and hit them. Show you’ve contributed to the business. “It’s a sign of respect for other executives, and the right thing to do if you want your executive leadership team and the board to feel like you’re rowing in the same direction as them,” she says. Excellent team playing advice.

Let’s be straight. Having the top job isn’t always rosy. Zajac says there are many hard days and difficult conversations had, so loving what you do is crucial. GCs deal with immense pressure and must develop an appetite for owning risk. Unlike private practice partners, GCs will see how their decisions impact the business, so they need to

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Making mistakes is a fact of life and Zajac says it’s important to always try to reframe them as a learning opportunity. confidently juggle risk with potential business reward.

The workload is, as you would expect, enormous, and apart from sole legal counsel, GCs usually manage a team of lawyers on top of their list of responsibilities.

GCs like Zajac often wear the Corporate Secretary hat too, which means spending a lot of time with the board.

She says this can cause tense relationships, as other executives become jealous of the amount of board exposure GCs get. “In a start-up environment, time with the board is like gold,” she says. Her advice? It is important GCs have a good relationship with the executive leadership team otherwise mitigating tension can become a tedious necessity.

Imposter syndrome also rears its head on occasion. To help stave off the inner critic, believe in yourself and take pride in your achievements. Making mistakes is a fact of life and Zajac says it’s important to always try to reframe them as a learning opportunity.

And although she loves her job, Zajac admits, “I think about succession planning every day.” She believes a responsible leader acknowledges that there will be a time when their reign will end, and that equipping someone to take over is a critical part of the job. “I have various people who can handle multiple aspects of what I do and understand certain pieces of the holistic legal function.”

She also says that teaching people benefits both the leader and the junior lawyer; the gift of mentorship helps her reflect on her own experience and better understand her strengths.

When it comes to Zajac’s future, anything is possible.

After more than 14 years with Workhuman, she still loves the product and the business. While she admits to being intrigued by the idea of calling the shots and being a CEO, there are still particular skills to hone should she ever seriously consider that avenue.

Whatever the future holds, she is happy with the choices she has made. “Even after 25 years as in-house counsel, I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, and I feel very fortunate.”

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A pathway to success Everyone’s path to success is different, and in the legal industry a lot can be learned from the journeys of its leaders. In Lauren Zajac’s case, she got the top job through hard work, professional and leadership training, and community involvement.

Rolling up your sleeves

After university summer breaks spent working as an associate for law firms, she moved to a junior counsel role for XML markup company eXcelon Corporation, where she worked as the sole lawyer under the General Counsel. This gave her a tremendous opportunity to grow professionally, her work involved negotiating a software license agreement and indemnification matters.

Knowing she wanted to be a tech GC, Zajac made a point of being involved in and trusted by tech peer-to-peer community groups.

Next was a senior counsel role at Allaire. The company was acquired during Zajac’s stint. She was responsible for guiding it through the merger agreement, strategic investments, and the international formulation of entity structure and the formation of foreign subsidiaries.

Zajac attributes her success to a willingness to work hard.

As a junior in-house counsel, she adopted the mindset of seeing every task every day as an opportunity, no matter how menial.

Building your network and community

Developing complementary non-legal skills Climbing the legal ladder, Zajac developed her human resources skillset. This gave her an edge, as along with being a corporate counsel, she could bring HR savvy to a potential GC role. She honed those skills when she joined Riverdeep in 2000, the experience proving invaluable when she moved into her role as GC and Vice President of HR at Metamotix.

Career chronology Undergrad

Postgrad

1997

1999

2001

Boston College

Hofstra Univeristy

Corporate Counsel (eXcelon Corporation)

Senior Counsel (Allaire)

Vice President, GC (Riverdeep)

2016

2008

2006

2003

Started mentoring & began public speaking

Chief Legal Officer, Data Protection Officer and Corporate Secretary (Workhuman)

Interim GC (MKS Instruments)

Vice President HR and GC (Metatomix)

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

Executive coaching

Public speaking training

Chair of board for Leadermom

Joined Forbes Technology Council and TechGC

Board Director at The Soul Project 35

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One great leap to General Counsel

by Chris McGavin

While Danh Nguyen was thrilled to accept the position of GC at Paysend Group Ltd, he was also daunted by the challenges. He reflects on his first foray into the role of General Counsel and provides insights on how to prepare to take the leap.

Your first experience of any job is bound to be daunting, a new role to learn and teams to familiarize yourself with while also optimizing your processes and workflows. Imagine on top of those tasks also trying to build the legal function and helping your company navigate through murky regulations, tricky mergers, and so on.

The above are all circumstances a new GC finds themselves in on day one. Daunting? Yes. Challenging? Of course.

Impossible? Absolutely not.

When Danh Nguyen was approached to be the first Group GC of Paysend Group Ltd, he was excited by the opportunity.

Behind the scenes he’d been building 20-plus years of experience across multiple industries, and it gave him the confidence to take on the role.

“Taking all those different experiences and learning from different sectors, industries and organizations, I knew I had the ability, agility and resilience, and was ready to package all those qualities together and try and make an impact here,” he says, which serves as a reminder that there is a tremendous amount of confidence to be gained from recognizing the diverse experience you bring to a role.

However, this step is a significant one, something even a highly capable lawyer could find daunting. “This job is new to me, and it’s really challenging on multiple levels,” admits Nguyen. “I’ve never taken on a global General Counsel role before, and while it’s incredibly rewarding it’s also scary because of the scope; it’s the breadth of things that makes you stop and think, ‘can I possibly do this?’”

That fear could well be a key indicator of your readiness for the role, especially if you’re daring enough to acknowledge and internalize it, and stride forward regardless of any residual unease you may feel. To appreciate the enormity of the challenge and what is expected of you.

“There’s two ways of looking at it, either you let it overwhelm you or you acknowledge that it’s just a part of the journey. My advice? Don’t let it overwhelm you, don’t let it overtake you.”

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Key to surviving any initial rough waters is having a strategic plan. Nguyen’s plan comprised of three parts, the first being to ensure his team was well positioned. “Make sure the team has the right capabilities to be set up for success. They need to understand what the business priorities are and their role in the team and within the wider organization.”

Secondly, he established support systems that would enable the team to work successfully, including onboarding technology and various tools. “It meant they could focus on higher value, interesting and challenging work.” An additional benefit was the team was more stimulated and engaged, which proved to be a worthy retention tool.

“This job is really challenging, and while it’s enormously rewarding it’s also scary because of the scope; it’s the breadth of things.”

Nguyen also sought to establish an operating model that would provide the blueprint for his team to work more productively. “We needed a proper strategy that is clearly defined so we’re not reacting to stuff constantly, and we are proactively identifying issues and making sure we address those issues in collaboration.”

Nguyen’s final piece of advice applies to everyone, particularly during the current trying times. Lead empathetically. “Read the signs,” he says. “On Zoom you can see people’s faces; you can see clearly when someone’s not happy or less engaged. That’s the time to reach out and say, ‘What’s going on? Is there anything I can do?’”

Your first few months should set the tone for your next twelve, giving yourself the best opportunity to grow from the GC you are into the GC you will become.

Download Danh’s first twelve months in the job template using the QR code here

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Unlearn to unlock your potential

by Connor Amor-Bendall

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Unlearning lawyer tendencies that don’t serve a business well, let alone yourself, and choosing to see legal acumen as only one of his numerous skills, helped Ryan Zahrai to prosper as a business advisor. “Forget the law” is the best piece of advice the Head of Legal at Eucalyptus ever received.

Unlearning is on the rise. As people transform themselves by learning new skills, processes, and technologies, it’s apparent that unlearning is also necessary.

Harvard Business Review defines unlearning as “the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm”. They note that unlearning as a tool of transformation is often overlooked, yet it can unlock an organization’s capacity for actual progress. Choosing to unlearn obsolete mental models allows individuals and companies to flourish.

“The process of unlearning is both painful but liberating because it’s getting back to your core of what your values were before you became an assumed lawyer, so to speak,” says Ryan Zahrai, who is a strong advocate for unlearning - especially as a lawyer. He believes a legal education changes people, and not always for the better.

Lawyers are taught to be risk-averse and to always see the potential for the worst-case scenario. In business, this mentality is not necessarily helpful: in-house counsel should be trying to move the business forward, not blocking things due to inherent but remote risk. To be a great business advisor, in-house counsel need to evolve with the times, and then some.

“Unlearning is a holistic posture that allows us to relearn,” says Zahrai. And top of his list of what in-house counsel should unlearn is ego. “I think lawyers are put through an education machine that spits out a personality which assumes you are the smartest person in the room.”

This superiority complex doesn’t serve either the business or counsel well. Rather, it creates an aura of unapproachability. If counsel want to be approached early with issues and brought into the folds of the business, ditching the ego is crucial.

“Moving in-house was a humbling experience because you’re surrounded by real change makers,” says Zahrai.

Rather than being in a law firm with an indoctrinated superiority complex, Australian healthtech Eucalyptus opened his eyes to people redefining health care.

MINDSET

Embracing his role as a creative problem solver aligned with strategic business goals, allows him to add tangible value. “For me, a humble attitude of learning came with moving in-house as you’re not surrounded by the redundancy of other lawyers creating drama and spinning wheels. My view is that lawyers need to be personable, to understand commercial and business drivers against risk, and the value of relationships.”

“Unlearning is a holistic posture that allows us to relearn ways of doing things that benefit ourselves and the company we are advising.”

Zahrai’s unlearning journey hasn’t always been easy. He’s struggled to shake certain traits and says that unlearning is a constant work in progress, particularly when it comes to his internal combativeness and competition. His manager identified him as having a tendency to behave in a “protectionist” manner, i.e. someone who jumps in to protect the legal department and is concerned about how the business views them. In a scale-up like Eucalyptus, this behavior doesn’t fly.

“The value in-house legal provides is making calls with less information but more conviction. This is especially true within a scale-up context because we don’t have time to be perfectly right all the time,” says Zahrai.

It comes back to “forget the law”; it’s important to note that forgetting the law doesn’t mean disregarding it or doing something illegal. Zahrai explains it as “to stop thinking like a four-walled lawyer and start thinking like a commercial operator who understands the law and how to navigate it in a business context”.

Unlearning how lawyers perceive risk is also high on Zahrai’s list. “There is a huge propensity for lawyers to think that every tiny error or omission in a contract will lead to litigation or become a textbook case whereas the reality is only a very small proportion do.”

Things are slightly different for private practice lawyers but developing a risk-reward appetite is paramount in the case of in-house. Counsel should constantly come back to business drivers and measure the risk of a potential issue against the potential to achieve business value.

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COMMUNICATION

Is getting political a risk worth taking?

by Connor Amor-Bendall

There’s increasing cross-pollination between business and politics due to CEO activism and consumer demand for corporate social responsibility. As a GC, planning for and mitigating the risks of getting political is no easy job. Adam Wardel, CLO of nClouds, shares how he navigates this potential minefield.

To be human is to be innately political. We live in societies ruled by governments and economies dictated by global events. And while it’s all very well to say, “don’t mix business and politics”, sometimes the crossover of the two can’t be stopped: executives are choosing to get political.

Times are changing and there is growing consumer demand for corporations to act ethically. You may have heard the term ‘CEO activism’. It’s a recent addition to business vernacular and refers to increasing instances of CEOs aligning with political causes or taking action.

Ed Stack, CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods, is an example of this. He took a political stance on gun violence, deciding to remove assault-style weapons from stores and raising the minimum age to purchase guns to 21. Nike CEO Mark Parker also joined the ranks of CEO activists by choosing to feature ads with Colin Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback who is also a racial justice activist.

Corporate social responsibility is becoming a tenet of business, and a changing media landscape means decisions businesses make are on display, as too are the things they choose to stay silent on. As Harvard Business Review states: “With a 24-hour news cycle and social media fanning polarization, it’s more problematic for organizations and their CEOs to remain neutral.”

Chances are, as a GC you may find yourself in a position where your CEO decides to take a political stance and it will be your job to determine the best way to do so. The most important piece of advice Adam Wardel, Chief Legal Officer at nClouds, has is to be supportive. In his opinion, the worst thing you can say as GC is “we should never talk about politics”.

He points out that a GC should accept “we are going to be involved - we are going to say something - but let’s make sure we do it the right way”. But what is the right way?

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Wardel believes it comes down to determining the potential consequences of decisions. When a company takes a political stance there will be knock-on effects for investors, employees, the market, and in some cases, wider society.

The GC needs to estimate potential effects and how they will implicate these groups of people.

In his opinion, employees should come first. “A company is as beholden to its employees as it is to its investors,” he says. They are the human capital of your company, and their wellbeing should be paramount. Ask if you will be putting them at risk. Will you be improving their livelihoods? Are you improving their working conditions or personal lives? Making a political statement as a business needs to take employees into consideration.

Next, come investors. A GC needs to be extremely clear on the potential financial implications of a political statement and discuss these with their CEO. Not all companies have investors, but those who do find their participation and support essential, so you should always consider how they may react.

Clients will also be implicated by a political statement. Will you lose some who don’t align with your political belief, or perhaps gain those who approve of your stance? Wardel advises a GC to investigate this and be ready for the consequences that may follow before making a statement.

When a company takes a political stance there will be knock-on effects for investors, employees, the market, and in some cases, wider society.

In some cases, a GC will realize that the consequences of making a political statement are overly high risk, potentially negatively impacting their people, drastically impacting business profit or scaring off too many investors. A good GC will have an appetite for risk while knowing what is going too far. As a business, you need to decide where that line is, together.

“Know exactly where you are going to stand and the consequences of such,” is Wardel’s advice.

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VALUE

The value of mentoring

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Being a mentor is a two-way street. Not only does it provide invaluable support to someone navigating their career, it also allows the mentors to learn as well.

“Mentorship lets you give back to your community, keeps you in tune with the current market and present issues, and helps you build a meaningful professional and personal relationship,” says Megan Lutes, General Counsel of Glowforge.

Lutes’ mentors helped shape her personally and professionally. “Their sponsorship helped me get interviews, make career decisions, it gave me confidence to develop my own style of practicing law. It set a gold standard for me in terms of leadership, work ethic, integrity, mentorship, and management,” she says.

“I doubt any of us got to where we are today without someone mentoring us. Giving back is the right thing to do.”

Mentorship fosters the next generation of counsel, and Lutes advocates for using one’s position of influence to “bring up fantastic in-house attorneys, increasingly raising the bar and supporting others to be successful”.

Making a conscious effort to support and mentor under-represented groups is important. Lutes says more diversity is needed within the law, especially at executive level. Underrepresented groups and women face extra hurdles in their careers making mentorship even more valuable to them.

When it comes to finding the right mentor, Lutes advises “look for someone with whom you connect and put in the time and energy to foster and maintain that relationship”.

Go for it! There’s nothing wrong with asking someone to be your mentor. Lutes recently published The Art of Networking focused on how to find mentors and build a robust network. Scan the QR code to purchase the book.

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Being connected is the only option

by Connor Amor-Bendall

Having a connected legal function is more necessity than nicety. During turbulent times - think global pandemic or potential recession - the response of some in-house legal teams has been to hunker down and conserve resources. Others are embracing the opportunity provided and adopting a connected way of working.

Shaun Plant, LawVu’s Chief Legal Evangelist, is the pioneer behind LawVu’s new framework for in-house legal teams, called the ‘Connected Legal Function’. He believes that if an in-house team invests time and resources into becoming more connected, the legal team and the wider business will both benefit greatly.

What is a Connected Legal Function? Put simply, it is delivering in-house legal services in a way that is designed to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the team and

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its impact on the business while simultaneously being able to tangibly demonstrate its value.

The approach comprises four key pillars: productivity, engagement, proactive and impactful. Focusing on these pillars allows the team to become more connected to their work and team, the wider business, and business outcomes as a positive consequence. “Focusing on connected legal allows legal teams to grow, and in times like the recession you don’t want to think how can I survive, but how can I thrive?” says Plant.

There’s a lot of talk about an impending global recession.

A Federal Reserve gauge indicates the US economy could be headed for a second consecutive quarter of negative growth, ticking the box for a recession. The Financial Times notes stock markets are taking a turn for the worse, with a sell-off in inflation-protected bonds, bonds, gold, industrial metals, and crypto. The World Bank expects global growth to slump from 5.7 percent in 2021 to 2.9 percent in 2022.

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“Focusing on connected legal allows legal teams to grow, and in times like the recession you don’t want to think how can I survive, but how can I thrive?”

While it’s not all doom and gloom until it actually happens, Plant advises legal leaders and their teams to start preparing for what could be tough times ahead for business. “Preparation does not mean squirreling all your nuts away to survive winter,” he says. “Rather, it’s an opportunity to re-think and optimize your team. It’s a burning platform that teams can use to drive the change they want but haven’t been able to prioritize.”

Plant references the 2008 Global Financial Crisis when legal teams found themselves inundated with work as the cost of external counsel became unjustifiable. “If we face another recession, in-house counsel should be looking to the past and realize they will soon have much more work to do as things are brought back in-house. Not only will the volume of work increase, but the type of work will be different and more complex. Increasing headcount won’t be an option.”

Preparing for an influx of work means getting the right tools and processes in place. Investing in tech might seem like the last thing a legal team would do in a recession, but it will best set them up to weather the additional work and collect data to provide insights on the legal department’s value.

Covid-19 also proved this to Plant: clients found themselves either grateful they had invested in legal tech before dealing with the challenges of the pandemic or kicking themselves for not getting on board sooner.

“Use the time now to prepare for the recession should it happen,” says Plant.

Unfortunately, some businesses view the legal function as a cost center. “You know what happens to cost centers in a recession? They thin us out,” warns Plant. This is why it is crucial for a legal team to demonstrate the value that they add and that they are a critical component of the business’ success. “Continuing to churn through work won’t cut it. Legal teams need to be smart about what they spend their time on. The goal must be to maximize productivity and efficiency, ensuring the right processes, tools and behaviors are in place to produce good quality work with the least possible resources.”

VALUE

The Connected Legal Function framework was created after interviewing in-house legal professionals worldwide, finding that the profession needed a way to deal with the increased complexity and volume of work they were facing and then connect back with the business.

The framework starts by automating low-level tasks, allowing legal teams to be more productive and efficient.

This gives counsel back time to focus on the strategic work that is valuable to business objectives. Plant notes the type of work that lands on the desks of legal teams is likely to change during a recession. “Right now, there are a lot of mergers and acquisitions and growth in business. We know from the GFC that that type of work will reduce, and litigation will skyrocket.”

However, a difference to the previous GFC is that we are in a different digital space, the increase of data in daily business interactions has been astronomical, which means litigation cases will involve massive volumes of information that will need to be trawled through. “If you’re using different and unconnected technology systems, the cost and effort to work through that volume of data will be huge.

You will need something more sophisticated than Ctrl+F.”

Plant advises legal leaders and their teams to start preparing for what could be tough times ahead for business.

“Having a connected technology stack which provides a single source of truth is a critical component of an effective legal function through those processes.”

Prioritizing being connected allows legal teams to have the most impact or, as the Executive Leadership Team might see it, to deliver value to the business.

Download The Connected Legal Playbook here

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Asim Khan, Senior Legal Counsel and Legal Operations lead

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CAREER DEVELOPMENT

The five Cs of in-house counsel

by Connor Amor-Bendall

The role of in-house counsel is demanding and multifaceted. Given the huge variation of work environments - some working alone, others as part of a team - do those who flourish in this job share any characteristics?

And if so, what are they?

Asim Khan is the Senior Legal Counsel and Legal Operations lead for Iress. He’s been in the legal game for a decade now. In that time Khan has noticed five key traits that he thinks enables in-house counsel to reach their full potential - and it’s a happy coincidence that they all start with the letter C. The five Cs of in-house counsel: Consciousness. Khan says that for an in-house counsel to be truly impactful within their business, they need to have “a keen sense of individual and collective insight of the objectives of each department”. Not to mention the objectives of individual stakeholders, such as the executive team, and their own legal function. Acquiring this insight comes with consciousness; in-house counsel needs to make an effort to be in tune with the business around them.

Khan is a fan of the “walk the halls concept”, that is, personal interaction with different individuals and teams allows you to understand department objectives and what is happening on the ground and may become an issue.

“This can be achieved by occasional attendance of team meetings, drop-in sessions, and even a random message asking to discuss a particular topic. No one ever said no to an opportunity to tell you what they do.”

You should be just as conscious of external factors that impact the work of an in-house team. This involves having a sound understanding of the market, your competitors, and even any socio-political factors that could affect your business. When it comes to the product your business creates or the services they offer, in-house counsel should have a sound understanding of how those impact the world, not to mention being conscious of your regulatory

responsibility as a lawyer. This is becoming a topic of increasing importance for the modern day counsel and relates to the echoes of legal being the “conscience” of a business.

Collaboration. Collaboration is underpinned by trust, which comes with communicating effectively, honoring your commitments, being helpful, and importantly, showing people that you care. Khan believes in working holistically, which means using your emotional intelligence. “You’ve got to have that skill of relating to different people at different levels and working together towards a goal,” he says.

He actively seeks out different perspectives and aims to work with a variety of people and says being an active listener is a skill lawyers can really benefit from. “Lawyers can fall into the trap of assessing a situation and making our minds up without fully listening. But collaboration is as much about listening as it is about speaking” Khan believes a surefire way to improve your listening skills is to become a mentor.

Collaboration is underpinned by trust, which comes with communicating effectively, honoring your commitments, being helpful and, importantly, showing people that you care.

Supplier engagement is an example of how collaboration can elevate the business. Speaking about his own experience, Khan mentions an example concerning a disjointed approach to supplier onboarding. “Each function had their own process, and there was significant duplication which was a very painful experience for each party involved.” The legal team led a project to combine the efforts of business functions and workstreams, which allowed everyone to share knowledge and expertise, 45

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ask questions, and debate best practices. “True collaboration like this brings a team of knowledgeable professionals to address an issue which could not be tackled individually.”

Critical thinking. This is the skill and practice that allows you to see the bigger picture, recognize risks and opportunities, and use them to your business advantage.

Khan links this to the ‘legal eagles’ theory - that as inhouse counsel you are flying high, keeping watch over the business, and when you spot a potential issue, you zoom in and apply critical thinking to solve the problem.

“Critical thinking is a unique art of conducting a SWOT analysis or Socratic questioning as it is better known, probing and analyzing deep questions before accepting ideas,” he says.

Commercial mindedness. Paramount for in-house counsel, in fact you should be ever-expanding your commercial toolkit to hone your commercial skills; sharpening your commercial toolkit. In-house counsel ultimately serve a profit-based business, so the link between corporate law and commercial awareness is intrinsic. “It makes sense that to be a great in-house counsel, you must have more than just legal acumen, you must have commercial savvy and an understanding of the business environment in which you operate,” says Khan.

“There is nothing better than spending time with your commercial/finance colleagues and picking their brains on how a business makes money, what’s a really good sale.”

By being your authentic self, not just a lawyer, you will be a better colleague. Although you practice law in a business setting, people want to deal with a person.

The commercial team can also help you to upskill your knowledge, and Khan recommends spending time with them, at meetings or informal scenarios. He says that during a commercial meeting he came across the notion of ‘confidence level’, explaining it as “being the potential for a deal to close and seeing how interaction with the legal team, along with others, impacted that percentage”.

There are tried and tested business theories, which provide a great up opportunity to upskill. These could be

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financial skills, operational skills i.e. agile methodology, or even people management skills. You just need to be prepared to ask.

Care. Care for your organization and its people, and care for the impact they make. Understanding how they fit into the bigger picture of the business goals. “Emotional Intelligence is at the heart of this and is what, as a lawyer, you care about to elevate your work and your role in the business,” says Khan. By being your authentic self, not just a lawyer, you will be a better colleague. Although you practice law in a business setting, people want to deal with a person. “The best compliment - well, I am taking it as a compliment - I’ve ever received was ‘you’re quite normal for a lawyer’,” laughs Khan.

There you have it, five essential tools for any excellent in-house counsel’s toolkit.

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