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

Forging new pathways

The power of collective leadership

From the creators of LawVu

InView team

Sarah Barker LEAD EDITOR & SENIOR WRITER

Heather Kidd SUB EDITOR & WRITER Lisa Waldren DESIGNER

thanks to our guest writers, contributors and interviewees:

Sanam Ahmadzadeh Salmani, Seshani Bala, Marija Barbarich, Rosanna Biggs, Sarah Binder, Carlos Chambers, Stephanie Corey, Emma Coxhead, Marija Dukadinovska, Elisabeth Flett, Zaid Gardner, Michael Guilday, Mark Guthrie, Emily Jackson, Sam Kidd, Emily McCormick, Ali Meredith, Philippa Miskelly, Karen Nimmo, Shaun Plant, Jamie Pounch, Charmaine Shyu, Kate Tyers, Lauren Zajac

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

Limited for any

or information contained in InView.

A note from our Chief Community Evangelist

Dear InViewers,

As I’m writing this, our conference team is in countdown mode finalizing the finer details for InView Connect 2024 which kicks off in London on June 11. The InView conferences are always a highlight of my year – a wonderful opportunity to meet with our community, enjoy the engaging content and have a lot of fun. Having been born in the UK, the London event is also an opportunity for me to catch up with family which always brings with it the full spectrum of memories and emotions. If you are not able to join us in London, we hope to see you at InView Connect Sydney in September.

We’ve also been delivering on our promise to you to provide content in different formats with our Legal Leaders podcast (we’re currently at episode 11). How fortunate we are to have so many members in our community who want to inspire others by sharing their experiences and ideas.

As the landscape of the legal profession continues to change, the role of in-house counsel has never been more dynamic, and in this issue of the InView magazine we delve into the themes of technology, wellbeing and career development, our contributors highlighting several pivotal trends and insights that are reshaping the future of in-house legal practice.

Leadership is a constant theme, and with diversity in our roles it’s a discipline that continues to evolve. No longer is a single leader expected to be all things to all people. We are hearing that today’s in-house legal teams are learning to thrive by leveraging the unique strengths and specialties of each member. I firmly believe that by following the examples set by the people who inspire us, we can build stronger, more resilient legal teams.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is continuing to revolutionize the profession. Understanding and mitigating the risks associated with AI is just as important as embracing its opportunities. As in-house counsel, we must remain vigilant, ensuring that we use AI in ways that are efficient and ethically sound.

One of the things that I find most exciting about our profession is that today’s in-house lawyers are not confined to traditional legal roles. We are strategic business leaders, innovators, and advocates for governance on emerging issues like AI and ESG. The capacity to wear many hats is becoming an indispensable part of our professional toolkit and is helping to shape the future of our roles and our organizations.

However, I know from personal experience that managing multiple hats can be very demanding, and maintaining healthy work-life boundaries and managing stress are essential components of a thriving legal function. Our contributors underscore the importance of these elements, advocating for a more sustainable and humane approach to legal practice.

Looking ahead, the insights from our diverse contributors remind us that leadership and career development in the legal field is about more than just climbing the corporate ladder. It’s about fostering a culture of collaboration, leveraging technology wisely, embracing diverse roles, and prioritizing our wellbeing. By doing so, we not only enhance our own careers but also contribute to the broader success and sustainability of our organizations.

I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I have.

Sincerely,

Shaun Plant shaun.plant@lawvu.com

Sam Kidd, CEO at LawVu

Creating a community: Thought leadership and the origins of InView

by Heather Kidd

In marketing terms, thought leadership offers a different approach to the way that companies have traditionally promoted themselves. There’s no hard sell, no bells and whistles or in-your-face tactics, no blatant product displays. Thought leadership is more cerebral – it’s about engagement and connection, the promotion of ideas and ideals, building connections and offering insights. And innovation is key.

Although the term ‘thought leadership’ has a 21st century ring to it, its origins date back thirty years. The term was conceived by editor-in-chief of magazine Strategy and Business Joel Kurtzman, who said: “Thought leaders are those people who possess a distinctively original idea, a unique point of view, or an unprecedented insight into their industry.”

Perhaps it is the upheavals experienced in the business world by the recent global pandemic coupled with seismic societal shifts which have thrust thought leadership into the limelight. The old ways of doing things are just that – old – which has created the perfect environment for thought leadership to become an authentic marketing tool. These days, many businesses are eager to share the story of their journey and happy to encourage people – staff and clients – to join them on their company’s voyage of discovery.

Legal tech company LawVu personifies thought leadership. Co-founder and CEO Sam Kidd says, “Thought leadership is about education. Legal tech is one thing, but what we do at LawVu, our idea of being a holistic workspace, is a journey that we want to bring people on.

“When we started out, the concept of what we were doing was new. Initially we were regarded as the weird kids in the corner and our challenge was, and continues to be, about normalizing what we do. It is about demonstrating to those working in the legal space that LawVu is about changing the way they do things: taking them from relying on nothing, or a variety of point solutions, to having a platform which transforms their ability to report and run their corporate legal team. All those concepts seem new and strange – until they’re not.”

“Thought leadership is about education. Legal tech is one thing, but what we do at LawVu, our idea of being a holistic workspace, is a journey that we want to bring people on.”

Having a deep understanding of your business is integral to thought leadership, as is your willingness to share your insights with others. Think Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Digital marketing expert Neil Patel is another. Co-founder of the digital marketing agency that bears his name, Patel has established himself as an expert on social media, SEO, and content marketing through his thought leadership strategy.

In a blog post he wrote: “Thought leadership marketing is the process of sharing valuable knowledge about your field with others to establish a reputation as an industry expert. Whether you are the CEO of a large corporation or an individual running a small business, thought leader marketing tactics build credibility.”

Patel’s prodigious content creation output and mastery of social media – earlier this year he posted on LinkedIn that he has 3.8 million followers across numerous social media platforms – has helped his business to boom.

From a thought leadership perspective, it’s important to be clear about how best to showcase your industry expertise.

Sam says that from the outset LawVu’s aim was to establish itself as one of the main players in the ELM (Enterprise Legal Management) market – which it has done – and that its approach has always been long rather than short term. An integral part of the company’s marketing strategy has been its creation of InView, a community where in-house legal professionals can ‘learn, connect and share’.

“Being a thought leader is about being real and approachable and not hiding behind corporate jargon or a logo – it’s about genuinely wanting to let people in on the journey your company is undertaking.”

InView is a multi-function forum – existing online (articles, podcasts, and webinar), in print (magazine) and via conferences (currently held annually in Australia and the UK). Its content is wide ranging, with topics covering everything from technology and professional development to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), health and wellbeing.

The aim of InView is to speak to those involved in the inhouse legal and legal ops space, and there is no prerequisite that anyone – conference guest speakers and attendees or subjects of profile articles – be LawVu clients.

“Nothing in InView speaks to our product, instead it speaks about the way we think teams should run,” says Sam. “It’s about thoughts and behaviors, it’s about finding people who are aligned to our way of thinking.”

Because, in marketing terms, thought leadership is a subtle way of marketing ideas, Sam says it has worked well for LawVu as it continues with its quest to radically modernize the legal industry, a notoriously conservative environment. “We knew from the outset that we’d be controversial, so we had to arrive on the scene with an opinion and a decent story as to why adopting our product was a good idea. We had a strong conviction as to why our product was needed but initially

people struggled to grasp what we were about because what we were offering was so different, as was our approach.”

A Faster Capital article entitled Understanding Psychology of Building Trust with Thought Leadership Content content makes the point that ‘thought leadership content has become an integral part of building trust and establishing credibility in today’s digital age. By offering valuable insights, expertise, and innovative ideas, thought leaders can position themselves as industry authorities and gain the trust of their target audience’.

Trust is integral to being a successful thought leader, which means individuals and/or companies must be authentic, transparent, empathetic, innovative, engaging, and able to demonstrate their expertise.

Sam says authenticity is crucial, especially in a world which places great importance on social media – and where the demand for more visibility, more transparency (of companies as well as individuals) is insatiable. “It is about being real and I do wonder if there’s more emphasis being placed on that since Covid when people were Zooming from their bedrooms and their kitchens; it made companies seem more authentic.

“Prior to Covid, people generally dealt with massive organizations from a slightly removed perspective and the pandemic changed that – companies weren’t about faceless people anymore, suddenly they were real people who had families – and we got to see their messy kitchens, a glimpse of their day-to-day lives, when they jumped on calls. It brought home the fact that business is about people dealing with people.

“Being a thought leader is about being real and approachable and not hiding behind corporate jargon or a logo – it’s about genuinely wanting to let people in on the journey your company is undertaking. People want to feel noticed, want to feel that they belong and that they are aligned with the people they are doing business with.”

The authors of the paper New Leadership Dynamics in the Information Age: Lateral Leadership and Thought Leadership conclude that “thought leadership focuses on meeting the challenges of a globalized world through new thinking, innovations, new ideas, and transformational solutions to meet customer expectations, reflect social change requirements in business life, and differentiate companies regarding marketing share”.

Thought leadership is not only about making a statement, it is also about making one’s mark on the world.

Turning leadership into a team effort

by Heather Kidd

In a departure from the traditional top down approach, the in-house team at Employment Hero has embraced collective leadership, with each member an “expert in the room” in their chosen speciality.

The correlation between personal responsibility and career growth should not be underestimated. The byproducts are all positive and include people becoming more confident, having greater control over their future and the ability to realize their goals – all of which can increase their sense of empowerment and, of course, their levels of job satisfaction.

While the legal industry is renowned for its conservative approach to employer-employee relationships, especially the deeply embedded hierarchical structures within big law firms, a loosening of the centuries-old grip that has dominated legal’s ways of working is underway. The main beneficiaries of this quiet revolution are, for the moment, those lawyers who work in-house and their organizations. Traditionally less encumbered by a strict chain of command, some in-house teams are adopting a more transformational

type of leadership: inspiring employees and encouraging personal development being very much a part of transformational philosophy.

A great example of transformational leadership can be found at Employment Hero in Australia. Employment Hero is a SaaS business providing a cloud-based HR, payroll and employee benefits platform which employs more than 900 staff and operates across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia. Founded ten years ago, the company has gone from startup to scaleup, and what was originally an in-house legal department of one has grown to a team of five. Jamie Pounch, who studied law at Trinity College, Dublin – graduating in 2015 – became the second member of the team in 2022, joining Amber Minter who is Employment Hero’s Head of Legal.

Jamie says it was immediately apparent when he joined the team that he and Amber had different skill sets – his background was in corporate and transactions law, while hers spanned the broader areas that come from more in-house experience (like financial services, contracts, employment, data protection and IP). The duo came to quickly appreciate that their differences were also their

Jamie Pounch Legal Counsel (Head of Corporate + Commercial) at Employment Hero

strengths – and this made them think about what their structure might look like in the future, especially as more lawyers joined their ranks.

“We started to look at what it would mean to be in the team for a few years,” he says. “We questioned what the line of promotion was, what new job titles could be, what work was being done day to day and how that was going to evolve over time.”

The idea of a team replete with legal (junior, senior et al) counsel didn’t appeal, and so they came up with a novel approach. They each became specialists – in employment, IP, commercial, corporate and data protection.

Jamie explains: “Choosing to specialize rather than focusing on seniority in our job titles was about encouraging progression – being able to focus on what we need to focus on, learn what we need to learn about, and having that real accountability for specifics of the business. It’s also about encouraging us not to worry about the stuff that we shouldn’t need to worry about, where that can be handled by someone else in the team. We have our own focus areas and our responsibilities, and those are the things we’re relied on to do well.”

“Choosing to specialize rather than creating a seniority in our job titles was about encouraging progression.”

Due to the small number in their team, there were no issues when it came to changing the status quo. Working together, as partners, they discussed what the team could become and what its structure would look like. They also worked at how they might set a tone for the team that made everybody feel able to contribute in their own way and which would be supportive. Confidence in themselves and in each other – all team members having each other’s backs – was crucial to the environment they were creating.

Jamie says good leadership is about encouraging collaboration – and that Amber was the driving force behind the team being able to work like partners in building a function rather than creating a manager and employee scenario. “It’s not one person running on ahead, it’s about empowering autonomy – supported teamwork. It’s closer to coaching than trying to be the star player. Individual moments of leadership become more about being reliable and stepping in for someone else when points are lost in translation, something hasn’t gone so well or even when a team member’s capacity runs out. In those situations, most of the rest of the team can step in to offer backup. The person stepping in trusts you and they’re willing to step straight in and say, ‘yes, we did what we could up until now’.

“In a fast paced, small team, you don’t need somebody to individually set values or goals or dictate what we’re all going

to do next. You need somebody who gets the team together to create those shared values and bring our own ideas to our roadmaps.”

Discussion, of course, is key. As is personality. Team members can be very different in that regard; on the work front some people are systems driven, others have the big ideas. It is about being able to recognize and acknowledge the various specialties.

“You might have someone who is naturally more intuitive, good at hyping up the team, delivering training and who can conduct a webinar, and maybe there’s someone more like me who is very data driven, typing out plans and documents and who is happy to work away on the process stuff,” says Jamie.

“Having an environment where different personalities can contribute in their own way and being open to the variety in ways of working and thinking has been particularly good for us, and it’s helped us make decisions together on complex matters. Having those different perspectives and methods is very valuable, together with trusting that each team member is there to support the others.”

Trust equals safety – and that’s important in a team environment, particularly in today’s era of remote working, and especially in a remote first company like Employment Hero. “Each of us disappears off in our own direction, only coming together every now and then, and that is challenging,” admits Jamie. “We’re lucky to have a good team of people who are comfortable being outside their comfort zone quite often and who can give opinions and contribute across the business on the fly. But we’re each also confident enough to admit when we don’t know something or accept when someone else in the team knows something better than we do. You can put your hand up and someone else will jump in to help – or even the whole team will get together to work something through.”

Creating a new way of working has had many benefits for the Employment Hero legal team. Collectively, they are a strong unit, working in an environment of their own making that encourages each person to do their best.

Doing your best, as far as Jamie is concerned, is about becoming the expert in the room in one’s specialty. “Don’t try so hard to lead,” he advises, “and don’t focus on what you do well but rather figure out what interests you. Hopefully that crosses over with what you do well, but if it doesn’t, find something about what interests you that you can do well and let that become your specialization. However tiny it might be, start by figuring out one niche thing – and then another, and another. There’s no shortage of work in an in-house team, so experience will come, and with that you will gain the confidence to specialize and be good at what you do.”

By following this approach, you free yourself from the pressure to be all things to all people – and your knowledge becomes a true value add for your team and your organization.

Building a tech-savvy in-house legal team

by Emma Coxhead

Assembling an in-house legal team from scratch is never an easy task – and doing so in tech brings its own raft of challenges.

Lauren Zajac, Chief Legal Officer at ExtraHop, shares with us her top tips for getting it right.

Tech and legal – a unique combination Lauren has succeeded in marrying her love of technology and law by building a legal career in the tech sector. As someone who has been part of, and shaped multiple in-house legal teams from scratch, she has refined her approach to building a legal function – and specifically, one which can meet the unique demands of the fast-paced tech world.

Lauren grew up immersed in technology. Her father, an engineer who went on to become a CEO for various tech companies, provided her with a unique insight into the latest gadgets from a young age – as well as a glimpse into what a career in tech could look like.

“At eight years old, I put my hand on my hip and said I was going to be a lawyer – and from then on, I never changed my opinion,” says Lauren. “Because of my Dad’s position, I was given a unique insight into the possibility of combining the dynamism of technological innovation with the fulfillment of a legal career.”

Coming out of law school clear on where she wanted to be, Lauren initially experienced a trial by fire as she approached tech company after tech company with her resume in the hopes of securing her first in-house position. Eventually landing her first in-house role in the tech sector, she worked directly alongside the company’s General Counsel, who actively supported her professional development. Having someone back her early on her career set the tone for

Lauren’s own leadership style – and embedded within her the importance of community in building a legal career. Now, as a legal leader, she relishes the opportunity to pass this value on, mentoring and supporting the next generation of in-house lawyers whenever she can.

Finding her sweet spot in tech companies operating between US $200 million and $1 billion in revenue, Lauren has noticed a distinctive challenge faced by lawyers in this sector. They must do far more than just offer legal counsel; they must also grasp the intricacies of their organizations’ tech products from both a developer and sales perspective. Understanding the nuts and bolts of the technology at play is crucial in order to effectively communicate risks to the board.

Having someone back her early on her career set the tone for Lauren’s own leadership style –and embedded within her the importance of community in building a legal career.

“We (legal) are here to support the building and selling of a product. We need people who are willing to come in and roll up their sleeves – even if they’ve never been in tech before –and ask, how can I understand this product? How is it sold? What do I need to know to protect it and to contract around it?”

Building your team – top tips

Lauren’s own understanding of what is needed to thrive as an in-house lawyer in tech has actively shaped the way that she builds teams in this environment. “In a larger company, you have the luxury of hiring subject matter experts in litigation, intellectual property and contract negotiation,” she says. “You don’t have that luxury in this sort of space, but it’s where I live.”

Having tried and tested her approach, Lauren has refined some top tips for building an effective legal team in the tech sector:

1. Find the right people. Look for a certain type of person, rather than simply focusing on a desired skill set. For Lauren, this means finding people who are up to the challenge and pace of a tech environment, and who have a willingness to roll up their sleeves and do things that are not in their wheelhouse. It also means finding people who are keen to understand the product that they are working with, and who don’t take themselves too seriously.

2. Business people first. For Lauren, an exceptional inhouse team is made of lawyers who are business people first – and never more so than in the tech world. This means ensuring that your legal function has the ability to provide legal advice through a business lens and guide organizational processes.

3. Promote inclusivity. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) must take center stage in the development of any healthy legal team. This is something that Lauren takes seriously beyond her professional role – she actively contributes to the Board of Massachusetts Special Olympics and lends her support to various nonprofit organizations dedicated to empowering women in the tech industry. Instead of fixating on rigid diversity quotas, Lauren prioritizes cultivating a diverse candidate pool for each hiring opportunity by using gender neutral language and removing any microaggressions towards minority groups. As leaders, she reminds us, “we need to find the way that works with our belief system – and model that.”

4. Prioritize wellbeing. For Lauren, this is, above all, a matter of leading by example. As a mother, she makes sure that she emphasizes the importance of flexibility to her team by making it a practice to openly communicate her own work-life balance. She has no qualms telling her team, “I’m leaving now because I have X, Y, or Z to do for my kids” – and purposefully demonstrates that her team members have the same permission to prioritize their personal commitments. For Lauren, this is key to a productive and content legal function. “We’re all human beings and we, as leaders, need to model that it’s actively encouraged to have a life outside of work.”

Lauren’s strategy for building effective legal teams in the tech sector underscores the importance of taking a comprehensive approach, spanning from recruitment to ongoing support. It begins with an inclusive hiring process, maintaining an emphasis on qualities beyond those that are listed on a resume, and thrives by finding and nurturing individuals who are adaptable, collaborative, and possess a willingness to step outside their comfort zones.

Ultimately, Lauren’s own success in this area reminds us that a strong in-house function demands more than legal expertise; it takes strong soft skills, commercial awareness, and the ability to foster relationships and innovation with humility and humor to get off the ground Ultimately, becoming a true business partner hinges on embracing this holistic perspective.

This article was created from Episode 6 of InView’s Legal Leaders Podcast. To hear the full interview with Lauren, visit inview.lawvu.com/the-legal-leaders-podcast

Lauren Zajac, Chief Legal Officer at ExtraHop

Calling General Counsel: Is it time to take the lead on sustainability?

by Sarah Barker

With climate regulations topping the ESG agenda, a new era of corporate responsibility is upon us – and General Counsel has a chance to play a pivotal role in the transition.

As environmental impact becomes a critical risk factor for financial investors, climate change is no longer something that businesses can afford to ignore. With a raft of newly enacted or proposed climate reporting regulations underway across the globe, the relationship between our planet and big business is changing – with knock-on effects reaching every level of the supply chain over the next few years.

Carlos Chambers is a lawyer, B2B software entrepreneur and CEO of climate software startup CarbonInvoice. Carlos has advised major corporations in his capacity as a solicitor, from electricity retailers to key players in the aviation industry – but his passion for sustainability has led him to find his niche in the net zero space. We spoke with him about the impact of new ESG reporting rules on SMEs (private businesses with less than 500 employees) and what role GCs might play in guiding their organizations through this new sustainability landscape.

“Corporates are seeing the writing on the wall. They know that they will be in scope for reporting sooner or later –and are starting to get ahead of it.”

Climate reporting is coming

With governments inching slowly toward net zero carbon targets, climate reporting legislation is bringing ESG to the forefront of the corporate compliance agenda for the first time in history. From the Climate-related Financial Disclosure (CFD) regulations in the UK to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) climate-related disclosures and mandatory climate-related financial disclosure requirements across New Zealand and Australia, most of the western world’s business centers have either already been hit by new measures, or will feel them within the next couple of years.

At the same time, climate-related litigation against corporates is on the rise. According to the Norton Rose 2023 Annual Litigation Trends Survey, more than a quarter of corporate legal departments reported heightened exposure to environmental impact concerns last year, with one in three concerned about being on the receiving end of climate-related class actions.

No carbon targets – but broad impact

While incoming regulations are jurisdiction-specific, all broadly require in scope companies to conduct record keeping and disclosure of their carbon footprints. Critically, the purpose of these frameworks is to provide transparency for investors –they do not impose carbon targets. Their scope is also narrow, currently affecting only those at the top of the corporate food chain. However, Carlos is clear that they will eventually be landing on desks across even the smallest of SMEs sooner or later – for three reasons.

Firstly, it’s highly likely that what are currently top-down regulations will be expanded once a precedent has been set at the head of the market – climate concerns aren’t going anywhere, and the demand for insight into environmental risk is only likely to increase. “What is currently a voluntary phase for smaller companies will inevitably merge into a regionally specific compliance or regulated phase,” Carlos predicts.

Secondly, “less than half of the emissions generated by in-scope companies are their own – the rest emanate from their supply chains,” he says. Finally – and perhaps most importantly – irrespective of legal obligation, climate reporting is becoming a high priority for the shareholders on whom businesses depend for their long-term survival.

Combined, all of these factors will eventually create widespread pressure across the market, as climate reporting ultimately becomes a condition of doing business. Carlos is already seeing this in the world of big tech, with the likes of Microsoft, Atlassian, and Apple already asking their suppliers for carbon data. The long-term result is likely to be a mammoth governance and data demand for SMEs – the question will be how they tackle the job, and who is best placed internally to take ownership of the challenge.

Carbon reporting – a broken system

In respect of the first question at least, Carlos believes he has an answer. CarbonInvoice is a climate software startup with a simple mission – to help small businesses play their part in reducing the world’s carbon footprint by empowering them to measure and mitigate their own environmental impact in minutes.

The concept was borne out of the struggles that Carlos experienced getting one of his own earlier businesses carbon

certified – after weeks spent laboriously gathering the data needed to obtain a basic carbon measurement, his team realized that they were dealing with an archaic system. He laughs as he recalls the final straw: “Our marketing manager came to me and said, ‘Carlos, I will not weigh our bags of rubbish. I have found my line, and this is it.’” At that point, the penny dropped and he realized there had to be a better way.

Determined to solve the problem, Carlos’ team set about designing software to automate the measurement process. They came up with an activity and spend-based solution which can now conservatively measure the carbon footprint of an SME in around three minutes, all using basic business information and accounting data from their existing systems. For busy SMEs this low-effort, fast results approach makes an overwhelming task into an easy one. The accuracy of the measurement can be uplifted by bringing in activity data (including electricity, travel, and waste outputs) with the goal of ultimately building a full carbon profile including every element of the company’s operations.

The system then helps the business take responsibility for their emissions, mitigating their footprint by offsetting through native tree planting schemes. It also provides them with content to communicate the positive action they have taken to their prospects and clients, with the aim of ultimately

Carlos Chambers, Founder at CarbonInvoice

helping them to retain and win more business. Carlos is proud of the results so far, with clients beginning to secure supply contracts which can be at least partly attributed to their carbon measurement activities.

What difference does it make?

“There is far too much paralysis by analysis in the climate space. Action beats strategy when you’re trying to learn and figure things out.”

For anybody conversant in the world of sustainability, one question is obvious – can carbon offsetting really offer a full answer to climate change? “Of course not,” Carlos says; in an

ideal world, governments would regulate primary emissions at source through taxation. But with no realistic prospect of this happening any time soon, responsibility is shifting downstream – and with just two percent of global SMEs measuring their carbon footprint, Carlos says there’s an urgent need to find a way through “without creating a huge compliance overhead which stunts productivity and cripples businesses”.

With all of this in mind, Carlos believes that measurement is a great place to start – and his aim is to bring the number of businesses who know their “magic number” up to at least 50 percent over the next few years. “What we’ve designed is the easiest, simplest answer to the reporting challenge for SMEs. Is measurement and carbon offsetting the full solution? No. Does it provide a tangible way for businesses to get going on a journey which the vast majority haven’t even begun? Yes.” The ultimate aim, of course, is to transition away from carbon emissions altogether – and Carlos assures me that the CarbonInvoice product roadmap points in this direction.

SMEs – Why should this be on your radar?

Setting aside wider market pressures, Carlos believes there are strong commercial reasons for SMEs to take climate reporting seriously now as part of wider ESG strategies –reasons which lean into opportunity rather than risk. One of the biggest is the marketing power of strong climate positioning: “Quite simply, this is a very powerful way to differentiate your brand.” As conversations about climate reporting between regulated companies and potential suppliers become more commonplace, he identifies this as a chance for businesses to set themselves apart ahead of time.

Carlos also sees a key value opportunity here for companies when it comes to talent acquisition. “Thirty percent of the workforce are now millennial or Gen Z,” he notes. And according to CarbonInvoice’s survey of over 900 SMEs in 2023, these are professionals who value climate far more highly as a factor in their employment relationships than previous generations. For businesses and their legal teams looking to attract and retain in-house talent, he believes being able to speak coherently to this topic could be a game-changer.

A leadership opportunity for General Counsel

“With no clear owner for climate reporting, in-house legal professionals are well placed to upskill and become thought leaders in this area.”

Raising the level of climate awareness across your business is one thing – but for any new concept to really take root within an organization, someone usually needs to take ownership of it. This is something that Carlos acknowledges – whilst large corporates are likely to have ESG teams dedicated to environmental policies and practices, this is ultimately a new function which is likely to lack any clear leader within smaller businesses. “It could potentially fall under finance or operations, but I think in-house legal professionals are very well placed to upskill and become thought leaders in this area,” he says.

And if corporate legal leaders are ready to take on the challenge, what will this mean in practice? Carlos predicts it will involve a lot of skills which come naturally to in-house lawyers – from getting internal policies and codes of conduct up to speed to managing wider governance responsibilities. The ability to communicate the nuances of climate reporting clearly to shareholders will be particularly crucial: “There will be a need for individuals who understand the interplay between climate and commercial concerns, and who are able to have lucid conversations about these issues with senior decision makers.”

There will also be a need for someone who understands how these high-level conceptual shifts will flow through to business and employment contracts. Vendor contracts are likely to eventually require extensive revisions to meet greenhouse gas emissions requirements. Other key commentators in this space, such as PwC , have already observed that the pain factor of this task could be well mitigated by legal teams bringing in other tech solutions, such as AI-assisted Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools

In the short term, Carlos believes that the way GCs respond to this new landscape will depend very much on their individual perspective. While there is a clear compliance and risk mitigation angle for legal teams, there is also an opportunity to use the new regulations as a catalyst to explore new marketing and business development ideas. “Start by simply asking the question,” he suggests. “What do we have going on in the ESG space? Is this something I can contribute to?”

Just taking the first step may initiate the first ripples of change across your organization.

The future of climate reporting

As for the future of this space, Carlos is confident that the journey is just beginning. With the initial outlay of primary legislation setting a climate reporting framework, the expectation is that more meaningful regulations will eventually follow to actively push down emissions. Carlos is hopeful on this front: “It does need to go further, and it will go further. We’re going to start seeing reduction targets – a lot of the biggest companies have already proactively set them, and governments are likely to follow suit.”

As to how as-yet unregulated companies – and their legal leaders – respond in the immediate term, Carlos believes there’s a clear choice. “The first option is to ignore the issue until the last possible moment,” he says. “This might be a valid approach. But you may end up with frustrated clients, a workforce which lacks confidence that you take the issue seriously, and a struggle to keep hold of good talent as a result.”

The alternative, he suggests, is to embrace this new way of thinking and incorporate it into both legal and the wider business function sooner rather than later. “Our other option as lawyers is to accept that this is a clear systemic issue with clear risks, and turn it into a positive opportunity. If you do that, there’s a very real chance to add value to both the top and bottom line of your business.” For now, at the very least, it’s something well worth keeping a close eye on.

Lessons from the road less traveled

by Heather Kidd

Progressing an in-house legal career is like scaling a mountain – there’s often more than one route to take, and it’s not necessarily a straightforward climb. In our recent webinar series, The Path to GC, we asked three legal leaders about their biggest lessons learned from each of their conventional (and not so conventional) in-house journeys.

LESSON 1: Maximize all opportunities

In many respects, Emily Jackson has done it all – having worked for both major corporates and boutique law firms across New Zealand, Australia, and the US. Emily’s formative career years helped her settle on where she saw her future – which was the sports and entertainment industry in the US – and she spent ten years making it happen.

“The past decade has been about building toward this end point. I’ve had various in-house roles, each one taking me a little closer to this one, which is Director of Legal – US at FIFA World Cup 2026.”

Intentionality has been a key part of Emily’s career path, as has her focus on growth – she is always asking herself what the next step is that will allow her to grow her skill set. She says that she has gone into every role with an openness and expectation that it might be a good landing point long term.

“A mentor of mine told me to envisage my career as a dartboard, with the end goal, my dream job, in the middle –and every move I make is about getting me one ring closer to the middle. My first goal was getting a job in-house; then it was getting a job in-house in the entertainment industry; next was getting in-house international experience. Ultimately, everything aligned.”

And while Emily is delighted with her role at FIFA, the pathway to her dream job has not always been easy to negotiate. Opportunities to progress her career proved at times to be stressful, as she worried about leaving jobs and battled feelings of guilt for being ambitious.

For Sarah Binder, it was being prepared to put her hand up to something that sounded like a new and interesting opportunity to gain experience which led to her working overseas.

Rosanna Biggs, VP, General Counsel and Head of People and Culture at Linktree

Emily Jackson, Director of Legal (US) at FIFA World Cup 2026™

Sarah Binder, General Counsel & Head of Legal, Trust and Safety and Insurance at Lime

While working offshore wasn’t initially on Sarah’s to-do list, her advice is that if you’re offered such an opportunity, make sure to grab it. She says that global careers are possible, due in part to an increasing occurrence of global problems. These days issues don’t sit in just one jurisdiction; no one –courts, regulators, and media – works like that anymore.

According to Sarah, living and working in a foreign country broadens one’s horizons on every front. This can be a wonderful opportunity, especially early in your career when you are likely to have more flexibility, i.e., no mortgage or school-age children to take into consideration.

“That breadth of experience where you’re able to say, yes, I’ve dealt with something similar in another country when in a previous role is helpful. And I found being an expat super fun. It was an incredible experience and I absolutely loved it.”

Lesson 2: Get tech savvy

Looking to take advantage of new technological tools to make legal’s role more efficient and less manual is on the radar for Emily. She is keen to create a digital interface for her organization that can centralize queries and stop inboxes from filling up, and which can also track information across the business, meaning that the status of any matter can be established at any time. Having a contract management system is also a priority.

Another tool she’s looking into is AI – something she acknowledges makes some people nervous. “Lawyers tend to have trepidation when it comes to new technology, but what we’ve seen is incredible and it can take away a lot of the base level administration of contract review and the time-consuming reviewing of many documents. It means you can hone in on the strategic value-add parts of your role which means you ensure that you’re the one providing the strategic advice and you’re not stuck doing menial tasks.”

For Rosanna, the real value of tech is in providing a foundation that allows her team to focus on what really matters. For her, this means utilizing tools (like LawVu), which enable her to quickly assess the risk and complexity of incoming work, inform resourcing, and implement self-service where appropriate – ultimately preventing legal from becoming a bottleneck.

“Tech allows us to drive and generate data – which in turn demonstrates the value that the legal team brings to the business.”

According to Rosanna Biggs, the potential for growth doesn’t end at GC. She says that if you’re prepared for the learning curve, legal skills are highly transferable – and it doesn’t have to be a choice between one role or another.

For Rosanna, who wears dual hats at Linktree, her expansion into People and Culture was an organic process. Whilst the initial connection was forged through HR challenges that required a legal lens, ultimately it was driven by her passion for helping people to show up as their best selves – and she never stops thinking about ways to diversify further.

“When I think about career paths beyond GC, I think about how I could eventually expand into COO or CEO roles. We should be having more conversations about broadening our remit.”

According to Sarah, Lime is a data-driven business – which has made her data driven too. Her language and her thought processes have, to a degree, changed – and she says that nowadays, if anyone says to her ‘I think we’re going to lose this case’ or ‘this contract is really important’ her response is that words alone don’t mean much to her.

“Tech allows us to drive and generate data – which in turn demonstrates the value that the legal team brings to the business.”

“My question is, how is this important? Give me a number or numbers, give me objective facts about why this matters. If everyone else is talking in a data-driven way, you can’t be a function that doesn’t speak the same language. You have to be able to talk the language of the business.

“Talking the language of the business opens the communication channels: it’s a confidence booster. And for anyone thinking ‘but my business is different, I don’t know how I would quantify that,’ I promise you that you can quantify it – because any number is better than no number at all.”

LESSON 2: Get tech savvy

Lesson 3: Make an effort

Developing a community in the legal space is crucial, especially when you’re growing and developing your career, says Emily. “Having people as sounding boards to bounce ideas off and get a sense of whether something feels right or not is really important.”

When Emily reached a certain level of seniority, she began to get added to small informal groups (such as Women In-house Counsel and In-house Lawyers in Australia and New Zealand) and she says that this is a good grassroots way to introduce like-minded people who can, when required, assist and support each other.

“Having people as sounding boards to bounce ideas off and get a sense of whether something feels right or not is really important.”

Emily is also a fan of attending as many networking events and conferences as possible, and of making an effort to put oneself out there and become comfortable talking to people. “It’s a way of discovering the different roles that are out there and finding out the pathways to them,” she says. Networking is also a terrific way to build further connections.”

While excellent communication will always be important, Sarah stresses that it’s become even more so since the pandemic which introduced the need for remote work – a situation which, post-Covid, has become the norm for many workers. The change in how and where people work means that team leaders must increase the amount of time they spend communicating their messages and strategies and ensuring that their messaging is clear – being careful not to create a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

“My guidance is that you have to triple the number of times you communicate something than you think that you do,” she says. “Do that and you are probably getting close, but you can never explain things too much. I read a great book by David Novak called argument, basically, is that you don’t really have anything if you haven’t taken people with you. You don’t have the commitment, you don’t have the focus or the vision, and you don’t have the innovation.

“At Lime I’ve learned that there is nothing more valuable than spending time communicating to your teams and your people on what and why you are trying to do things and where they fit into it. If you don’t have everybody underpinned and pointing in the same direction, you have to continuously keep recycling the communication of who we are, what we stand for, and what we are doing. My approach to communication is taking the time to do that thoughtfully and authentically – and three times more than I think I need to.”

Continuing education has been key not only to Rosanna’s career development, but also in supporting others coming up through the legal profession – something she places immense value on. Working across multiple jurisdictions meant cross-qualification and a lot of upskilling for her the years. However, nowadays, she finds the most value learning materials which expand her leadership capabilities. Investing in “non-legal” skill sets is critical, she says, as the role of GC goes far beyond legal advice.

“We are also there as critical thinkers – relied on to apply common sense and to often be the adult in the room.”

If there’s a common thread between our trio of legal leaders, it’s that their openness to new opportunities has spurred them all on throughout their careers. They’ve never settled, nor wanted to settle, and continue to be excited about adding to their already formidable skill sets. Key to their success is their ability to communicate – with their team and their business – as is their keenness to embrace new ways of working, including utilizing technology to show the valueadd that legal brings to the business.

LESSON 3: Make an effort

Stronger together: The power of collaboration

by Shaun Plant

The following is an excerpt from How to Make In-House a Powerhouse: A Revolutionary Way of Working for In-House Legal Teams, the debut publication by globally recognized in-house legal advocate, lawyer and project management specialist Shaun Plant.

Competitive and prone to independent thought and action –it’s not surprising that collaboration doesn’t come naturally to many lawyers. And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to tell you a story.

When I was in private practice, I attended an internal workshop on collaborative negotiation. This is a concept that you may be familiar with – the aim is to emphasize cooperation and creative problem-solving to find win-win solutions for both parties.

After spending the morning learning new skills, we set about a negotiation exercise to put our training into action. It was based on the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”, one of the core concepts of modern game theory. In this exercise, each party was given the option of playing either a red card or a blue card. If both sides played a red card, they would get +3 points each. However, if one played a red card and the other a blue, the red team received -6 points and the blue team would get +6. If both played blue cards, both teams got -3 points.

The instructions were for each team to try to get the highest possible score. Having spent the morning exploring the value of collaboration and win-win scenarios, you would have thought both teams would simply play red each time – but no. The unspoken (but expected) collaborative win-win outcome was overcome on both sides by the dominant drive to achieve the best possible outcome for themselves, which was only possible if the other team lost.

When we focus simply on “winning” the best outcome for ourselves and our clients, we can miss out on the chance to work collaboratively to achieve a far greater result on both sides.

So instead, the exercise went something like this: after the first round kicked off with a red/blue play, every other subsequent round saw both teams playing blue/blue. The reasons for this made sense – the team which had played the red card first (and therefore lost 6 points) didn’t want to get caught out again and make their situation any worse, and the blue team didn’t want to lose the 6 point gain they had made at the beginning. The result at the end of the exercise was a clear lose/lose, with both teams in the minus figures. However, because the team who had played blue throughout hadn’t lost quite as many points in the end, they claimed a moral victory. The lesson – as lawyers, we are more powerful when we work together – not against each other. When we focus simply on “winning” the best outcome for ourselves and our clients, we can miss out on the chance to work collaboratively to achieve a far greater result on both sides.

While collaboration is the key to connecting your team with one another and optimizing your productivity, finding opportunities for effective and efficient collaboration can be challenging, especially within a remote work environment which relies extensively on electronic communication. It can be particularly hard to collaborate when essential information is spread across Slack/Microsoft Teams, email chains, and meetings. But by embracing a few key strategies, it is possible to foster effective collaboration within your legal team and maximize its collective potential.

Firstly, establishing an environment which fosters open communication is crucial. To prevent your meetings from becoming a source of legal waste, make sure that you keep them focused. You should also look to include brainstorming and knowledge-sharing sessions into your standard ways of working. Importantly, encourage team members to voice their opinions, ask questions, and contribute their expertize, and in return, make sure that you provide positive feedback so they know their input is valued and respected. Providing positive feedback also generates trust, which is another key ingredient of effective collaboration.

In-house legal teams can also benefit from fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional development. Encouraging your team members to attend legal seminars, workshops or conferences, and providing opportunities for cross-training within the team as part of your building legal capital initiatives can broaden your collective knowledge base and expand the skill sets of everyone involved. This shared commitment to growth creates a foundation for collaboration built on a mutual desire to excel.

Creating cross-functional teams or assigning diverse project groups can also promote collaboration and encourage fresh perspectives. By bringing together individuals with different expertize and backgrounds, your team can tap into a wealth of diverse insights, stimulating creativity and innovation. These interdisciplinary collaborations can lead to well-rounded solutions which include consideration of multiple angles and enhance the overall quality of your work.

The collaborative functionality of technology should also be embraced as part of your strategy. Legal technology solutions (such as a legal workspace) often include many features that can enable your team to collaborate on the same matter, such as sharing documents, in-app conversations, notifications when tasks are due or completed, and status update features to make sure everyone knows where any given matter is at any time. If you are using communication tools like email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, you can also make sure that they are integrated into your workspace so that all of your communications can be accessed in a single place.

Recognizing the achievements of the team as a whole reinforces the importance of collective effort and reinforces the value of collaboration.

Lastly, celebrating and recognizing collaborative efforts is vital to sustaining a culture of collaboration. Publicly acknowledging and appreciating team members’ contributions and successes fosters a positive atmosphere, boosts morale, and motivates further collaborative effort. Recognizing the achievements of the team as a whole reinforces the importance of collective effort and reinforces the value of collaboration.

By implementing these strategies, your team can harness its collective intelligence and skills and work more productively as a unit.

How to Make In-House a Powerhouse: A Revolutionary Way of Working for In-House Legal Teams is available in print, digital and audio formats. To get your copy, scan the QR code or visit this link.

Michael Guilday, General Counsel at Sydney Fish Market

The generation gap: How to combat resistance to change

by Sarah Barker

From poor handwriting to tech pioneer, GC Michael Guilday is a senior lawyer who has built his career on embracing innovation. He spoke to us about the growing generational divide in legal – and how to build bridges between old and new.

A lawyer struggling to read or write

General Counsel Michael Guilday might bear the hallmarks of a successful old-school lawyer, but he is anything but old-school. Having spent much of his career as part of the distinguished magic circle in London, Hong Kong and Australia, he is now GC and Head of Property at Sydney Fish Market – and his sights are set firmly on the future, not the past.

Despite the prestigious haunts which have characterized much of his career, Michael’s route into the legal profession was far from traditional. At school, he excelled in math and science, but struggled with English. Although he was drawn towards law, his initial response to higher education was one of dismay. “I turned up to university, and there were books everywhere,” he laughs. “I realized I was going to have to do a hell of a lot of reading – and writing as well!”

With the support of his partner, who showed Michael how to find material that interested him, his reading skills improved – which in turn helped him to work on his writing. But one thing continued to hold him back. Still beset by his “terrible” handwriting, he was embarrassed every time he submitted a shoddy, hand-scrawled essay to his professors, and he began to seriously question whether he was cut out for life as a lawyer.

Wangs to the rescue

“If I had started my career earlier, before word-processing was a thing, I probably would have given up.”

Fortunately, Michael’s latter years at university coincided with the advent of the personal computer. As wordprocessing assignments became commonplace, he realized that his work “suddenly looked quite professional!”. This led to one of his earliest lessons, as he realized that, “If I was adaptive with the technology available, it would put me on at least a level playing field with others around me.” Since then, he has maintained a constant interest in the latest technology solutions, curious about how each might help lawyers do their best work.

Michael recalls his experiences of the early origins of email as another pivotal moment. In the late 1990s (pre-Microsoft), Wang computers, which were used for basic document drafting, also had a popular local messaging feature. “You could ‘Wang’ anyone in your office about your weekend or the latest gossip, but they weren’t intended for business purposes, and could only be received outside work hours. None of us knew what that [messaging feature] would later become.”

The evolving face of legal work

“The nature of the work that a lawyer does now, compared to twenty years ago, has shifted in my favor.”

The introduction of computers into everyday life proved to be merely the first ripple of a much wider paradigm shift, and few lawyers of that era could have imagined the emergence of concepts such as generative AI. But innovation is something Michael embraces – it is what has made his own success possible. “We all know things have changed; it’s brought legal work to a place that I am not only more comfortable with, but which I can actually enjoy.”

When Michael recalls the type of work that characterized his early career – “the dark years” as he refers to them –he talks about interminable days spent on huge M&A due diligence document review tasks and putting data into tables. For a long time, this type of mundane procedural

work was perceived as a rite of passage at junior levels of the legal profession – a necessary evil to earn your stripes before getting into the more complex work. Thanks to technology, this landscape is changing fast.

“The work of a junior lawyer is now far more interesting than it ever was in my time,” says Michael. “A huge part of legal work is the ability to synthesize large amounts of information and translate it in a certain way. That hasn’t changed – but powerful tools like digital discovery software mean that we can spend a fraction of the time on the first part and shift our focus far more quickly to the second – which in-house means skipping straight to what matters and translating that to the business.”

The power of mass adoption

Looking back, there’s a clear pattern that emerges from Michael’s own experiences with tech – a series of pivotal moments which he jumped on early in the adoption process, investing in the potential of an idea without really knowing what the long-term outlook or benefit might be. For him, this has paid off – but ultimately he recognizes “the power of this technology comes from mass adoption, when everyone’s in

on it, and everyone is connected”. As with all new ideas, this means someone has to be the first to take the leap!

Of course, not everyone is as open to innovation as Michael is – and for senior legal leaders (who, critically, are also usually the final decision makers) who have spent entire careers working a particular way, even the simple act of contemplating this kind of transition is tough. Michael says this is one of the biggest challenges currently facing corporate legal professions. “I have worked with a lot of tech naysayers, and it’s incredibly frustrating.”

So, what is the antidote to this entrenched thinking? Michael’s advice is nuanced; he’s a big advocate of leading by example, but at the same time, he isn’t afraid to call it a day when he meets resistance. “When someone has deep-seated views, changing them isn’t easy. If you’re not ideologically aligned, you’re likely to ultimately come up against significant problems. There will always be efficiency pressure, but if you can’t leverage tools to help, it may be better to jump off the sinking ship than to go down with it.”

The good news is that as tech savvy juniors progress in seniority, this problem is unlikely to persist for much longer.

“For the future generation of lawyers, continued adaptability will be vital. We can’t continue to do the same thing and expect different results.”

Out with the old, in with the new

With evolving approaches to legal work, what is Michael’s take on the changing demands facing in-house lawyers in the future? He thinks the shift is likely to be fairly radical. “It’s no secret that data is now incredibly important. Whereas before it was important to be able to write good letters, innovations like ChatGPT are slowly eroding the value of that particular skill. Instead, we are seeing the rise of lawyers who are skilled at handling, manipulating, and generating insights from data –which is a completely different quality.”

His message has been echoing throughout the profession for a while – adaptability is critical. Successful corporate lawyers of the future will be those who invest in high-level skills which not only cannot be replaced by technology, but which are able to intelligently and strategically draw on its benefits to deliver commercial results.

Looking to the future – where do we fit in?

“The legal profession is self-generating. I’m a strong believer that technology will actually mean more work for lawyers in the future – not less.”

With so much going on in the corporate legal sphere, what does Michael think the future looks like for in-house lawyers? First off, he’s firmly of the opinion that there aren’t any set boundaries to what a GC or legal professional can or should do. “The work of an in-house lawyer is whatever work they actually do – and I don’t believe there’s any limit to that.”

Of course, it’s likely that more automation means less administrative work. But with an increasing number of selfservice legal products on offer online, Michael says it may also mean a move away from good legal services being the preserve of the wealthy. “As with medicine, it’s increasingly going to be possible to ‘diagnose’ straightforward legal problems over the internet.” He predicts that straightforward matters will be automated, with people only consulting a lawyer when things are really complicated.

However, far from signaling the end of demand for legal services, he believes there will be a greater rather than lesser need for good lawyers. “Even though we have all these tools at our disposal, things are, in many ways, becoming more complicated. The risks of generative AI require more regulatory scrutiny than ever before. Like it or not, there will be a greater

need for advice across specialized areas, from ESG and DEIB governance to marketing and accounting compliance.”

If he is correct, it seems inevitable that the role of the in-house lawyer as translator and demystifier of complexity will only increase.

Human ethics – the key differentiator

Michael believes the other key factor that will set lawyers apart from technology is our collective regulatory, ethical and professional duty – something which is becoming ever more vital with the increased role that tech plays in legal work. “That’s our key differentiating factor. We’re still required to prove certain competencies and ethical obligations, and we’re the only ones with those specific duties within a company. Even the most routine piece of correspondence is approached with that in mind.”

This is not something that ChatGPT, for example, is bound by. “We will need to oversee everything, and it’s a huge job,” Michael warns. Technology is also elevating the level of accountability for lawyers. With everything now tracked and logged, gone are the days when lawyers could get away with dismissing a question for lack of records. “Without oversight, technology has the potential to create more problems than it solves, and when people aren’t happy with the outcomes, we lawyers will still be there to argue about it in the corner!”

Embrace the uncertainty

Several critical lessons have emerged from Michael’s story. Look for a work environment which is embracing the future –remember that today’s early adopters often find themselves streaks ahead tomorrow. Cultivate your data skills. Think creatively about emerging tasks which could fall to legal and jump on those which interest you. And, of course, keep good records!

“Don’t be afraid to create your own space – and choose your own adventure.”

Michael’s advice to those navigating the current in-house landscape is to look at what’s coming as an opportunity rather than a threat. His early career pathway might have been tentative, but he now appreciates it for what it was – a valuable array of experiences which armed him with a unique adaptability and outlook.

“I enjoy talking about my own journey, because it wasn’t apparent to me at the outset where my path was going to lead. In-house isn’t as rigid as private practice, and with technology expanding the realm of what is possible, things are going to be blown wide open even further over the next few years. Don’t be afraid to create your own space - and choose your own adventure.”

In-house legal 2024: The current state of play

by Heather Kidd

Concerns over staffing, time management and technology dominate the current legal landscape.

Attracting and retaining talent is an issue for many businesses today, and legal is no different. In fact, the 2024 In-House Legal Technology Report (LTR) reveals that one of the top five challenges facing legal leaders is staffing. Mark Guthrie, a former General Counsel, who spent more than 15 years heading up legal departments before retraining as an organizational coach, and who is also a consultant to lawyers and in-house legal teams, says that the employee experience is a vital part of what attracts and engages talent.

“There’s a maxim in organizational coaching which says that performance equals potential minus interference. If you can minimize interference, providing the optimum operating environment for your staff to do their jobs, it means that people are more likely to perform to their potential. And if people are realizing their potential, they see professional growth and therefore you are more likely to retain existing talent and become an attractive proposition for new talent.”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Improved engagement equals staff retention. But the rules of engagement, or employment, have changed markedly in recent years, particularly post pandemic. As Mark says, today’s employees are interested in more than just the job, they want to understand the environment they’re thinking of joining.

“I’ve always been conscious that interviews should be a twoway thing, that they should be as much about the team selling its vision and its strategy and articulating what the overall employee experience looks like on a day-to-day basis.”

Mark also stresses that it’s important for employers not to over-promise, and that transparency is key.

While staffing issues are a big issue for legal leaders, and concerns about how to increase the productivity and efficiency of legal teams rated highly in the LTR, Mark says more importance should be placed on how to improve a team’s capabilities.

“My personal point of view is that this should be top of the list given how important it is in terms of unlocking your ability to achieve some of the other goals and objectives that are highlighted in the report. When we talk about capability, I would encourage General Counsel and Heads of Legal to think about it not just at an individual talent level but at the collective organizational level too: what the legal team as a whole needs to be really good at in order to deliver on its strategy.”

“When we talk about capability, I would encourage General Counsel and Heads of Legal to think about it not just at an individual talent level but at the collective organizational level too: what the legal team as a whole needs to be really good at in order to deliver on its strategy.”

According to Mark, there are three capability categories. First is knowledge and technical skills – your subject matter expertise – which are assumed. Second are those not necessarily considered part of a lawyer’s core skill set but which he deems increasingly essential – individual skills such as business and strategy, commercial acumen, financial literacy, project management, change management – and

sitting alongside these are human skills such as persuasion, influence, sales, and leadership.

“The third category are the broader collective capabilities. Functional competencies like collaboration, agility, ambidexterity, creativity, innovation, a customer experience mindset. These are all collective capabilities that the entire function needs to embrace and demonstrate. In my view, they are behaviors that are essential to achieve the outcomes people are seeking. And they don’t happen by accident. You need to be purposeful about how you create them in your team.”

Another issue highlighted by the LTR is that between 30 and 40 percent of legal teams admit to spending three or more hours per day on low-value work. This, says Mark, means there is a lot of extremely expensive human glue spread across the legal profession, which is an immense hidden cost to teams and businesses. He also makes the point that “busyness” means people often struggle to find time to think about how to break the “business as usual” cycle.

“They do what lawyers often do, which is they try to solve the problem by working harder. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of some of the attributes that make lawyers so valuable in the first place. There’s an irony here, that what makes you valuable is actually undermining your value – your work ethic and professionalism, your perfectionism, your sense of accountability – the fact that you care about the work that you do, that you find it hard to walk past a problem without stopping to fix it.”

Technology, including AI, offers a way for legal teams to improve their productivity and efficiency, but considerable thought and research into which system(s) is most fit for purpose needs to be undertaken before a definitive decision is made. Get it wrong and all the good intentions will be undone. According to the report, multiple tech stacks are still being widely used by the in-house community and navigating between various systems is known to be time-consuming and problematic. But the tide is turning, and there is a discernible shift towards consolidation.

It’s a change which Mark supports. “By consolidating and using a smaller number of solutions, teams are making full use of the full functionality,” he says. “Overall, unless you’ve got a highly scaled legal ops team who have the capacity and capability to manage different vendors and solutions, the idea of a one-stop shop legal tech engine is a really attractive proposition.”

Mark goes on to say that by improving productivity and efficiency, teams enhance their ability to reemphasize the dual role legal plays in the business – that they act both as a growth accelerator and a compliance brake. The best in-house teams have an intuitive understanding of when to press the right pedal – be that the brake or the accelerator – because they are highly attuned to the changing risk appetite of the businesses they serve.

This article is adapted from InView’s recent webinar, The state of legal tech and its impact on in-house leadership, teams and the wider business. The full webinar and the 2024 In-House Legal Technology Report are both available to view at inview.lawvu.com.

For more information about Mark’s dedicated consulting and coaching services for legal professionals, visit mightyconversations.com.au

The long-term impact of AI on the cost and delivery of legal services

by Ali Meredith

For in-house legal teams, the slow creep of AI into our everyday work is no longer a question of “if” but “when” – and significant questions remain over the long-term consequences for our functions. To understand what the future might hold, there’s a lot we can learn from the past.

Corporate legal teams are demanding AI powered solutions, and software vendors and elite law firms alike are responding by accelerating their investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The legal technology industry is expected to double in size over the next decade and the number of solutions being built

for lawyers is growing rapidly. While funding for traditional legal technology slowed in 2023, funding for AI powered legal tech has been readily available for both incumbents and new entrants to the market.1

What impact will AI have on legal? Although we are only in the nascent stages of learning about AI, looking back at the impact that other technologies have had on the cost and delivery of legal services over past decades provides valuable insights into what the future holds for the legal industry.

What’s changed?

Technology has been quietly impacting the delivery of legal services for many years now. While frontline legal service providers to medium and large corporates are still mostly top

law firms, the composition of who (and what) is providing legal advice has changed dramatically. The modern law firm’s technology stack likely already includes AI powered solutions. Technology providers such as Litera who provide a range of products including document comparison and AI powered contract due diligence tools to improve efficiency are widely adopted by a majority of top law firms. Many law firms have their own captive alternative legal service providers (ALSP) or relationships with independent ALSPs that provide the scale and processes for completing low complexity tasks efficiently, which has made high volume work like e-discovery much less costly.

AI has put pressure on law firms to adopt technology, and will accelerate the pace at which they invest in and transition to more cost-effective models of providing lower complexity legal services. Large law firm hiring has by and large been stagnant for years, but law firms are launching new products and are increasingly finding an appetite for providing technology enabled fixed fee offerings. One way for firms to use technology is to experiment with how providing more cost-effective legal advice could grow their client book. Startups that do not yet have a big legal budget but have the potential to develop one are an obvious target. Many firms already have groups dedicated to startups and are investing in building new products to serve them, like the Wilson Sonsini Neuron group’s recent launch of Dioptra, a contract review solution.

AI has put pressure on law firms to adopt technology, and will accelerate the pace at which they invest in and transition to more cost-effective models of providing lower complexity legal services.

Are law firms a serious player in the legal tech or commoditized legal services space?

Law firms, legacy software providers and new legal tech startups are all exploring how to best leverage AI. Ostensibly, law firms are at an advantage due to two reasons, (a) their existing monopoly over much of the delivery of legal services to enterprise clients and (b) their vast repositories of existing client data and understanding of what clients really want.

However, a real challenge for technologists at law firms will be in navigating the complex and entrenched existing structures and processes. It is exceedingly difficult to overturn established culture and work against incentive structures and established hierarchies, regardless of the threat of inaction or size of the ultimate reward. Law firms are designed for qualified lawyers to provide legal services, not for a range of professionals to provide legal products.

One way to overcome the resistance to change within law firms is to enable a team to spin out an independent company. Recently, the UK top 40 law firm Travers Smith did this with Jylo, a newly independent business that will sell its AI platform to the wider legal market.2 Jylo will be able to leverage the firm’s connections and perhaps data to build and sell products to the firm’s clients under a new organization. Travers Smith will be able to continue providing legal services, but with the assurance that they now have a stake in the legal AI game.

The legal industry is expected to be significantly exposed to disruption by AI3, with some reports predicting that the majority of legal tasks will be able to be assisted or fully automated by AI. Given the gravity of these forecasts, it’s not surprising that law firms are making moves to capitalize on the growing market for legal products and simultaneously hedging themselves against a disruption to the market for delivery of legal services.

We are all fixated on AI, but what is it actually capable of?

AI is best used to help automate the most mundane aspects of providing legal advice. This will allow lawyers to perform legal tasks more efficiently and legal service providers to deliver their services more cost effectively.

Highly complex strategic legal advice will be less impacted by AI, as AI is best placed to help with low complexity legal tasks. Because of this, and perhaps contrary to expectation, AI is unlikely to exert significant downward pressure on elite law firm rates. Both the CounselLink 2024 Trends Report: “Dynamics Shaping the Future of Legal” (CounselLink report) and the Thomson Reuters 2024 Report on the State of the US Legal Market (Thomson Reuters report) show a steep increase in law firm rates in the past year. The CounselLink report showed the widest gap between the median partner billing rate at large firms and mid size firms that they have seen since they started reporting eleven years ago.

It makes a lot of sense for top tier law firms to use AI to put distance between themselves and their competitors by doubling down on building their brand as the best “read: expensive” minds in their core practice areas. Procuring legal advice for strategic or high risk matters is not cost sensitive but it is quality sensitive, and so winning this category is a strong move that positions firms in a place that is relatively immune to the impact of AI (in the medium term, at least).

However, the truth is that the vast majority of legal work is not in “bet the company” strategic legal advice, but in a blend of humans and technology completing the day to day “run the company” work. This less strategic work which is more cost sensitive, less complex and high volume is where AI will disrupt the legal industry.

In a recent study, Toby Brown, former chief practice management officer at Perkins Coie found that “Drafting and Reviewing” accounted for 47 percent of the revenue in a sample of timesheets analysed from a broad range of work performed by ten large firms. For big law firms, it’s unlikely that rate increases for a decreasing portion of highly strategic work will be enough to offset the impacts of AI on the increasingly commoditized bulk of their day-to-day work.

In reality, technology has been making the performance of lower complexity legal services more and more efficient for decades – AI will simply accelerate that. As AI makes it possible for more of the tasks involved in providing legal services to be performed by less experienced lawyers, the value add of having a pedigreed lawyer deal with run of the mill contract review will drop. Tools that help with drafting, clause comparison and precedent management already carve valuable hours off contract review.

In reality, technology has been making the performance of lower complexity legal services more and more efficient for decades –AI will simply accelerate that.

If most legal work is going to be increasingly productized and commoditized, who is best placed to deliver it?

Although ALSPs are widely used for due diligence review and e-discovery, law firms are still performing a high volume of contract review. For corporate teams, the efficiency gains created by AI powered solutions along with the presence of alternative legal service providers presents a good opportunity to exert pressure on law firms and drive the price down.

Based on the CounselLink report, this appears to already be happening. While the data collected shows a steep increase in law firm rates over the past year, that increase does not correlate to an equally steep increase in blended rates at the matter level. This indicates that as top tier law firms are increasing their prices they are simultaneously completing their work more efficiently, which is effectively softening the impact of those rate increases on their clients.

A large component of the services that corporations procure from law firms could be completed by alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). ALSPs have been a vital component of the enterprise legal services market for many decades, but as lawyers we still don’t fully understand how to use them to our benefit.

A study from Thomson Reuters4 found that ALSPs already serve 79 percent of law firms and 71 percent of in-house

legal teams surveyed, however awareness of ALSPs among middle market legal teams remains low. Because ALSPs excel in using efficiency to perform commoditized legal work at scale, they have been built and marketed almost exclusively to enterprise clients. The Thomson Reuters State of the UK Legal Market 2022 report found less than twenty percent of the inhouse respondents surveyed were aware that a selection of prominent consultancies offered legal services.

ALSPs are generally very efficient, cost effective and experts at leveraging technology which makes them much better suited to performing low complexity legal work than law firms. The introduction of AI presents a real opportunity for ALSPs to expand their remit to more low complexity legal work like routine contract review and to middle market clients with lower volumes of work. However, will this trigger a rapid shift? Not likely.

Law firms have historically owned the relationship with corporate legal departments, and as long as General Counsel continue to cut their teeth at big law firms they will continue to do so.

In many cases, law firms already have avenues for routing low complexity legal work to their own captive low cost providers or independent ALSPs.

As a GC responsible for procuring legal services, what are your options?

Use law firms for high complexity strategic

legal matters

For the matters that have the most potential to impact your business, the price of legal advice should be irrelevant. For these matters, you should indulge in luxury. Buying legal services from a top tier law firm brings many benefits, and as the saying goes, “No one gets fired for hiring Cravath”. Receiving high quality expert legal advice on the right matter at the right time could be invaluable. Likewise, bad legal advice is (at best) worthless.

Use your own team for high complexity strategic commercial matters

Large corporations today typically have teams of technologysavvy and commercially minded in-house lawyers. Not all legal work is well suited to outsourcing, and corporations with a large in-house team can be selective about the types of tasks they choose to send externally and what they should perform internally. Any urgent work that requires an in-depth knowledge of the business should be kept in-house. As AI is slowly infused into our day-to-day productivity tools, this type of strategic work will become easier but will not be completely automated by AI.

Use an Alternative Legal Service Provider for low complexity simple legal matters

Any work that consists of a high volume of standard “run the company” tasks that the team cannot scale to absorb themselves is well suited to low cost legal service providers who can deliver with a blended human and technology approach. There is not much point in paying legal’s brightest minds to review NDAs, and now there are a plethora of contract review solutions that leverage AI to help users identify risks and insert acceptable language. This work should see a significant price drop in the coming years as the time and effort required to complete each review decreases.

Become a “Center of Enablement” and have the business self serve on low complexity and low risk business matters

Where possible, all corporate legal teams should be empowering their peers across the wider business to answer their own questions on day-to-day low risk legal issues. There is a lot of easy value to be gained by doing the groundwork to get resources in place that will protect the legal team from distracting queries such as answering questions about policies, providing reports, managing contract expiries or signing contracts. Clear policies are a start, but newer tools are able to leverage AI to help make policies and contracts more consumable and help the wider business understand them more easily.

Investing time in understanding AI will help you leverage it to negotiate better deals

For those of us who work in-house, we are perfectly placed to take advantage of the growing array of legal products and service providers available to drive down external legal spend where it makes sense. Being willing to consider viable alternatives for some tasks could help to put pressure on existing suppliers to perform cost sensitive legal services more efficiently.

Making it a priority to keep abreast of new technology is the best way to confidently navigate the landscape. Proactively redirecting some budget towards upskilling your team or investing in your own AI solutions will equip you and your

team to understand and fully leverage AI and the products and service providers using it. Knowing when and how they should be using it to deliver more efficient legal services to you will help you to know where it makes sense to negotiate and what you should be asking for.

1 Venture funding for LegalTech startups totalled ~$700M between Jan 2023

– Feb 2024, “Generative AI Legal Landscape 2024”, March 2024, Megan Ma, Aparna Sinha, Ankit Tandon, Jennifer Richards

2Travers Smith spins off AI capability with the launch of Jylo, an independent technology enterprise powered by advanced AI

3A 2023 Goldman Sachs study found the majority of legal tasks had the potential to be substituted or fully automated by AI. The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth (Briggs/Kodnani)

4Alternative Legal Service Providers: 2021 Report – Strong Growth, Mainstream Acceptance, and No Longer an “Alternative,” Thomson Reuters Institute, the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

Ali Meredith is the Director of Product Partnerships at LawVu

Beyond efficiency: Legal ops as a pillar of mental health

by Stephanie Corey

Mental well-being is a significant concern as the legal profession grapples with soaring work pressures. In my decades of legal operations experience, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of legal operations in enhancing the mental health landscape of legal professionals. For the uninitiated, legal operations professionals handle the business aspects of law within an organization, focusing on streamlining processes, improving efficiencies, managing costs, and leveraging technology to support legal departments effectively.

This article delves into how the goals of legal operations teams, such as providing strategic workload management, process automation, and clear role delineation, serve as pillars for fostering a healthier work environment.

Streamlining workflows to combat burnout

In an era where the demands on legal professionals only seem to escalate, leading to increased burnout and turnover, teams are pressed to find sustainable solutions. Rather than perpetuating the status quo, implementing thoughtful changes to legal operations presents a viable strategy for alleviation. By reevaluating and enhancing workflows, teams can significantly mitigate stress and improve efficiency. Strategic adjustments in how tasks are managed and distributed streamline operations and foster a more supportive environment, ultimately retaining talent and boosting morale.

This shift towards optimized workflows is not just about doing less but about doing better, ensuring that every aspect of the legal process is as effective and stress-free as possible.

The first step in getting off the hamster wheel, so to speak, should be an exercise to understand what work is coming into the legal department, how it is getting done, and by whom. Performing an analysis to understand the value of that work is critical in determining who should be doing that work (internal legal employees, alternative legal service providers, law firms, clients themselves, other departments within the company, or automation) or whether or not it should be done at all. Rather than “doing more with less,” sometimes the correct answer is “do less.”

This shift towards optimized workflows is not just about doing less but about doing better, ensuring that every aspect of the legal process is as effective and stress-free as possible.

One universal example of an area where “doing less” to alleviate stress is developing an effective strategy to handle the deluge of emails. When email as a communication technology entered the business world, it was considered a courtesy to respond to every message in the inbox within a business day, even on weekends. Now that the influx is often overwhelming, even replying to most is not possible, nor is it an effective use of time. Your value is not in responding to every email but being selective and intentional in crafting meaningful replies in select cases and ignoring (filing or deleting) the rest.

In the groundbreaking 2008 study, The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress, from the University of California, Irving, researchers found that for each interruption – such as pausing to review every incoming email – it took participants an average of about 23 minutes to recover and return to the original task.

In the legal industry, this can translate to focusing on what’s important and ignoring the rest. For example it makes sense to simplify language in contracts so non-lawyers can understand it. This simplification speeds up review and approvals and relieves stress on both sides of the negotiation. Each side can focus on essential elements of the agreement rather than esoteric and unnecessary redlining that adds no value.

The role of automation in minimizing stress

My team and I are excited about exploring how to harness the power of Generative Artificial Intelligence and its capability to automate low-impact, repetitive tasks. For instance, drafting standard legal documents and contracts can be streamlined with GAI models trained on your department’s templates and language preferences. This accelerates the drafting process and minimizes the potential for human error, ensuring consistency and compliance across all documents. In another example, we’re providing GAI-automated FAQ services, which not only help teams by significantly reducing response times to common inquiries but also allow legal professionals to focus on complex legal matters that require their expertise. This streamlines client support, enhances efficiency, and ultimately boosts team morale by eliminating the repetitive strain of answering the same questions repeatedly.

The integration of GAI into Legal Ops boosts productivity and elevates the quality of work life for legal professionals. It frees up time for them to engage in more complex, strategic tasks that require human insight and creativity, thereby enhancing job satisfaction and engagement. The use of GAI in handling low-impact tasks also demonstrates a commitment to innovation and continuous improvement within the legal department, making it an attractive place for top talent. For example, alleviating mundane tasks such as rote NDA review fosters a sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction. When executed thoughtfully, automation can be a game-changer in transforming the work experience in legal departments, making it more fulfilling and less fraught with frustration.

Clarity in role and expectation management

Ambiguous role definitions and unclear expectations cause anxiety in the workplace. A lack of accountability and the inability to safely and effectively voice concerns exacerbate this dysfunction in teams. Each team member must clearly understand their responsibilities and how they contribute to the legal department’s broader objectives.

I have seen a healthy turnaround with these problems through detailed role mapping and setting explicit performance

metrics. When we run our Value Exercise with clients to help teams prioritize high-impact, high-importance tasks and eliminate or offload low-impact, low-importance activities, we see a distinct change in attitude. Team members feel energized by having time to make meaningful contributions to the organization’s success and feel less weighed down by removing most, if not all, of their wasted, energy-sucking tasks. Teams come away with clarity in their roles and a better understanding of what they can do as a team and individuals to stay focused on the big goals while gratefully leaving lowimportance tasks behind.

Charting a healthier course with legal operations

Recently, the legal industry has shined a spotlight on mental health challenges. Old-school thinking was that lawyers had to burn themselves out, mentally and physically, to succeed in their profession, starting in law school and continuing throughout their careers. The modern understanding is that this trauma is unnecessary for success and inhibits people from reaching their full potential. Books like The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law by Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder provide insight into what makes lawyers happy in their profession, including communication and work-life balance, which are essential for mental health.

Ambiguous role definitions and unclear expectations cause workplace anxiety. A lack of accountability and the inability to safely and effectively voice concerns exacerbate this dysfunction in teams.

The intersection of legal operations and mental health is a testament to how structural changes in workflow, automation, and role clarity can cultivate a healthier work environment. As legal professionals, our mental wellbeing is intrinsically linked to how we work, and it’s incumbent upon us to embrace solutions that not only enhance our efficiency but also our quality of life.

Effective legal operations consultants assist workplaces by helping to create strategies that place mental health at the center. By adopting this mission and demonstratively practical approaches, legal departments can transform into bastions of wellbeing, where professionals excel and enjoy a sense of fulfillment and balance in their careers.

Stephanie Corey is CEO and co-founder of UpLevel Ops and a widely respected veteran in Legal Operations.

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Marija Dukadinovska, Senior Commercial Lawyer and Career Coach

Five steps to transform your legal career

by Sarah Barker

Marija Dukadinovska, senior commercial lawyer and career coach, knows what it’s like to face the unknown and come out the other side smiling. From overcoming burnout to rediscovering your sense of purpose, she shares her top tips for lawyers looking for a change – and why the tools you need to transform your career are probably already in your back pocket.

Marija’s story

Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, things just don’t go according to plan. As a lawyer whose own journey has seen many twists and turns, Marija is no stranger to the predicament of finding yourself on a career path that doesn’t turn out quite as expected. And with record numbers leaving the legal profession across the globe over the past few years, it seems she’s in good company.

Like many others, Marija began her career at a high-flying mid-tier firm. However, it wasn’t long before she realized that the traditional corporate ladder climb wasn’t for her – and after several years of struggling against the current, she eventually took the most daunting step of her professional life, walking away from her first legal role without a plan.

For Marija, this was a turning point. As she slowly dismantled everything which anchored her to her identity as a lawyer, she kept what was useful – and discarded what wasn’t. Finding her niche as a career coach, she also rediscovered her own sweet spot within the profession – first pivoting in-house, and subsequently landing at a firm which embraced the value of her diverse skill set. Her hybrid role gives her unique insight into the biggest challenges facing lawyers seeking a change –and how to overcome them.

STEP 1: Recognise when it’s time for a change

“Breaking out of autopilot is always tough. But we all have a pain threshold, and when you hit your limit, that’s when something’s got to give.”

Carve out space

As a successful career coach, Marija’s advice is often sought by lawyers who are dissatisfied with their jobs, but aren’t sure whether or not it’s time to do something about it. This is all-too familiar territory, she says – law is a notoriously highpressure profession, and moments of exhaustion and doubt are normal. However, when these feelings start coming up on repeat, it’s usually time to start taking them seriously.

For anyone stuck in this thought loop, Marija’s advice is simple – press pause, take a breath, and ask yourself some tough questions. Why are you really unhappy in your current role? Is it the work, the environment, or the culture? Are you lacking purpose? Does your current environment challenge you and provide opportunities for growth, or are you stagnating?

As you reflect, it’s critical to be honest with yourself. Are there things that you can work on where you are before throwing in the towel? Starting over from scratch can be tougher than refining something you’ve already built. By challenging your own thought process, you’ll future-proof your decision making, ensuring that if and when you do decide to move on, your choice won’t be driven by the impulse for a quick fix.

Don’t wait for burnout

This is all very well, but when you’re fighting to stay afloat, finding the headspace for self-reflection is easier said than done. The truth is that for many, this road ends in burnout –and for many of us, this is the only catalyst powerful enough

to drive change. However, if we pay attention and notice the warning signs early on, we can save ourselves a lot of time and stress.

When there’s a persistent problem in our lives, Marija says, there are usually telltale signs which start to push through.

“Start to take notice of the conversations you’re having with friends and loved ones,” she suggests. Have they noticed that you complain a lot about work? Do you idealize other professions and lifestyles, dreaming out loud about starting a bakery, or jetting off around the world with a backpack?

You don’t have to go overboard – setting hours aside to reflect every day isn’t realistic. But just by making a physical or mental note of these patterns as they come up, you’ll start giving voice to your subconscious thought patterns, slowly building up the evidence you need to make the right call.

STEP 2: Face your fears

“Start to ask yourself… What am I resisting? What’s really stopping me from making this change?”

Accept uncertainty

As we face the unknown, often for the first time in our careers, fear can creep in – and if we’re not careful, it can stop us in our tracks. This is a hurdle that Marija knows all too well, having herself battled with intense feelings of failure, loss of identity, and fears of disappointing loved ones when she left private practice. “It’s natural to be apprehensive when you can’t see what’s waiting on the other side of change,” she says. But the key, she says, is to acknowledge these feelings without letting them take the wheel.

Challenge catastrophic thinking

As lawyers, we tend to be our own worst enemies when it comes to change. Whilst caution often serves us well in our advisory roles, the “what-ifs’’ can threaten to consume us when it comes to personal decisions. What if I make the wrong choice – and regret it? What if I’m no good at anything else?

For those who feel paralyzed by catastrophic thinking, Marija suggests turning to solid evidence. She encourages her clients to reflect back to another time when they faced major change in their lives. What were they worried about, how did they move through the process, and what was the outcome? This exercise often reveals how seldom our worst fears actually come to fruition.

STEP 3: Find the exit

“Who do you want to be in this next chapter? Sometimes a part of ourselves has to die to allow new parts to grow.”

Go back to basics

In Marija’s experience, mustering up the courage to truly commit to change is the hardest part of the battle – even if you still have no idea what things will look like on the other side.

“There’s no need to have everything figured out all at once,” she says – all you need to do is take your first step.

By now, it’s likely that you have a pretty clear idea of what it is you don’t want – but now you need to figure out what you do. For many of us, this can involve confronting a degree of identity loss. Whether you’re contemplating a pivot away from the traditional private partnership route, or a more drastic departure from law altogether, it’s likely that your current position has been hard-earned – and you may need to let go of some entrenched ideas of who you are to allow yourself to move forward.

The questions you ask yourself at this stage might well be some that you haven’t considered since the early days of your career – if at all. What are your strengths? Are you creative or analytical? Are you good at problem solving? For Marija, the real value of this exercise is that it restores ownership over your unique superpowers, the bedrock upon which you will build the next version of yourself.

Transfer your superpowers

Once you’ve identified your core skills and drivers, it’s time to map out how they are going to propel your transition. At this stage, Marija sees a lot of clients dismissing themselves as candidates for new opportunities right off the bat. This type of black and white thinking is a mistake, she says. “Legal skills are incredibly coveted across a multitude of professions.” The likelihood is that you have far more to offer to a new role than you realize. It’s just a matter of identifying your transferable skills.

Think about how much is involved in your day-to-day legal work, and cross reference your core skills against those that you’ll need in your target role. This is a great exercise in lateral thinking – from commercial strategy to human management, creative application of broad skills are likely to impress in interviews, and may well offer a welcome change of perspective for prospective employers.

STEP 4: Leverage your skill set

“Never underestimate the power of voicing your intention. By committing to your dream out loud, you bring yourself one step closer to making it a reality.”

Create an action plan

Once you’ve got a clearer picture of what you’re bringing to the table, it’s time to create an action plan. Marija is emphatic about the importance of this step – it’s critical to externalize your intention and create accountability. Your plan of attack could involve the following steps:

• Voice your intention. You don’t have to shout it from the rooftops, but Marija advises that by letting your trusted inner circle know you’re on the lookout for something new, you will expand your reach and “recruit others to your cause”. Simply communicating your situation to your peers can be incredibly powerful in helping you to commit to the process.

• Enlist support. When you’re heading out into the unknown, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone. Think about who you could reach out to in order to learn more about the industry or role you’re curious about. Whether it’s consulting a career coach, recruiter, or even thought leaders on LinkedIn, you may be surprised to find how many people can help you on your journey.

• Update your CV and cover letter. It sounds obvious, but brushing the dust off and getting these documents up to date should be a top priority. The transferable skills that you have identified will be incredibly useful here – now is the time to take stock of how far you’ve really come, and make sure that you are showcasing it.

• Start upskilling. Whilst your reflections should have instilled you with confidence in your existing toolbox, they should also act as a springboard for identifying your weak spots – and how you could resolve them. For example, if you’ve been in private practice but are looking to move in-house, what additional skills are you going to need, and how might you acquire them? From regulatory shifts to the growing influence of technology and AI, the world is moving fast. Whether it’s through community networks, learning resources, or technology, there are countless opportunities to upskill and set yourself apart from the crowd – when you know where to look.

STEP 5: Uncover hidden opportunities

“It all comes down to building relationships. We all know someone who knows someone who could be the key to that next opportunity.”

Make new connections

By now, you might have a clearer picture of what the future might look like – you’ve reflected on what you want (and what you don’t) and you’re armed with a plan. This is where Marija sometimes sees her clients stall. Often unable to immediately find anything in the job listings that they gravitate towards, or which ticks their boxes, they can quickly feel discouraged and think “there’s nothing out there for me”.

For Marija, the antidote to this is to put yourself out there. Attend industry events – they’re a huge opportunity to get insights into a new field. Once you get there, be bold. “Be curious. Ask lots of questions. Get a clear understanding of what is involved in that industry, and what they are looking for!”

She also emphasizes the importance of building a lively online presence – which means no more lurking on LinkedIn. “We all have something of value to add,” she says – and if you engage, you never know where a conversation might lead. “If something is calling out to you, be curious about it. Follow the breadcrumbs, and the rest will unfold naturally.”

The journey continues

Marija’s final piece of advice is to remember that you’re always on a journey. Whether your own path involves a strategic pivot or a more dramatic departure, with time, confidence, and practice, we are all capable of building something which works for us. And when you next take stock and turn around, you might be surprised to see how far you’ve come.

If you would like to discuss taking your career to the next level, Marija would love to hear from you – get in touch at marijaduka.com

Behind the scenes: A modern in-house legal function

by Heather Kidd

When Zaid Gardner set out to build the legal function at Property Finder, he intuitively understood that team dynamics would be important, but he didn’t foresee just how critical getting this part right would be to its future success. Now, with the help of legal ops pioneer Charmaine Shyu, he leads a formidable tech-enabled team – and they’re just getting started!

A democratized approach to in-house legal

By his own admission, Zaid Gardner is a sports nut. And, interestingly for a South African, he is happy to heap praise on the skills and versatility of All Black Beauden Barrett, a player equally adept at either first-half (fly-half) or fullback. He talks too of Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani, who is renowned as both pitcher and batter. At the end of last season, Ohtani signed a US $700 million ten-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers – the largest contract in professional sports history. Recognition, says Zaid, of the player’s unique skill set which the Dodgers are confident will benefit the team in the years to come.

Zaid’s appreciation for sports’ top echelon makes sense. Based at the company’s UAE headquarters in Dubai, the GC and member of the executive leadership team at Property Finder is all about team mentality. Over the past three years, he has built, led and nurtured his in-house legal team from the ground up into a cohesive and well-functioning unit – one that is able to operate in the fast-paced pressure-cooker environment that is the Middle East ecosystem.

“There is an energy here that pushes and encourages you to create opportunities; it’s a dynamism that we’re trying to replicate within our own team,” he says. “As GC, I play my part in that, because my responsibility is to look after the legal team and service the business – but it’s not a top-down

system. I try to democratize the team as much as possible – a great idea, an opinion, or a perspective can come from anyone. There is space here for people to express themselves without hesitation or judgment.”

Three years ago, when Zaid joined Property Finder, he was the sole in-house lawyer, a one-person legal function responsible for offering legal and strategic advice as well as doing routine work such as contract reviews and NDAs. When it came to building a team, he knew a targeted approach was required. Attitude was important, as was the desire of the people he hired to continuously learn and extend themselves in an environment which would test their versatility and commitment.

“I try to democratize the team as much as possible – a great idea, an opinion, or a perspective can come from anyone.”

“I searched for people who were perhaps more junior in terms of experience, but they were also hungry and enthusiastic, and have brought a lot of energy to the team,” he says.

Today the legal team at Property Finder consists of a small handful of lawyers, a collections division which reports to Zaid, and Charmaine Shyu, the contracts and legal operations manager. Because the work environment is intense, the team’s active adoption of legal technology is playing a vital and increasing role in their success, allowing them to fulfil their broad ranging obligations to the business.

While this approach provides much needed structure when it comes to internal relationships, ensuring that the business knows how to engage with legal, it also allows for flexibility and versatility – both in the way things are done and the team’s own ability to focus on more high-level strategic work. The goal is for legal to be recognized as far more than

a support function – they’re a legitimate and value-additive partner to the business.

As the Property Finder legal team leans more and more into technology as a tool to increase efficiency and optimize its value, the role of legal operations has become less of a “nice to have” for Zaid, and more of a necessity.

“The goal is for legal to be recognized as far more than a support function – it’s a legitimate and value-additive partner to the business.”

“Because we’re a small team in a growing and fast-paced industry, creating a designated legal ops function whilst investing in technology is really allowing us to accelerate towards creating a mutually beneficial symbiosis between our team and the wider business.”

While Charmaine was initially employed as contracts manager, her role has evolved to encompass legal ops, which she now champions for the whole team. Although she is still at an early stage of her career, Charmaine has proven to be a major asset and Zaid emphasizes his complete trust in her to handle this side of the function: “She is very detail oriented and has a great skill set,” he says, describing her as the fuel that enables his team to ultimately achieve more with less, opening up the doors for “infinite possibilities”.

Zaid is excited by the speed with which his team’s legal ops function is developing and is especially interested in exploring concepts like legal design, the process of rethinking legal workflows to make them more human and user friendly. “How can we present our legal work in a way that is less dry, less functional, and more engaging and interactive?” he muses.

“How do we communicate in a way that non-legal colleagues will find interesting, which triggers them to engage so that we can have a more meaningful conversation with them?”

One of the biggest advantages of having the operations side of the legal function handled by Charmaine is that it allows the lawyers in Zaid’s team to operate as a team of specialists. “We’ve got the business effectively divided up into parts which various team members look after respectively – this has given them each the chance to better understand that particular part of the business – its work, its history, its road map. And they’ve started to build trusted relationships with the people who work in those departments.”

For Zaid, it’s important, however, to also retain a generalist overview within the legal function so that team members can cover for each other if someone is absent or on leave.

A holistic approach, as he terms it. “We have structure, we have discipline, we have a format that works for us, but we also have the flexibility and versatility that allows us to interchange.”

Watching his team adapt and develop gives Zaid a lot of satisfaction. Helping others to achieve their own ambitions is a key part of how he sees his future legacy at Property Finder, something which includes creating a succession plan for his own role.

Unsurprisingly, Zaid returns to his love of sport to explain his philosophy. “One of the All Blacks once talked about only ‘holding’ his jersey for only a short time; it didn’t belong to him, it was only his until it was time to pass it along to his successor. So, while your team is evolving, it’s worth keeping in mind that your role in it ultimately has an end date. Make the most of it – but remember that at some stage you will pass it on to another person. When that time comes, hopefully the work you’ve done will endure – creating a selfsustaining legacy which puts them in a better position than you were in when you first took on the role.”

Zaid Gardner, General Counsel at Property Finder

Legal ops leading the way

Contracts manager Charmaine Shyu’s metamorphosis to legal ops specialist unequivocally makes her the glue that binds all parts of the in-house team together. “Previously there wasn’t much organization in terms of how the work went from legal to another department to another stakeholder and so on,” she says.“Now, as contracts manager, my work involves a lot on the operations side.”

Charmaine is the team’s tech specialist, and she is proud to have been instrumental in starting up the legal operations facility at Property Finder. She is equally proud of the positive impact that has resulted from the implementation process, and it’s clearly apparent that she is central to how the legal function operates as part of the wider business.

“Legal operations is still quite a new concept, particularly in our [Middle East] region, and while in many larger organizations the role is being handled by two or three people, in our company it’s just me,” she says.

Due to the newness of legal operations, Charmaine still has some challenges to face. Chief among them is an occasional lack of understanding among non-legal peers and colleagues as to what legal ops actually is, and what it brings to the organization.

These are ongoing conversations for Charmaine – both within the legal team itself and with internal clients. While Charmaine might not be a lawyer – she has a paralegal background –neither is she there in an admin capacity, and this is something that she still has to communicate to others. Her specialist knowledge and input into creating well-ordered interactions between legal and the business’s internal and external stakeholders is crucial to the business – and as she continues to make her mark, it’s being noticed.

As a champion of legal ops, another major daily challenge for Charmaine is change management. “Whenever I add new tools or processes to our workflows, whenever I do my weekly check-ins with the team, I’m constantly reminding them to be on top of their game and about the importance of championing our own tech so that the business will follow. We have to be our own role models.”

Charmaine’s attention to detail has earned her a reputation as the enforcer within her team – in the nicest possible way. “They jokingly say that it is nearly impossible to refuse me when I request for something to be done – they know I’m always on their case, making sure that we’re leading by example on tech adoption and use of new workflows. But, honestly, beneath the tough exterior, I’m a friendly face that always has their backs.”

Part of the reason for Charmaine’s regular check-ins with both legal colleagues and internal clients is to ensure that the ageold critique of legal being road blockers will never apply to this team. “I try to get myself involved, especially when the request for our support is a contract. I always encourage and remind my team to loop me in that conversation, so I know what’s going on.”

Charmaine says one of the major strengths of the legal function at Property Finder is the positive dynamic – all members of the team enjoy spending time together, have met each other’s families, and are extremely supportive of each other. “Roles are, to a degree, interchangeable and no one ever says that’s not my job so it’s not my concern.” And if a team member is away or on leave, others are versatile and capable of stepping in and taking over – no questions asked.

Charmaine can look back over her first two years at Property Finder with fulfillment. The legal team has grown, personally and professionally, and the introduction of legal operations to the business is producing widespread and impactful results.

How not-for-profit became a passion with a purpose

by Heather Kidd

Moving from the corporate world into the not-for-profit sector was a leap of faith that has reaped many benefits, personal and professional, for Cancer Council NSW’s General Counsel.

Working for a not-for-profit had never been on Elisabeth (Lis) Flett’s radar. In fact, InView’s newest Champion considered it a no-go zone, something a legal corporate high-flier such as herself should steer clear of at this stage of her career. But when such an opportunity presented itself, and despite Lis initially declining to consider it, something about the role on offer, General Counsel at Cancer Council NSW, sparked a flame that refused to be extinguished.

“The approach came when I was on maternity leave from my role at DP World; my daughter was only four months old. And while I had doubts about returning to my old job as the company was undergoing a major restructuring which would impact my workload and responsibilities, I dismissed the notion of working in the not-for-profit sector at first. I worried that moving away from a corporate role would somehow soften my skills and pigeon-hole me for future roles. I was concerned that the work wouldn’t be complex enough, and that I’d miss the big deals and big figures I was used to working with in heavy industry and infrastructure.”

Lis initially tried to persuade herself that she was the wrong fit for the job, that being a high-performance, high-tempo kind of person didn’t align with not-for-profit. So why did she find herself lying awake for nights on end, her mind whirling with the possibilities the role presented? It was as if her head and her heart were on a collision course – and the impact, when it occurred, was profound. The job was everything and more that she wanted, a way in which she could combine the most important aspects of her life, professional and personal. It was also an opportunity to do law differently, and to carve out her own happy corner of the law where lawyers could

learn and thrive. Within a week, she had gone from dismissing the role to being certain it was right for her. Meetings with management and research into the organization’s mission and achievements removed any doubt that this was an opportunity she just had to have.

It was also an opportunity to do law differently, and to carve out her own happy corner of the law where lawyers could learn and thrive.

Two-and-a-half years on, that same certainty remains. The differences between working in private practice and large corporations and a not-for-profit organization have proved to be positive. “I expected it to be the type of environment where, because of budget constraints, we’d have to scrape by and deliver ‘good enough’ legal work. Instead it’s pushed me to dig deep and really allow me to be creative and resourceful in the ways we deliver best class legal services. What I also hadn’t expected was the expertise I’d encounter. Because Cancer Council’s work is very research-based, I’m surrounded by some incredibly impressive people – data evaluation experts, cancer research experts, epidemiologists – people who’ve worked in public health and government for a long time. It’s not just a collection of people who mean well. We produce world-leading research and programs that create meaningful change in society, such as the latest position taken by the government on vaping, advances to eliminate cervical cancer, our phenomenal contribution to reducing cancer deaths and our in-community services and education that support people living with cancer.”

Research undertaken by Cancer Council is particularly meaningful to Lis. According to the organization, cancer is a common disease and one of the leading causes of death in Australia. It is estimated that one in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of eighty-five.

Elisabeth (Lis) Flett, General Counsel at Cancer Council NSW

Which means that few families escape unscathed by the disease which is the leading cause of death worldwide. When Lis was at university her mother was diagnosed with cancer, which impacted her career choice. She shelved plans to study veterinary science because it would have meant leaving Tasmania while her mother was undergoing treatment, which she wasn’t prepared to do. Instead, she studied science and law at the University of Tasmania. When Lis eventually relocated to Sydney, her mother’s outcome was positive (and although she continues to live with cancer she is doing well).

Finding a job in Sydney wasn’t easy but eventually Lis landed a great in-house role with CSR Limited, a big player in the building material industry. From there she went to a law firm, a move she knew she didn’t want to pursue long-term but was told she had to do for at least three to five years if she wanted to have a long-term career in-house. The cutthroat environment didn’t sit well with her, but she stuck with it for two years until her mother’s cancer diagnosis took another turn. “I could no longer sustain the energy to keep pushing on in private practice. I’d been slowly burning out, but the risk of losing my mum had me questioning what I wanted from life, and at that time I just couldn’t see a sustainable future in the law.”

Deciding to revisit her veterinary ambitions she enrolled at Sydney University’s School of Veterinary Science. However, after a year at university, a friend persuaded her to combine her studies with part-time work as a lawyer for Brookfield GIS – a global building and facilities management company. “I spent two or three days a week working at Brookfield and the remainder of my time out at the uni farm or on prac where I’d be assisting with castrating bulls or working with sheep. It gave me a strange but therapeutic balance, and one always offered something complementary to the other – flexibility, perspective, and the sense that I was doing law on my own terms.”

That year helped Lis to form her future. She realized her skill set was talking to people and problem solving, and that metropolitan living appealed more than rural life. But it was when she was approached by Ruralco Holdings Limited, an ASX-listed agribusiness company, that she felt able to return fully to the law, and decided it was time to give up the dream of becoming a vet.

Over the next decade, Lis took on several demanding jobs –Legal and Corporate Counsel for BGIS, Legal Counsel with Ruralco Holdings Ltd, Legal Counsel at Sydney Metro, and Corporate Counsel at DP World Australia. While change wasn’t always something that she was seeking – returning to work after having her first child prompted a reluctant move away from a much-loved role – changing roles regularly kept her interested and challenged, and deepened her sense of purpose.

“Life’s too short not to give a few things a try,” she says. “When I worked in agribusiness, I loved that I solved problems

for people living in rural Australia and in a sector that I’d formed a close connection to during my vet studies. Now I work in an area where, again, I can connect with the purpose. That connection is really motivating, and it shapes how I now look at work.

“You do have the privilege of being able to be more selective about your choices the further on you get in your career, so I appreciate that early career lawyers need to do whatever comes along to get experience. But later, when you’re making decisions about where you want to spend your time, you have the opportunity to follow your heart or to follow your head. If you can align the two, that’s where I believe you can really thrive. These days, what informs my decision making is asking myself, do I connect with the purpose? Even if the money and the type of work is attractive, if I can’t connect with the business, with its purpose, or if it’s going to take away from what I value the most – family – then it’s not going to work out for me. And I know I’m not going to consider certain roles because of that.”

Here Lis digs deeper, explaining that her decisions aren’t based on judgment [of the role or the business] but rather on the inherent connection – that spark. Having found it and loving how it has ignited her passion for what she does, she now realizes there is no turning back.

Being uniquely you in an industry that would have you believe that fitting in is the secret to success is not just okay, it’s actually your superpower.

“I feel energized by what I’m doing, and I’ve got that perfect balance between doing interesting and complex corporate work, in a highly driven and purposeful environment. It plays to my strengths, but has also opened up some great learning and development opportunities. Never having led or run a legal team before, I’ve been able to put into practice my values through my leadership style. I’ve learned that I can get excellent results by leading through empathy and by example, that I get the best out of people by valuing them for who they are and what they uniquely contribute. And I’m proud to be able to do that.”

And while Lis says working for a not-for-profit hasn’t changed her, she admits it has helped her to flourish personally in her work environment. It has been and continues to be a validating and confidence-boosting experience. “Being uniquely you in an industry that would have you believe that fitting in is the secret to success is not just okay, it’s actually your superpower.”

Legal leaders must embrace and adapt to rapid change

by Marija Barbarich

Continuous learning is the key to coping with a profession undergoing a seismic shift in the way it conducts its business.

“We’re now at a crossroads – adapt quickly or risk becoming irrelevant,” is not a warning Seshani Bala, General Counsel at KPMG, issues lightly. She points out that historically legal has been immune from change – and immune for a long time –but the time taken to carefully assess, deliberate, and slowly adjust to change no longer applies. These days, time is literally of the essence.

Seshani says that change, in the form of technology and AI, is something legal leaders must get on board with quickly.

“While there's thought leadership we can turn to, and the small amount of evolving guidance, it’s really down to exercising our critical thinking and judgment to navigate the change and adapt.”

And regardless of whether you're a leader or aspiring to be one, if you can’t bring critical thinking and judgment to your advice and decision making, you’re not going to be delivering much value to your business or stakeholders.

Generative AI is playing an incredibly important role already, although guidelines and regulations around it remain a work in progress. So, how best to prepare ourselves for this fastpaced environment and boost our critical thinking skills at a time when it feels like we are expected to fly the plane while building it? The answer is in continuous learning.

Seshani Bala, General Counsel at KPMG

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.”

As Anthony J D’Angelo said, “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” Continuous learning provides us with the ability to explore and gain new perspectives. By continually challenging ourselves with new material and ideas, we are able to expand our scope of critical thinking, and knowledge.

“Expanding your exposure to diverse perspectives, a wide spectrum of ethical dilemmas and a diverse array of data, scenarios, risks and opportunities can significantly enhance your ability to develop robust judgment and cultivate your critical thinking skills,” explains Seshani.

From a leadership perspective, Seshani says it’s on leaders to model the behavior they want to see in their people – if they see you prioritizing your learning, being curious and intentional with what and how you choose to learn and putting your hand up to say I don’t know much about that, but I’m going to find out more and get across it, they will too. “Reward people for the behavior you want to encourage in them. Reward them for continuous learning, reward them for being innovative and experimenting, reward them for challenging the status quo and doing things differently. Remember that learning doesn’t have to be a chore – it can be fun, and it keeps things interesting. As leaders, we have a real opportunity to make learning less boring!”

For Seshani, facilitating this involves having routine discussions collectively with her team and peers – whether they’re in other functions of the business or in her network – to share and discuss new learnings and insights. Asking others what they are experimenting with and continuously sharing resources such as thought leadership material she subscribes to or podcasts she’s listened to (and seeking the same from her peers) is also her common practice.

And while the concept seems simple, Seshani says the starting point is to identify how you learn best as an individual – something she encourages each of her team to understand and articulate. This means they’re better equipped to access and digest materials and information that will stick. For example, if you’re a visual or auditory learner, infographics, online courses, webinars and podcasts might be perfect for you, or if you’re a kinaesthetic learner, then you learn and retain information best through doing and being actively engaged. Seek interactive learning options that include experiments and practical application.

There is a catch, however. “You have to be smart with your time,” Seshani advises. “Time to learn will never magically appear in your schedule, so part of managing your workload is to consistently prioritize and dedicate the time – at whatever point in your day works. What matters most is that you just do it, as small and consistent efforts can make a big impact.”

Parallel to this is the practical element of learning, the doing. Fortunately, nowadays you can access webinars, podcasts and video materials all on the go. “As with time, we’ve got to be smart about our learning. For example, I listen to podcasts while I’m on the move, it’s my way of keeping up while I’m commuting,” says Seshani. Second to this is micro-learning, scheduling bite-sized chunks of learning into your day. “Gone are the days of needing to spend a few hours to qualify your time as learning. You can do it in as little as fifteen minutes (which is why Ted Talks are all fourteen minutes),” she explains.

Most importantly, Seshani says, “No one can put knowledge in your head. You have to be curious, and you have to be intentional about it.”

The key is in prioritizing with intention how your time is best spent in gearing yourself and your team up to embrace and adapt to rapid change through learning. “What’s the worst that could happen? The worst is that you stay stagnant and become obsolete. And that’s probably the one thing you don’t want to happen.”

“Learning doesn’t have to be a chore – it can be fun, and it keeps things interesting. As leaders, we have a real opportunity to make learning less boring!”

Seshani is firm on the importance of adaptability, improvising and continuous learning, and her reasons speak to the future challenges Generative AI will create: “It’s going to be humans plus machines, and not one or the other. We need to take our people on that journey and reshift their skills – that’s the challenging part of organizations, it’s a behavioral and change management challenge, not just a technological one.”

Top tips to prevent burnout

by Karen Nimmo

It’s 6pm Friday and your employee is in your office in tears. She says she has far too much to do, hasn’t got enough support, and is exhausted. At home, her relationship is on the verge of breaking up.

You want to be an empathetic team leader, but you’re stretched to capacity yourself  –  so is your whole team. It looks like a bad case of burnout. Should you have seen it coming?

With burnout rates climbing, it’s an increasing challenge for leaders in a legal environment with rising demands and fewer resources. Even if your team is running smoothly, it’s likely one or more will be struggling due to other stress in their lives. In fact, it’s frequently a life issue (such as a relationship breakup, worries about kids or money) that tips a stressed employee into the red-light zone.

I call it the Perfect Storm  –  when work and life stress collide.

Burnout is the official term for chronic work stress. It can strike anyone, but overwhelming workloads, lack of clarity, a disconnect from values and a lack of support are the most common triggers.

The symptoms look similar to those of mild depression  –sleep problems, fatigue and lethargy, low motivation, persistent low mood, irritability, exaggerated emotional responses, disinterest in favourite activities and people  –  nothing feels like fun anymore.

Because stigma still exists around mental health difficulties, many prefer a label of burnout over depression: it’s easier to tell your boss you are burnt out or highly stressed than you are mentally unwell.

Both burnout and depression are often not recognized until symptoms escalate, but the difference is that burnout tends to be (or should be) a more temporary condition. A decent break/ rest, a change in the work environment or lifestyle, often lifts the symptoms.

A burnout diagnosis isn’t cause for panic. It’s just an alert system for mind and body: Hey, something needs to change here or I’m taking you down a more serious path.

3 warning signs of burnout

Most experts agree on the three key warning signs:

1. Physical and emotional exhaustion

2. Feeling detached from, and cynical about, work and your contribution

3. Falloff in performance. This is often the last one to show up; it’s surprising how long people can work at high levels when they are emotionally and physically run down.

Before burnout takes hold

Burnout is a reality in a stretched environment and team leaders can’t be expected to anticipate every case. But early intervention and reduction are good aims. Here are some tips to help.

Monitor workload –  how many tasks are staff doing and is it a fair and reasonable workload?

Know what’s going on at home – life events are often the tipping point. If you understand your people’s lives, you’ll understand them. And the more they will appreciate you and support your leadership.

Provide clarity around roles  –  uncertainty around expectations is one of the most common complaints. Be clear and specific on what’s expected of them, including timelines.

Keep your door open –  keep everyone up to date with what’s going on. Don’t spring surprises. Be available (within reason) to listen to their problems or provide other support, such as a mentor.

Allow autonomy where you can –  this is why WFH and hybrid work have been so popular. When people feel they have some control over their lives, they are happier.

Make them feel valuable –  genuine specific praise for their contribution fosters goodwill towards you and the company.

Encourage down time –  everyone loves downtime but not everyone wants to socialize with the team. Try to match your offers of downtime with their preferences.

Model healthy habits –  even if you have a huge capacity for work, show your team that you approach work (and life) in a healthy way.

Above all, check in on your work environment. You can’t control all that goes on in people’s lives, but you can promote healthy habits and a supportive workplace culture.

Karen Nimmo is a clinical psychologist and life coach. She specializes in high performance psychology.

Burnout symptoms

Burnout symptoms are well documented. But here are those I most often see in my clients. Remember, some of these on any given day is normal. But a persistent cluster of them? Take note.

Your sleep is erratic (or more than usual) and even deep sleep isn’t refreshing. You want to nap more but naps leave you groggy.

Your brain feels either wired and spinning  –  or cloudy and dull.

You have unexplainable physical aches and pains.

You worry excessively. Your worry latches onto a range of things, and you can’t shake it.

Your concentration and focus is poor. You’re easily distracted, and you may waste a lot of time online, randomly scrolling.

You feel slightly disconnected from your key people.

Your negativity dial is wound up; other people and your environment drive you crazy. You start seeing the gloomy side of most situations.

You feel increasingly emotionally reactive  –  even when you don’t need to be. You get wound up more quickly.

You feel like you’re stuck, what’s up ahead doesn’t sparkle  –  it looks grey. Activities you were looking forward to feel like a chore.

You feel dread when going into work.

You drink more alcohol, you exercise less.

You are more irritable than usual with your partner/kids.

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

The human lawyer: Overcoming outdated norms

by Heather Kidd

Kate Tyers believes that professional and personal wellbeing should never be mutually exclusive. We spoke to her about the importance of casting off unhealthy industry norms and of cultivating self-belief for herself and those she leads.

It’s not difficult to see why Kate Tyers, Global Director of Legal – Operations at Ricardo PLC, keenly advocates for those in her profession to cast off entrenched and outdated legal norms and embrace change. Her pathway to a legal career was strewn with what might be regarded as potential roadblocks, and which many in the legal fraternity don’t have to navigate: state school educated, Birmingham born of parents who worked in the public sector with no legal industry contacts. Oh, and throw into the mix her Midlands ‘northern’ accent.

But despite these obstacles, and despite her own admission that she never expected to become a lawyer – “it wasn’t my destiny” – she did in fact become one. In 2008 she graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from Newcastle University, after which she did the University of Law Legal Practice Course part time, juggling study with work – the job a necessity so she had enough money to pay her fees – and she qualified in 2014.

Her dedication and patience were rewarded when she got what she terms the “golden ticket”, a training contract on England’s south coast working for a medium-sized law firm.

“In my opinion, it was better than being with a London law firm. We carried out London-style work but because there were fewer trainees we were more involved in the work. The firm made a big deal about its trainees being very involved and getting exposure to good-quality work, so that they were set up for success upon qualification. We came

away with possibly more readiness to be a legal advisor than most of our peers in the City.”

After completing her training in 2014, she moved immediately in-house, accepting a newly qualified position for a startup, and over the next decade she has remained in-house, taking on roles as a Legal Counsel, Head of Legal, General Counsel, and she is now Global Director of Legal – Operations at Ricardo PLC.

Opting to grow a legal career following an in-house trajectory might strike many in her profession as a high-risk strategy, but Kate has no regrets. “I knew early on that I didn’t want to stay in a law firm environment and that I wanted to go in-house. At the law firm, we had quite a few almost quasi-in-house clients and I liked dealing with and getting to know a client well. And it also gave me the opportunity to develop a good rapport with the sales function.

“Part of choosing to work in-house was wanting to be involved from start to finish rather than being drafted in to solve a problem. Getting to know a business well, where you’re more than just a legal advisor, that is what I enjoy.”

Neither is Kate a fan of the competitive environment fostered by private practice. “Over the years I have observed that there can be an unhealthy rather than a supportive competitiveness. The way law firms are set up can mean that partners are so emotional about their ‘baby’ i.e. the firm. It’s therefore difficult to tell them when their baby is ‘ugly’ or needs improvement. There’s a real entrenchment of thought in some firms still that the partners are very superior and that junior lawyers will all bow down to them. It’s not helpful for the profession and it doesn’t foster an environment where people can thrive.”

Being a decent human being, one who is not afraid to show her feelings and is able to demonstrate empathy, is important to Kate. She’s an advocate of soft skills – what she refers to as power skills or human skills – and says they are key attributes

“Part of choosing to work in-house was wanting to be involved from start to finish rather than being drafted in to solve a problem. Getting to know a business well, where you’re more than just a legal advisor, that is what I enjoy.”

for in-house personnel. “Lawyers are expected to have IQ but it’s hard to teach the curiosity mindset, which is critical. As lawyers, we need to be curious about what we’re doing, problem solving and so on, and EQ [emotional quotient] is also a massive part of our role these days – showing the more human side of leadership.”

That human side of Kate isn’t afraid to admit that working 24/7 is not for her and it’s something she actively discourages. “It’s not effective and it can mean that your output is actually lower.”

The perception that lawyers are robots, that they don’t have lives outside of work because they love their work so much, is a notion she’s eager to dispel. Having a family life, an active life, a social life or enjoying a glass of wine should not be about stolen moments or guilty pleasures.

When it comes to work, Kate is a fan of the traffic light (or red, amber, and green) approach. “If it’s an emergency and you need to get something done there and then that’s okay. Otherwise let people have a work-life balance and let’s get away from the ‘I was working all night last night’ scenario. You are not an effective employee if you haven’t got a life outside of work – and you’re a long time dead – so, enjoy life.

“I’d much rather somebody bashed out work in sensible hours during the day and then went home instead of participating in presenteeism, where they might churn out the work to start with, but then it drops off because people are simply not effective after working for a long period of time. We need to change the message – it should be more about balance, enjoying life and not working all of it.

“In the Ricardo Legal Team we’re about working to strike a balance, resetting expectations and making sure our employees are in the ‘thrive zone’ as that’s where they are most effective, successful and produce higher output.”

Kate Tyers, Legal Director at Ricardo PLC

Mastering the art of public speaking

by Sarah Barker

Seasoned in-house lawyer and podcast host Sanam Ahmadzadeh Salmani knows how to win over the toughest of crowds – but she

hasn’t always found the limelight easy.

When Sanam tells people she’s a lawyer, she’s sometimes met with a raised eyebrow or two. Outgoing and bubbly, her energy and humor is infectious; far from the solemn suit-andbriefcase legal stereotype. But make no mistake – Sanam is a force to be reckoned with. When she’s not advising as a full-time in-house lawyer for software company Employment Hero, she’s hosting and producing Law Lenz, New Zealand’s go-to employment law podcast and Sanam’s passion project which she single-handedly launched late last year.

Sanam spoke to us about why public speaking is such a critical skill for in-house lawyers, and why so many of us still shy away from it. She also shared her winning tips for becoming a more confident communicator in-house – even if you’re not naturally that way inclined!

It’s OK to speak up

There’s no denying it – not all lawyers are born extroverts. In fact, many of us are introverts by nature, most comfortable expressing ourselves through the safety of the written word. And while this is an easy explanation for the aversion that many of us feel towards standing in front of a crowd, Sanam believes it goes deeper than that. “To some extent, it’s an institutionally learned behavior. As lawyers, we’re still expected to present in a certain manner,” she reflects. “Solemn and serious.”

“You can be both the loudest and the smartest person in the room – the two aren’t mutually exclusive!”

However, Sanam says, in the context of the modern in-house department, the reality is that it doesn’t matter how strong your legal insights are if you can’t communicate them in a dynamic way. This is one of the biggest hurdles for lawyers moving in-house from private practice – as our roles shift from black letter law towards delivering strategic advice, we are called upon to synthesize information and offer clear solutions, not lengthy legal jargon.

Sanam Ahmadzadeh Salmani, Founder at Law Lenz

“Most of us have someone who we report to, whether it’s our GC or reporting partner, and it’s our job to communicate with them in a way that actually lands,” says Sanam. For her, getting this right is the foundation of public speaking – and it’s a skill that none of us can afford to be without.

Read the room

Growing up in an Indian family, pressure to perform was par for the course throughout Sanam’s childhood. But as an adult, she quickly realized that standing in front of a room full of strangers wasn’t a particularly comfortable experience. “I thought it would come naturally to me like it did when I was young, but that definitely wasn’t the case!”

“I have been in front of the toughest crowds imaginable – audiences who don’t even crack a smile.”

One of Sanam’s first speaking gigs as a lawyer was a challenging affair. She recalls the experience with a degree of horror. “I got up there, chirped ‘Hi everyone!’... and the response was tumbleweed. I realized that I needed to reassess the room – and fast.” She had learned one of the first lessons of public speaking: getting a read on your audience is everything.

Be adaptable

Sanam’s advice – with the benefit of hindsight? “Take your audience as they are, not how you wish they were,” she says. Remember, in-house lawyers deal with a wide range of stakeholders, and no matter who you’re speaking to, it’s important not to cling to rigid expectations. “I managed to salvage that gig by riffing on the audience until gradually, people started to loosen off a bit,” she recalls. “Things aren’t always going to land as well for some as they do for others, and that’s OK. If something doesn’t land, reflect and adjust so that things go more smoothly next time.”

Of course, there’s a balance to be struck. Knowing your audience beforehand reduces the chances that you’ll need to pivot. For Sanam, this is where tailoring your content is key. “What sectors are you catering for?” she asks. “Don’t lecture a room full of healthcare professionals on employment law without acknowledging that they have collective agreements!” She also advocates caution when it comes to assuming prior knowledge. “It’s a mistake to take understanding for granted –even just the basics. It’s a surefire way to alienate people.”

Choose your tools wisely

As Sanam speaks, a theme emerges: keeping your audience onside is critical to creating a positive speaking experience. To this end, Sanam says, the way you deliver your content is just as important as what you actually say. This is a common pitfall for liability-conscious lawyers: “We tend to feel that we

must cover everything in great detail, because we fear that there might be professional consequences for giving incorrect information or missing something out.”

This often leads us to fall back on crutches like busy PowerPoint slides, which are overwhelming and difficult to digest in real time. Sanam’s advice is bold – she recommends cutting any visual cues down to their bare bones, using visuals and humor where appropriate. For her, this achieves two goals at once. “You’ll deliver a super-succinct message whilst prompting people to engage and start considering the nuances of the subject themselves.

“Don’t be afraid to add your own flair – humor, gifs and memes all have their place, and you can use them without diminishing your message.”

Comfort is another thing that often gets overlooked. Sanam recalls a networking event during which she sat in a crowded, hot and stuffy room for hours on end. “Not once did they give us the chance to get up and move!” Nowadays, she makes a point of checking in with her audience and getting them up and out of their chairs. “Doing this right off the bat can set a completely different tone for the event and go a long way towards winning people over.”

It’s a process

Sanam’s final piece of advice is that learning to speak in public is a process. Practice makes perfect, and there’s always positive learnings to be taken from even the most painful attempts. Sanam comes across as supremely confident in her webinars – but her challenge at the moment is repeating the same word twice in a row by accident. The only way to fix it, she says, is to rinse and repeat.

“The one thing you cannot do is get demotivated and let your doubt show – just pick yourself up, make a joke of it, and keep going.”

And for in-house lawyers who are still dreading that speaking engagement, her advice is to simply begin with one-on-one. “Start with your reporting partners, your GC. Every time I speak to my Head of Legal, I know my job is to communicate clearly and effectively. There should be no deviations or need for what do you mean by this or that? Once you are confident in your ability to do this, it should translate to a larger audience – you just have more eyes looking at you!”

For some of us, the truth is that public speaking will never be something that we actively pursue. And Sanam is emphatic that that’s ok. “But the better your communication skills, the more you’ll be able to let your authentic self shine through when the time arises – and it’ll become something you know you can handle!”

Organizational culture and leadership

by Philippa Miskelly

Long-held leadership models are being challenged by changing attitudes within the workplace.

Culture is a concept which has a variety of meanings depending on the situations it is applied to – for example: ethnicity, behavior (acting in a ‘cultural’ manner), identity, art (high or popular culture), social groups (such as youth culture), locations, as well as workplaces and organizations. Studies into culture used to be focused on ‘the other’, anthropologists in particular seeking out population groups who were considered different from their own. However, since the mid twentieth century there has been a movement which has seen the research gaze turn inward, attempting to reach a deeper understanding of what culture means and the role it plays in shaping the attitudes, values and behaviors of our own communities or groups of people. Organizational culture is a facet of this inward gaze and is a concept that runs through many sectors: education, health, law, public and government bureaucracies, to name a few, as well as the business community.

The culture of an organization was once seen as pivotal in terms of improving efficiency and productivity; also encouraging team spirit, corporate pride, and employee morale. Direction (or manipulation) of culture within the workplace setting was considered the domain of management and those in leadership positions. However, the idea of what form leadership should take is now being challenged as we move away from production-based economies to those which are knowledge-based.

Let’s take an example. Henry Ford’s assembly line mass production of vehicles (which began in 1913) proved highly successful and lucrative. This was predicated largely on a hierarchical leadership model – a boss, foremen, and workers. Each group knew their role and direction was taken from the top. It was a model that worked at the time because tasks were clearly defined and often repetitive.

However, knowledge-based businesses which are found within environments such as education, legal, health, and technology are heavily reliant on expertise gained through extensive education, research as well as practical experience.

The idea of what form leadership should take is now being challenged as we move away from production-based economies to those which are knowledge-based.

These economic and business environments are often complex because of interconnecting networks of professional groups as well as dynamic and evolving systems which can be fast-paced and need to be able to react to changes by governments and professional regulatory bodies as well as market forces. One way to meet these challenges is by adopting a different approach to leadership which encourages “innovation, evolution and learning”1 whereby organizational leadership is less hierarchical.

Complexity theorists are challenging the idea of hierarchical leadership, arguing that because a high proportion of knowledge-based businesses and organizations comprise a well-educated and articulate workforce, a different model is needed. Think of a woven rug or a tapestry – it comprises different strands, materials, thicknesses, and colors. Once all these interconnected components are pulled together, a pattern emerges. Organizations adopting a ‘flatter’ leadership model are a bit like this.

Michael Arena and Mary Ul-Bien describe how businesses usually comprise two systems: an operational one as well as an entrepreneurial one. Tension between these two can occur, especially if a hierarchical leadership model exists. However, if a ‘flatter, woven’ leadership model is utilized it

Encouraging employees to share responsibility for setting up networks and lines of communication to cut across organizational silos, can result in an increasingly dynamic and innovative workplace.

provides opportunity for what they term an adaptive space to be created. This is where the cross-fertilization of ideas can emerge and flourish. It is the role of leaders to manage this adaptive space, creating an organizational culture which enables employees to build their own networks where they feel able to put ideas forward which are then discussed and debated.

Knowledge-based work environments, with their inherent complexities, can utilize flatter leadership models to disrupt the status quo. Instead of being hamstrung by directives

from a top-down approach, (which can quickly become obsolete), encouraging employees to share responsibility for setting up networks and lines of communication to cut across organizational silos, can result in an increasingly dynamic and innovative workplace.

The culture of an organization depends on its leadership style. An environment encouraging employees to share ideas is less likely to inhibit innovation. Instead, it provides a platform for energy and momentum, a contest of ideas, problem-solving, learning, and growth along the ability to quickly adapt to changing market forces and regulations.

Philippa Miskelly is a health researcher and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology.

1Boulton J., Allen M. & Bowman C. (2015). Embracing complexity: strategic perspectives for an age of turbulence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.29.