Episode 10: How to create a business-savvy legal team

Inspiring Legal

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 ...