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Inspiring Legal

Inspiring Legal

Openli

Join host Stine Mangor Tornmark as she journeys through the in-house legal landscape of today. With influential GCs, top C-level executives and other fascinating guests, Inspiring Legal is your weekly dose of everything legal, career and life-lessons. Don’t hesitate to pitch ideas, feedback etc. to [email protected] Apply to become a community member at www.openli.com/community
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Top 10 Inspiring Legal Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Inspiring Legal episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Inspiring Legal for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Inspiring Legal episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Inspiring Legal - Episode 24: The future of privacy
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04/18/23 • 12 min

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 - ...

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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 th...

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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 sphe...

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Inspiring Legal - Episode 21: Opportunities for Legal with Sarah Ouis
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03/28/23 • 30 min

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...

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"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 h...

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Inspiring Legal - Episode 19: Finding your superpower with Chad Aboud
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03/14/23 • 33 min

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...

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Inspiring Legal - Episode 18: What a CEO needs from their GC
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03/07/23 • 8 min

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 ...

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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...

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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. <...

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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...

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How many episodes does Inspiring Legal have?

Inspiring Legal currently has 28 episodes available.

What topics does Inspiring Legal cover?

The podcast is about Career, Law, Legal, Podcasts, Inspiration, Self-Improvement, Business and Careers.

What is the most popular episode on Inspiring Legal?

The episode title 'Episode 24: The future of privacy' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Inspiring Legal?

The average episode length on Inspiring Legal is 22 minutes.

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Episodes of Inspiring Legal are typically released every 7 days.

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The first episode of Inspiring Legal was released on Oct 17, 2022.

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