Episódios
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TrackUnit's General Counsel, Thomas Christiansen, joins the Inspiring Legal studio! We're talking about being the first Legal hire, how to educate the rest of the business, how to help Sales, and how being agile in a small company helps you get ahead.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:34] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Welcome to this episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:34 - 00:51] My name is Stine and I'm a part of Openli. And today I'm going to be joined by Thomas Christensen, who is going to introduce himself in a second. But before he does that, I can just already now give you a sneak little kind of advertiser as to what we're going to be talking about today.
[00:51 - 01:11] Because Thomas has been on a journey with the company Track Unit. And that has been quite the impressive journey going for, well, growing across many countries. On top of that, growing himself, being the first one in legal and how that has impacted the culture.
[01:11 - 01:31] Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. Welcome, Thomas. Thank you, Stine. Nice to join you. Well, it's us thanking you for being here. Thomas, I know a little bit about you and your company, but the listeners might not. So maybe could you give an introduction to who you are and your background.
[01:31 - 01:47] And maybe also Track Unit, just so that people get to know a little bit more. Oh, yeah, for sure. So, yes, and yeah, you're correct. I was the first legal in Track Unit. I have a background first from corporate law. So, well, in Denmark, we have a split.
[01:47 - 02:03] You have corporate law and ordinary law. So my first education was a candidacy in our masters in corporate law. I did do a normal law, so to speak, afterwards. So I have both. And that's my educational background.
[02:03 - 02:20] And I've had a little bit of a diverse kind of career to go into it. I actually started working for a university as a kind of a, what is it, department head at an administrative level for a center. Working with teleinfrastructure, which is suddenly where I ended up afterwards also.
[02:20 - 02:36] But that was not the trajectory I was set out to be. So I left them after three years working into a company that was a bit of a startup working within, well, a lot of legal work, mostly focused on employment law. That was bought by a union, a Danish union called Krifa.
[02:36 - 02:56] And then I worked for them for about three years after they bought and merged it into their organization. So I learned a lot about employment law there. Didn't really feel that that was my plan for my future. So I heard about a small Danish company that was just been acquired by Goldman Sachs and Grow Capital at that point.
[02:56 - 03:12] And that sounded very interesting to kind of move out and be in an in-house legal. So I started there in May 16, I believe it was, which is a long time ago for most people. But yes, so that was my kind of introduction into the work in track unit.
[03:12 - 03:29] Track unit is a company that does fleet management. We are a software company, have a hardware component as well, enables us to collect data, have roughly about one and a half million units deployed all over the world, collecting data in construction.
[03:29 - 03:49] So it is the construction world that is our main focus. So we call it off highway. And our purpose in the entire company is actually to eliminate downtime, which is one of the biggest issues for our industry. And plays a lot into the legal over, by the way, we like to optimize, we like to be efficient, we like to make things in the best possible way.
[03:49 - 04:05] And it's a not so digitized world that we are trying to help digitize and actually make use of data. And as we also spoke a little bit before the podcast, as well, being open about data and what you can use it for to help pretty much the industry. And we see a lot of traction in that.
[04:05 - 04:30] Recently been acquired by HG Capital, so Goldman Sachs. So the PE journey, private equity journey is also part of, let me say, my internal education, so to speak. It has been quite a journey going from a, let's say, a normal eight to four job to be owned by a big conglomerate PE bank that has some requirements, not just on the legal side, but also the compliance side.
[04:30 - 04:46] So it has been a how to build this structure in a, let's call it a small North Jutland company, maybe not used to too much legal. And well, trying to see how you actually gain a role of being a trusted partner as a legal person.
[04:46 - 05:04] So, Thomas, when you joined the company, you were their first legal hire. I was. How did you kind of go about educating the CEO and the CFO about, hey, I'm the new guy.
[05:04 - 05:20] I'm the one who helps with legal. And what does that even mean? So how did you do that? And what were your learnings from it? I would say I was a little bit naive when I started. I had like a big idea about now I have to build structure.
[05:20 - 05:37] I'm going to teach these people how to do legal, how to do everything in the right way. Very quickly, I learned software is definitely not a place where you build structure. It's where you need to be agile. So that's one of my big learnings. If you're in a company, and maybe even as the first one, I used to, well, I'm inspired by a few other legal people.
[05:37 - 05:58] So I call it building walls. I can't build boxes. I can build walls. And within those walls, they can pretty much pounce as they want. I'm just making sure we don't end up in places where we go to jail or get big fines or, well, get into media trouble or anything else. That's pretty much my main task is keeping us within these walls, both compliance and legal-wise.
[05:58 - 06:25] And I had to learn to forget about the boxes and just say, well, I'll keep us in line, but I'll help kind of impact the business on the best possible way. And I think the journey is mainly, well, all the legal business will know that we have a tendency to be always in a little bit of conflict with our salespeople because they see us, well, we are slow, we're a bottleneck.
[06:25 - 06:43] We do everything to kind of stop the commercial journey. And just convincing them, no, that's not what we're doing. It's actually enabling you to do things in a correct way. And I think, well, it took a few years, but I would say that our legal actually appreciate the legal department now.
[06:43 - 07:12] So sales help, legal help sales. But yes, educating everybody, including CEOs. I think from what I've heard from others, but also my own personal experience is that when you start as the first legal hire, it's a lot about not only building processes, but it's a lot about getting people to know what you can use legal for, how legal can support and be a business player.
[07:12 - 07:29] But at the same time, it's also a find balance in regards to you also need to build walls. You need to protect the business. So can you maybe just tell a little bit about how did you get started? Like, how did you go about that journey? Yeah, for sure.
[07:29 - 07:45] It's a, I'm a big fan of the book, The Trusted Advisor. It has a very good trust equation because w... -
The privacy landscape is moving fast these days, and increasingly so. That's why we're dedicating the following weeks fully to privacy here at Inspiring Legal. Stine Tornmark will take you through what you need to know and what's on the horizon for digital privacy.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript: [00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:38] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. So welcome to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:38 - 00:54] My name is Stine and I am a CEO and co-founder of Openli. But what I'm also is a passionate person when it comes to privacy. I strongly believe that privacy is a fundamental human right.
[00:54 - 01:12] And it's not to put myself on a pedestal, but it's just to say my life. It's as much online as it is offline. That's just the name of the game today. With chat DBT and what's going on now with AI, well, that's only going to increase.
[01:13 - 01:29] So in this little episode, I'm going to be talking about data. I'm going to be talking about transferring data from the EU to the US. It doesn't sound super interesting, but I'm sorry to say it's impacting
[01:29 - 01:45] you and your life every single day. You might not be on Facebook, you might not use Google, but you will most likely either use Instagram, you might use Apple.
[01:45 - 02:05] Well, they're all US-based companies. So when I'm talking about data and I'm talking about data transfers, I'm talking about your everyday life because American tech companies are de facto in our lives and that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but take a step back.
[02:05 - 02:26] What is it that I'm really talking about? Well, in the EU, we have GDPR, right? We see it as a fundamental human right. The right for you to own your data. In the US, up until now, the focus has been very much about the companies owning data.
[02:27 - 02:46] We're seeing more legislation coming from the US, for example, in California with the CCPA, but we don't have the same standards yet anyway. What we're also seeing is a very strong intelligence agency in the US that have
[02:46 - 03:06] far-reaching rights to access your data, to use it in whatever way that they deem appropriate or not appropriate, but for whatever means they want the data. So therefore, there has been a lot of decisions over the last couple of years
[03:06 - 03:25] with Strems 2, if you've heard about that, the privacy shield falling apart, and all due to the fact that the US didn't provide the same level of protection. So what we then got was a period of time where everybody was running around
[03:26 - 03:41] and not knowing what to do. Then we got the SECs, that's the transfer mechanism enabling businesses to send data between the EU and the US, but that in itself isn't enough. You need to have additional safety measures.
[03:41 - 04:01] You need to make sure that your data is safe. So many kind of thought, okay, let's try and see if we can figure that one out. Not easy in any way. And I'm not promoting the only service, but that is a part of what it is that we're doing, trying to really help with that transfers element, as many of
[04:01 - 04:18] the things we're doing. But what we then saw is Google Analytics getting in trouble. It started in Austria. And what happened was that the Austrian data protection authorities found that there wasn't additional, the safety wasn't good enough.
[04:18 - 04:37] Transfers of data was happening, IP addresses and so forth in clear text. Big issue. Therefore, they kind of like said, Google Analytics violating GDPR, therefore, you can't use it. We then saw that the EU was also doing a lot of things that were not
[04:37 - 04:54] you can't use it. We then saw that spreading out. Moving to Italy, moving to France, moving to Denmark and the EDPB, that's the European Data Protection Board, issued a statement saying, this is an issue.
[04:55 - 05:15] So everybody started looking at, okay, I need to change. I need to find an alternative to Google Analytics. That's an episode we could take kind of like on its own, I know, but let's just focus on the transfers for today. So everybody, I think many were thinking, okay, we'll get a solution from the
[05:15 - 05:32] politicians. They will figure out a way for us to send data. They will create a framework and we're still waiting for that because the Biden administration came out not that long ago and saying, well, we're getting closer. We're going to get some kind of transfer in place.
[05:33 - 05:49] What Mark Schrems did, and that's the Austrian data protection, let's call it, I don't know what to call him. He is not an activist, but he's also, they're kind of like a non-profit
[05:49 - 06:10] organization enforcing GDPR and privacy rights. Well, he kind of came out and said, well, that's going to be lipstick on a pig. Meaning, don't expect this to solve anything anytime soon. So everybody kind of like still hope and anticipate that we might be seeing some
[06:10 - 06:29] kind of change with the authorities in Europe and the US coming into some kind of agreement. Yeah, well, then comes meta, meaning Facebook. For many years, it's been the Irish regulators that have been responsible for
[06:29 - 06:45] enforcing privacy when it comes to Facebook because Facebook has their European headquarters, if we can call that, in Ireland. So many have been talking back and forth about the Irish data protection agency
[06:45 - 07:00] not being that enforceful. And I'm not trying to do any kind of conspiracy. I'm not saying that whether or not they're good, but given the fact that the Irish have a lot of tech companies, at least the Irish data protection agency
[07:00 - 07:17] has a lot of things they should be looking for. So what happened was that the European data protection board, which is composed of data protection regulators from each member state in Europe, they get together
[07:18 - 07:33] on a regular basis and they figure out on a European level, because it's one law, right? It's the GDPR applied to the entire Europe. They figure out what they think in different areas. And they have now issued a statement when it comes to Facebook.
[07:34 - 07:53] So what did they say? Well, we don't know exactly because they haven't made that statement public, like the decision, but they made a statement. And what they said was the Irish regulators have one month, one month to get things
[07:53 - 08:09] going when it comes to Facebook. And it is anticipated that there will be a ban of transfers between the EU and the US in regards to Meta Facebook.
[08:10 - 08:30] In that regard, I can mention that Facebook has been going out publicly and warning if there will be such a ban. They might be forced to close down Facebook in Europe. Boom. So when I'm talking about Facebook and I'm talking about transfers, I am talking
[08:30 - 08:48] about potentially far reaching implications. Imagine Facebook closed in Europe, closed up. Because of transfers. So if you're sitting there and thinking, why is she talking about those bloody transfers?
[08:49 - 09:05] I'm talking about you not having access to Facebook and you might be sitting there and thinking, OK... -
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Today, we take another dive into Legal Operations. This time, we explore and discuss with Heineken's Legal Operations Manager, Sean Houston. We'll get into the how and why of legal ops with Sean, who also shares his journey from tech to ultimately joining Heineken in The Netherlands.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community. Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
My name is Stine and I'm your host. It's not going to be me talking today because I have a guest on the podcast that knows so much more about legal operations than I do. Sean is joining us and you'll hear from him in a second.
But before we get Sean's introduction, I can tell you already now, we're going to be talking about legal operations. More specifically, covering the baseline of what is legal operations. And then Sean is going to help us get smarter on what type of background
and skills should you have when working with legal operations. Welcome, Sean. Hi, Stine. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for joining. We are super excited about you joining because, well, not only do you have
a lot of experience within legal operations, you have also really built that work and that topic for companies that are, well, in many views, big and doing a lot of great things and great work. So, Sean, before we start talking about legal operations,
could you maybe just tell people a little bit about who you are and your background and the company you work for and what you do? Sure. So my name is Sean Houston. I am legal operations manager here at Heineken. I'm a legal operations manager at Heineken.
I'm a legal operations manager at Heineken. I am legal operations manager here at Heineken, based at our headquarters in Amsterdam. I'm originally from the US, born and raised. I relocated to Ireland, was living in Ireland with my wife for about four years
and then relocated here to the Netherlands for this position with Heineken back in the summer of 2021. So coming up on two years as we record this today. It's been a very good experience so far.
And yeah, this legal ops journey, so to speak, in this field of legal ops is one that I'm particularly very interested in and happy to talk about with you today. So maybe before we start talking more specifically,
how did you get into legal operations and how did you end up in Europe? Yeah, so I think that'll probably be something, you know, over the course of this conversation, we probably come back to quite often, but there is no like very clear defined path that someone must take
to wind up in legal ops or, you know, wind up in a position like the one that I'm in here with Heineken. So for me personally, I didn't even know what legal ops was, you know, let's say five or six years ago.
So my background, I actually went to university for broadcast journalism and particularly was interested in that for sports journalism. So I was a play-by-play broadcaster for a few different baseball teams
in the US doing the play-by-play and commentating on the games as they took place. And I did that for a little over, right around six years and then decided that I didn't necessarily want to do that
for the rest of my life. I had enjoyed it a lot. It was a wonderful experience, but, you know, I guess I realized I preferred being a fan of sports more than anything else. And when you work in something, you can't really also be a fan of it. It's difficult.
So anyway, for various reasons, I moved away from the broadcast journalism side and I pivoted into working in software and technology. It was also something I'd always had an interest in and found very,
you know, let's say fun and inspiring. And I also saw, you know, a significant, let's say bright future in that industry because, you know, I don't think anything in terms of technology is going away. It's just going to continue to grow and grow and grow.
So anyway, I pivoted into that and did that for several years. First based in Austin, Texas, then with my wife, we moved to Ireland. I continued working for a few different companies there. And then most recently, before joining Heineken,
I was in at a base at a company, an Irish startup named Bright Flag. And Bright Flag is a legal tech startup. And so that was kind of my introduction into legal operations. So my role was in customer success for Bright Flag,
working with our customers across the globe to ensure that they were, you know, getting value out of the Bright Flag platform, using it as well as they could and, you know, kind of streamlining and standardizing their operations as it pertained to vendor management
and e-billing as much as they possibly could. So through that, I was working every single day with the legal operations teams and the legal departments at all of our customers, you know, very large global companies and also, you know, significantly smaller companies,
but always, you know, companies of a decent size, let's say, with a decent amount of external legal spend that we could kind of help them with at Bright Flag. And I became really interested in, you know, this legal operations field and kind of what it is and how all of the companies
that I had an opportunity to work with, how their teams were structured and what impacts they were making on the organization and, you know, started to peel back the curtain a little bit and learn a little bit more about it. And I realized, you know, how new of a function this was
for just about every company that, you know, I was talking to. I'd say more often than not, the legal operations person I was working with was the very first person in that seat at their company. Same is true for me here at Heineken.
And if it wasn't the first, it was maybe the second. You know, it's a new function with people who are getting a chance to create something kind of from the ground up. And that was initially what was so very interesting to me. You know, I don't have a legal background.
I didn't go to law school, but that's not a prerequisite or a requirement for this position, even though it's within legal affairs. And there was a lot of overlap between what I was doing in customer success to what, you know, a legal operations person
will do at most companies. Now, I do want to kind of not try and paint everything with, you know, one color brush here, right? Because I also totally recognize that what is legal operations here at Heineken, it does not necessarily mean that's exactly what that is
at company A, B, C, on down the line. It can change and it can vary quite a bit organization to organization. Now, I know, you know, you mentioned earlier what is legal operations. So I like to defer to the definition that CLOCK provides.
And for those who aren't familiar what CLOCK is, it's a large organization that is solely for – based on legal operations. So it's the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. So they have a definition, which is legal ops describes a set
of business processes, activities, and the professionals who enable legal departments to serve their clients more effectively. And it continues on, but I think that first part is, you know, a pretty good summary. But if you even look at what I just said there, that's pretty va... -
Millions of companies use Stripe to accept payments and grow revenue. An operation that big requires some serious privacy procedures. Luckily for Stripe, they have Emma Redmond to take care of just that. And luckily for us (and you!), Emma is a guest on today's episode of Inspiring Legal, where she shares some of her absolute gems of insights.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:40] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community. Inspiring Legal is back and we're back today with a special person who knows a thing or two about privacy.
[00:41 - 00:59] When you think about payments and you think about one of the biggest players in the world, well, that is Emma's company. Or it's not her company, but it's the company she works for. I'll let Emma introduce herself in a second, but Emma Redmond is working at Stripe.
[00:59 - 01:19] So Emma, for the listeners out there that don't know you, would you share a little bit about your background and the company you work for? Sure, of course. And first off, thanks so much for having me. It was delighted to take part in a podcast for a company that really values the legal in-house community.
[01:19 - 01:40] So it's an absolute pleasure. A little bit about me. I come from the far west of Ireland called Galway and I have been living and working from Dublin for the past 20 years. In that time, I attended University College Dublin, did my law degree there, did my Masters in Trinity, became a barrister with the Honourable Society of King's Inns.
[01:40 - 02:00] I'm a mom of three, an Irish dancer, adjunct professor at University College Dublin, which I love. And so there's there's a lot going on. And I currently, as you said, work for an amazing company called Stripe. And just a little bit about Stripe. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the Internet.
[02:00 - 02:16] And Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the Internet. Businesses of every size, from new startups to public companies, use our software to accept payments and manage their businesses online.
[02:16 - 02:32] So it's an absolute pleasure to work for Stripe and I'm having a lot of fun. So that's a little bit about me. So for the listeners, they might feel that energy that you have and you do have a lot of energy, which is amazing.
[02:32 - 02:48] And so for you with that background and having built your career as you've done. Could you maybe just share some good advice for the listeners out there who wants to be you in the next two to five years?
[02:49 - 03:09] And what I mean by that is that you're handing up privacy at a company that is really making a difference when it comes to online payments and that whole gateway. And Stripe is a really, really big company. For the people that might not know you, this is a global company that has been growing super fast.
[03:10 - 03:31] And has really, I think, changed the whole way that payments and subscriptions are managed. And it's not a sales pitch or me just going completely bananas, but that has really made a massive change. So with your then background, could you share how you kind of like got to where you are today?
[03:32 - 03:50] And is there any good advice? Yeah, of course. Look, like anything that's worthwhile, it takes time and patience is key. And for many who know me, I'm not always the most patient, but I had to be when it comes to a career like this,
[03:50 - 04:16] because it does organically change over time. Privacy is about principles and applying principles in a very complex space. And this goes for all of the companies I've been at, not just Stripe. And so, you know, as background, I suppose, really, you know, the advice that I have and accumulated as I macheted my way through all of these difficult landscapes is,
[04:16 - 04:39] I suppose, look, I practiced as a barrister for a number of years, and that really set me up neatly for what was coming down the tracks in my career. You know, you learn to be concise, you learn to be to the point, you know, you take the opportunities when they arise. You know, you have to, you know, put yourself out there, be uncomfortable and be OK with that.
[04:40 - 04:59] And that's easier said than done, of course. You know, I did, as I say, started off as a barrister, but I joined the fantastic in-house community. I was assistant general counsel at an ad tech online marketing company. And I thought to myself, you know, I was brave to make that jump, I think at the time, and I maybe didn't realize that.
[05:00 - 05:18] And what it did is expose me to the whole world of third party cookies. And of course, with that came the whole privacy sphere. And, you know, the company I was with was an online marketing company. And I thought to myself, oh, you know, how hard could online advertising be?
[05:19 - 05:36] Surely it can't be that difficult. Of course, you know, unbeknownst to me and completely clueless looking back, that's where I really gained my ground in terms of privacy, because it was ridiculously complex.
[05:36 - 05:53] And that was really about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. And, you know, the the the enjoyment, I suppose, that I got out of that and the challenge has always that's been one of the common denominators for everywhere I've been.
[05:54 - 06:16] You know, there's always ridiculous challenges there, but I enjoy them. I think the difference for me and the advice I give is, you know, the ability in an in-house world to be so close to your client, to be there right at the time when they need to be making the right decision and applying the right principles is fantastic.
[06:17 - 06:40] And you don't get that in every sphere. And I would take it further in terms of privacy. You have even more of an opportunity to do it because it's it's untested in a way. There aren't there aren't a lot of precedents out there in terms of how to apply. So that makes it even even more enjoyable. And joined obviously LinkedIn and the world of of of recruitment, social media, of course, had an amazing time there.
[06:41 - 07:02] Ancestry after that, in terms of of DNA, of course, and and family history and of course, Stripe. So I suppose what I'm saying is it started with Adtech, social media, DNA, FinTech. You know, was there a plan? No. And but what was there throughout it all was that openness to opportunity.
[07:03 - 07:25] And I think that is really, really key. I did have an idea early on, especially when I was living in a third party cookie world, that there was so much for the ordinary data subject to understand about their data. I thought to myself, you know, once individuals are educated about cookies, for example, they will have so many questions about how it works.
[07:26 - 07:48] And of course, that all played out, as we can see. Right. And so, you know, education, transparency was always one of those things that, you know, pulled me along throughout all of those years. You know, you put the hard graft in for sure. And I think you give yourself that exposure to all those elements of privacy and all the types of privacy that are really important.
[07:49 - 08:06] And, you know, there's a few common denominators and all the companies I've been in, you know, users and data subjects are central to the mission. Transparency is really, really key. And I'm not just talki... -
How do you create user-centric legal operations? And actually, what does user-centric even mean in a legal context? Wonder no more, because today we're joined in the studio by Legal Design & Content superhero Sarah Ouis. Sarah will take us through her own journey from in-house counsel to out-of-house consultant and delve into the opportunities for scaling in-house Legal teams.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:07] So, we're back with another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:07 - 00:11] My name is Stine and I'm your host.
[00:11 - 00:14] Openli is all about the community.
[00:14 - 00:22] It's all about inspiring each other and us to become even better in-house privacy counsels,
[00:22 - 00:29] GCs, head of legal, and working with that every single day.
[00:29 - 00:32] Today, I'm joined by Sarah.
[00:32 - 00:41] Sarah Ouis is an amazing person, one to get inspired by.
[00:41 - 00:48] And today, she's going to be talking about her journey, having worked in-house as a legal
[00:48 - 00:58] counsel, moving up in the ranks, so to speak, heading up legal teams, and now working no
[00:58 - 01:07] longer in-house, but from the outside, taking that view on how can we, working in-house,
[01:07 - 01:08] improve?
[01:08 - 01:09] What works?
[01:09 - 01:10] What doesn't work?
[01:10 - 01:16] With that maybe more objective view, because she's looking in from the outside.
[01:16 - 01:17] Welcome, Sarah.
[01:17 - 01:22] Thank you so much, Stine, for having me.
[01:22 - 01:26] Sarah, so people might know you.
[01:26 - 01:27] They might not know you.
[01:27 - 01:32] You have a massive following based on LinkedIn, and we'll talk about that as well.
[01:32 - 01:37] But maybe for the ones that don't know you, could you maybe just tell a little bit about
[01:37 - 01:40] yourself and your journey and who you are?
[01:40 - 01:41] Yeah, sure.
[01:41 - 01:44] So a little bit about myself.
[01:44 - 01:45] So I'm Sarah.
[01:45 - 01:52] I am a French qualified lawyer, but I've pretty much developed my career in the UK.
[01:52 - 01:53] That's after law school.
[01:53 - 01:56] That's pretty much where everything started for me.
[01:56 - 02:04] I worked as an in-house counsel in multiple industries, mostly in technology and pharmaceutical
[02:04 - 02:06] life sciences sectors.
[02:06 - 02:11] So these were really the sectors I knew the most.
[02:11 - 02:16] And I developed my career as an in-house counsel, first being part of a legal team, and then
[02:16 - 02:17] I joined a scale-up.
[02:17 - 02:24] I started off as a sole counsel, built the entire legal function and privacy function
[02:24 - 02:25] from scratch.
[02:25 - 02:34] So I've been for the weeds of what it takes to grow as an in-house team.
[02:34 - 02:41] And then in 2021, I kind of felt that I couldn't see myself doing this again.
[02:41 - 02:52] And I just figured that I was more passionate about problem solving in-house as opposed
[02:52 - 03:06] to being an in-house counsel on a daily basis, which made me move to work part-time with
[03:06 - 03:15] Contrapod AI, which I have a CLM, and also found my own consultancy, Lobeth House.
[03:15 - 03:23] So it's all about I really help legal team design user-centric in-house legal departments
[03:23 - 03:32] for them to increase customer satisfaction, but ultimately also be more fulfilled in everything
[03:32 - 03:33] they do.
[03:33 - 03:38] So yeah, that's about me.
[03:38 - 03:40] You say that's about you.
[03:40 - 03:41] That's quite impressive.
[03:41 - 03:49] And I also think you've kind of like did that journey where you started your career, right?
[03:49 - 03:56] And then you just built on from there, building the teams, building yourself, and being on
[03:56 - 04:02] that journey where when you're a part of a startup or a scale-up, you have to keep up
[04:02 - 04:03] with the business, right?
[04:03 - 04:12] You have to keep your team motivated, having massive workloads, having to improve yourself,
[04:12 - 04:17] motivate yourself, build out your own kind of career while doing this, and still trying
[04:17 - 04:24] to get that work-life balance to kind of, well, work, or at least just get some kind
[04:24 - 04:28] of normality into it.
[04:28 - 04:35] So Sarah, if you were to kind of like maybe put a few words on when you're now sitting
[04:35 - 04:42] at your consultancy and working with those legal teams, if you were to kind of like take
[04:42 - 04:48] a look at your own journey and think a little bit about what have I learned and what would
[04:48 - 04:54] I have done differently maybe, could you maybe just share some of those kind of thoughts?
[04:54 - 04:57] Yeah, sure.
[04:57 - 05:05] I think probably when looking back, one of the things that really hinders, hindered me
[05:05 - 05:13] as an in-house counsel, and I think it hinders a lot of in-house legal teams, is mindset.
[05:13 - 05:25] We are really, we lack the skills that it takes to really run an effective user-centric
[05:25 - 05:28] legal function that doesn't burn people out.
[05:28 - 05:36] Again, because the legal functions tend to be unfortunately cost-centered, that's just
[05:36 - 05:39] the reality of the way we are perceived.
[05:39 - 05:44] We obviously get buried in an amount of work, and we are pretty much helpless about it.
[05:44 - 05:46] We don't really know what to do.
[05:46 - 05:48] And I've been that, I've been there.
[05:48 - 05:54] I've been that in-house counsel that didn't have any budget, that had to fight for months
[05:54 - 05:59] if not years to get additional resources, et cetera.
[05:59 - 06:08] And in a way, it was a blessing in disguise because when you are, resources come with
[06:08 - 06:09] resourcefulness.
[06:09 - 06:14] So you really have to kind of find ways to build that foundation in order for the resources
[06:14 - 06:15] to come.
[06:15 - 06:20] So since I had no budget, I had to work with what I had, which was nothing.
[06:20 - 06:26] So I had to look inward and be like, okay, what is it that I can do better?
[06:26 - 06:34] What is it that I can, what area of the business can I start, build efficiencies into, et cetera?
[06:34 - 06:38] So it kind of made me think.
[06:38 - 06:46] And I think that a lot of where mindset comes a problem is that we tend to kind of think
[06:46 - 06:51] that we can't problem solve unless we have more budget, unless we have more bodies.
[06:51 - 06:58] So we lack this kind of resourcefulness and we don't take a step back and think, well,
[06:58 - 07:03] actually, let's look at what we have here.
[07:03 - 07:07] Does every contract, is every contract worth the same?
[07:07 - 07:08] Absolutely not.
[07:08 - 07:15] I always use the example of the office furniture agreement, like office furniture supply and
[07:15 - 07:19] low risk, zero value type of contracts.
[07:19 - 07:21] Why do we handle that as a legal function?
[07:21 - 07:25] So all of those kinds of questions, right?
[07:25 - 07:29] That we don't necessarily ask ourselves.
[07:29 - 07:36] So looking now from an outsider's perspective, it's obvious that the first change that we
[07:36 - 07:39] have to make is... -
"Get to know the product and understand our unique selling points" - Today we're joined in the studio by Eva Mobacker, VP of Legal at Planhat. Listen in as she and Openli CEO Stine Tornmark discuss the ins and outs of scaling the legal clockwork at a (fast) growing company.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:35] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:35 - 00:54] My name is Stine and I'm your host. Today, I'm joined by Eva Mobacker. She's going to introduce herself in a second. But Eva has a really strong background, having worked both at a law firm, then moved in-house,
[00:54 - 01:11] now scaling a team and being a part of a company that is growing not just fast, they're going super fast. So today, we're going to have a conversation about working in-house at a fast-growing company,
[01:11 - 01:32] scaling your team and how you do that. So, Eva, welcome. Thank you, Stine. Thank you for having me. Sleep-deprived, new mother on maternity leave. Well, Eva, I'm impressed by the kind of energy that you're having.
[01:32 - 01:48] And people will know exactly why that is in a second. Maybe, Eva, you can introduce yourself. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so like Stine said, I've been a lawyer for a long time. I think it's coming up on 18, 19 years now, which is just crazy.
[01:48 - 02:06] And I've worked primarily in-house, but a bit in private practice as well. And in companies of all sizes, like everything from small startups to the huge international multimillion companies. So I've seen a lot throughout the years. Definitely.
[02:06 - 02:24] I've been primarily in the gambling industry, which has been very interesting from a legal perspective. Albeit a bit controversial, of course, but I worked a lot with compliance matters in the gambling industry. But currently, a fast-growing SaaS company.
[02:24 - 02:48] Yeah, so that's where I'm at now. So for those who don't know you and from what I know about you, you've been working at a law firm where you let their privacy group sink. There you won secondment for AWS, then moved in-house to Hero Gaming and furthering on now to Planette, where you are VP of Legal.
[02:48 - 03:04] Eva, could you maybe just take people through that journey of like having gone from working at the law firm to then going on secondment? Very similar to my own journey, which was why when I met you first time, I was kind of like, wow, I love your background.
[03:04 - 03:24] But I think it could be super interesting to people like to maybe hear a little bit about what your journey has been, what it has been about, but also maybe some of the things that you've picked up along the way. Yeah, of course. I think, Stine, that was just like the last five years or so.
[03:24 - 03:46] So you have like another 13 years to come for before that, where I've done a bit of everything. But definitely like most other lawyers, I think I started in private practice back in 2006, 2007. I actually started working in London as a paralegal, which was a very interesting start of my career.
[03:46 - 04:04] And through that, I got a job at White & Casey in Stockholm. So that's where I started like my actual career as a lawyer, working a lot with M&A during very intense times. But I always felt like super interested in the actual business and being in private practice.
[04:04 - 04:19] You feel a bit like, you know, you become an expert at things, but you have to jump in and out very quickly from different companies. You never kind of, well, you can have a client over a long time, of course, but you never really see the day to day and,
[04:19 - 04:36] you know, take the strategic decisions, which is what I enjoy. So quite early on, I identified that I would probably be better suited to work in-house. So that's what I've done most of my career, even though I've had like smaller stints back at law firms as well throughout.
[04:36 - 04:55] And yeah, as I said before, I've worked in companies from, you know, now when I joined PlanPass a year and a half ago, we were 40 people. And as you mentioned, I've been at AWS with, you know, I don't know how many employees, but it's very interesting to see, you know, the different ways of working as well.
[04:55 - 05:12] At AWS, like you had very limited freedom as a lawyer. I mean, I was also like an external lawyer, so probably even less freedom, but there were fallback clauses for everything. And it was very kind of like almost mathematical, you know, this deal is worth this much.
[05:12 - 05:34] And maybe use this fallback clause so you can't even change a word without having, you know, approval from Boston or what have you. And some people thrive in that environment. I didn't. I'm more, you know, I want to have the bird's eye perspective. I want to think about strategic things. I don't want to go too deep on details that perhaps don't matter from, you know,
[05:34 - 05:50] a larger risk based perspective. So it's very interesting. I think I needed to do all these different things to identify, you know, who I was as a lawyer, what I wanted to do. Some people are probably lucky and maybe, you know, their first job, they think this is it.
[05:50 - 06:08] You know, I love this. This is exactly what I need to do. And I think for me, it's been I didn't get that, but it was also, you know, throughout life, different things were interesting to me. And, you know, different workloads perhaps suited my that season of life, so to say.
[06:08 - 06:24] So. So, yeah, I'm very happy with with all my experiences, but I really feel like now I'm in my element. Building the legal team at PlanHappen and working with all those brilliant minds in kind of a smaller setting, but with a lot of freedom for the team.
[06:24 - 06:43] So when you joined PlanHappen, you said that there were 40 people and you were their first legal hire. And I know from a lot of our listeners out there, they're sitting with that exact, let's say, opportunity right now, coming in as the first legal hire, but also then having to not only build the legal foundation,
[06:43 - 07:03] but also to get the organization to understand the value of what it is that you as a legal person can bring to the table. How have you gone about that? Could you maybe share some of your experiences and maybe also some of your wins so that if the listeners out there are sitting with that, they could maybe get a few ideas?
[07:03 - 07:24] Yeah, definitely. I think for me, it was it was a big relief coming from the gambling industry with where, you know, the work of the legal team, legal and compliance team is very much focused on regulatory matters. And, you know, being unfortunately quite often a blocker for the business, like where, you know,
[07:24 - 07:45] they have to jump through the hoops or standing in the way for what the business wants to do. So going from that to like, you know, a B2B platform where, you know, obviously we do have some compliance matters, but primarily it's about like facilitating the sales process and making sure that, you know,
[07:45 - 08:04] our customers are happy and that we don't spend too much time negotiating our standard terms and so on. That was quite a relief for me because it's always easier to be on the same side as the res... -
Today we're talking to Chad Aboud - the lawyer on a journey to make Legal more enjoyable and fulfilling. You might have seen him across social media, or you might not know him (yet), but one thing is for certain: after listening, you'll have a new perspective on your career and hands-on tips on how to find your superpower as a lawyer.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:17] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. So today we are joined by a person that is all about making life the most enjoyable that
[00:17 - 00:34] you can possibly get out of it. He is amazing. He is motivating. He is energetic. And he is all about combining happiness with lowering. So welcome, Chad.
[00:34 - 00:54] Thank you so much for having me and for that warm welcome. We will today talk about being happy and working in-house or at a law firm and how you can combine that if it's even doable. But before we start talking about that, maybe Chad, you can just tell people a little bit
[00:54 - 01:09] about your background and what you do today. Sure. Thank you. So I'm in Toronto, Canada, and I started my career about 12 years ago in a big law firm in Toronto, and I was helping public companies acquire other companies and raise money.
[01:09 - 01:25] And so I was doing that for about five years. And the training was amazing. I think any young professional services training skills are great. It forces you to learn how to think quickly, how to analyze, how to do a ton of work in a very short amount of time.
[01:25 - 01:41] And I valued that and I appreciated that and worked with some wonderful people. But I think at the same time, I really noticed that I was drawn to two elements that probably weren't the core of that job. One was I really liked training students and other lawyers as they started their career.
[01:41 - 01:58] I love being part of the student committee and the hiring committee loved that. And I also was looking at deal structures as I was doing them and saying, well, there's like 25% of the deal structure that seems irrelevant to the value to the client, but takes a lot of time and it's very painful for the lawyers and nobody cares.
[01:58 - 02:14] So let's wipe that out and then just do 75% of the work, still charge the same rate. Bottom line is amazing. Less work. Isn't this beautiful? And I think, in retrospect, as a young lawyer at a major law firm, suggesting how important it is about training the students and changing deal structures, I think a lot of folks were
[02:14 - 02:33] a little bit confused and I think that made me confused. And so what I realized was this probably wasn't going to be the future for me because I could tell my nature and energy was drawn elsewhere. And so I actually resigned from big law without necessarily knowing what I was going to do next and traveled around the world with my partner for six months and a personal professional
[02:33 - 02:49] journey. And then when I came back, went into industry, one of Canada's largest brands. And so retail, e-tail, expansion into the US with a retail footprint. And it was amazing because I'm a pretty curious cat. So I really like to like, what's a marketing team up to? What's the privacy team up to? I love that.
[02:49 - 03:05] And I love learning different types of law. And so that actually, it made a lot more sense to me for the first time because it was less about the law. Of course, I stole a lawyer, but it was a lot more around, well, we've got an operation to run. And so how do we find the right kind of law plus business, create relationships?
[03:05 - 03:23] It just felt more natural to me. And so I love that. Love learning how to be an in-house lawyer. But then after three years, I kind of had this same drive again about like, but I want to create the brand or the way or the relationships in my way. And so for the last three and a half years until recently, I became general counsel of
[03:23 - 03:39] this international tech company where we created the legal function and built out the team and brought in legal tech and it was part of the leadership team and it's an incredible journey, right? You get to build it the way you want to build it, with the parameters of the company's goals. But that was very motivating for me.
[03:39 - 03:54] But even then I realized I care the most about two things. One, helping people find the most that's in themselves and two, making their way forward easier. And while those things are very helpful for me as a general counsel, it wasn't the core
[03:54 - 04:09] of the job. And so I resigned in September because I knew I needed to follow that nature. And at the beginning of this year, I launched my own consulting and coaching business for the legal industry because through my journey, I just know that we can be successful and
[04:09 - 04:27] happy and fulfilled. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And so that's the journey I'm on now, coaching lawyers, doing consulting to law firms, helping their lawyers realize how to make real relationships with their clients in a way that generates business and is fun because it's doable. And this is what I care about. So this is where I'm at now.
[04:27 - 04:45] So you have really taken a leap, so to speak, not just a leap of faith, but just in terms of your career development, which is super inspiring. I think what I'm sitting with, maybe the listeners are too, is how do you do that?
[04:45 - 05:02] Like not the leap, but more just saying, okay, I think this is doable. This is something everybody should be able to feel, to have in their daily work because you use too much time working.
[05:02 - 05:18] You spend more time at work than you do at home. So how do you then go about coaching people to become happier? Yeah. And that is the most important question. And this wasn't like when I was saying I was a second year and I saw these things, it wasn't
[05:18 - 05:34] fully formed in my mind at this time that this was going to be my journey. It was just these little like flashes through my mind. And I wasn't always capturing them and knowing what to do with them, but I felt them deeply. And so what I tell people and what, you know, maybe I don't, I mean, my journey was my journey.
[05:34 - 05:50] It was the way it was meant to go. But what I would tell my younger self is those things that you think about when you're not thinking for me, it was like, how do I help this person? How do I help them make their way easier? Like this is your superpower. And do you know why?
[05:50 - 06:08] Because you think about it without trying. This is not effort for you. It is not hard or painful or annoying for me to spend lots of time with people, helping them find their own superpower, making their way easier for other people. It is. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm saying it's right for me. And so that journey, that reflection journey of uncovering that, and that's what I do with
[06:08 - 06:24] lawyers now. It's like lots of exercises like, okay, for the next week, every time you catch your brain, just going into some space where you're not trying, just write that thing down. And I don't care if you think it's silly. I don't care if you think it doesn't relate to law. It doesn't matter.
[06:24 - 06:41] Because what I know is if you... -
In today’s episode, we discuss (some of) the qualities of a successful general counsel. At an Openli Community event, Stine asked Trustpilot CEO Peter Mühlmann what he looks for in a GC. His answer? Listen to find out.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:36] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Welcome to this episode from me, your host, Stine.
[00:37 - 01:00] You're listening to the podcast called Inspiring Legal, and you might have heard about me talking a little before. Today, well, it's me talking, but it's actually more me referring to a conversation I had with a CEO that I really like, that I have a close relationship with.
[01:00 - 01:17] And that is the CEO and founder, Peter Hultman from Trustpilot. So I worked together with Peter for six years. I came on board Trustpilot when there were 70 employees. And the first guy I met was Peter.
[01:18 - 01:37] He gave me a big hug the day I came in. He was wearing the classic, you know, Silicon Valley t-shirt, tennis socks, and some classic H2O slippers. And I was kind of like, OK, nice to meet you.
[01:37 - 01:53] You're very different from what I've known at the law firm, where everybody was wearing, you know, the classic blue shirt and the nice jacket. Maybe tie if you're going out for customer meetings, but otherwise, you know, the suit.
[01:53 - 02:24] So I met Peter and we bonded in the sense that he was a person and he is a person that is caring, outgoing, and always honest in his feedback. So not that long ago, I asked Peter to join an event we had here in Copenhagen for some of the members in the community.
[02:25 - 03:04] And I asked Peter to give feedback, feedback to the community on how he would like his general counsel to give good advice. What he preferred his general counsel to do when facing, let's call it complicated situations, and how the general counsel, in his opinion, get a place around the decision making table, you know, make a difference, become that business stakeholder that so many of us, well, are, but also would like to be.
[03:04 - 03:21] And continue improving on. So I asked Peter, wouldn't you just join this event and tell people some of the things that you've been saying to me for so many years? And by the way, it's not just me and Peter having a conversation.
[03:22 - 03:42] It was Peter having a conversation with the entire room. And it was super insightful. And I think what he said was very common to what CEOs are looking for. What Peter said that he's looking for is a general counsel that understands the business.
[03:43 - 04:02] That was his key element. As he said, like, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. Jump on customer calls if sales is an important element of your business. Sit down with the marketing team on one of their weekly meetings and hear how they're generating leads.
[04:03 - 04:26] So that when you're having these executive management meetings, you, as the general counsel, know more about the business than the majority of the people around that table. That also means that you will be able to identify risk in a completely different way than what you would otherwise expect from the general counsel.
[04:27 - 04:56] But it also makes you more appreciated by your peers, but also by your CEO. What Peter then said, in addition to that, was when I'm asking for your opinion on something, I don't need a long memo. I don't need long, kind of like, on one hand, you know, and on the other hand, well, I need you to tell me yes or no.
[04:57 - 05:16] I trust that you know better than I. I trust that you, with all your knowledge of our business and the legal rules, are much better equipped to make that decision than me.
[05:17 - 05:34] And of course, sometimes decisions need to be escalated to the CEO. So when you escalate it, explain why it is that this scenario is being escalated and come up with your proposal.
[05:35 - 05:57] Don't leave it as, this is the, you have the blue pill and the red pill. Which one do you want to take? Tell me what pill would you prefer to take? And then, of course, me as the CEO is responsible for, if we take that blue pill, that we've taken in the pros and the cons.
[05:58 - 06:16] But I want to hear what you think. I want your opinion. And then what Peter also said is that, have opinions. That's not a bad thing.
[06:17 - 06:33] But remember, it's not just about saying yes or no. It's about being there for the business. And that your management group is the most important group. That is your peers.
[06:34 - 06:50] It's not your legal team that is the most important. It is not you as the general counsel that is the most important. It is you as part of the executive management team.
[06:51 - 07:14] They are your peers. They are your colleagues. They are the ones you should be supporting, you should be working with. And that you should always put first. So, this little episode today was much more about just recapping what Peter said.
[07:15 - 07:33] And I think many of us are doing a lot of that. But it doesn't mean that we can't get better. And it can't just stop with us and with Peter's thoughts. We should be sharing those thoughts together.
[07:33 - 08:05] So, listen to the next episode of Inspiring Legal where we will have, and we are having, another amazing speaker that will inspire us all. So, thank you and listen in. -
Legal Operations is on everyone's lips. But what is it actually all about? What are the best practices, what are some quick wins - and how does one go about pursuing a career in Legal Ops? Join us in a conversation with TomTom's Legal Operations Officer, Matilde Montanari, as we dive into the specifics of this fast-moving legal field.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:35] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Today, I am joined by Matilde Montanari.
[00:35 - 00:52] I hope I pronounced it correctly. Welcome Matilde. Thank you very much for having me today. So Matilde, for the listeners out there, they might not know you, but you have a very interesting background when we're talking about legal operations.
[00:52 - 01:08] And again, this is a topic that is on a lot of people's minds, but maybe not necessarily that familiar. So I was thinking, what about telling the audience a little bit about who you are and your background and maybe how you got into legal operations.
[01:09 - 01:26] Yeah, absolutely. So, hi Matilde. Perfect pronunciation for my surname, Montanari. I'm currently based in Amsterdam and I'm the legal operations officer at TomTom. TomTom is currently a technology company.
[01:26 - 01:43] Maybe most of you might remember for the GPS. Everyone at some point had a TomTom GPS and it was actually very revolutionary. But yeah, now they move more in the space of B2B and building maps and licensing maps to other companies.
[01:44 - 02:02] My background, I'm Italian from Pisa, so from Tuscany. I've graduated in law and then started in, worked in house for a law firm in private practice for a law firm for a couple of years.
[02:03 - 02:21] But after a couple of years working there, I soon realized actually that I really wanted to have a bit more business exposure. And then maybe that wasn't my actual path. But I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And I wanted to go back to study.
[02:21 - 02:40] So I found and I did an LLM here in Leiden, which I highly advise everyone to visit. It's an amazing little town in the Netherlands. It's a student city, very, very, very nice. And after that, I found, ended up finding a job as a legal commercial consultant in MessageBird,
[02:40 - 02:58] which is a tech startup, very, yeah, very hectic, like really the classic startup environment that everyone thinks and everyone sees in the movies. So it was very, very fun and very, very exciting. Back then, my GC was very into legal operations.
[02:58 - 03:14] Then in the back, it was very, very, you soon realized that to scale a team, you also have to have the proper tech stack and tech setup to actually support your team, especially when you're going at that speed and that growth.
[03:16 - 03:37] So you really wanted someone that, yeah, could focus on ops as well. And I've always been very interested in operations, like in general, my friends, they always like to say that, yeah, I like to fix things and that's the reality. So I started focusing 50% of my time on legal ops.
[03:38 - 03:55] And then, yeah, I fell in love and I was like, oh my God, I want to do legal operations. So I went, my next step in the career was indeed to find a 100% focus on legal operations position. And I moved to booking where I was doing legal operations by financial management.
[03:55 - 04:12] So yeah, budget, external counsel. So I need such a big team and inspiring team. That was very, very interesting. So yes, that's a few words, my life, I end up here. So from booking.com,
[04:12 - 04:32] you then moved into TomTom where you're now the legal ops officer. Just because legal ops is for some new and maybe also a little undefinable. Could you maybe just give us a little insight into what are
[04:32 - 04:50] you doing as a legal ops officer? You're probably doing so much, but what is that? Yeah, definitely. So I think indeed it's quite new and the entire legal operations community is still working and trying to define
[04:50 - 05:07] what we really working on. But I like to approach legal operations as, I mean, it's still an operations role and we have seen operations role in other different departments. So when I approached it and when I was the lead, when I started my work at TomTom,
[05:07 - 05:25] I really wanted to be inspired or take inspiration from other departments. So I really approach it as the classic way you do operations by focusing on data and technology, people and processes. So that's the kind of like three big cores that I like to focus
[05:25 - 05:42] on. And then under that, obviously there are sub topics or a sub focus. But yeah, I would say that in few words, legal operations is really trying to make the life of legal counsels a better life and a happier life, I would say.
[05:43 - 06:00] Yeah. Make them more efficient. Make sure that they can provide their best without like thinking to admin or processes things that like just slow down their work. So you're going in and like taking a holistic view of whatever
[06:00 - 06:18] you're doing within the legal teams. So, and then looking at how you can optimize it, how you can work smarter, how you can save cost as well, or. Well, definitely. So yeah, all of them. I mean, when, when usually approaching when started at TomTom,
[06:18 - 06:34] also like booking, there is a big period of just trying to understand what they're doing and how they're doing it. I always think that they're the first period that they're always quick and little wins that we can always have.
[06:34 - 06:52] So without having to engage in big projects or being changed management into new technologies, everyone wants technologies is always, but there are a lot of things that we can already do to improve the way we are working just by asking why, why we are doing a certain way and why certain things are like this.
[06:53 - 07:10] So usually that, yeah, the first step is just literally to speak with the team, trying to understand their struggles. So like, yeah, like therapy session, what are your problems today? And then from there, like, yeah, what we can do in the short term, like quick fixer and what would be part of a bigger project
[07:11 - 07:27] and a bigger approach, maybe introducing technologies and improving like, yeah, processes and yeah. Let's say that you're sitting and you are considering starting to hire your first legal operations person.
[07:29 - 07:45] In your opinion, what should you be looking for? What type of skill sets and what type of person should you get? Should you get somebody who has been working in the in-house legal team and promote that person to the legal ops? Should you try to find somebody who's good at that?
[07:45 - 08:03] Project management or should you try to find a finance controller type character? What's your recommendation? What should we be looking for? Wow, it's a very interesting question. So I definitely think that I was just recently speaking
[08:05 - 08:22] with other people in legal operations that I'm aware tha... -
Today, Inspiring Legal is joined by Jonathan Keen, the Head of Legal at powerhouse software company Figma. Listen in as Stine and Jonathan dive into Figma's legal operations, their approach to privacy, and Jonathan's own Legal journey.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:17] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. So today I am joined by Jonathan and you'll get to hear more from him in a second. But Jonathan is working for Figma, a fast growing, amazing tool.
[00:17 - 00:34] If you ever used it, you know what it is and you know how good it is. But Jonathan also has a background working for tech companies that are growing fast. And today Jonathan is joining me to have a conversation about privacy, expanding into new markets
[00:34 - 00:56] and how you're managing that when you're working for a company both headquartered out of the US, but also working in Europe. So welcome, Jonathan. Hi, thank you for the warm welcome. I'm delighted to be here. So Jonathan, for the listeners out there that don't know you, I think they should get to know you a little better.
[00:56 - 01:13] So I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about yourself, where you are from and what you do. Sure. So where am I from? I'm based out of London in the UK and have been for some time.
[01:13 - 01:38] And I guess my legal career started in a traditional way. I worked for a well-established English firm to do my training contract, which is a two year kind of training period, which we do in the UK, before qualifying into a number of US law firms in their London office,
[01:38 - 02:01] but headquartered in New York. So I had that exposure to working with US organizations very early on in my career. So I had kind of that insight into working to tight deadlines and to working with a US centric kind of work culture and kind of the pace and the requirements of that entail.
[02:01 - 02:18] So the first US firm I worked for was Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. They're one of the big white shoe New York firms. And when I was working for them, we were in the middle of the financial crisis in 2000, then it was the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
[02:18 - 02:35] And I joined kind of towards the end of that. And they were actually the official counsel to the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11. So working on really high profile corporate insolvency work as part of their financial restructuring team, which was hugely interesting.
[02:35 - 02:51] And a lot of new case law was made at the time because obviously a bank of the size and complexity of Lehman Brothers had never gone insolvent before. So it's a hugely interesting project and I'm delighted to play a very small part in that.
[02:51 - 03:12] Subsequently, I realized that kind of in the long term, private practice wasn't really the area for me. I am interested in studying new areas of law. I'm interested in a breadth of work. And that doesn't really traditionally tie up with a private practice career.
[03:12 - 03:36] So relatively early on in my career, I made the move in-house working for a portfolio technology company, a very small bespoke software house working in the energy sector, and then gradually made my way into into the West Coast technology scene where I've kind of been specializing for the last five years,
[03:36 - 04:03] helping West Coast typically headquartered hyper growth SAS companies expand into the international market. So I've been the first non-US lawyer now. The last two organizations I've worked for. And the first kind of pair of feet on the ground outside the US. And I'm there to help enable that rapid growth into Europe and beyond for these for these companies.
[04:03 - 04:20] And yeah, Figma has been my home for the last 18 months and seen a exceptional pace of growth. We've opened offices in London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and now Singapore is next on the list during that time.
[04:20 - 04:38] So kind of the we have this phrase that kind of a month in Figma is like a year at other companies because so much, so much changes. And that's part of the excitement, but also presents its own challenges as well. I'm normally saying working at a tech scale up is kind of like dog years.
[04:38 - 04:58] So you're multiplying it by seven. Here we're multiplying it by 12. And I think it kind of gives a good understanding of the growth of Figma and where Figma is going. So if you don't know about Figma out there, take a look, because if you're working at a tech company, you are most likely using their products.
[04:58 - 05:19] And if not, most likely going to, especially the product teams and the dev teams are madly in love with it. And I'm not getting commissioned for saying this, and I don't use your product, but my dev team does. I am not creative. I'm not able to do anything that just resembles something smart when it comes to technology.
[05:19 - 05:38] But I know from my UX designer and from my CPO that they are in love with your product, which was also why we reached out to you, Jonathan. But also because of those challenges and but also exciting times that come with working for such a company.
[05:38 - 05:56] Could you maybe just put a few words on like just during those 18 months that you've been there? How has that journey been so far? Yeah, it's been hugely exciting. It's come in two phases, really. There's the initial six months where it was just me.
[05:56 - 06:24] So I didn't have a team. So and kind of covering off so many different areas. So primarily new business, negotiating SAS contracts with with our existing and expanding customers, but also kind of doing the corporate foundational work, incorporating entities in France and Germany and all of that good stuff and helping enable the rapid growth in headcounts.
[06:24 - 06:46] We were only 50 people in Europe and now we're 150 plus. So a huge amount of growth in terms of personnel, but also in terms of revenue as well. So that first six months I was really doing everything from a legal perspective, employment as well, privacy.
[06:46 - 07:08] It was really fascinating, but also it's a challenge on your resources when you're doing all of that. So you have to ruthlessly triage and prioritize what is kind of key for the business and turn your attention to it. And you're very much kind of doing baseline compliance in some areas and focusing on the real high risk areas and putting your time into that.
[07:08 - 07:36] So everyone at Figma has done it. It's kind of the six months initial trial, almost where you kind of head of HR did the same, where you're kind of coming in and you're, you're building things just on your own and looking after everything and then you start recruiting and then things become more manageable. And then it's a focus on the on the kind of the value add and the strategic rather than just the tactical.
[07:36 - 08:08] So when you not have only done this once, you've done it twice. I think you are almost a veteran when it comes to really scaling a US company into Europe. And one of the challenges that are then I could pursue is maybe around privacy and getting that ingrained and bridging the US with the EU and working with that.
[08:08 - 08:28] Could you maybe just share a little bit about what have been your experiences and how have you worked with it? Yeah, this is the second time I've done this. So before Figma, I was at a company called Zero who did identity management and a very similar growth trajectory to Figma.
[08:28 - 08:47] And then we were acquired by Opta for six and a half billion. A couple of years ago now. So this is my second time arou... -
How do you get approval for that certain tool that'll help scale your work? We've got you covered in this episode of Inspiring Legal.
-
Meet Natalie, the O-shaped lawyer and General Counsel of UK-based Zilch. O-shaped what? O-shaped lawyer. Meaning Natalie is not only the GC providing legal advice - she's also a modern leader with a human-centric focus on her work and co-workers. Join us today as Stine and Natalie dive into the world of modern in-house legal.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:18] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. My name is Stine and I'm your host, and today I'm joined by Natalie. Welcome, Natalie. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. So you're gonna hear more from Natalie in a second.
[00:18 - 00:33] Natalie is all about putting the human into law. And what that means? Well, that's what we'll be talking about today. But before we do that, Natalie, can you maybe just tell the listeners
[00:33 - 00:50] a little bit about you, your background, and why this area is on your radar, your passion, and something that you are working a lot on? Sure. So I'm a general counsel in-house.
[00:50 - 01:06] I trade as a lawyer in the city at Taylor Wessing, but moved very quickly into an in-house career. So it's quite unusual at the time to do that. That was back in 2009. So quite a lot, it wasn't really the usual way for people to enter the profession.
[01:06 - 01:24] So I think I've always been quite conscious of the fact that perhaps I don't have the traditional training that a lot of lawyers do, that operate in the commercial and corporate world. And equally, I think there's a way of providing legal services in-house that's quite different to being in private practice, which isn't always about just the technical skills
[01:24 - 01:41] and deigning legal advice on others, but more how you win people over and how you get people to care about legal and to care about including you in their decision-making to make better decisions for the overall business. So I think having that unique opportunity
[01:41 - 01:57] so early on in my career to enter the corporate world as a junior lawyer allowed me to play a little bit more with those ideas of, well, why me? Why does somebody want to come to me? Why does somebody want to come to me rather than legal as a concept?
[01:57 - 02:13] And so therefore, I think those human skills have always been a really important part of my career. And I think we do see a bit of a lack of them in the profession sometimes, a lack of empathy. And I think that's taking its toll on the profession. If we don't do more about it as legal leaders,
[02:13 - 02:31] then we're going to lose talent and we're not going to have really great people joining us and lifting the talent pool and the profession further. That's something that I'm really passionate about and would love to talk about a little bit more today. And that's what we're going to be talking about.
[02:31 - 02:49] So putting legal and humans together, well, that's something we've always been doing. So when you talk about making it more approachable, relatable, making it more you,
[02:49 - 03:06] can you tell us a little bit about why that started to be such a center point for you in your career? I think it goes back to, as I said, moving in-house quite early on and being afraid that I didn't have the necessary skill set
[03:06 - 03:23] to add value to my organization. So I think you're trained in private practice to feel as though you aren't allowed to rise in the ranks unless you've done a certain amount of practice or hours or experience. And so I was quite self-conscious about that
[03:23 - 03:38] when I started in-house in terms of, well, I've only had two years of experience. So therefore, what do I know? Why would somebody listen to me? Do I have the credentials? And then I quickly realized that actually it was more about getting people on side
[03:38 - 03:54] and you don't always know the answer, but it doesn't mean you can't find it out. But it's about having those touch points, those conversations, those openings and almost acting as a sales person for the function to get out there, have those confident conversations and not always be reacting
[03:54 - 04:09] to what the business is asking of you, but being proactive in terms of going, well, hey, I noticed this happened the other day. I'd love to see if I can help. And so I think that's what really started me thinking slightly differently from the more traditional private practice approach to law, which was much more about,
[04:09 - 04:26] hey, I'm gonna give some technical legal advice and I'm going to advise you and maybe you'll make a decision on the back of it to collaboratively working with my colleagues to make their lives easier, but also inadvertently making my life easier because if we understood each other better and we had good processes or we had playbooks
[04:26 - 04:43] or we had just smarter ways of working in those open dialogues, then you can almost predict what your colleagues are thinking and they can almost predict what you're likely to advise them. So it just seemed like a smarter way of doing things. But as I said, back then it was a bit more unusual
[04:43 - 04:59] because generally people would be super senior and having done quite a long tenure or a number of different years in private practice moving in to an in-house environment. So I think it was just that blend of, as I said before, trying to show that there was value in me being there as me.
[04:59 - 05:16] And we could talk about that a little bit more as to what that means. And just making sure that I felt like it was a fair relationship to be in. So I was getting something out of that for my learning and development and exposure to different stakeholders and learning.
[05:16 - 05:31] But equally, I was able to add value. And what you realise is that actually a lot of law, there's quite a lot of common sense to it as well as the understanding of what the law says. So it's all very well knowing the law, but if you can't articulate that
[05:31 - 05:47] in a way that somebody is going to understand or it resonates with them, or you can't influence them to do the right thing, then what's the point in knowing the law? It's just something that's in your head. You alluded to it. So what does it mean?
[05:49 - 06:06] So what for you today as the general counsel, so how do you work with making law more human, putting human into the law, and guiding your employees and coaching them on being more approachable,
[06:06 - 06:23] of giving better advice, understanding the business better? So how have you incorporated it into your daily work? I think it's about being available, but also we use the word approachable and not trying to mystify law. I think a lot of lawyers don't realise
[06:23 - 06:40] that we're already put on pedestals for the type of background and training that we've had. So people have a certain expectation as to what we are and what we bring to the table. So we don't need to be insecure about it and try and prove that people should listen to us. I think that comes across as very defensive
[06:40 - 06:56] and also quite haughty and it alienates people ... -
Why aren't lawyers encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship? The typical founder of a startup does not have a legal background.
Today, we ask: well, why not?Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:18] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:18 - 00:37] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community. Welcome back.
[00:37 - 00:59] This is Inspiring Legal, a podcast where we're trying to inspire or get inspired. My name is Stine and I'm the podcast host and today we will be talking about entrepreneurship
[00:59 - 01:17] and legal. Do those two go hand in hand? Well, in many ways it doesn't, but in my opinion, it should. So what do I mean? Let's take my own journey as an example.
[01:17 - 01:36] When I graduated law school, I was kind of in the classic career path of going to a law firm and that's what I did. I was there for six years and what I was coached on, what I was trained to do, and what was
[01:36 - 01:53] the only career path that was talked about was the classical one, be a partner. We are putting you on a talent track for partnership and that was what I did because, well, that
[01:53 - 02:11] is what you at least expect to do and what you have to aspire for. But in all honesty, in-house is also a possibility, but there are more possibilities.
[02:11 - 02:33] So when you go in-house, you are then most likely kind of trained to think, well, head of legal, director of legal, GCs, those are my next steps. But when you graduate law school, you have a legal degree and you have a skillset that
[02:33 - 02:49] is so much stronger and has so much more potential than just that. And it's not because I don't think it's amazing to become partner at a law firm. It definitely is. And it's hard work.
[02:49 - 03:08] And so is it to become a general counsel. And it's not easy to transfer into in-house legal teams. That requires new skillsets. But what's common for all of us with those types of backgrounds from law school is that
[03:08 - 03:23] we have been trained to communicate. We've been trained on understanding the letter of the law and interpreting that in ways many haven't.
[03:23 - 03:44] We're trained to be analytical, to be skeptical, but also to always find the underlying solutions. To work together on finding solutions for problems that aren't sometimes almost impossible
[03:44 - 04:00] to solve and we do it anyway. We're strong in building relationships, stakeholder management. It might not be that budgets or something we use a lot of time on, but when you have
[04:00 - 04:17] analytical minds working and we're also used to working, right? We're used to crazy hours and being at the top of our game always and always striving
[04:17 - 04:38] after getting a better understanding of why things are as they are. Well, when you have that skillset, when you have that mindset, it means that you have so much more to choose from if you want to.
[04:38 - 04:55] Legal professionals, and I've been speaking to some amazing, inspiring people. Some decide to go the commercial way because lawyers are commercially driven people as well. So they're excellent contract negotiators.
[04:55 - 05:22] They're excellent salespeople. They're good at stakeholder management, at communicating complicated stuff and making it understandable, writing in ways that are engaging, inspiring in regards to subjects
[05:22 - 05:41] that are sometimes really boring. So what I'm trying to say here is that why is it that we aren't trained? Why is it that we aren't grasping the amount of opportunities that lay in front of us?
[05:41 - 06:01] I know some are, and now I'm totally generalizing, and I don't mean to because I've been hearing some amazing stories from people. But what I'm trying to say here is that I hope that lawyers understand the potential
[06:01 - 06:18] that they have, that in-house legal people know that they don't necessarily only have to be within the legal team. They can decide to go into communication.
[06:18 - 06:34] They can decide to go into politics. They can decide to go into sales. You name it, become the CEO. Why not? Or become a founder.
[06:34 - 06:50] You can do that as well. I've done it. I love it. Is that the easiest path to choose? Just in all honesty, that's maybe another episode of what it actually meant and the bumps that you face.
[06:50 - 07:08] Been there, done that, doing it continuously, but enjoying it as well. But what I want and hope is that you just know that you are sitting on a pile of gold
[07:08 - 07:36] when it comes to resources and skills, and you can do whatever you want to because you have so many talents, so it's just about choosing which one you want to showcase to the world.
[07:36 - 08:15] I hope that I gave you a little bit of inspiration into as big of an opportunity to lay ahead and lie ahead for all of us. So thank you for listening and have a great day.
[08:21 - 08:24] Bye. Bye. Bye. -
"Get out there and meet the people", Martin Lønstrup, the VP and Head of Group Compliance at Sandvik, says. In this episode of Inspiring Legal, Stine & Martin discuss the importance of the people that make up the business, its operations, and its level of compliance.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:36] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community. Welcome to another Inspiring Legal episode.
[00:36 - 00:54] So my name is Stine. I'm your host. And today I'm joined by Martin. I'll let him introduce himself in a second. But what we're going to be talking today about is something about compliance and not being afraid of failure.
[00:54 - 01:14] Well, how do those two things connect? Well, that is what we'll be talking to Martin about today. Welcome, Martin. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Stine. So Martin, for the listeners out there that don't know you, could you maybe just give them a little flavor as to who you are and your background?
[01:14 - 01:34] Absolutely. I can do that. Well, first and foremost, I'm a father. I have three kids and a wife. And I love to ride on my bikes. So I think that's important for me to start with, because that's probably who I really am.
[01:34 - 01:58] But professionally, of course, I'm today head of compliance for a large global Swedish engineering company called Sandvik. And I have a legal background and have worked now, what, more than 15 years or so in, I guess, mainly large corporates.
[01:58 - 02:15] Before Sandvik, it was Falk. So everyone knows Falk in Denmark, at least. Emergency healthcare company. And before that, around eight years in Maersk, another Danish conglomerate with presence all over the world,
[02:15 - 02:31] the container shipping logistics business there. So, and I've, you know, background-wise, I've gone from working with actually negotiating contracts and being a lawyer and legal work in-house.
[02:31 - 02:50] To slowly transitioning, as many do, into compliance. And working now, I have now worked with compliance for roughly 10 years. So, Morten, I know you from LinkedIn. I've seen a lot of your posts.
[02:50 - 03:09] You're very good at sharing, not only sharing your bike rides, but also sharing wins, struggles, challenges. So in that regard, you've always been very open about giving to others.
[03:09 - 03:33] So when you and I started talking, we started talking about compliance and building out a compliance framework for companies, big companies, for example. And at that point, I remember you saying, well, if you want to build really good compliance programs, you have to be open to failure.
[03:33 - 03:55] And for me, that was, I agree, but failure and compliance and being open to failure are two things that normally don't go hand in hand. So I think the people out there would love to hear some of your stories, some of your learnings.
[03:55 - 04:14] So could you maybe give a little insight into why you believe that failure and compliance is, well, a good thing? Yeah, I can absolutely do that. And it should not sound as if I just go halfway into my things.
[04:14 - 04:41] Of course, with a legal background, we have our methods. So I think everyone who works within this field are definitely capable of doing so. I think for me, the failure part is, it resonates quite clearly to me because I think it's important that you build a comfort in your team and your teams with your employees, with your talents, that you don't have this no failure culture.
[04:41 - 05:11] I think that it can literally lock people down a little bit. And I have actually, if I have to take one example from my very early young days working in Maersk, actually in an area where we were outside of, we were in the legal space, we were not in compliance, but I had to pitch something for the management, a project.
[05:11 - 05:32] I did that, it completely failed. I pitched in the wrong way. I probably used the wrong arguments, even though I felt I was overly prepared. And at that time, it resulted in me actually not being given a chance to then do it again until like a year later.
[05:32 - 06:07] And then it was actually then a success and we could do the project. But that made me kind of feel like, okay, you really don't get a lot of chances at that point in time. And then as I've moved up in my career, I've seen it over and over again that at least sometimes there's this, I guess, general respect or fear that if you don't do it right the first time, then you shouldn't do it.
[06:07 - 06:48] And I think that that's unfortunate because I think that it doesn't really energize anyone or gives any motivation to anyone if you go in and you just get hit for them to come back and sit at your desk and then sit and grumble over like, why did it go wrong? I think that that's quite important to me. And I've seen it also in my later positions. Many of these situations, I have many failures, at least where I go in and maybe I've discussed a project or a pitch with my team, with everyone, and then I go in and then it should have been 40% different.
[06:48 - 07:30] But you learn from that, you become stronger from that. And I think it's important to talk about it. Because if I don't talk about it, and if I don't grab my employees, if they face this type of dilemma in my compliance function today, they're left on their own to deal with that. And I don't think that that's fair. I think that it's also part of my leadership task to try and open this up a little bit and talk about it as something that is okay. And I kind of hate the word failure.
[07:30 - 08:03] I prefer to talk about learnings, because you kind of get something out of it, you learn something, you reflect on it. And then you come out actually stronger in the end. So that's kind of how I try to see it. And I don't know, we've recently done a tech development that I've also told you a little bit about it before, where we did one development, we were very, very positive, we developed it in a system in eight weeks.
[08:03 - 08:42] We did use a technology that was not maybe fully suited for the purpose, but that was for some strategic business reasons. And the day before, we had to scrap it because it could not live up to the data privacy requirements. And data privacy is within my function, so I couldn't really approve it, because then my function would not be following what we are supposed to follow. And immediately after, the first immediate reaction was, because it was taking a chance in the first place, it was like, you have failed.
[08:42 - 09:01] So we have failed in this, you know, and actually, I had to really walk around in all the corridors and talk about, no, no, this is not failure. This is a learning. We have now learned that this tool, or this technology we chose for strategic reasons, were not suited for what we wanted to do.
[09:01 - 09:20] So we have now learned, we should have taken the other technology that we knew of, but we didn't choose that because it may be a tiny bit more expensive for many reasons. We should have taken that one. Now we will take that one and do it over again, and then we'll be successful. It's a learning piece to that.
[09:20 - 09:57] And I think we're all learning, right? Like, that's a part of growing up. It's about developing yourself personally, but also professionally. And what you often remember are the failures you made along the way, where you're definitely remembering, I'm not going to ... -
How do you build that business-savvy legal team? In this episode, Stine teams up with Shanti Ariker, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at Zendesk, to learn just how she did that and the impact it had on the team and the company.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript with timestamps:
[00:00 - 00:09] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16] Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:31] For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community.
[00:31 - 00:35] Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:35 - 00:39] My name is Stine and today I'm joined by Shanti.
[00:39 - 00:46] You will hear much more about her in a second, but I can tell you she has a very impressive resume,
[00:46 - 00:49] working for some of the biggest tech companies.
[00:49 - 00:51] Shanti, welcome.
[00:51 - 00:56] Thank you so much for having me today. It's great to be here.
[00:56 - 01:03] I just wanted to welcome everybody to the podcast and I'm excited to be here.
[01:03 - 01:07] We are super excited to have you on.
[01:07 - 01:12] What we're going to be talking about today is making legal a part of the business.
[01:12 - 01:21] How do you get legal to be that business partner that not only helps protect the business, but adds value too as well?
[01:21 - 01:26] That's something that I know that you've been very passionate about, Shanti, during your career.
[01:26 - 01:35] But before we jump into it, I would love for the listeners to get a little bit of flavor into your background
[01:35 - 01:43] and who you are so they get to know you as well.[02:14 - 02:26] I am currently the general counsel of Zendesk, which is a large CRM software company that mainly focuses on customer support and customer success.
[02:26 - 02:34] But previously I've worked at other large companies, as you mentioned, including Twilio, Autodesk, and Salesforce.
[02:34 - 02:46] So in my time, I've done a lot to grow large tech companies and to really work side by side and hand in hand with the business folks.
[02:46 - 02:52] So it's not just tech companies.
[02:52 - 02:55] These are some of the biggest in the world.
[02:55 - 03:03] If you know about SaaS businesses and you know about tech, you definitely know about Salesforce and Twilio and Zendesk.
[03:03 - 03:08] So how did you get into the tech as general counsel?
[03:08 - 03:10] How did that start?
[03:10 - 03:17] So really, it started quite a long time ago with my interest in science and technology.
[03:17 - 03:23] My father was a physicist and always interested me in that sort of thing, even though I was an English major.
[03:23 - 03:34] So while I never went into the technology field myself or became a technologist, I was always really inspired to understand about it and wanted to,
[03:34 - 03:42] and having grown up actually in Silicon Valley, I wanted to be near that and be part of it in whatever way I could.
[03:42 - 03:51] So when I became a lawyer, I thought, what better way to honor kind of my father's legacy than to continue in the tech field myself.
[03:51 - 04:03] So when I did start out, though, I was at a big law firm on Wall Street and then moved to the Bay Area and was working in the litigation group of a Bay Area law firm.
[04:03 - 04:07] And I really did want to move in-house and work in tech.
[04:07 - 04:14] And in order to do that, I got a little bit lucky and was asked to go in-house by one of my clients.
[04:14 - 04:21] So I did that, but I eventually started to work more on technology agreements and work on commercial agreements.
[04:21 - 04:32] And so that, you know, really got me much closer into the business because litigation, you know, you learn like maybe one facet related to a case, but not as much about the whole business.
[04:32 - 04:49] And so as I started to work more on technology transactions, I learned about what the concerns of the business were, what the needs were, and, you know, over time have delved more and deeply into business areas.
[04:49 - 05:02] So you mentioned it, getting closer to the business, and I think this is something that lawyers are becoming better at doing.
[05:02 - 05:12] But what would you say have been kind of like the development over the last, let's say, 10 years, in your opinion, has it changed?
[05:12 - 05:15] Have lawyers changed as much as the business?
[05:15 - 05:18] And how have you seen this develop?
[05:18 - 05:29] Yeah, I think, you know, over my career, there's been a big shift between inside and outside counsel, right?
[05:29 - 05:36] So there were much smaller legal departments in-house when I started to practice law.
[05:36 - 05:44] There might even be no general counsel or just a general counsel and no staff, maybe one person at most.
[05:44 - 05:56] But now, you know, some of these companies that I've worked at have hundreds of lawyers or even thousands of lawyers on some of the larger FANG companies like Google, Facebook, et cetera.
[05:56 - 06:03] And so they're almost like whole legal firms in and of themselves.
[06:03 - 06:16] So, you know, the practice of law in-house has really changed quite a bit because you have to specialize, you're much more focused on creating value for the business and really understanding the business.
[06:16 - 06:24] And so, you know, the companies where I've worked, we've had, you know, larger legal teams, but not enormous.
[06:24 - 06:30] And I think where you can really add value and where I've been able to add value is to really understand the business.
[06:30 - 06:32] And what do I mean by that?
[06:32 - 06:34] And it's not just about my little area.
[06:34 - 06:40] You know, when I was hired at Salesforce, I was mainly working on the master subscription agreement.
[06:40 - 06:45] And certainly I know my way around an indemnity clause and limitation of liability.
[06:45 - 06:55] And then but you have to understand a little bit about the use cases of the customer, what they're looking to put into the system as by way of data,
[06:55 - 07:02] the privacy areas of regulation and where that could trip you up and depending on which country you're in.
[07:02 - 07:10] But the more the longer that I'm in a company, the more I'm interested in, you know, what is exactly what is their product do?
[07:10 - 07:19] And where are the things where are the where are the problems and the issues that are facing customers when they're trying to use the product?
[07:19 - 07:30] And how can you as a lawyer bring those to the business and make them understand where they're where there are these friction points that you can help solve?
[07:30 - 07:34] Often they don't they don't earn in those conversations, in those negotiations.
[07:34 - 07:47] So they don't necessarily know, you know, sometimes they'll be in a good example is a very acquisitive company may have acquired a bunch of different products and not put them on the same platform.
[07:47 - 08:01] And so when you're negotiating an agreement, suddenly you've got six different security standards or the data is residing in different places or it's being processed in different ways.
[08:01 - 08:05] And so you don't want to have the same security addendum apply.
[08:05 - 08:09] And the customer doesn't care because they just want one set of term... -
Working in-house means understanding and taking business needs into account. So far so good, but how do you get there? How do you get the understanding needed to be offered a seat at the decision table? How can you use that understanding to help your company even more? Press play to find out.
Join us next week when we'll be talking with Zendesk's GC, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Privacy Officer Shanti Ariker. Shanti will further enlighten us about how Legal can support the entire business.
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:09] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16] Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:30] For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community.
[00:32 - 00:34] Inspiring Legal is back.
[00:34 - 00:40] It's 2023 and my name is Stine and I'm a part of Openli.
[00:40 - 00:45] You might have heard me before and if you haven't, well, welcome to Inspiring Legal.
[00:45 - 00:52] This is a podcast for in-house legal, for the people that are working as general counsels,
[00:52 - 00:58] head of legal, privacy counsels, and supporting the business.
[00:59 - 01:06] This year we have some amazing lineups of speakers, people with extreme experience
[01:06 - 01:09] and they've been working within legal for I don't know how many years.
[01:09 - 01:18] So today, this episode is about what we're going to be focusing on for the next couple of episodes
[01:18 - 01:20] with these amazing speakers.
[01:21 - 01:27] How you become a business savvy in-house lawyer.
[01:28 - 01:33] I think we all know that working in-house means you need to understand the business.
[01:34 - 01:37] Otherwise, it's super difficult to support.
[01:37 - 01:40] It's difficult to give good legal advice.
[01:41 - 01:45] What's even more difficult is to make a difference.
[01:45 - 01:47] And we all want to make a difference, right?
[01:47 - 01:48] That's why we went into law.
[01:49 - 01:58] This is why we're working with either contracts, privacy, or marketing as an example.
[01:58 - 02:04] Supporting the business with complex matters and trying to decipher it in a way where they get it.
[02:04 - 02:12] So still, I think we can do better.
[02:12 - 02:14] Or at least I know I can do better.
[02:14 - 02:17] It's all about getting on top of your business.
[02:18 - 02:24] So we will be talking with Zendesk's general counsel and she's a force.
[02:25 - 02:31] She knows something about supporting a business and being that business savvy lawyer.
[02:31 - 02:33] She has a very impressive resume.
[02:33 - 02:40] She's been working for not only Zendesk, but some of the fastest growing tech companies out there.
[02:41 - 02:44] And having a seat around the table.
[02:45 - 02:48] And to get that, you need to understand your business.
[02:49 - 02:50] So how do you do that?
[02:50 - 02:53] Well, take a look at what I did myself.
[02:53 - 02:58] And also take maybe a few references for some of the speakers that we've had.
[02:58 - 03:05] I started my first job out of the law firm working at a tech company.
[03:06 - 03:12] I have to say it was quite the experience and a bit of a rollercoaster.
[03:12 - 03:17] Because when you're sitting at the law firms, you know your clients.
[03:18 - 03:19] They're the same as you.
[03:20 - 03:23] They are lawyers or maybe they're like CEOs or CFOs.
[03:23 - 03:28] But as a main role, you're talking to the same persona.
[03:29 - 03:34] And when you then go out to the business, all of a sudden you're not talking to lawyers.
[03:35 - 03:38] Well, you might get legal advice sometime from like your external law firm.
[03:39 - 03:42] But you are supporting marketing.
[03:43 - 03:48] You're talking about fast moving people that just want to get things done.
[03:48 - 03:52] Or the developers that just want a yes, no answer.
[03:53 - 03:55] And ideally, yes, preferably, if doable.
[03:56 - 04:03] So what you need to think about and what I did was how do I communicate?
[04:04 - 04:05] So that was the first one.
[04:06 - 04:10] So becoming that business savvy lawyer, it's about how you communicate.
[04:11 - 04:12] How you speak to people.
[04:12 - 04:21] And show that you're honestly super interested in what they do.
[04:22 - 04:28] So the perfect example, or maybe not perfect, but just like explaining where I came from.
[04:29 - 04:34] So I came in at this tech company and on day two, the VP of engineering came over.
[04:35 - 04:37] And we're in around 2013.
[04:38 - 04:40] And he came over and he said, hey, Steena.
[04:40 - 04:43] We're thinking about using APIs.
[04:44 - 04:47] I just want to make sure from a privacy standpoint, but also contractually,
[04:48 - 04:50] is there anything that we should be aware of?
[04:51 - 04:57] And we're considering building it into the product to make it even more easy for our customers to integrate.
[04:58 - 05:02] And I was sitting there and just thinking, APIs?
[05:03 - 05:05] What the hell? What's that?
[05:06 - 05:08] And I had no idea, right?
[05:08 - 05:12] And you don't want to really seem as if you have no clue what he's talking about.
[05:13 - 05:18] But I kind of really, really fast just came to the conclusion, I just have to ask.
[05:19 - 05:22] And I just said, okay, what's an API?
[05:23 - 05:26] And then he started telling me what an API was.
[05:27 - 05:28] And I still really didn't get it.
[05:29 - 05:33] So we went to a whiteboard and he started drawing how the data floated.
[05:33 - 05:37] And all of a sudden said, oh, so it's kind of like a traffic light.
[05:38 - 05:39] Like you're on a freeway.
[05:40 - 05:43] And he's looking at me and I'm thinking, what is she talking about?
[05:44 - 05:48] So the way I kind of like tried to get it was like, okay, so APIs,
[05:49 - 05:55] they're kind of like a freeway where you can go in your car and you can go really fast back and forward to your destinations.
[05:56 - 05:57] And then there are traffic lights.
[05:58 - 06:00] So if it's a public API, it's normally just green.
[06:00 - 06:02] And I can take my little car and I can drive.
[06:03 - 06:10] And if it's private, well, sometimes there's a red light and I have to show my credentials before the light will go green.
[06:11 - 06:15] And it was kind of like, yeah, okay, we can work with that.
[06:16 - 06:17] And okay.
[06:18 - 06:22] But just the fact that I really, I think, tried to get it persuaded him.
[06:23 - 06:27] So a few days later, yeah, the story isn't done yet.
[06:27 - 06:31] He came over again and he started talking about iframes.
[06:32 - 06:36] And by the way, I've been doing privacy and tech for I don't know how many years.
[06:37 - 06:41] So I do know something about tech, but when you're talking about the VP of engineering,
[06:42 - 06:45] apparently there's a bit of a way for you to learn at that point.
[06:46 - 06:53] So he came over, he started talking about iframes and we're talking about widgets and performance on websites and stuff.
[06:53 - 06:57] And I started, okay, so ... -
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:09]: Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16]: Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19]: If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:30]: For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community.
[00:31 - 00:38]: Welcome back to this episode of Inspiring Legal, where I have the pleasure of welcoming William.
[00:39 - 00:41]: William, we are delighted to have you.
[00:41 - 00:48]: For the listeners out there, who is William and what is your background?
[00:49 - 00:53]: Thanks, Stine. I really appreciate it. It's great to be on.
[00:54 - 01:01]: My background, in a nutshell, maybe can be told by my accent or lack of an accent.
[01:02 - 01:08]: But I'm originally from the US, but I've been in Denmark for 10 plus years now.
[01:08 - 01:19]: I've also lived in a number of places and have been quite mobile in my personal life and career, but have made a home now here in Denmark.
[01:20 - 01:29]: Fantastic. So for the listeners out there, William Wade has been working for Sitecore for 11 years.
[01:29 - 01:38]: Recently, you launched what is called Sitecore's Legal Hub 0.1. I will be asking you so many questions,
[01:39 - 01:43]: because I think this is something that people will really truly find inspiring,
[01:44 - 01:49]: because you've set the goal to becoming the most innovative legal department, as I understand it.
[01:50 - 01:56]: In the industry. We'll start being the most innovative legal department in the industry,
[01:56 - 01:59]: and then we'll see where we can go from there.
[02:00 - 02:07]: That is ambitious, but it also means that you've been thinking a lot about, I guess, how to innovate, how to work.
[02:08 - 02:16]: But maybe to take a step back for the ones that don't know Sitecore, what is the company, what industry,
[02:17 - 02:20]: and maybe also just how big is your legal team?
[02:20 - 02:30]: Sure. Well, the legal team is, we are 23 people in all, including all various types of legal professionals,
[02:31 - 02:37]: not just attorneys that make up our team. So we're 23 in all, spread out globally.
[02:38 - 02:43]: Take back to 10 years ago or so, when I started, I was the second.
[02:43 - 02:51]: So we've grown since then. I would say we haven't grown enough to support all the needs of the business,
[02:52 - 03:00]: but that's what most in-house teams would also say, especially in the tech world. It's tough to keep up.
[03:01 - 03:08]: In terms of Sitecore, yes, so Sitecore started out as an early CMS provider.
[03:08 - 03:12]: So that's content management systems, just a way to manage content on your website.
[03:13 - 03:21]: The simplest example was in the early days, even dating back to the early 2000s,
[03:22 - 03:29]: if you wanted to make an edit on a website for similar content, you might have to go on every individual page and make that edit.
[03:30 - 03:35]: So it's crazy how much things have advanced since then.
[03:35 - 03:42]: But Sitecore started out, founder-led company by Michael Seifert.
[03:43 - 03:53]: And it was really about how can we build websites and make the process of managing content easier.
[03:54 - 04:03]: And they were a big player on the scene and also got started in the Bay Area through family connections
[04:03 - 04:12]: and other early investors so that when they were starting in Denmark, they were also starting almost in parallel in the US.
[04:13 - 04:16]: And that shaped a lot of the early success of the company.
[04:17 - 04:22]: It didn't have to make that jump from Europe to the US, that we were established there.
[04:23 - 04:29]: And in fact, a lot of US customers would most likely identify Sitecore as a US company
[04:29 - 04:33]: and not necessarily even understand its origins.
[04:34 - 04:35]: That's a big part of the success.
[04:36 - 04:41]: In terms of the product, CMS, that's old hat now.
[04:42 - 04:51]: To describe our product suite and the industry we're in, you call it the digital experience world,
[04:51 - 04:58]: which can mean different things, but it is a lot about how you engage with the website,
[04:59 - 05:06]: how personalizing content, of course, with consent, GDPR consent, of course.
[05:07 - 05:10]: All of that is privacy by design built into it.
[05:11 - 05:17]: But it is about being able to send the right content to your customer,
[05:17 - 05:20]: whether you're a B2B or B2C customer.
[05:21 - 05:23]: Sitecore's customers can send the right content at the right time.
[05:24 - 05:27]: So what have been the challenges?
[05:28 - 05:32]: I know a lot of the listeners and a lot of people in the community are sitting right now
[05:33 - 05:36]: and really focusing on especially improving sales.
[05:37 - 05:42]: We have the community report that we built together with the community.
[05:42 - 05:47]: And that shows that more than any other department,
[05:48 - 05:53]: sales and commercial are requiring the most resources from in-house legal teams.
[05:54 - 06:02]: I think on average, 71% of all community members said that sales were the most demanding team to support.
[06:03 - 06:08]: And they were also just taking arms and legs, more or less, from the legal teams.
[06:08 - 06:15]: What have been the challenges to build the legal hub?
[06:16 - 06:21]: Well, it's definitely true with sales and Sitecore is no different.
[06:22 - 06:25]: And our field legal team is the largest.
[06:26 - 06:33]: When we think of those 23 legal professionals, a huge chunk is set within the field.
[06:33 - 06:42]: And a lot of the things that I do as well is focused on supporting our field legal team, which supports everything.
[06:43 - 06:44]: Field is the sales?
[06:45 - 06:46]: Field is the sales, yes.
[06:47 - 06:53]: So anything commercially driven and any revenue generating contract and related.
[06:54 - 06:58]: Of course, it all can be interrelated, but that's what I mean.
[06:58 - 07:02]: Sales is also just a good word to use.
[07:03 - 07:06]: So it's the same here that we use that.
[07:07 - 07:20]: And the challenges, in large part, I really feel is how can we present information in a way that will support the sales process.
[07:20 - 07:36]: And will be advantageous and a value add to our sales team, both to save resources of asking, having to answer, excuse me, the same question again and again.
[07:36 - 07:51]: How can we focus our resources, obviously, towards the customer so they will have less questions because we have been so transparent and have really tried to give them the full picture of what we're doing.
[07:52 - 08:01]: Which make the sales person's life easier, decrease deal cycles, the length of time it takes to close a deal by doing that.
[08:01 - 08:17]: But also give our own sales team that ammunition to take into those discussions when a customer, you know, legal departments from our customers, you know, they want to show their value as well.
[08:18 - 08:27]: You run into these situations where you can see that they may not have issue with your contract, but they are trying to show you the value to their organization.
[08:27 - 08:34]: And we're cognizant of that. But how can we still make that process easier?
[08:35 - 08:41]: And I think it goes back to engaging the customer and being transparent.
[08:42 - 08:48]: That's transparent, transparent, transparent is what we want to offer.
[08:48 - 08:56]: So explain our agreement set up, understand we'll have some disagreements, but explain why we have set up language the way we have.
[08:57 - 09:10]: And also, you know, a big conversation point that came up in the middle of this is that are w... -
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:09]: Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16]: Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19]: If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:31]: For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community.
[00:32 - 00:38]: Welcome to another special edition of the Inspiring Legal podcast.
[00:38 - 00:39]: It's Christmas time.
[00:39 - 00:43]: And so let's start by wishing each other.
[00:43 - 00:44]: Happy Christmas.
[00:44 - 00:49]: I hope you're all enjoying the season of hopefully snow.
[00:49 - 00:55]: If you are in the snowy locations, if not, well, I hope you're enjoying the sun.
[00:55 - 00:59]: Today I am joined by a very special guest.
[00:59 - 01:04]: He is the mind behind the podcast.
[01:04 - 01:14]: A big contribution and also content creator when it comes to the openli community.
[01:14 - 01:15]: Welcome Daniel.
[01:15 - 01:16]: Thanks, Dina.
[01:16 - 01:17]: Wow.
[01:17 - 01:18]: Thanks for the nice words.
[01:18 - 01:19]: Very happy to be here.
[01:19 - 01:25]: So for those who don't know Daniel, well, you actually know him, but you don't really know him.
[01:25 - 01:31]: He's kind of like the special secret Santa that we have here at openli.
[01:31 - 01:35]: Daniel is heading up content and communications at openli.
[01:35 - 01:37]: So he's the producer.
[01:37 - 01:38]: Yeah.
[01:38 - 01:42]: Usually I am sitting behind the microphone, but you won't hear me.
[01:42 - 01:49]: But so for this special edition Christmas episode, we decided to spice up things a bit.
[01:49 - 01:51]: And so I've joined Stine.
[01:51 - 01:52]: I'm very happy to.
[01:52 - 01:58]: And yeah, today we're talking about something very close to Stine's heart.
[01:58 - 02:01]: I know and to my heart also.
[02:01 - 02:09]: How are legal teams working in the year that we are just currently exiting?
[02:09 - 02:14]: And what will those trends say for the year that we are looking forward to?
[02:14 - 02:15]: Yeah.
[02:15 - 02:18]: So as you all know, it's the season of giving back.
[02:18 - 02:21]: It's from all of us to all of you.
[02:21 - 02:25]: So if we look back at 2023, oh, sorry, two.
[02:25 - 02:28]: Jesus, I'm already jumping ahead.
[02:28 - 02:35]: So if you look back at this year, what we did is that we launched the openli community.
[02:35 - 02:40]: And based on your feedback, we launched the podcast.
[02:40 - 02:44]: We asked the community how many of you wanted a podcast.
[02:44 - 02:50]: And it was over 90% that said, this is something we really would like.
[02:50 - 02:57]: You also told us a lot about what your struggles are, what you're working on, what you're focusing on.
[02:57 - 03:04]: And that's why we built the survey where we talked with more than I don't know how many.
[03:04 - 03:07]: We're almost 600 in the community now.
[03:07 - 03:18]: Everybody working in-house legal, everybody really focusing on scaling, improving the way that they're working and also sharing what their struggles are.
[03:18 - 03:24]: And that's why we built the in-house legal community report that we shared with you a few weeks back.
[03:24 - 03:33]: But those who haven't had time to read the report, for those that aren't a part of the community, but listening to the podcast,
[03:33 - 03:44]: Daniel and I talked about what could we best do to give you a little Christmas present, but also give you the best possible start for the year.
[03:44 - 03:51]: So Daniel, you are, of course, a big part of building that report, getting those insights.
[03:51 - 03:58]: So I thought it'd be nice if you just kind of decide what we should be talking about and what we should be sharing.
[03:58 - 04:08]: Yeah. So basically, we went over the report and we thought, OK, so what will bring the most value to our very much valued listeners?
[04:08 - 04:16]: And basically, we have decided to go over the report with you right now, right here.
[04:16 - 04:20]: Yeah. So from all of us to all of you.
[04:20 - 04:26]: So, yeah, hope you will enjoy this.
[04:26 - 04:33]: We're going to skim the report, obviously, and you can go and sign up for the community and read the report.
[04:33 - 04:41]: But yeah, we hope you will get a lot of very valuable information out of this. We surely have.
[04:41 - 04:46]: So should we just dive into it? Yeah. Yeah, let's do so. All right.
[04:46 - 04:49]: So the first thing, do you want to take the first one? Yeah.
[04:49 - 04:55]: Yeah. So the first thing we started talking about with the community was very much about showing value.
[04:55 - 05:06]: Like Daniel and I know from many of you out there that legal is sometimes not able to showcase how they're supporting the business.
[05:06 - 05:11]: Like everybody knows how much value and how much work, but how do you showcase it?
[05:11 - 05:14]: So what about KPIs? How do you measure value?
[05:14 - 05:19]: So we started talking with the community about how they are measuring it. Are they even measuring it?
[05:19 - 05:32]: And what we found out is that 45 percent of the legal teams are working with KPIs, meaning 55 percent aren't.
[05:32 - 05:36]: And what's really interesting for a lot of people out there are, OK, so what are you measuring?
[05:36 - 05:47]: How are you tracking it? And we've been having some really interesting conversations with some of the biggest general tech companies where you're talking to general counsels from Sendesk.
[05:47 - 05:54]: We're talking with FITMA and so forth. And every time we're asking them, so how are you measuring value?
[05:54 - 06:00]: And what they're saying is it's very much about understanding the work.
[06:00 - 06:04]: It's about understanding the data. But how do you get data?
[06:04 - 06:11]: That's where the tricky part comes in. So some are having what you would call kind of like a ticket system.
[06:11 - 06:17]: So they are asking everybody who wants to get in contact with legal to file a ticket.
[06:17 - 06:29]: So when they file a ticket, it's they're measuring who's sending it, what teams they're measuring, how fast we're responding, what type of contract are reviewing.
[06:29 - 06:43]: So all of a sudden, they're able to see what departments are taking the most of the legal time or what departments are sending the most amount of contracts for review.
[06:43 - 06:48]: Others are using NPS scores and surveys. And what is an NPS score, Stine?
[06:48 - 06:56]: So an NPS score is kind of like a satisfaction score where you're often asked to measure between one to ten.
[06:56 - 07:00]: And where you're counting the most positive, you're counting the most negative.
[07:00 - 07:05]: And then you have kind of like this, let's call it the dead zone, where it doesn't really add in.
[07:05 - 07:10]: It's not negative and it's not positive. So that's also how some are doing it.
[07:10 - 07:16]: But what we found out that most people are doing are surveying.
[07:16 - 07:21]: They're going out and talking and asking, what do you think? Are you getting value?
[07:21 - 07:26]: Is there anything we can do better? Is there anything we're doing excellent?
[07:26 - 07:33]: So on that regard, they're trying to really try to get a sense of where they can improve and how they can work better.
[07:33 - 07:40]: And then we have the ones that are very much just focused on the ACV, so the average contract value.
[07:40 - 07:46]: And that's another way that some are measuring the value that they're delivering to the company.
[07:46 - 07:53]: So how much of the revenue generated sales are being supported by legal.
[07:53 - 08:02]: But I imagin... -
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcript:
[00:00 - 00:09]: Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16]: Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19]: If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:30]: For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community.
[00:32 - 00:36]: Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:36 - 00:40]: My name is Stine and today I'm joined by Laura.
[00:40 - 00:41]: Welcome, Laura.
[00:42 - 00:44]: Hi, welcome. Thanks for having me.
[00:44 - 00:53]: So for the listeners out there, Laura is a big contributor to the openli community,
[00:53 - 00:59]: having written several articles on a topic that is very close to our heart,
[00:59 - 01:03]: about building the in-house legal team's brand.
[01:03 - 01:09]: But before we jump into that and hear more about the importance and why you should be thinking about it,
[01:09 - 01:11]: I think we should meet Laura.
[01:11 - 01:17]: Laura, can you maybe just tell people who you are and maybe a little bit about your background?
[01:18 - 01:22]: Sure. I always have a difficult time knowing where to start.
[01:22 - 01:26]: So usually I try to get some things, you know, right out at the start,
[01:26 - 01:32]: which is that I'm an American who is an expat living in Denmark, in Copenhagen,
[01:32 - 01:35]: to kind of situate myself.
[01:36 - 01:40]: I went to law school in California.
[01:40 - 01:47]: So I'm a California licensed attorney and I've had a varied career throughout different states and countries in Europe.
[01:47 - 01:50]: I've primarily been in-house my whole career.
[01:50 - 01:53]: So that sets me apart a little bit. It makes me a little different.
[01:54 - 01:56]: Today I would say that I work in tech.
[01:57 - 02:02]: But prior to that, I've also worked in sports and worked in media.
[02:02 - 02:10]: And I'm very passionate about pushing our industry, the legal industry, and particularly in-house teams forward
[02:10 - 02:20]: to become more efficient, really to be optimized and be able to work better within our current business environment.
[02:21 - 02:25]: So for those of you, when Laura is talking about those companies she's worked for,
[02:25 - 02:29]: it's big companies like Unity and Red Bull.
[02:29 - 02:36]: So she's being modest. She is a person who knows a lot when it comes to in-house legal.
[02:37 - 02:44]: So Laura, maybe just tell me a little bit about where did your passion come from
[02:44 - 02:48]: when it goes to the kind of in-house legal team brand?
[02:48 - 02:50]: Like, where did you get that?
[02:52 - 02:56]: I think it's probably from really just working with the business
[02:56 - 03:02]: and going in and having the business really just not excited to have a meeting with you,
[03:02 - 03:10]: not excited to take a phone call with you, or maybe even some points being scared to come talk to you.
[03:11 - 03:14]: I mean, we're there to help. We're a service organization.
[03:14 - 03:19]: We serve the business and enable the business to thrive.
[03:19 - 03:21]: So really we should be looked at as partners.
[03:21 - 03:27]: And so, you know, just this barrier that would come up because people, you know,
[03:27 - 03:33]: in some contexts have had negative experiences with legal or they think of television shows.
[03:34 - 03:39]: Right? People have come with all these preconceptions about what a lawyer is or what a lawyer does.
[03:40 - 03:46]: And I've found in most of my jobs, I've had to do education and relationship building
[03:46 - 03:50]: and bridge building and selling what I'm doing.
[03:50 - 03:54]: So then I can be more integrated into the business.
[03:54 - 03:59]: So it's really, I think, probably out of necessity to do my job better.
[03:59 - 04:05]: But then also just on a personal level, you know, you want your colleagues to want to have meetings with you
[04:05 - 04:08]: and not be upset or disappointed.
[04:08 - 04:11]: Like, oh, I got to get on a call with legal.
[04:12 - 04:16]: Yeah, those like, have you talked to legal? Do I have to?
[04:16 - 04:18]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[04:18 - 04:22]: Okay, so when you're talking about legal brands and building that,
[04:22 - 04:30]: it's as much about getting maybe away from the perception that legal is a naysayer
[04:30 - 04:33]: or maybe somebody you couldn't talk to.
[04:33 - 04:35]: So is that correctly understood?
[04:35 - 04:39]: Yeah, kind of like, I would say like a dream crusher, right?
[04:39 - 04:43]: Especially working in technology, working with developers.
[04:43 - 04:49]: I think when people are, or even in the creative industries, when you're creating something,
[04:49 - 04:55]: you don't necessarily want to sort of bring your baby to legal to then have it be, you know,
[04:55 - 05:03]: crushed and smashed because, you know, of some regulations or just something that is going on.
[05:03 - 05:07]: So that's also part of why, you know, in brand building, it's about when to work with legal.
[05:07 - 05:13]: So come to legal before so we can work together to build whatever it is you're building.
[05:13 - 05:18]: So then you don't have those negative experiences of, you know, for example,
[05:18 - 05:22]: building a product that's collecting all sorts of personally identifiable information
[05:22 - 05:28]: and not building anything in that product to deal with regulations in the proper way.
[05:28 - 05:34]: So if we then take your, you've written a whole series on this subject.
[05:34 - 05:37]: So again, there is so much for us to cover.
[05:37 - 05:48]: But if you were to kind of like give the intro to how do you see like legal brands,
[05:48 - 05:57]: where are we today and how have we maybe been evolving, hopefully?
[05:57 - 06:02]: I think it probably just depends on one, the company and then the leadership of the legal team.
[06:02 - 06:07]: But I definitely see, especially actually as part of the LinkedIn community
[06:07 - 06:14]: and also different legal communities that are being built, like the OpenLink community,
[06:14 - 06:21]: people are interested in pushing our industry forward and also the perception of legal,
[06:21 - 06:23]: how we're doing things.
[06:23 - 06:30]: You can look at everything from pushing from using plain language to adopting technology
[06:30 - 06:40]: to talking about mental health of lawyers, where we're trying to push forward to humanize ourselves.
[06:40 - 06:48]: And then also, I think, bring ourselves up to speed with other teams that are using technology to optimize.
[06:48 - 06:51]: So I think it's all about accessibility and humanizing.
[06:51 - 06:54]: So I think there's definitely really great progress being made.
[06:54 - 07:00]: But, you know, other kind of, I guess, like the early tech adoption curve, right?
[07:00 - 07:03]: People are in different parts of their journey.
[07:03 - 07:08]: But don't you think maybe that the legal teams are evolving too in this day and age?
[07:08 - 07:15]: Like what we've seen from the community report that we did and that we're launching now,
[07:15 - 07:24]: we can see that a lot of the legal professionals out there have been struggling with building relationships,
[07:24 - 07:31]: getting that buy in and understanding of why legal is so important and when you can use legal.
[07:31 - 07:38]: So do you think there is maybe also a shift in the in-house legal teams in terms of mindsets?
[07:38 - 07:48]: I think so. I think they're recognizing that in order to do your job, you have to sort of have a seat at the table or change the perception of legal.
[07:48 - 07:54]: And also, I think legal teams ar... -
Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.
Full episode transcription:
[00:00 - 00:09]: Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal.
[00:10 - 00:16]: Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:19]: If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it.
[00:19 - 00:31]: For more inspiration, go to openli.com slash community.
[00:32 - 00:36]: So this is a new episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:37 - 00:43]: My name is Stine and today we're going to talk a little bit about privacy.
[00:43 - 00:56]: Often when you're sitting in-house, a part of your responsibilities are related to privacy, GDPR, CCPA, and the various privacy legislations that are out there today.
[00:57 - 01:00]: You might also have a privacy team.
[01:00 - 01:12]: But regardless of whether or not you're sitting in privacy, if you're sitting in legal, you need to figure out how you want to work with privacy.
[01:13 - 01:23]: What is your privacy vision, mission, goals, and how do you get that ingrained across the organization?
[01:23 - 01:41]: Well, I think the first thing we should talk about is getting management to stand by the support, the insights, and the power that is needed for you to succeed with working with privacy.
[01:42 - 01:47]: Because if you don't have management, it's going to be very difficult to get this implemented.
[01:47 - 02:02]: So what I would do first is I would start by figuring out just at my own desk, where are we in my understanding of our compliance level related to privacy?
[02:02 - 02:23]: Once I've gotten that, what I would do is I would at the next management meeting go and introduce them to just generally privacy, where we are as a company, and also what is needed for us to be at an acceptable level.
[02:23 - 02:34]: I'm not talking about going into details about whether or not you have your Article 30, if your DPA is up to date, your privacy policies. I'm talking just in general.
[02:34 - 02:57]: And then I would go to management and say, I think this is important for reasons A, B, and C, not focusing on the fines per se, but focusing on how we can leverage privacy as a revenue generator, just one example,
[02:57 - 03:07]: or as a way to build trust with our users, or if we can see that we're getting a lot of requests in the sales process, or from users.
[03:08 - 03:19]: So let's say that we're a B2C company. If we can see that a lot of users are starting to ask questions about how we're doing things related to privacy, well, that is always good to have on file.
[03:19 - 03:40]: Because as soon as you make it tangible, as soon as you make it visible to management, how this is impacting the company, not only because of high fines, but how you're operating as a global company, as an example, well, then it makes a difference.
[03:40 - 03:50]: So this is where I would start. Then I would ask for a mandate to go and take a further look into how we're working with privacy.
[03:51 - 03:59]: And what I would do then is simply start classifying GDPR and privacy into different buckets.
[03:59 - 04:17]: There is how we're doing in terms of sales, how many requests are we getting, how we're doing in terms of end users asking us questions, how we're doing in terms of internal, it might be your employees that have questions, and then how we're doing on the overall compliance level.
[04:17 - 04:33]: In my own personal view, I've not done any digging at this point in time. And I then have a good understanding of the impact that I'm able to maybe have with running and implementing a privacy program.
[04:33 - 04:57]: What I would do then is simply start mapping out how we're doing, what data are we getting, are we a data processor? Well, some of the things that I would start looking at first is how, let's call it, risky are the data processors that we're using to deliver the service to our company.
[04:57 - 05:04]: So let's imagine that my company, it's not, by the way, just emphasizing, it is not, but built on Google Analytics.
[05:05 - 05:16]: If it's built on Google Analytics, I know, not good, right? Because if you've seen all the many different types of decisions coming from the regulators, well, then you would know.
[05:17 - 05:20]: Google Analytics aren't doing super well.
[05:20 - 05:30]: So we do that mapping and seeing, okay, just on a general level, how we're progressing in that regard. And once I had that, well, I would start doing more mapping.
[05:30 - 05:55]: Then I would figure out overall what impact do I anticipate that working with privacy will have on my company? Because it might have an impact. In some scenarios, it probably will. Marketing might not be able to do the same type of lookups in Facebook that they were doing before, you know, lookalikes.
[05:55 - 06:15]: It might be that some of the processes for buying tools will drag out a little. I'm not talking necessarily about a lot, but before you start buying a tool, figure out whether or not your data processor is GDPR compliant and working with privacy and have the appropriate security measures.
[06:15 - 06:33]: Well, that's important. Because as soon as you open up, you start to share data, and then you're relying and hoping on their compliance level. So you might want to introduce your process when it comes to buying tools, which might have an impact on the product teams.
[06:33 - 06:50]: Because also the product teams, they like to buy tools, just like marketing. And if all of a sudden they just can't go out and buy the tools as they were normally doing, well, then you would need buy-in. So getting that overview before you start implementing it.
[06:50 - 07:19]: And then what I would do is I would go to each of the business owners, and I would have a conversation about it, telling them why it's important, showing them how many requests we're getting from customers, how many tools we're using in the organization, how much data we're sharing across, or maybe also how many of our prospects have questions about the subprocesses we're using.
[07:20 - 07:38]: And how it's impacting sales. So I would go to, for example, my CPO, which is the chief product officer, and I would say to him, well, this is how the world is. Many product officers are really dedicated to privacy. That's my experience.
[07:38 - 07:51]: So when you're talking about, we need to keep data safe, you need to make sure that we're working with the right companies, well, they typically buy-in. Especially if you're asking them also about how can we improve the process.
[07:51 - 08:07]: It's all about stakeholder management. But it's also about figuring out a balance. And then creating your vision and mission together with these decision makers.
[08:07 - 08:26]: Because if you can get the CPOs buy-in, well, a part of your maybe goals would be that we contract with tools, platforms, and services out there that have a certain standard when it comes to private security.
[08:26 - 08:44]: And if you get that buy-in, that's an easy goal. It's also easy to get incorporated into the business. And then you go to management and say, well, me and the CPO, we are here to talk a little bit about our vision and mission when it comes to privacy and working with vendors.
[08:44 - 08:57]: So we've agreed that we've set the bar to be, we want to work with contractors, platforms, services. That meets these basic criteria.
[08:58 - 09:12]: So we will be implementing this and that would really help increase our compliance, make sure that our product is safe, maybe minimizing the amount of potential data breaches because we're working with these more maybe secure companies.
[09:12 - 09:21]: And at the same time, by the way, my CCO, Chief Sales Officer, I can tell you that we can see that a lot of the customers have had questions about subprocessors.
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