In-House Counsel

Think Quick: Working At Fast-Growth Companies

It’s a sink or swim type of environment requiring a specific set of skills to thrive.

By and  
on

Brain Speed think quickWorking at a fast-growth company is akin to diving directly into the deep end: it’s a sink or swim type of environment requiring a specific set of skills to thrive. At a recent event put on by Priori Legal, Vince Cogan (former Corporate Counsel, Head of Product Legal and Legal Operations at Stripe), Kate Karas (VP, Sr. Associate General Counsel at Lending Club), Steve Siger (Managing Counsel at Thumbtack) and Chester Te (Assistant General Counsel at Silicon Valley Bank) provide their strategies for optimizing in-house legal at fast-growing companies.

  • Scaling: Legal departments at high-growth companies frequently start off by hiring generalists, and then bring on specialists as the department grows. “The reality is that you will likely need both generalists and specialists. If you’re looking for specific subject-matter expertise, it may mean hiring a specialist with significant firm training. If you’re looking for someone to jump in and tackle any topic, you’ll want a generalist who is comfortable being uncomfortable. In either case, the key is fit, and making sure this person can go in front of your key business stakeholders and executives. Soft skills are critical, and you can use past experience and resume to verify the hard skills,” says Te.
  • Focusing on Long-Term Growth: As Karas explains, “More than focusing on generalist vs. specialist, I always try to remember that it only takes one person who isn’t a fit with the legal or business team to create a destructive environment and really bring down morale.” Cogan echoes this approach, but encourages taking a long-term view of where the legal department is heading. “In the early stages, you’re looking for someone who is intelligent, curious, adaptable, and a culture fit. Over time, you start focusing on hiring more specialists because you have a clearer strategy for the legal department as a whole. The earlier you can start thinking through what you’d like your department to look like, the higher the chances you’ll know who to hire, and be able to clearly communicate to the potential employee how they’ll fit into the team as it grows.”
  • Prioritizing: In a fast-growth company, there are never enough hours in a day for any one person to do everything that is asked of them – such is the nature of this type of environment. An important tool is to understand which matters in-house counsel should focus on. As Siger explains, “I find that figuring out what to do and the order to do it in is, often times, harder than doing the actual work. It takes quite a bit of time to determine what ‘urgent’ actually means at a given company. The business partner is critical in helping legal figure out where their request falls on the continuum of needs, and open communication is the lynchpin to make it all come together.” Effectively communicating the reason certain tasks are being prioritized does wonders for building relationships. “It’s so difficult to tell someone that the thing they want to do isn’t necessarily the most important in the big picture. I work hard to communicate the message in a non-personal way, and sometimes, you just need to escalate and have someone step in. Legal can’t always be the arbitrator of competing business interests,” Te adds.
  • Staying Patient: “As one of the initial lawyers at a fast-growth company, you’re frequently working with lots of business people who simply aren’t used to working with legal. It takes time and relationship building to show your value,” explains Siger. Though it may take longer, not rushing through this part of the process is critical to long-term success. “On your first day, you see everyone going crazy, and it’s ok not to know how to help. Take time to learn, meet people and don’t stress about not being able to help immediately. Having more patience in the beginning is key in setting you up for success going forward,” he adds.
  • Staying Practical: At many fast-growth companies, it’s quite common to work with business teams who have not previously spent years working with robust legal departments. As a result, explaining and managing risk can feel like an uphill climb. To combat this, Karas suggests taking a practical approach. “We explain risk and try to identify a workable path to the goal articulated by the business team. We try to quantify risk and ask how likely it is that the negative impact will occur. We then asses what the impact would be – is it brand? Customer confidence? Or another metric important to the business or the company. Having this type of data-driven approach to risk really helps legal speak the business language.” If this strategy doesn’t work, Karas uses another approach that is quite effective. “If all else fails, I follow the decisions of the SEC, FTC and other regulatory bodies and point to those examples. This is a very effective way to overcome the ‘legal is just being conservative’ argument. It’s a neutral way to point out that a suggestion is, simply, a bad idea,” she adds. Siger also uses external sources to support his rationale, “If something really isn’t a great idea, explain why, use recent news articles about how someone else got in trouble for doing something similar,” he explains.

Balancing the various competing interests at a fast-growth company is an exciting roller coaster ride for in-house counsel ready to face a new challenge daily. Adding these effective tools to your practice will help you navigate these challenges and achieve long-term success within the legal department and for the company as a whole. Do you have additional tips that helped you along the way? We’d love to hear your thoughts @OlgaVMack @bloomkatia!

Olga V. Mack and Katia Bloom are startup enthusiasts who embrace the current disruption to the legal profession. Long gone are the days when in-house legal departments simply manage outside counsel or provide services. Today’s legal department is a sophisticated business unit that co-manages the company’s bottom line, embraces technology, and analyzes risks constructively. Mack and Bloom love this change and are dedicated to improving and shaping the future of the legal profession. Together they passionately collect and share inspiring stories of legal leaders who are thriving through the ongoing tectonic shift. Mack and Bloom are convinced that the legal profession will emerge from this revolution even stronger, more resilient, and inclusive than before. They are currently co-authoring a manual of the skills and traits lawyers need to succeed in — and even enjoy — today’s rapidly evolving in-house legal departments. You can reach them at olga@olgamack.com and katia@katiabloom.com or @olgavmack and @bloomkatia on Twitter.

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , , ,