Episode 23: Leading Legal Operations - with Sean Houston of Heineken

04/11/23 • 32 min

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...

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

Previous Episode

Episode 22: Heading up a global privacy team - with Emma Redmond of Stripe

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...

Next Episode

Episode 24: The future of privacy

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 - ...