Career Footprints podcast

35:55

Reed Smith alum Molly Campbell shares how her passion for learning novel and complex subjects and her powerful interactions with mentors enabled her to excel as a litigation associate and then partner at Reed Smith. She details how careful reflection and strong professional and personal relationships paved her path from trial lawyer to in-house counsel at Astellas Pharma advising on cutting-edge regulatory issues.…

Career Footprints

1
Doug Sayranian: From M&A lawyer to general counsel working in cyber threat intelligence 29:45

11 weeks fa29:45

29:45

Reed Smith alum Doug Sayranian shares his journey from M&A senior associate in New York to his current role in-house as general counsel at cyber threat intelligence company Intel 471. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guests, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals' careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that. Lauren: Greetings, and welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints podcast. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Reed Smith alum Douglas Sayranian. Doug is currently the general counsel of cybercrime intelligence company Intel 471. He joined Intel 471 from Reed Smith's New York office, where he was a senior M&A associate. Doug's career has included roles at three other global law firms, where, as we're about to hear, he built significant chops in public, private, and private equity M&A. Doug, welcome. Doug: Hi, Lauren. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Lauren: So I would love to start our conversation by hearing a little bit about Intel 471. What does your company focus on, and what is your role over there? Doug: Absolutely. Intel 471 is a cyber threat intelligence company, and our specialty is focusing on gathering and reporting hard to get information about what's happening in the criminal underworld when it comes to cybersecurity threats, vulnerabilities, and tactics. A good example might be the solar winds breach or government investigations into Telegram or trying to help protect hospitals and businesses from ransomware. My role at the company as the head of legal covers the normal everyday contractual matters, but also things like risk, privacy, compliance, HR, and strategic positioning of the corporation. Lauren: Wow. So it sounds like you're really, or at least your company in the business is working on some things that are in the headlines that we're all seeing every day. So exciting. So as someone who spent most of your career so far at law firms, what's been the best thing about making the jump to in-house? It was a really difficult decision for me when I was considering whether to continue pursuing partnership at a large law firm, specifically at Reed Smith, or to leave for Intel 471, which was actually one of my clients when I was in private practice. The best thing about being in-house is the ability to really put my skills to use and solve problems for the business outside of a narrow legal channel being able to have an impact and an influence in a variety of different aspects of the organization has been really rewarding and it's also allowed me to learn entirely new skills and develop different aspects of existing skills to be a better practitioner and a business leader. Lauren: Great. No, thanks for that. So you mentioned developing new skills in your new role, and I want to ask you more about that. So in what areas have you had to do the most learning? Like where was the biggest learning curve? And how was that for you coming from being, you know, quite a successful senior associate? Doug: I think that there are probably two areas that I would identify as the low-hanging fruit or the steepest learning curves for me when I first went in-house. One is practical, and that is reframing an analysis of any situation or a solution to a problem or a strategy to tackle a certain obstacle. In terms of practicality, the fact that the world is in an imperfect place. In private practice, obviously, attorneys seek to be experts on a wide variety of topics, but understand both the perfectly impossible and imperfectly possible solutions to a client's problem. It was difficult for me when I first went in-house to let go of the impulse to want to apply the best solution, as opposed to applying the solution that was commercially practicable. The second area where I've done quite a lot of reading, both technical and non-technical material, is obviously in the context of artificial intelligence and large language models. It's an exciting new development for technology for humanity and it's really changing the way my business and businesses in general conduct themselves in the world. Lauren: Interesting. So really getting down into the details of the business. Because I imagine as outside counsel, you also try to be practical and business-like, but it sounds like now that you're on that other side, it's a different level of solution-oriented thinking for the business. Doug: Absolutely. I used to joke that when I was an M&A practitioner, I was functionally a wedding planner. Lauren: I love that. Doug: I helped companies fall in love and start a family. It's a little bit different when you're part of the family and you have to think about day-to-day things like getting groceries and taking out trash as opposed to planning for the big party. Lauren: Oh, wow. I love that metaphor. Okay, so let's go back to the beginning of your career now that we have seen where you've landed so successfully. So you went to Northwestern Law School in Chicago, and knowing that, you must have had plenty of options when you started out your career. So can you tell us a little bit about when and how you chose to come to New York and do M&A at a global law firm? Doug: When I was in law school, I had the privilege of taking corporate law courses from Professor Carl Lutz, who was formerly a private equity M&A partner at Kirkland & Ellis. And one of the courses he taught was on M&A transactions, where we actually read through sample deal documents and thought through the negotiation of the commercial terms, the legal terms, and the implications it might have for the fictional business. I enjoyed that work so much that I knew in law school that I wanted to be an M&A attorney. And when I was interviewing with firms, I met with a number of really wonderful partners and associates from all over the country. But it was fairly obvious to me that New York as a market was where most of the activity and the skill and the resources for U.S.-based M&A was located. And the line that I used in my on-campus interviews when I was still a 2L trying to get a summer associate position was, you don't choose to become a gladiator and then refuse to go to Rome. Because of all the places in the world to do M&A, New York is the most competitive and the fastest moving and the most intense. And I knew that if I was in New York City, I would find mentors and teachers and challenges that would help me grow. Lauren: So you just fell in love with the subject matter in law school and then, as you said, made it to the capital of the excitement. And I'm curious, when you landed here as a first-year associate, what surprised you? Was it all that you had expected and hoped for and what was different from what you might have expected? Doug: I joke with people that being a big law M&A associate is not as bad as people say it is, but it's worse than you imagine. In that it's exceptionally rewarding and challenging and changes constantly. And so there's an adaptability and versatility that's required that makes doing the work fun, genuinely interesting on the other hand the lifestyle is quite intense and i think to be excellent all of the time and push for perfection and look for errors or mistakes or gaps is a difficult thing to do. It's a method of mental training that is quite taxing. And so I was really surprised when I first started practicing and started learning from my teachers how consistent you have to be in your thinking. And not rigidly consistent, but just how demanding you have to be on yourself to deliver a high level of practice. Lauren: Yeah, that sort of image that's coming up is just like this relentlessness of having to get it right, even though you're working on difficult timelines, I imagine. So you've shared that M&A practice is particularly demanding. And in my former life, I was also a corporate lawyer. I did securities. So I know, and you've shared that you worked long and unpredictable hours. And I'm just curious, what kept you going throughout those tough times and maybe some sleepless nights? Doug: I had the benefit of working with really wonderful teams of lawyers, associates, senior associates, partners, and also support staff. This was also pre-pandemic, and so most of the time we were in an office. If we had weekend work or late nights, I was almost never alone. Even if I was the only person working on my matter in my office, there would be other people in the office, on my floor, in the cafe. And the feeling of camaraderie, of doing important work, of collaboration, of excitement, really removed a lot of what I would call the distress of long, late nights. And so it was stressful, but it wasn't distressing. Lauren: Now, it's so interesting when I think about what made it so hard for so many people during the pandemic, I think it was just the absence of what you said, right? Having other folks around who you can talk to and who understand what you're going through, and then having all that just physical support, right? Having a cafe that you can go to and take a break in. So that's really, it's interesting to hear that that's what got you through. So just kind of continuing on with this theme of the intensity of your career as interesting and great as it was. I want to ask you to go back to a particularly difficult moment and all of that and give your younger self some advice? What was one of the toughest times and what would you say to yourself when you're in a very intense period? Doug: It's interesting because looking back, the moments I would say were most difficult for me as a junior lawyer are probably not the moments I would have chosen as a junior lawyer. The benefit of hindsight I think recontextualizes some of those things if i was going to give myself some advice and hopefully the audience can benefit from this as well is to maintain some perspective and take a deep breath and think things through because often there is pressure to do things perfectly and instantaneously. One of those is achievable, and it's the quality of practice. No matter how quickly you work or how urgently you work, you're never going to be able to rewind the clock. And it's far better to take a deep breath and make sure what you're doing is really moving the needle and helping your team, helping your partner, helping your client, and trying to reach a goal. So I think falling down and still working with urgency, but not feeling rushed. Lauren: Yeah, I guess as easy as it could be to sort of be an autopilot when you're working that hard, it sounds like just really reminding yourself that you are a lawyer, even though you might be a junior one, and take the time to think and, you know, have empathy also for your senior lawyers, maybe a little in there. So it sounds like you were working hard. It was interesting. It was intense. There were some rough times, but overall, it seems like you did pretty well judging from where you went next and where you ended up. So just quick question before we move on to the next stage of your career, what are a couple of things that you did right? Like, if you look back, you were like, that was a good move. Doug: So I think the biggest thing I can actually take credit for that helped my career go well was I was extremely intentional about seeking out lawyers who I admired as practitioners and as people. And made an effort to learn from them. Work with them, get to know them, seek their advice, seek their guidance on what skills I should try to develop, the best way to develop them, and how to plan for the future and make sure that I wasn't developing myself into a niche that was going to fade away, right? The second thing I think I did right was be extremely organized. And that sounds very simple, but it made a huge difference in terms of my stress level and my ability to work with a team or be nimble or to pick up new work for new clients. Having an organized inbox, having organized files, keeping notes of things and Making sure those notes were identifiable and well-organized made a huge difference and also gave me a little more work-life balance because I wasn't spending as much time scrambling looking for things. Lauren: Yeah, I love that. Going back to a theme that you brought up earlier about slowing down, taking your time, and being thoughtful, right? It sounds like you did that with the basics of getting advice and keeping yourself organized. So, okay, I want to segue now to when you joined us as a lateral associate. So could you tell us a little bit about how you landed at Reed Smith? How did it come about? Doug: Sure thing. So a few years ago I got a call from a recruiter who was working on behalf of Reed Smith, specifically for Jen Cheng, who is one of the leaders in the corporate practice and the M&A group at Reed Smith. And at that time I was in a transition period at my prior firm because a senior partner had decided to retire and a lot of his client work was being primarily done by myself and another senior partner. And we were trying to figure out how we were going to staff this book of business and to continue supporting these clients. At that time, I had a decision to make whether I wanted to continue really focusing my practice on this region of the world, these industries, these clients specifically, or if I wanted to broaden my horizons and try to really develop an aspect of my practice that was weaker than the others, which was public company M&A. I had done some, but not a lot. And it was a skill that I identified pretty early on as being essential to being a powerhouse M&A attorney, knowing how to do public, private, cross-border, private equity, sponsor-backed deals. So when I got a call from this recruiter offering to have an introductory conversation with Jen, I said, absolutely, because she has a great reputation and is known for being a power player in M&A. And when we had our initial get-to-know-each-other call, we hit it off immediately. She's a fantastic lawyer, wonderful human being. We both love dogs. And so we really, we bonded over our love of our four-legged friends. And later when she said, you know, hey, would you consider coming to work for Reed Smith? She really presented it in a way that focused on my trajectory as a lawyer and how I can grow and learn new things, but also be very successful and help the firm. And framing it that way, how I can be helpful, useful, and still grow alongside a really great team was what won the over. Lauren: Oh, it sounds like just a great fit, both personally, professionally. So once you made it to Reed Smith and joined the team, what did you like best about your practice here? Doug: My favorite part of my practice while at Reed Smith was the quality of the clients. Phenomenal companies of all sizes, led by extremely intelligent, caring executive leadership teams and general counsels. And I felt like I was a real business partner. It wasn't just a service provider pulled off the shelf and pointed in the direction of a problem here and there. I was really providing a valuable service to their company and helping them operate and navigate in the world. Lauren: I feel like that is a theme that comes up in a lot of the discussions we have with our alums, that they felt like they were really partnering with the clients and being legal advisor, business advisor. So it's interesting that you said that. And so it sounds like you were doing great at Reed Smith, you were enjoying it. You did make the choice to move on to your current role in-house. I'm curious how that happened and how you made that decision. Doug: So in 2022, Intel 471 approached me looking for a general counsel. Specifically, they wanted a general counsel who had an eye for the strategic side of the business and also knew how the private equity growth lifecycle for corporate investment worked so I could help them scale the business. Expand globally, manage risk, and keep things organized. I really bonded with the executive leadership team at Intel 471, and when they laid out for me the plan that they had for the company and all of the good they wanted to do by expanding our product offering, by owning our intelligence gathering, by expanding our audience, And it really struck a chord with me that I could have a massive impact on this business and really work alongside it. Incredibly talented, motivated professionals. It was really difficult for me to leave Reed Smith because I finally found a rhythm of practice at a firm where I felt like I could succeed very authentically. I didn't have to decide my personality or fit into a particular mold or look a certain way in order to be successful. And I think that's also a product of the legal industry as a whole really evolving and appreciating the diversity of thought that comes from individual authenticity. And leaving Jen's team and also leaving behind the team of junior lawyers that I had mentored and trained was frankly quite heartbreaking, for lack of a better word. But when I thought about what I personally wanted out of my life and my career, I thought, you know what, I'm willing to take a big risk. I'm willing to go into something where I know I'm going to have to start from square one on a lot of things and be a student again. And for me, that was extremely enticing. I know that's not the case for everybody, but for me, that was incredibly attractive. And I did seek advice from a ton of people. I spoke to my parents, neither of whom are lawyers. I spoke to mentors that I had gained over the years, including folks who are partners in other law firms, old professors, and just friends and neighbors. So I really solicited advice from my entire community of support, and it was very useful to me. Lauren: Sounds like a tough decision. And you mentioned consulting with a lot of people. Did you talk to anyone at the firm? Doug: You know, funny enough, I had quite a few conversations with Jen about this decision, and she was incredibly supportive. I wouldn't have expected anything else, obviously, but her insight and her knowledge of me as a friend and colleague and lawyer was really meaningful. And she provided a fantastic soundboard and guide for helping me figure out what I really wanted to do as I developed my skills and my career. And she was obviously very clear about her bias. She wanted me to stay, of course. But when I finally told her, hey I'm thinking about I'm really thinking about leaving private practice and becoming a general counsel at Intel 471 she shifted her focus from helping me to make that decision to talking about how I could succeed in that role and the ease and sincerity with which she made that transition from helping me decide between to helping me think about how to knock it out of the park once I got there was phenomenal. Lauren: So interesting the way that that relationship, you know, just evolved, right? You were, you had several different roles vis-a-vis one another, but that personal connection that you built really, really helped both you and the firm. So I could ask you so many more questions about your, your practice and your transition and your current role. But I wanted to ask you about one of the themes that we've been sort of hinting around. And it's really a question that I think many of our audience of newer lawyers will have. And it's about the issue of well-being and setting boundaries as someone in a very, very busy practice. And so as someone who has been very successful, how would you advise a newer attorney to think about that? How can you kind of take care of yourself and set some boundaries while also giving it your all in an intense practice where, as you said, things are expected to be more or less perfect? Doug: It really is a delicate balance, and it's mostly an art. It largely depends on who you're working with, your team, your clients, and the circumstances that you're under. Some deadlines and fire drills are obviously unavoidable, and so it's all hands on deck. And everyone is kind of expected to make sacrifices for their time and predictability in order to make things work. I think a healthy way of approaching it is to maintain some perspective and humility, but also have a clear understanding of what's important to you and what you need for your physical, emotional, and mental well-being. So a good example is a document needs to get turned late one night because it has to be ready for the morning. On a team of four lawyers, if you're the junior most lawyer who's capable of turning that document, chances are you're going to be the one asked to do that. That's not just because no one else wants to do it and you happen to be the lowest ranking person on the team. And it's probably because there are phone calls or negotiations or meetings that are happening at the same time that your senior associate or your partner or your colleague is handling. And so the work, especially in a high-pressure situation or when there's urgency, is divvied up among the team efficiently as a unit. And so it's important to accept that that's going to happen and expect it and try to plan around it and to be organized. On the other hand, it is absolutely essential to be comfortable raising your hand and communicating with your team. Part of this comes from developing a great working relationship with them generally, hopefully a friendship and a relationship of mutual respect and genuine care. But they won't know that something is important to you or is bothering you if you don't raise your hand and say something. A really good example is a lot of times when I've been working, sometimes I had to go home at a certain time in the evening, quite early actually, to walk my dog because my dog walker couldn't make it back for a second walk that day. And rather than just say, hey everybody, I'm going to leave at six, I'll be back at seven, I said, hey, team, I have to go. I'm going to go walk my dog. I'll bring back coffee on the way. I'll be out of pocket, but don't worry. I'm not just signing off. And to me, that was very important because I love my time with my dog. But it was also important for my team to know, hey, I'm not just dropping off the face of the map. And if something happened, they knew that, hey, this was a priority for me. And so somebody could step in and help. Lauren: Well, I think that's really good advice. And to your point about perspective, right? Making sure that you're taking a step back, thinking about relationships, about organization, and about planning. So thank you so much. I think that that's, it's a helpful example. And I'm laughing because I noticed that your cat is in the background. I guess you like both dogs and cats. Doug: Yes, I actually spent a lot of time now with my girlfriend doing animal rescue. And so we do quite a lot of cat rescue here in Brooklyn. Lauren: Your office mate was very cute to have in the background. Well, Doug, again, we could talk for much longer, but thank you so much for being with us, for sharing your story, and for sharing so much wisdom on how you got where you are today, including a pass-through time as an associate here at Reed Smith. And thank you all for listening to this episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints podcast. We hope that you'll join us on a future episode. And thank you again, Doug, for being with us. Doug: Thanks for having me. Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's Alumni Network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz, at alumni@reedsmith.com. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.…

Career Footprints

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Naz Sachedina: From structured finance associate to director in asset management 27:02

24 weeks fa27:02

27:02

Reed Smith alum, Naz Sachedina , shares her journey from qualifying as a lawyer at Reed Smith to her current role as a director at WisdomTree Asset Management. Naz discusses her diverse experiences at Reed Smith, including two secondments, and how these shaped her career. Naz also offers valuable insights on transitioning from private practice to in-house roles and the skills needed for success in the legal industry. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals' careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that. Lauren: Welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's alumni Career Footprints podcast. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by London office alum, Naz Sachedina. Naz qualified as a solicitor at Reed Smith and then practiced for about five years in the structured finance team of our financial industry group. Her time at Reed Smith included two secondments, one with Barclays, and then with Merrill Lynch. Since then, Naz's career has included two senior in-house legal posts, first at counsel at Pinebridge Investments, and then as associate director and now director at WisdomTree Asset Management. Naz, welcome. Naz: Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for having me. Lauren: I’m very excited for this conversation about your career. So I wanted to see if we could start by you telling us a little bit about your current role at WisdomTree and what you're doing now and what you like about it. Naz: Yeah, sure. So as you mentioned, I'm a director. I'm actually a director in the product legal team at WisdomTree. So that kind of means I cover the products and platforms rather than the kind of the corporate legal matters, which is covered by another part of our legal team. So WisdomTree in Europe has a very wide range of platforms and asset classes. So underlying assets kind of range from equities to commodities like oil and gold to crypto assets. We have physically backed platforms we have synthetic platforms where swap counterparties provide exposure to the underlying assets through a swap and all our kind of all our platforms are all slightly different so which means the mechanics the way they operate are slightly different. That means a kind of in my role I cover the kind of lifespan of the product so right from when you launch a product to when you do maintenance like doing the prospectus rollover if you have to make amendments if you have to do security holder votes right to the closure of a product so it's kind of cradle to grave as it were for products and I also want to take kind of wider projects within the with the WisdomTree so if we're making changes to a platform rather than specific products. So that's in a nutshell what I do at WisdomTree. Lauren: And keeping in mind that many of our audience are are newly qualified lawyers and lawyers in their first three years of practice and knowing that you've been in their shoes. What's the best thing about your current role? Naz: I never get bored, ever, just because of the range of assets and platforms. There's always something new happening, which is still a little terrifying. I remember asking Andrzej, shout out to Andrzej at Reed Smith, like, when do you feel comfortable? And he was like, you never do, Naz. So even though it's slightly terrifying, there are always new things to do, new things to learn. I love learning new things. I'm one of those really sad people that gets very excited by it. And also just, you know, WisdomTree, not just the legal team, but the wider team are great as well. I love the legal team. They're awesome. Everyone I deal with are just really nice and very clever people I always want to be the least clever person in the room which I generally am so um so that means I'm always learning basically. Lauren: I love that point because I feel like as a junior lawyer sometimes we think that after a couple of years everything will be we'll know what we're doing and we'll just go to work and we'll do the same thing and it sounds like for you that's not the way it is and that's a great thing. Naz: Yeah agreed yeah I mean I I think I it's one of those things sometimes like I wish I just did the same thing every day but I know myself and people I know like Naz you'd get really bored and I would 100% get really bored so it's the sometimes it's nice when you know that you're like okay I can do this it's fine but yeah do that too much and life does get a bit stale after a while so yes, learning new things is apparently key in my life. Lauren: Well, well, knowing that you've landed in such a place that's so interesting and well suited for your interests, I want to now rewind and go back to the beginning of your career. So when you finished your studies, you attended University College London, you must have had plenty of options for for where to do your training contract. And I'm curious, what did you think about when choosing a law firm? And why did you ultimately choose Reed Smith? Naz: Sure so a lot of my peers were basically looking for the magic circle law firms right that was like the pinnacle of where you wanted to train but then the more I talked to people kind of you know when they come to your unis and try to get you to apply and try to understand what they did as a trainee it just didn't sound very exciting. I know don't get me wrong the life of a trainee is not supposed to be exciting right you're supposed to be learning but even the work they were doing as a guy I put amends through on documents and I do and again that's there's nothing wrong with that but there was no scope seemingly to do more even when you kind of got to a third or fourth seat trainee which is obviously when you're really hitting your stride so I kind of decided I wanted not a magic circle law firm but a really still good size firm that had a lot of coverage did a lot of practice areas was international because you know that's always interesting as well and also I kind of went by the trainee intake size so reed smith oh God I should know this maybe I'm going to get it wrong aren't I I think about 15 to 20 trainees and that that was a really good size because then you know there again there is going to be enough work for all trainees to do because you're not you're not one of 150 so that means that if you kind of work hard and prove yourself there's there's a chance to kind of get more exposure and do proper work rather than just putting them in through documents which again it's necessary work it has to be done well. So that's why I decided to go with Reed Smith. Lauren: Well, that's fantastic. No, I hear that so much from our lawyers in our London office and also here in the US that our lawyers are really doing substantive work and thinking work from day one. I mean, it sounds like you were super thoughtful about seeking that out. So once you arrived at Reed Smith, tell us about your trainee seats. Where did you rotate and how did you decide to land in the financial industry group? Naz: Sure. So I did corporate as my first seat. And that actually so I'm surprised actually when I look back on it how much thought I've put into it because I thought that was good kind of foundational seat right it's not too specialized you don't have to have a lot of background as a law graduate you won't necessarily already have but it gives you a good kind of breadth in terms of especially the clients that there was like life sciences as well as kind of pure corporate clients so you could do a lot of different things and then I went on to comment to Barclays Asset Finance and then I did that I did obviously FIG financial industry group as my third seat and it was the classic you have to think about your third seat because that's when you're your best performing so you want to go to your third seat the place you want to qualify and then I did commercial disputes as my fourth seat so that that was kind of my thinking mostly because I knew I wanted to qualify into into FIG just because I was interested in financial services basically. Lauren: Yeah. And I understand that you went well in FIG. You worked in what I think of as a highly specialized area of structured finance. So what was that like? How did you get up to speed? Naz: I mean, looking back, to be honest, Lauren, it was a crazy, but excellent in the end move, but crazy for me, to be honest. So the structured finance team had only just joined Reed Smith when I was a full seat trainee. So I couldn't actually annoyingly do a seat there. But I was really interested in the subject matter just because obviously at that point just following the financial crisis and you know it was very much kind of in the news and in the zeitgeist so I was very interested in those kinds of structures and so I just I just applied knowing that I didn't have any experience but please I'm really interested and thankfully the team took a chance and and hired me so I was lucky I was lucky enough to be offered a job there and in terms of how I got up to speed I mean I kind of just read as much as I could so I you know, it did our classic, our good old friend PLC about the different kinds of transactions. Right, that structured finance teams would kind of undertake to at least, so I'd go and have an understanding of what people were talking about, rather than just sitting there shell-shocked in the corner. And then when I was actually assigned to a transaction, if I was, for example, asked to look at a specific document, I would then on my own time, look at the other documents as well. So I can understand how they fit together and how one impacted the other and just kind of being really curious about the whole thing just to understand just because for my own education I wanted to understand how things work so that when I was commenting on one thing I could then see well if I do this here that also means something else over here so yeah it was just being curious and reading a lot unsurprisingly Lauren and being a lawyer but yeah. Lauren: No I love that I mean it's I think as a as a junior lawyer at least for me I sometimes felt so out of control like there's all this new information but it sounds like you've had a lot of confidence right to go and meet them. Naz: Misplaced confidence Lauren let's let's not let's not get things confused and twisted um certainly miss but it was more just i felt it was one of those the more information i had the safer i felt almost right so it was like I'll just look at everything and then in the hope that I'll be able to kind of answer questions if if they were kind of asked of me so I wouldn't say confidence Lauren I would i would say more yeah more just wanting to not look like a complete idiot it basically. Lauren: Curiosity right which you said. Naz: Yeah Lauren: So you mentioned that during your traineeship you were seconded to Barclays and seeing now in retrospect that you landed in an in-house role I’d be curious to know what you learned from that experience and how that sort of contributed to your eventual decision to live in-house. Naz: Sure I think one of the things that kind of led me to want to do is to comment as a trainee is the whole point obviously is to get experience right and understand what you like and what you don't like and so obviously you know there are different routes in terms of a legal career but certainly in my head you know when you're when you're really young and don't know better it's very much private practice in-house and those are the only two routes. To go on as a comment just meant well at least I can see if I would be suited to in his house career if I would like it so that was one of the main drivers wanting to kind of understand if that's something I want to do in the future. What I learned I learned I learned a lot about one just the obvious thing kind of how in-house teams are structured what kind of work do they do what's expected of in-house lawyers and I was a I was a second seat trainee Lauren so I was I mean still terrified to be honest and it was just because when you're even when you're on secondment it does say trainee in your email title but everyone kind of disregards that and just sees you as kind of qualified legal counsel. So, but it was, It really improved my confidence just because it was such a massive learning curve because people took what you said as gospel you had to then be confident yourself that what you were saying was correct which meant you have to you know understand exactly what they were talking about and exactly what the question was and what the impact so you have to do a lot of kind of fact finding so you could be sure that you would you were giving the correct answer. Lauren: Yeah no I love that point about how you're the lawyer right in the conversation even though you're you're brand new. Naz: Yes. Lauren: Did you how do you kind of prepare to make an impression? I mean you talked about how you were reading and doing your own research and looking at all the documents. Is there anything special you did at Barclays to feel more confident about the answers you were giving. Naz: I think it was more just again I'm gonna just repeat myself this whole time I'm being curious right and even on things that you weren't working on when you had team meetings and people were discussing what they were doing listening and then asking questions about what that meant and oh is there a document I can look at and can I get more background onto what you were doing and not in an annoying way because in-house lawyers do not have time to sit there and give you background but equally if they can just send you a document that you can then read. And I think the other thing is just kind of in terms of making an impression you know again again being curious but also trying to take the initiative because as a trait you know when you go on as a comment as a trainee thankfully the people that are in-house know that you know very very little you're a trainees they know you're scared so they give you one piece of work right and you do that one piece of work but then you can also be like okay well this is it i think the next steps are going to be this would you like me to do them like I've looked at this document you look to the document would you like me to send it out and then i can answer the questions i just try to take the initiative and you know show that you're not just there to do that one thing that they told you to do but you're trying to be helpful and add value basically. Lauren: No, I love that. Like the anticipating the next thing and offering it up, which I think is something that you so appreciate, especially when you are managing other people. Naz: Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Lauren: All right. So you after after starting in your qualification seat with the financial industry group, which we call FIG here at Reed Smith, for those who don't know, you had a by all accounts, very successful practice for five years in the FIG group. You've worked with some fantastic mentors at the firm who are leaders in their field and known to be particularly good at bringing up more junior employers. So I'm curious about that time in your career. What did you like most about your team and what did you like about the work you were doing? Naz: What I liked most about the team is that they knew so much collectively because they had so much experience over different practice areas. Is there was very, I can't remember a time when I'd, you know, when there was a random question and there wasn't someone in the team who could answer that question or at least give you a, I would look here and then you find out the answer. So it was such an amazing learning tool because, because you're surrounded by people who have such breadth of experience now and certainly, definitely then I'm sure now as well at the FIG. So yeah, I think that's what I, I also really liked the team. Like they were a really good laugh. You could just have a chat with them. It wasn't just all about work, which is really helpful. So yeah, I do miss my time at Reed Smith. Not being as scared when you didn't know what you were doing, but certainly the people, I haven't forgotten them. And I'm still in touch with a lot of them, which is also really nice. Lauren: Oh, that's fantastic. You mentioned that you thought that you might be interested in in-house roles from your traineeship. When did you realize, like at what point in your career did you start to think it was It's time to think about next steps? Naz: I kind of knew after the Barclays comment, I actually really knew that I enjoyed it. As scary as it was, and as challenging as it was, it really improved my confidence. It made me realize that I could do this and I could go in-house. And so at that point, it just became, well, Naz, if you want to go in-house, what do you need to do? You need to get as much experience as you possibly can across everything that basically structured finance has to offer, which is what I tried to do. And it's obviously you know because the scary thing about going in-house to a place that you know with work you've never done before is thinking god am I going to be able to do this and if you know that you've done a load of stuff before and you've managed to do it that just gives you confidence to know that well I've figured that out I'm sure I can figure this out too. Lauren: And you talked about having some some great mentors and team members you really liked and are still in touch with so when you decided it was time to start looking for in-house roles in earnest did you talk to them about that how did you approach looking for roles and did you tell anyone at the firm you were doing that. Naz: Yes I did I was lucky enough so Tamara Box who's obviously was head of structural finance at that point and obviously still in FIG now I was I was very open with her it was great she'd be right from the outset T-Box sorry I call her T-Box I can't I can't call her Tamara it sounds weird. T-Box was very open to you know people take different paths some people go in-house some people stay in private practice some people go to different firms and she was was very kind of encouraging of kind of discussions around that so even before I decided I wanted to kind of leave I asked her if there was an opportunity to do a secondment for example which is how I got my second secondment and Merrill Lynch yes the toolbox was exceptionally supportive and secondment and both of my left as well and it's great I still get to work with her now which is amazing. Lauren: That is great. So if there were an associate who wanted to start exploring in-house roles at the firm, what advice would you give them about starting a dialogue with their mentors? Naz: So I would say two things. So one aside from the kind of dialogue about that is just try to get as much experience as you can, like across different things, work with different partners. Do different types of work even if it's scary even if you think oh I don't this doesn't have anything to do with anything I might be doing in the future I want to do in the future because you don't know how things transpire and you don't know things that will crop up in your future career that you randomly did 10 years ago that actually helps you and then the second thing was to be honest just be as open as you can like you know partners in law firms aren't going to they're not going to make you feel bad for wanting to go in-house certainly those who understand that at some some point you could be their client right so ask about secondment opportunities you know with from partners in your team if there are any if there's anything you could do to be considered for a common opportunity and also then when you actually do get to work with clients in private practice you know make a good impression not that anyone obviously makes a bad impression certainly but really go the extra mile like be personable be responsive be kind of understanding of what they want and try to deliver that so that if there is an opportunity to do a secondment there they're gonna be like oh yes I remember this person they were great on that transaction sure I’d love to have them on my team for a secondment like that also really helps. Lauren: That's such great advice I mean we we've all had times in our career when we're working very hard and and things on a deal get heated up but just always remembering that the person who you're serving in that moment right they could be it's a chance to market yourself as a professional and the person and it sounds like you really did that. Naz: I tried. I don’t know if I succeeded, Lauren, but I tried. Lauren: So you have a ton of wisdom that I think we could talk for a much longer time about the advice you have for more junior lawyers. But since we do only have a few minutes left in our time together, I want to ask you a couple of questions in your capacity now as a senior in-house lawyer. And the first one related to the last point we were discussing. But when you are working with junior lawyers that are outside counsel. Can you talk about a few things that a junior lawyer has done during your time that's really impressed you and given you the impression that this is someone you really might want to work with again? Naz: Sure. So the first is responsiveness. You know that annoying, a client sends an email and then you respond saying, hi, I've seen your email. The timelines are fine and we're working on it. That is a really pointless email to send, I know, because it seems so unnecessary. But. To the person who's just given you work to do, it's really nice. Okay, that person's either they're dealing with it, I don't have to think about that anymore. So definitely the responsiveness. I would also say attention to detail. You know, as in-house lawyers, we don't expect nor do we really want our partners to know the minutiae of transactions. Like we don't want them to kind of be knee deep in the documents. So as a junior, my kind of advice would be immerse yourself in the documents. Know what's been negotiated and know what the outcome was or where we are currently with them if it hasn't been bottomed out yet. So if you're on a call and someone says, oh, where do we get to on the limitation of liability? You know, you as a junior person can probably, oh, this is where we've got to. And it shows that, you know, the documents and you're keeping track. And that is very impressive. And, you know, it just, it's good to know that someone's on top of these things. So that would be my advice. Lauren: So just that responsiveness and being the person who's kind of keeping everyone else organized. Naz: Yes yeah definitely. Lauren: Yeah as a junior lawyer that that surprised me that that that was part of my role but but as the person who has right the most time and probably the fewest matters compared to you know I imagine you're working on a ton of matters at any given time. Naz: Yes basically it also can be quite daunting as a junior lawyer to be the person that's almost like the lynchpin but it's the classic well if you just break it down right you know what documents are being negotiated you know who's working on if you kind of keep a track of what's the most back and forth it's actually not that bad but it can really yield a lot of results and not just externally to your client right but also internally. It's very helpful to partners if there's a snapshot of what's going on where are we if you can deliver that that shows again that you care you're not just doing what you're told you're really trying to to kind of provide the best service both internally and externally. Lauren: And that point you made about how you don't necessarily want the partner to be the person who's up to date on all the details, right? But for obvious reasons, and I think that's really powerful that someone, you know, a senior in-house lawyer like you can actually notice when a junior is providing that very strong support to their more senior attorney. Naz: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, obviously, yeah, there is, we don't want, you know, partners to be negotiating limitation of liability because it's a waste of their time, as well as a waste of fees. I think there might be some kind of I can understand that if you're a junior lawyer in private practice you might be like well no one's going to know that I'm doing this and everyone's going to understand I'm not going to get acknowledged and it's not about acknowledgement but you know if you work hard of course you want to get acknowledged for it but you know the partners of Reed Smith certainly you know at least in my experience have very much kind of acknowledged when the work has been done by someone else. And equally on a call it's very obvious right when a junior person can speak up and answer a question that they know what's going on so that will be even if you don't even if no one on the call says oh wow that's amazing I'm so glad you know that, it will be it will be noticed that it was you who was able to give the answer. Lauren: I think that's very motivating and reassuring right when you're when you're working as perhaps the most junior person on the deal to know that your work is really very meaningful to the client. So final question and you've talked a little bit about what what you did and what you think mid-level lawyers should be thinking about if they want to move in-house but just speaking from the perspective of someone who might be assessing people who you're mentoring or who might want to join your team what would you say to a mid-level lawyer about the the skills that they should be developing if that is a path that they if they want to pursue. Naz: So I think yeah and this is kind of a theme that I've seen certainly and certainly in the you know the job that I'm in in now which is it's less about do you have experience in this particular asset class or this particular area it's do you have transferable skills to do this work if you're given the support and the tools that you need. I for example I did nothing I've never done exchange traded product work in my life don't worry I was very upfront about this in my interviews so this is not a surprise to anyone at WisdomTree but you know i was able to demonstrate because of the experience I had on the CLO work on the securitization work I was able to look at complicated structures and problem solve and figure out answers and that's what it really is about. It's about being able to apply the skills that you've learned elsewhere to the job that you're doing now because no one has done everything and it's certainly an in-house counsel as I kind of said as I said before you will end up doing things that no one has ever thought about like you know that hasn't really been contemplated. I'm not even being facetious. Certainly in the crypto space, for example we're definitely doing things that have never been done before and so it's not about do you have the experience because no one had the experience. It's about how can you approach this and will you be able to do this well and that is very much based on the skills that you have your ability to kind of problem solve your ability to approach something and be able to kind of break it down to some of its parts and understand it and then figure out a way to deal with the problem or the best way to do a project or something. So my my advice would basically be try not to get fixated it's very difficult but try not to get fixated on the area itself and getting experience indirectly in that area but get as much experience as you can then be able to demonstrate how the experience that you have will be able to what will mean that you'll be able to do the job that you're applying for very well. Lauren: I love that so so earlier you talked about being someone who loves learning and and it sounds like that is the skill that you're looking for in people who want to work with you. Naz: Yes for sure like enthusiasm and curiosity and wanting to be challenged and don't get me wrong you know challenge is not easy there are certain days when you know the things you're doing are hard and it makes your it makes your brain hurt but once it's done it's a really really nice feeling to be like, yeah, we did that. We as a team were able to accomplish that. And it's a really nice feeling. So yes, definitely. Lauren: Well, Naz, thank you so much. We are at the end of our time together. But I want to thank you for sharing so much from your perspective as an alumni of the firm and a senior in-house lawyer and someone who started their career at Reed Smith and made a very intentional decision to join the team. So thank you so much for being with us. Naz: Thank you again for having me. I really appreciate it. Lauren: Thanks so much, everyone, for joining this episode of Reed Smith's Career Footprints podcast. And we hope to see you at the following episode. Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's alumni network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz, at alumni@reedsmith.com. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.…

Career Footprints

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Wendy Jephson: Leveraging Gen AI and other technologies to help people think brilliantly 33:58

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Alum Wendy Jephson shares highlights from her very successful and varied career, taking in her time at Reed Smith predecessor firm Richards Butler, as a senior in-house counsel, in several posts as a behavioral psychologist (including at NASDAQ) and more recently as CEO and co-founder of Let’s Think – a behavioral science-led tech company focused on how to elicit, capture and transmit knowledge and understanding within organizations. Wendy demonstrates the ongoing value that her legal training delivers to her business career, not least in building an understanding of deal drivers and blockers. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals' careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that. Lauren: Welcome back to another episode of Reed Smith's Career Footprints podcast. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by firm alumni, Wendy Jephson. Wendy has had a really interesting career path that started at the law firm of Richard’s Butler, which merged with Reed Smith in 2007. And since then, Wendy's career has included two in-house legal posts, several posts as a behavioral psychologist, including at NASDAQ, all leading up to her founding of Let's Think, a behavioral science-led tech company. Wendy, welcome. Wendy: Pleasure to be here. Lauren: So you've had such an interesting career, and I was wondering if we could just start by you telling us a little bit about your current project at Let's Think. Wendy: Absolutely. So Let's Think we're a behavioral science led technology company and our purpose is to help the people of the world think brilliantly. We're really focused on solving the problem of expertise, how you elicit it, capture it and transfer it to people within an organization like a law firm. So we all know people with lots of knowledge and expertise and know-how in their heads. And when they leave the firm, it's gone. It's not written down. It's not transferred. And actually, that happens at the end of working on a legal matter or project as well. It's got a broad challenge. And then, of course, at the other end, you've got more junior people who would love to tap into that knowledge and know-how in order to develop their own learning and understanding and be more productive and more effective in their working lives. So that's the problem that we're looking to try and solve. And leveraging the latest in Gen AI technologies along with others as well in order to elicit that knowledge, capture and transfer in a really usable way. Lauren: Wow, that sounds like such an interesting project and one that really gets to like the core of some of the challenges that we struggle with in law firms. So just to tell us more about how you got to this project, and we'll ask you, of course, more about it later, but I was hoping that we could rewind back to the beginning of your career story. We'd love to hear a little bit more about your time at Reed Smith, which of course then was Richard’s Butler. Could you talk to us a little bit about when you joined the firm and what kind of work you did while here? Wendy: Sure. And it kind of is interesting to think that, you know, all those many years ago now has kind of led back to the current path that Let's Sink is on right now. And so it really did start a long time ago in the summer of my second year at university doing a law degree, where I got an internship at Richard's Butler and did a three week round robin sitting in a number of places, one of which was a shipping seat where I had to write a letter talking about charter parties and actually great advice from the partner then who said just write it as if you're writing to your brother which was a great tip actually because it kind of you know defers the the process of writing a letter like that seemed to do a reasonable job and I was invited to interview for the trainee contract and so started there after you know your obligatory five months of traveling after law school and started in February ’93. So 31 years ago, coming up to next week, really. Lauren: Wow. So so you mentioned that you got an internship at Richard's Butler and then moved on to a training contract. Could you tell us a little bit more about your time as as a trainee and and sort of how that progressed and how you ended up deciding to move to your next role? Wendy: Sure. So I started in a property seat with Paul Johnston, who I think became chairman at Richard’s Butler at some point in time, which was great fun and hugely educational. Next seat was competition. I particularly remember Katherine Holmes in that role. And that was really good grounding, actually, for the next seat that I had, which was actually going in-house. It was the first secondment that was set up with Xerox. It was actually then Rank Xerox, but Xerox, which actually, you know, involved a trip over to Brussels looking at competition law issues. So it was great grounding to then go and see it in practice in an in-house setting. I came back from there having really got some eye-opening understanding of how law works in the organizational setting. I think one of the biggest learnings I had was right really early on when somebody came to me for a contract and And I've taken the details for that. And I said, so when do you want it to start? And he said, oh, no, we started about a month ago. I was like, what do you mean you haven't got a contract? How could you possibly have started? So it's that, okay, so really we're part of a system here. And, you know, this is the way that the world works. Learning, you know, what are the implications of, you know, business is always going to move forward. So how do you ensure that they get the right advice at the right moment in time and the risks get managed effectively? So that was great learning. I came back for a brief corporate seat. And then the final seat was property litigation with Roger Parker, who I think was managing partner at some point at Richard's Butler as well. And at the end of that, in fact, Xerox offered me a job in their Central and Eastern European team. And I have to say, I loved being in-house. So I took up that opportunity at that moment in time. So it was a short but sweet stint at Richard's Butler, which I learned to keep him out from. Lauren: Yeah, no, it's so interesting to hear about, particularly for such a junior early career lawyer going in-house that you learn those lessons about the differences between in-house practice and law firm practice so early in the game. And one of our audiences of this podcast, of course, is our most junior lawyers at Reed Smith. So I was wondering if you could talk more about when you did end up landing at Xerox so early in your career, what did you kind of miss about being at the law firm. And I asked that partially just so our audience will know what are the kinds of experiences that they should soak up while while they're at the law firm. Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, one, you're no longer in a fabulous cohort of trainees and fellow junior lawyers. You're still in touch with them, but that social side of it is different. And even just learning from, clearly your colleagues are in different parts of the organization. And whilst litigation was never entirely my bag, you learn an awful lot from the litigators of what can go wrong if you're trying to set something up to go right from the get go. So having access to, at your fingertips, colleagues across an organization that are working on very different projects, but you can begin to understand the richness of the picture that you're operating in. I think that that is immediately a challenge when you're cut off from that to some extent. You get some of it by being able to go out and work with your external legal providers, because obviously internally you develop your own area of expertise. And particularly when I moved into pharmacy schools at Lilly, you know, developing a regulatory expertise and some level of employment law expertise and that side of things. But, you know, you're never going to be a construction law expert and you're going to go out to your external lawyers or indeed, you know, employment lawyer partners for tricky cases and competition law. You need to get the latest insight. So you have access to those providers of the expert knowledge whilst trying to apply it internally. So it's quite a different beast. I didn't miss the timesheets. I'm sure nobody would be surprised to hear that. Although I think some in-house firms do now start to monitor that sort of thing to some degree, I believe. But yeah, I mean, they are very significantly different organizations, that's for sure. And clearly, you know, you have training programs which are beneficial and they're structuring and supporting your career in quite a different way. So, yeah, there are, you know, significant benefits for being in private practice that I certainly see the way that law firms have developed over the time since I was in there, too. Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that image of when you're at the law firm, not only having sort of these peers who you can call and share experiences with and ask questions that you might be afraid to ask someone more senior, but also then you've got the whole resources of the firm. But I'll agree that a few people have told me after going in-house that they miss timekeeping, as important as it is. So you mentioned then that you went from your time at the firm to Xerox and then moved on to Lilly and loved being in-house. I'm hoping that you could tell us a little bit about that sort of learning curve of landing as an in-house lawyer fairly early in your career and maybe five years into that developing success and moving up. What skills did you hone in that position? And why? What was it about the in-house role that allowed you to kind of excel? And what were the key skills you built? Wendy: Yeah, I mean, I suppose because you have your clients at your fingertips. So it's very easy to join in their meetings and sit in. And as you're going forward, you start to go into the more senior management meetings and board meetings. So you are beginning to learn how the business works, what matters to the business, what risk is it willing to take and what is it not. And particularly was very much, look, if the law is black and white, we absolutely don't step over the line, regardless of whether there was like a one pound, one dollar fine to a massive upside. Absolutely no way. But actually, as we all know, law is really mainly gray. So it's understanding the risks of taking any opportunity. Is it the right thing to do? Will it pass the red face test? Understanding what that really means, especially in an environment with pharmaceuticals and products that are impacting people's lives. And so it's the rounded understanding of how the business works from R&D, compound discovery and development, clinical trials and the ethical side of patient work, all the way through to licensing and sales and marketing and pricing of all of that. You know competitive issues that come along the way with all so you get to touch so many different areas of the business that you really begin to learn how it works so you have a much better understanding of a really good understanding of what it is that matters to your your internal clients and therefore how to support and deliver the services to them. Lauren: Yeah, no, I, I love what you said about spending time with clients. And I've never heard that expression, the red face test before, right? But but what what I think you meant by that is just developing judgment, right? Like, how can you put all of these factors together and help help the client reach a good decision? So I want to, I want to pick up on that when we move on to sort of the next stage of your career of going back to school. But but before we leave your your time in in these these two in-house roles. Could you give us, our listeners, a few tips about great things, like times when your outside counsel just were really impressed you? What were a couple of things that they should be keeping in mind when they're supporting their clients of how to impress and please inside counsel? Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always really enjoyed working with the experts from outside counsel. And what that expertise over years of doing the job is they've seen many times examples that may not be identical to the problem you're posing to them, but similar. So they understand the nuances of it and they can give you a really good idea of what's the likelihood of success or the risks that you're taking and what are the key steps that you need to pay attention to versus the ones that aren't going to deliver as much value. So those were the things that I really enjoyed getting the pointers of how to go about something. Now, it's not so difficult to know what the law is now, particularly with all the level of support we've got. It's knowing how to apply it and the experience to apply it. That is difficult to get without actually practically doing it many times over. So in some respects, for junior lawyers, it's to try and understand applied work to go and dig into, well, how, you know, what was different about a particular past case. Sometimes that's by asking questions of people who, if you can get them to spend time talking to you about what was it you noticed? You know, what are the cues in that particular scenario that led you to a certain course of action? and trying to learn from, you know, what people are noticing that matters in this scenario, because that's what you want as a client. You really want to understand, look, I can't be the first person that's experienced this particular scenario. Give me the range. I can interpret for myself because I know my own business better than, you know, whoever's advising me. But give me the scenarios so I can understand the risks and the strategies and the tactics that are going to be most suitable for my particular case. So it's understanding that your client needs a practical outcome. They need a solution. They need to make recommendations to their board about the risks that are going to be taken and the actions that are going to be taken. So it is that interpretation of the law and to spend as much time understanding what is it likely in your business environment that you're going to need and what's going to be acceptable and where the red lines are. Lauren: Got it. So looking to outside counsel to bring that sort of view across many similar experiences is faced by many clients, whereas recognizing that you're the expert in your business and helping, you know, what's important to your clients. Wendy: And the benefit of being in a law firm is that you see across industries. So you will see similarities and differences, and therefore you can draw analogous conclusions. And that's really valuable because sometimes if you're stuck in one industry, you can't see it from a different angle other than your own industry. And that's certainly what I've learned from changing in different industry domains. Domains that they're the same problems, but from a slightly different angle and different viewpoints. So there is definitely a benefit to being private practice and being able to get that broad overview and what they might see is actually quite potentially a narrow window of expertise. And yet they are seeing it more broadly than maybe they realize. Lauren: Absolutely. So two complementary skill sets of the in-house lawyer and the external lawyer. I think that's really helpful to understand as a junior lawyer on a transaction, sort of understanding the dynamics of the people you're directly supporting in the firm and the ultimate client. Yeah. So at this point in your career, after being a trainee at the firm and two in-house roles, you spend about, I think, just over a decade in those three roles and then went back to school. So can you tell us a little bit about that decision and what you did next? Wendy: Yeah, some people might think it's slightly bonkers, but really it was about, so the role in-house is really about providing advice on risk, as I say, and decision-making and supporting the decision-making of those you're advising. And it was fascinating watching different people in the organization, how they cope with that risk-taking and decision-making. I really enjoyed providing supportive solutions to the clients. And, you know, Lillian Pharmaceuticals did a lot of work in mental health, looking at depression and schizophrenia. So again, that was interesting to understand a bit about neuroscience and that side of health. And also they have a scientific approach. They're really understanding the evidence-based way of working, which is, you know, actually in a lot of ways, not dissimilar to law in that we work from precedent and we're establishing and, you know, you're working from an evidence base of what's gone before and interpreting and applying. So they're quite well nicely aligned but I was really fascinated by that decision making process and how you might be able to support that and at the time I had a brother who was a fund manager who was talking about investment decision making and saying you know it's you have a disciplined process and and yet when you come under pressure it can be a highly emotional environment as you're being perhaps potentially losing money because markets trick thing and people start taking risks when they shouldn't, and thought maybe there's something around data technology and behavioral science. I thought that sounds fascinating. And whilst I didn't think I would spend the rest of my kind of social time reading law books, I thought I might spend it reading behavioral science books, and I do. I actually love it. So I did go back to university to do a psychology degree and then a master's in occupational organizational psychology, so business psychology, really with a view to mind of how can you improve decision making in the workplace? And that was goal. And from there, I came out and was co-founder of a FinTech, RedTech startup, which was really looking at decision making of fund managers. And the RedTech part of it was compliance officers looking at the decisions of fund managers and looking for market abuse and any potential insider trading decisions that might have been going on. So that particular part took off rather nicely and attracted the the attention of NASDAQ, who decided to make us an offer we couldn't refuse and bought us in 2017. Lauren: Wow, that's amazing. Congratulations on growing a successful company. And it sounds like you, after growing this company, going back to school, making a career change, you landed back at a large institution at NASDAQ. So could you talk a little bit about that? What was it like sort of being Being back at a big organization, but now in what I think was a non-legal role, and how was that different? And what skills did you have to sort of tweak and sort of evolve in order to be in that new sort of capacity as a professional? Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, in the startup, it was very much, although, I mean, interestingly, law never leaves. It's always very useful, whatever you're doing, to be able to write your own contracts and shareholder agreements and think about data protection and all of these things. And in fact, in looking at, you know, compliance and market abuse rules, it's just a useful skill to be able to read legislation if you're trying to understand and write an algorithm to detect some kind of market abuse or other factors that go into it. So at NASDAQ then, it was very much a research and product design role. So using the behavioral science skills to interview experts, to elicit their expert knowledge and the cues and the pieces of data that they were using to make judgments about is somebody doing something they shouldn't be doing or not. That was an a we could encode that into rules-based algorithms to detect trading according you know using trading data and also to bake into heat scores so to begin to categorize the kind of behavior according to how risky it seemed or not based on how just you know these experts were deciding so we could codify that and it's also useful to understand how you design technology that makes it easy and engaging to use as well. So that's what we were doing. We were developing and designing tech. And I was running a team of behavioral scientists, data scientists, and technologists, and liaising with marketing and sales in order to understand whether or not there was any appetite for the kind of products that we were coming up with. Lauren: Yeah, no, when you were describing the research part of the role, speaking to people who were experts in what they do and making decisions and figuring out their thought process and what's important to them. It just sort of echoed both when you were talking about being a trainee and calling on senior colleagues and as an in-house lawyer asking your outside experts. Does that resonate? Is that sort of a skill that you've enjoyed in all of your roles? Wendy: Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things about being in-house. You can't be expected to know everything. So it's okay to ask the questions of the experts. It's easier to do it, plus you're paying them. So all of that makes it easier. And it's difficult in an industry where you're paid to know, to admit you don't know something and to ask those questions. I mean, this is really something that we're looking to try and help solve with Let's Think technology, to improve the collaboration in a way between the experts at the partner and the senior lawyer end, And how can we share that knowledge in an easy way and a psychologically safe environment? So junior lawyers can perhaps ask the questions via technology in a way that it's a bit trickier to walk into a partner's office or indeed impossible if they're either working from home or they're in another country. Lauren: Yeah. So talking about how that skill across all of these sort of amazing roles you've had, you're bringing to Let's Think, I'd love to sort of switch to what you're doing now and how this all has built up to it. So when we were talking before, when we first met, we talked a little bit about how as someone myself, who's been in leadership roles at a number of law firms, I've seen two pretty consistent challenges that I think you also have seen in your career. And the first one is really just how a firm can keep its busy and specialized experts aware of what everyone else is doing when everyone is so focused on their own clients and their own practice. But of course, you also need to be focused on what your colleagues are doing. And the second challenge, which has been so acute for so many of us after the pandemic, is how partners can help more junior lawyers develop into senior lawyers when the day-to-day practice is so different from when I think we were both coming up, right? People are on Zoom, they're remote, they're not necessarily observing each other. So kind of long lead up to, please, we'd love to hear you talk about how Let's Think is sort of trying to help the industry with those two challenges. Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. So if we start with how do you kind of help get expert knowledge out of people's heads, actually, lots of the time, especially once you become an expert, you don't realize how much you know, which means it's difficult to articulate. You don't realize other people can't see what you're seeing. And that's part of the kind of training that I've gone and undergone as a behavioral scientist in how to ask the questions to elicit that knowledge. It's been used a lot in high-risk industries, particularly when they're doing post-sacral reviews of events that have gone wrong. And they're trying to understand what people were noticing. To understand whether or not you can identify those cues of something about to go wrong sooner and put in better systems to prevent that from happening. And what you realize, you know, this is when you start to have these interviews and you dig deeper into how things occurred and what those experts noticed, you start to capture knowledge in this new way and in a way that people quite often at the end of it say well one they really enjoy the conversations because people don't ask them questions like that typically two they don't realize how much they do know and it and it helps them articulate it and write it down. And then you can begin to see the difference between, well, junior lawyers don't even notice, they don't even see the cues because they haven't been pointed out to them. You know, for them, there's so much information, it's difficult to spot the things that are the high value add elements of a particular legal matter, for example, and the places to focus. Focus and what those signals are telling you you know you might get something that comes in and if somebody's experienced with the the law firm on the other side for example they instantly have memories of of what it's like to work against or with them and therefore you start to develop your strategies of how you're going to approach it and the kind of risk tolerances that might be involved so all of that is in their heads and being activated and that's some of the stuff that we want to try and capture. Now, what we know is, you know, we get great information, but it might take, you know, an hour and a half, two hour interview. So we want to turn that into micro-elicitation, micro-interviews via some kind of Gen AI chatbot that asks you questions rather than currently we ask the chatbot questions, don't we, and it provides the answers. So if we can actually get a chatbot that begins to ask questions of our experts as they're doing the work, captures it in an engaging way that's useful to them. You can build up the kind of knowledge base and a process map of what they're doing and why and when. So it's, you know, know how is really know what, when, why, who. It's all of those different elements that people are thinking about. So we can visualize, if we can create that database in a way, that means that junior lawyers can then access, or indeed just people who've got a slightly different angle on a legal matter could tap into what was it that Roger was thinking about when he was working on that particular matter with that client at that moment in time? Why did he take that particular action and decision that he took? I can get to see a bit more of the context and I can understand what that would mean for my own practice and how I might notice that and recognize that when I come to it quicker of going forward. And the other key element to this, actually, which somebody pointed out to me today, that, yes, you want to make people more productive and effective faster, especially as technology is coming along to eat away that work that typically junior lawyers were training on. So you need to get them upskilled faster. But also anyone who's worked with Gen AI will kind of say, well, yes, it looks great. Actually but the people are getting the most value out of it at the moment are the ones that have got some expertise and knowledge and know how to tweak it they know where it's good where it falls down you need expert knowledge to be able to stay on the safe side of Gen AI you need to be able to interrogate it so there's a challenge if you've got junior lawyers coming up who aren't developing the expertise or is there going to be a point at which they can't challenge the AI and keep us safe. So we need to still keep building up that expertise and keep developing it so that it can keep pace with what Gen AI is bringing, which is the junior lawyers are the first who are going to have to deal with that particular challenge. And it's coming at us fast. Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. So wow, hearing you talk about Let's Think, it almost sounds like like the product and the product that the process that you're undertaking is attacking both parts of that, that challenge, right? So it's, it's on the one hand, an organized process to get know-how from senior lawyers. And, and on the other hand, it'll be a way that junior lawyers can sort of tap that. Am I understanding that correctly? Wendy: Yes, absolutely. Lauren: So just, I'm so curious in, in the process of, of working with the, the senior lawyers to design this product and figure out how to build it. What has come out of that for you about the best sort of mentors and the people who are the most thoughtful about how to transmit that kind of know-how? What guidance would you give to sort of other senior lawyers that you've gotten from those folks? Wendy: That is a good question, because it doesn't work for everyone. Not everyone is great at downloading their kind of know-how and knowledge. But actually, people who are really just interested engage still. And quite often, nearing to the end of their careers, and they want to leave a legacy behind, they're always the best people to speak to, because, you know, they're keen to share what they've learned and they know. And even though the world of law has changed dramatically, having that knowledge and understanding about businesses and how they've worked, it's not as if what they know has gone out of date. They've updated every single time they've worked on a legal matter. So they have plenty to say. And the process that we take them through is pretty structured. So they're well supported in how we ask the questions and we capture the information. But, yeah, I think it's the ones who are curious, enjoy what they do, love the details. Tell I mean tell me a lawyer who's not like that get engaged with it and enjoy what they they realize they know at the end of the process and it's a lot easier actually to go back and reflect when somebody's asking those sorts of questions the benefit of it is people who are busy and don't have time to spend mentoring junior and junior lawyers I mean it's a skill to ask the questions so actually some of those junior lawyers don't know what questions to ask task but if we can download it it means you can transfer it to many as opposed to one-on-one conversations so there's a benefit to it to doing that as well. Lauren: Yeah and in answering that you you sort of jumped ahead to what was going to be my my next question so so in you know as we've talked about in all of these stages of your career it seems like a key to to what you loved about the job and what made you so successful was being really good at at being with people listening to them and asking the right questions. So for today's junior lawyers who maybe are struggling a bit more with figuring out how to engage with seniors and how to learn what they think is important and how to really learn what how they can be helpful. What would you say to them? Like what would have been the lessons of your honing this skill of working with experts? Wendy: Yeah, I mean, I think it's that don't be afraid to ask open questions. You know, what is it that you're noticing about that client? How are you assessing the risk and their willingness to engage in risk? What did you really notice in that particular interaction with them that are your key pointers that guided your next steps? You can keep it short and sweet. week, you start asking just a couple of quick questions to start to build up your own know-how of what those key things, and then you look out for them the next time you're interacting and see if you spot them. Because once somebody's pointed them out, they suddenly become far more obvious. Lauren: Absolutely. So that curiosity and asking open-ended questions and just really kind of showing interest sounds so important. And from everything you've said about your career, It seems you've been really just passionate in what the business was doing at each stage. Am I reading that right? Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact everyone's coming from a different angle. I mean, you're always trying to, especially in the startup world, you're pitching, the people you're pitching to in the room got more people in it than you've got in your business sometimes. And each one's got a different angle. So you're trying to understand, you know, what is it that you want to hear from me that is going to get you to saying, yes, I want to get involved with whatever this is. So it's having an understanding of the drivers and the potential blockers for different people and who are the pieces in any kind of deal that you're setting up or any kind of element of your legal matter. And I mean, I think that's the key thing that lawyers have an advantage of. We know you can read the same sentence in multiple different ways. So I have to be so careful about drafting and depending on what you're trying to get out of it, you'll get a different interpretation. And it's getting a really good understanding that that happens. It happens all the time in the world of work. And the better you are at realizing that and understanding how it can join together, the better lawyer you'll be, in my view. Lauren: Thank you so much for that. And thank you for sharing your really interesting career path from being a brand new trainee or really just intern at Richard’s Butler to being a founder after taking so many steps to get where you are and have the knowledge to build Let's Think. Thank you so much, Wendy, for joining us. It was so interesting to hear about your career and what you're doing. And thank you all for listening to Career Footprints. We're so glad to have you with us. And please join us again when we talk to another Reed Smith alumni. Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, PodBean, and ReedSmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's alumni network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me Reed Smith's global senior director of alumni relations Laura Karmatz at alumni@reedsmith.com. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.…

Career Footprints

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Stacey Heyman: Building legal and commercial acumen, one opportunity after another 31:53

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Alum Stacey Heyman shares highlights from her successful decade as a Reed Smith global regulatory enforcement associate, and in the senior in-house roles she has held since then. Stacey built professional acumen and confidence through trial experience as a new associate, an early-career client secondment in London, and working with detail- and client-service oriented partner role models. Stacey also shares how she secured the advice and support of her Reed Smith mentor during her transition to her first in-house role, setting the stage for an ongoing professional relationship. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that. Alicia: Welcome back to our Career Footprints podcast with our incredible Reed Smith alumni. I'm Alicia Millar and I have the great, great pleasure of introducing, talking with, discussing the career footprint of Stacey Heyman who has been part of the Reed Smith family for actually a significant chunk of time and in her career beyond Reed Smith as well. Stacey, welcome. Stacey: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Alicia: Wonderful. We are looking forward, I am certainly looking forward to hearing more about your career to date and the time at Reed Smith. So why don't we jump straight into it? I know that you are Senior Commercial Counsel at Atlassian. But way way before that, um you were part of the Reed Smith uh family and I understand was it 2009, all the way through to 2020. Is that correct? Tell us, tell us about your time at Reed Smith. Stacey: I was, yeah. So I was a summer associate in what was then the Falls Church office of Reed Smith is now the Tyson's office, um, in the summer of 2009 and then returned full time as an associate in 2010 and then, uh, was there until 2020. Yeah. So I, I grew up at Reed Smith. I was a baby lawyer and learned so much uh for the first decade of my career. Alicia: Amazing. And um it, it was a decade that that's quite, that is a significant chunk of time. Give us a flavor about why you chose Reed Smith in the first place. What was it that really drew you to the firm? Stacey: Yeah. So, um during on campus interviews while I was in law school, I was specifically targeting law firms that had satellite offices in um in specifically suburban to Washington DC, which is where I am now. That's home for me. But I really wanted the reach of a global law firm, but the feel of a smaller office. Um And so I, I knew going into OCI, that was, that would be a good, sweet spot for me. And I was interviewed by Rick Holzheimer from our Falls Church office and he had a good poker face. I did not think the interview went well, I had articulated all the reasons why I thought I would be a good fit and, um why I was attracted to apply to Reed Smith. And he just sort of sat there very sternly. Um, so no one was more surprised than me to hear from the recruiter to hear that I had been invited for a callback interview. And then I was thrilled to join as the, the only summer associate in that office for 2009. It was great. Alicia: Amazing. And you know, that a decade is a significant chunk of time. I mean, you know, were there some really key points during that time that you kind of think? Wow, that was, that was a genuine learning moment for me. That was a, a sort of got caught out there or, you know, what, give us a sort of some of the smaller footprints of, of your time at the firm. Stacey: So many. Yes, I, so I actually was slated to start, I, you know, graduated during an economic downturn in 2010. And so our entire class had been deferred until January of 2011, but, um, the Falls Church office was going into a big trial. And so I got called up a little bit earlier than my classmates and started in the fall of 2010. And Joe Luchini and Rick Sullivan were the partners in the Falls Church office leading this trial. And they like to joke that I walked in the door and they said, drop your bag and please join us in the courtroom. Um, we went right into trial, a very intense two week trial here in Maryland, which is where I now live. There was a Snowmageddon in DC. The court was called off for snow. Joe had to sleep in his office one night because the roads are a disaster, sort of memorable from that perspective. But also, um, it was my first trial and getting to be, you know, in the war room with the trial team in court every day for two weeks. Everyone kept saying at the beginning, gosh, you're getting such valuable experience right out the gate and, you know, it's sort of one of those things you can't really appreciate at the time until you realize how long you go in between trials and how rare it is, um to actually go to those big trials. So, uh right off the bat watching Rick and Joe, you know, conducting opening and closing argument, cross examining witnesses and I got to be there for all of it. It was just invaluable experience right out the gate and I, they put me in, in the courtroom right out the gate too. I, um, I was, I think I had my first trial within the first year or so. I certainly was preparing witnesses and doing like true litigation work. Whereas, you know, some of my peers at other law firms were still doing doc review for many, many years. That was not the case. I was, I was practicing law. I was using my law license right away. Alicia: That's incredible. And what a, what an amazing start, what an amazing start when a career, the expression which I'm sure transcends no matter where you are. But really jumping into the deep end and learning those few strokes of swimming and learning. It sounds as if learning from some pretty incredible people around you really getting the chance to observe, to be part of it, to be alongside them. What incredible experience that must have been. Stacey: Definitely, Joe had a knack for, he would scour through every line of an Excel sheet. He retired from the firm a few years ago, but I think anyone would commend his sort of impeccable attention to detail. Um And he, he won many, many times on that detail and he would spend hours sort of scrolling through documents, finding the needle in the haystack and then great gotcha moments on the stand that I felt very privileged to watch growing up as a lawyer in the firm. Yeah. Alicia: Sure. Sure, of course. And now, um I'm gonna fast forward a little because I understand. Did you have a secondment? I mean, you know, from my accent, you can tell that I'm, I'm not based in DC where you are. Did you, did I hear that you had a secondment in London? Um talk us through that. How, how did that even come about? And what was your greatest learning there? Stacey: I did. Yeah. In 2016 I was able to secondment with one of our life sciences clients in London, which was incredible. I was there for three months and I would spend four days a week with the client and Fridays in our London office. Uh, office-sharing with Nicola Beasley. It was so nice to get to know Nicola a little bit better while I was there. And Emma Williams, my other pal from London. I, I know she's um at the other office at Leeds now, but I'd be or miss if I didn't shout at Emma as well. Um But it was so fun to, to work with them and um to be embedded with a client at the time, they were re revamping their ABAC whistleblower program and sort of their global um sorry, ABAC stands for anti bribery anti-corruption. And so trying to better capture conduct of their employees globally and making sure it's bubbling up quickly that the company is able to track, able to remediate and just sort of have a better handle when you have a global life sciences company. These are the things that keep you up at night. It was really interesting to see what technology they were incorporating, to help them work a little bit faster, a little bit smarter and just to see how these things rolled out on a global scale. You know, a lot of times at a law firm you're getting called in when there's an emergency. You don't really get to, sometimes you get to build these things from scratch, but especially at the larger corporations that have powerhouse in-house counsel. Um, it was really exciting to be focused on one client for that period of time and helping them to sort of just better do day to day operations within the company. Alicia: Mhm. And was that your first taste or sense of oh, this is, this is slightly different, this is not private practice. This is in a different environment, different ways of working is, was, is that fair to say? Stacey: It was, and I, I think any law firm associate would tell you, oh, I wonder what it's like to be in house if you haven't experienced it. So it was very nice to be in house for a little bit and get a sense for what that looks like. They, you know, they very kindly at the end offered me a spot if I wanted to join and I wasn't quite ready at that time. I still felt there was more to do at the firm and I still liked the pace of helping to put out those fires, you know, changing client to client each day. So at the time I wasn't quite ready, but it certainly laid the groundwork for getting a sense for in house life and then eventually making that move. Alicia: Well, it's quite, it is quite a thing you sort of think, you know, I do wonder how it, how it operates. I wonder what the wider context is. You know, this piece of work that I'm doing when I'm in-house, how does that fit in with a broader sort of commercial sense of the organization? So, having even, you know, just a three month stint, being able to really have your eyes open to that is powerful learning, I'm guessing for you. Stacey: Definitely. Yeah, I think there are also things you uh tend to appreciate um more getting the secondment experience because you're privy to a a lot more day to day conversation, obviously that you wouldn't get. So you have better context for the customer, for their culture, for their true pain points. What you know, what their leadership is focused on may be totally different than the enforcement trends that you would have been advising them on. So there are certainly nuances that you gather through secondment that you wouldn't get as traditional outside counsel um posture. But it's also fun because you working with the client after my secondment, I had such better sensitivity to, you know, this person in the back of their mind is thinking about maybe that promotion one day or things like that. So, um yeah, to the extent a secondment opportunity comes up, I would highly recommend it. And do you also you know, not just specific to the client, you get a better sense, law firms have such a, a structure that you understand, especially I had never been in-house. So getting to appreciate the differences in house is completely focused on the business, right at the firm, you're focused on the client, in-house you're focused on the business, how to make the business better, smarter, more compliant, more profitable. And it gives you a better business sense, I think as outside counsel later to appreciate those differences once you've experienced it. Alicia: Wow, no, I can, I can definitely hear it and, and sort of hear it in the way that you're, that you're describing your experience there. And it is, it's sort of this breadth of understanding as a, you know, being a, being a practicing lawyer is it, it can feel perhaps, you know, I'm doing this piece of work, which is so, so desperately integral to what's coming next to the organization, but then actually seeing it in practice building those relationships and go, okay this person's having a really bad day. Uh I know why they, they, they might be on a sort of a very different preference or way of working right now and equally just, you know, coming back to the fact of you belong and you're part of something quite big and quite exciting. I definitely heard you saying you weren't ready yet. Um So I'm, I'm sensing back to the states, back in practice at, at Reed Smith where that was, what, 2016, 2017 And you know, how were those, how were those sort of last couple of years of, of your time at the firm before, before stepping into something different? How were they? Stacey: I did. Yeah, it was, it was fun because I left the Falls Church office to go on secondment and I came back to the brand sparkly shiny new Tyson's office when I returned and it all felt different. There was just a shift, you know, I felt, you know, intrepid that I've been on this international secondment and, um sort of coming back with a refreshed sense of what our, what our customers and clients need and how to better serve them. And so, uh, yeah, I continued as an associate for three more years. And in the fall of 2019, I had my first son and that, you know, of course, life shifts, uh for many reasons when you become a new parent. So I, I had my son in December of 2019, went on maternity leave. Obviously March 2020 COVID happened and I returned to the firm in May of 2020 in a remote environment. Sort of not. I was adrift in many ways, you know, navigating, working as a parent and um through COVID and sort of all the things that people were struggling with at that time. And I certainly felt more ready than to go in-house. I found myself really longing for using my brain from 9 to 5 and then switching gears and being able to sort of more focus on parenthood in the evenings and on the weekends. And that was, that was sort of the first inklings of, I think I'm ready to go in-house. And then I saw an opportunity, um, at Slack, the, um, software company that I thought would be a good fit and I figured, why not? I should apply. Um Just see kind of what happens. I went through about seven rounds of interviews. Alicia: Seven? Seven rounds? They must have been really focused on what they wanted. Stacey: Yeah, pretty intense. Alicia: That’s intense. Stacey: Yes, I think they were, I found out later they were pretty far down the line with someone else. So they were trying to rush me through and sort of get a good panel going um to make an informed choice. But uh and Rizzy Qureshi in the DC office, you know, as we were getting towards the end and they were asking for references. I opened up to Rizzy and said, um I'm interviewing for this job. Would you mind serving as a reference for me? And he was so kind about it. Yeah, so I um was offered that job and so I left Reed Smith in August of 2020 to join Slack. Alicia: Amazing. I mean, and you know, I, I love those moments when you, when you sort of think, oh, I kind of have to tell somebody here and I need their support as well. And, oh, that's just, that's a hell of a conversation to have. Right. I mean, that's, that's a moment of, please don't hate me, but this is happening and to hear that it was such a wonderful experience. Actually, a positive moment actually, with you for the firm. Stacey: It was, I had such a pit in my stomach as I know anyone can appreciate when you're contemplating leaving an organization that, you know, I had never worked anywhere else as a lawyer. I felt so deeply embedded and committed to the firm and Rizzy could not have been kinder, you know, he's a strategic businessman. He knew that this could mean business for Reed Smith. So he certainly stayed in the mentor role, just switching from partner associate to outside counsel, inside counsel and in-house council. So yes, he very kindly said, I'm sad we're having this conversation, but I fully support you and your professional goals. And so, yeah, and you know, and when I got back to Slack, I hired Rizzy and his team. Alicia: So there you go. Stacey: Yeah. Alicia: It does pay off. And it's, it's quite a thing. A lot of people sort of say, you know, we, we've got alumni coming back and they're going to talk about life outside of the firm. And it's like, well, they left us well and they talk about the firm. Well, so let's hear what they have to say. So it is heartening to have had such a great experience of, of leaving us. But also looking back so fondly. Tell us a bit more. So you're in Slack, 2020 you're in the remote environment. Now, there was a sort of acquisition 2021. All of a sudden as I understand it, you're sort of in this big team, um, you know, sort of, it's, it's, you know, Slack moves to become Salesforce, you know, is, is that the environment that you kind of go? Okay, now I've made it, this is it, tell us the next stage of your career path. Stacey: Yeah. So I was at Slack for about four months before they announced that Salesforce had intended to um acquire Slack and then we, we went through a pretty truncated closing process. Um DOJ conducted some antitrust review, you know, it's a big, big acquisitions um come with some heavy regulatory review. So once we got through that, um it was summer of 2021 and then we had some integration time with the Slack and Salesforce teams. And so at Slack, I had been hired to um act as the commercial counsel for the public sector business, which was really exciting. They were building it up and just sort of needed someone who understood FAR and DFAR and could speak that language and negotiate those contracts with the government. Salesforce had about 40 of me. So while I own a function at Slack, they had a very robust public sector sales commercial counsel team at Salesforce. And I also joked, I think anyone who's gone through an acquisition can appreciate, you end up with a job you didn't apply for at a company you didn't apply for. Alicia: I can imagine. Stacey: The team was very, very kind at Salesforce, but I really missed owning that function, being that partner and helping to build something new. And a few of my colleagues from Slack had gone over to Atlassian and said, oh, you should take a look at Atlassian. I think you'd really, I think you'd really like it culture. Um You know, Atlassian was founded in Australia. It has sort of this great Australian tech company culture. So, yeah, I applied and uh um I'm very grateful to be here and helping them sort of recreating what I did at Slack also helping them, they have a pretty good public sector sales function. Um But they didn't have dedicated legal counsel to it. So, yeah, helping build that up and getting us into more public sector hands is the goal. Alicia: Got it. Got it amazing. And you know, I, I think um so for those of us who don't know Atlassian particularly, well, tell us a bit more about the culture, tell us a bit more about the people and I'm going to ask you about your day to day as well. But yes, give us, give us a sense of what it's like to work there. Stacey: Sure. So Atlassian creates collaboration software and sort of way better ways to work with your team. Jira and Confluence are sort of the two major products that most people associate with Atlassian. Jira is a way to track projects and ticketing and sort of assign assignments and track them and see who's working on what and get answers on discrete issues. Um Confluence is like a, a virtual document software but it's, it's cool, you can put tables in it. It's hyped up, you can add hyperlinks, images, things like that. It's very cool. And as part of our commitment to collaboration software, we're a fully remote company which II I think it's getting harder and harder to find these days. So we have this thing called Atlassian Anywhere you can work in any country where Atlassian has a legal entity up to 90 days. So, you know, one of my colleagues did a work vacation from Paris for a few months and it's just there is a very nice emphasis on the company culture, making sure the employees are happy and feel, you know, excited about their work and excited about their teammates. And I really appreciate um I appreciate that. I very much value those personal connections with the people that I work with. So working at a company where it's so important is a very nice fit for me. Alicia: Mhm. Mhm And you know, hearing that sort of the values driven, the fact that, you know, what, what the, the ultimate product is of the organization is mirrored in the way in which you work in the way in which you can interact with, with everybody else at the organization. And that sort of collective feel. It sounds, it sounds incredible and fully remote goodness, you know, especially when, you know, we hear so much in, in the press, uh, you know, as we're coming back to office, you know, some organizations mandating 2, 3, 4, even 5 days these days. So, gosh, it must feel quite different actually bearing in mind, you know, sort of some professional services and what's going on in the wider world and just that, you know, the, the, the commentary that we hear in the news a lot. Stacey: Yeah, definitely we do. They're great about team meetings. So, uh we went, we met in Austin in May at the Austin, Texas office to be all together. I recently was in San Francisco. I'll be back in San Francisco in February and then they do region based activities. So in DC, we'll be doing a putt putt for Atlassian folks in DC and things like that. So, yeah, they do uh day to day, you know, it's sort of seamless working on our software, which is great, but then still providing the opportunity to get together and connect in person when possible. Alicia: Absolutely wonderful. Because of course, you know, as what, what what I'm sensing is, you know, something that really does drive you, is that relationship building? Is that sort of human connection? Um, the sort of team environment? Stacey: For sure. Alicia: Wonderful. We would know, you know, this is a Reed Smith podcast. We would know what, you know, sort of a day in the life of a lawyer. Reed Smith. Be that on the litigation side, be that transactional. Tell us about, you know, sort of your day. What is the day of a day in the life of, you know, the senior commercial counselor at Atlassian? Stacey: Yeah, so I in the mornings it is logging on and sort of checking what crises have popped up overnight. That is one of the sort of nature of a international software company. Sometimes I'll have, you know, my APAC colleagues or EMEA colleagues who have issues come up for questions. Um So in the morning it's just triaging and then sometimes, uh we have set customer calls, um, to negotiate through, you know, we're trying to enter into a new agreement or, um, we've, you know, had an issue pop up and we need to jump on a call with the customer um, and we'll work through those. A lot of broader projects are always like revamping our terms, revamping our contracts. Are they easy to read? Do they make sense for us? And the customer, one thing I really appreciate about Atlassian is we want to bring that customer voice to our contracts. So, yes, there are things that we need to protect the company, but we also want to make sure if we're getting a lot of feedback from customers about a specific term or something that's causing them friction. Uh, we really do want to make it easier, um, on our end to use our software, procure our software. And so that's what the commercial team is trying to do, trying to protect the risk of the company while also making it easy to buy our products. Alicia: Mhm. And you know, something that I don't know when you take a step back, you think actually that's pretty integral to um the way in which we do business and the way in which we maintain incredible client relationships, you know, by really being able to lean in to say what is going to work best for you, how do we make sure this is a genuine fit, not just, here's a document, sign it, let's hope for the best, you know? Stacey: Right. Exactly. Exactly. I think one of the things that I learned at Slack and for any contract nerds out there, I would encourage you to look at Slack’s sort of standard terms that live online. They have taken what usually, you know, you see these dense software terms, they've taken them to be incredibly customer friendly and incredibly easy to read. And so, you know, when I think of sort of the big lessons that I've pulled from you know, Reed Smith or Slack or Salesforce, from Slack it is definitely, there is always a way to convey what you need in a way that someone can read it and even maybe enjoy reading software terms if that's possible. So, I, I try to remember that as I'm drafting even today. Alicia: Awesome. I love that. Someone once told me if your grandmother understands what you're doing, you're onto a winner and I, I still hold by that. I absolutely do. One thing I'm always curious about I mean, you know, in private practice in a Reed Smith context. In fact, you know, most law firms time is money, right? You know, you've got to be billing every six minutes counts. What is the concept of time when you're in-house? I mean, how does, is it such a commodity and such a sort of rigorous recording as, as, as you would have experienced at Reed Smith? What does that feel like? Stacey: Yeah, it's so funny. I still find myself from time to time going to switch my timer and it just creates that muscle memory after 10 years. Um, it's a tough one to break, but the really nice change beyond, you know, not having to worry about the constant timer is people are much more willing to just touch base and chat. And, um, it was so funny to me when I joined Slack. A couple of my colleagues were saying, hey, you know, we haven't met in a while. Let's, let's set up a recurring one on one because I kept thinking, oh, I'm taking your time, you know, I know you need to get back to work. But when you're in-house that is built in and that time and connection and mentoring is built into your day. And so my manager and I meet once a week, not only to run through tasks and things, but to talk big picture, you know, are you happy? Where do you want to go in your career? Um Are you observing things we need to change and then, you know, other counterparts within legal, within the business, we just set up recurring one on ones and sometimes it's just, you know, the 30 minutes you would have grabbed a coffee with a friend um when you were in person, but it is so nice not to feel like I'm stealing their time or um you know, keeping them from getting back to billing it. Um It, it takes the pressure off to sometimes you get wisdom that you wouldn't ordinarily get just because the time is there, which is so nice. Alicia: Absolutely. And often, you know, especially if we are remote from our colleagues, those corridor conversations, those moments of, you know, how, how is, how are things going? Those moments with those who perhaps are more senior to you? And do you know, they, they hold the intel about how promotion looks and how hierarchy works, you know, having that time is, is can be quite precious. Um If you don't have it automatically, as you said in the coffee line. It's good to hear that those exist. It's something I'm in a learning and development function. Of course, I'm going to be preaching about this, but it's lovely to hear that it does, it does live and breathe. I'm really curious because the, the journey that you've given us today, the sort of the learning that you've had, what would you say has been the sort of highlights, those moments as you look back um over an incredible career if you know, 2009 and you know, we're about to head into 2024 and whatever goodness, whatever that's going to bring, you know, what are, what are those moments of learning that you say actually, uh to tell my younger self or absolutely, to tell the, the colleagues that we have here at Reed Smith who are listening in on, on those podcasts. What would you say about those, those moments of learning throughout this career so far from Reed Smith? Stacey: The one thing that I always go back to is don't bring problems, bring solutions. And I think as a young associate, it's very easy to say I had a problem. But one of the things that I learned from the partners at Reed Smith is finding the problem is always gonna happen. What sets you apart is the solution that you bring and being able to come saying we found this, but we have an idea is what is always gonna set you apart as a good lawyer no matter where you're practicing. And then that attention to detail sort of what I was saying about Joe ferreting through Excel spreadsheets to find the one missing number that could win the case. I mean, having that impeccable attention to detail will always serve you well, whether you're drafting contracts and think I could make this a little bit more precise or crisp or it's the winning paper document in a deposition or litigation, no matter what your practice is. Bring solutions, not problems and attention to detail are certainly the, the most important I think. Alicia: Mhm. One thing I would, I would emphasize, um, again, hearing from you and certainly the, the early lessons of attention to detail, as you said, the problems and, and solutions. I guess for our, for our younger associates, for our younger population, our younger attorneys really stepping into their 1st, 1st and 2nd years, it can be quite daunting to sort of say, okay, I think I've had a problem, let alone saying, I think I found a solution. How do you, how do you have that courage? I mean, what is it about, you know, the sort of the, perhaps it's a human interaction? What is it that gives you that moment of going? No, I'm gonna do it. This is what it's gonna set me apart. Stacey: Yeah, I, I can completely appreciate how that feels, being a junior associate and sometimes you're thrust into it. Sometimes you are not ready. And, um, a partner says I need you to do x, y, and z, even if it feels daunting and scary, that's where you're going to learn. Those are the best moments. Also, we, as, um, clients of the firm are, are paying you to look for those things. So I'd much rather you flag it and bring your also possible solution than be too timid because it may, it might be something we didn't even think of. You know, part of the reason we bring in outside counsels for the fresh set of eyes, we get into our day to day and we are relying on you to sort of remind us of the pitfalls or maybe see something flag something we haven't done before. So it may be scary, but it also might be your moment to be bold and look really good to your partner, your client, whoever that may be so and of course, run it by your colleagues. Um, if you're not quite confident enough to bring it to the client, but that's what they're there for and that's where you'll learn so. Alicia: No, I think that's, I think that's, that's wise advice and, you know, I certainly, I certainly appreciate hearing you are a client. You are, you are in-house counsel, an amazing organization. Um, so to hear it direct from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Um, thank you for that. I guess I'm, I'm on to final words. I'm on to sort of what are the, the sort of key takeaways. And as I listen to you, I'm sort of hearing this again. It's coming back to the human connection, the relationships that you've built up and, you know, to a certain extent, I, I, you know, if I put it into more business speak, you know, the network that you must have now, the people that have crossed your path, would you say that's, that's sort of a big part of your longevity to date and will continue, you know, sort of for the next 10 years going forward? Stacey: Definitely. I always, when I'm talking to younger associates, um to the Reed Smith transactional associates that I talked to in September, I always encourage you to just be kind or at least professional slash cordial if kindness isn't the tone of, um, the conversation, but you just never know when you're going to cross paths again. Careers are long. And it is so funny to me how many people you just don't expect that you will hear from pop up and they might need something from you or you might need something from them. So I always try to encourage just be times be professional, be cordial because you just never know. So keep in the back of your mind. Alicia: Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. So, look, Stacey, this has been wonderful uh talking with you again, hearing about your career journey to date. And, you know, I'm seeing so much more to come from whether it's in-house, whether we tempt you back in at some stage, I'm sure because it seems like you are a great friend of the firm, a great advocate of the firm and certainly something that our younger associates can, can really look up to thinking beyond just the sort of first five minutes in the firm, but a longevity career, that's clearly one that you're cherishing. Actually, I would say that's how I really feel. Stacey: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's, I love talking to Reed Smith associates. So I encourage you to reach out if you have any questions or want to chat. Alicia: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Stacey. And I certainly look forward to the next Career Footprints podcast. Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's Alumni Network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz at alumni@reedsmith.com. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.…

Career Footprints

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Adam Tachner: Becoming a trusted advisor to Silicon Valley 36:10

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Alum Adam Tachner traces his path from junior IP associate to a senior business and legal role at AI chipmaker Groq Inc. Adam shares how his unrelenting curiosity about his clients’ businesses, and cultivation of a deep professional network in the tech community, have contributed to his ability to “see around corners” at the leading edge of tech across a 30-year career. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest for Reed Smith alum to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals careers that will help you find your professional success however you define that. Alicia: Welcome back to Career Footprints, our podcast series at Reed Smith, looking at or listening to the incredible career stories, the career footpaths of our amazing alumni. I'm Alicia Millar and I am delighted to welcome my next guest that is Adam Tachner with the most impressive job title I have to say that possibly the largest uh business card you'll ever find. So VP Corporate Development, Finance and Chief Legal Officer over at Groq. Adam, welcome. Adam: Thank you so much. You know, they say that the shorter your title, the greater the power. So don't be impressed. Alicia: Well, I still am, but thank you. I still am. Welcome. Absolutely, Welcome to our podcast. I can't wait to share your career journey uh with our listeners and especially the times that you're going to be talking about your experiences at Reed Smith or actually Crosby Heafey, as I understand. So, not necessarily full on Reed Smith, but don't let me talk about it. I'd love to hear more about you. Talk us through it. Adam: Sure. It's, uh, so, first of all, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's, uh, it's a little humbling to realize I've reached that stage in my career where I have to spend some time reflecting uh backwards. Uh I tend to focus more on what's next and what's come to pass. So I appreciate the moment to take a breather and look back. I, I actually grew up around the law in a sense, not big law, but my father was a, was a patent attorney uh who came to it relatively late in his own career. He went to night school in the seventies. He had been an engineer on the Apollo program in the sixties and, and then became a patent attorney because he was an engineer who could write. And um and so he had this great solo practice that he really enjoyed and probably wanted me to follow in his footsteps. But, but when I went to law school and saw what was going on in Silicon Valley, I was really inspired after leaving University of Oregon or even before I finished, actually, I did my third year at what was then the Hastings College of Law, uh the UC Law School in San Francisco. And uh got a 2L job which extended into a full year internship at a little patent boutique in San Francisco. And they knew uh an attorney at Crosby Heafey and they referred me over and he brought me into this kind of nascent intellectual property team and I was really uh honored and privileged to be kind of a, a co founding member of that group. There were maybe three or four of us. They had maybe a year or two under their belts thus far and, and then had some opportunities to help bring in clients and sort of build practice Alicia: Amazing. And that sort of first time in, um, in Crosby Heafey, what was it like, sort of walking in? What was your sort of first year or two? Like, what was that sort of moment of, you know? Oh, my goodness I'm here, I'm a patent attorney, New practice. Ok. Where's the deep end? Am I jumping in? Adam: Yeah. Well, you know, joining Crosby Heafey at that time was actually a wonderfully, uh, stimulating set of circumstances because it was a, a good size firm as they went. Uh, at the time, we were not a boutique, but, you know, a specialist California firm we probably had on the order of a couple of 100 attorneys up and down the coast and the heart of it was in the Oakland area in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland. I don't even know if the firm still has an office there. And uh Ed Heafey had started that firm somehow related to the fact that his father was one of the founders of Farmers Insurance. And so there was an arrangement whereby the Crosby Heafey team would have a kind of a no settlement policy on any litigation that they launched. And so it was this wonderful place to learn how to be a litigator at a very practical level. And often the stakes were not particularly high for farmers and they would just go for it even on a case that was only worth thousands of dollars. And so you had an opportunity to, you know, to really get in there, understand the case uh and, and make mistakes if, if, if that was unavoidable um kind of on the clock. And there was a formal litigation training program and there was just a lot of super capable people. I remember the firm had a full time editor, uh and sort of writing instructor who would work with you. We had an amazing appellate department and it was just a very high quality large boutique firm. And, and in, in, in, inside of that middle, we had this small group, Scott Baker, Ed Lynch, Mal Wittenberg, Morgan Tovey. These are names that will probably be uh I mean, other than Scott, of course, I'm sure as well still well known at the firm, many of them have already moved on. Of course, but it was a great place to learn all aspects of the trade at the same time, though, none of them was particularly technical. Certainly not in my field, which was electrical engineering. And so you had this kind of strong base of support and folks that knew intellectual property was something that was really important to their clients, but also, you know, weren't fully familiar with how to service it. And, uh, and, and basically, just to sort of background that a little bit because I think there's intellectual property has changed so much. It's probably worth spending just a couple of minutes to overlay that sort of broader economic history in that around 1981 or ’82 Ronald Reagan, as president had signed on to the formation of the CAFC, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. And before that, patent law had just been one of, you know, many fields that would go to any of the numbered Federal Circuit courts of appeal in the United States. And so you had often a, a venue uh determination, a race to the courthouse to figure out who would actually win the case. And so, you know, you had absurd situations like in Kansas City, if you filed in Kansas City, Kansas, you'd effectively pursue your case under one perhaps defense favoring a set of laws. And in Kansas City, Missouri, a completely other set, right. And so, uh it was kind of an untenable situation. This new court quickly consolidated all of that law as a matter of law and then really added more value to patents because there was, you know, the key to value in business in a lot of ways, a key value to value in business is um predictability, right? And now patents were a little more predictably enforceable, a little more predictably uh valuable. And a book came out. I remember, uh late eighties, early nineties called Rembrandts in the Attic. And it was about sort of finding these patents and really exploiting them. And in effect, that gave birth to the what became known as the patent trolling industry where they would enforce patents as a means of building profits independent of whether you are actually the innovator. And so all of that was going on and that was overlaid, of course, with the birth of the internet, the mosaic operating system, which became Netscape came out in 1994 the summer I graduated law school, I actually still have the issue of Wired Magazine that I was using when I should have been studying for the bar exam, I was instead reading Wired. And so it was just a really fun time to join the practice and a really great uh context in which to, to sort of bring this something new. I wasn't just another cog in an existing machine. I had an opportunity to sort of entrepreneurially build something new. And that was very, very exciting. Alicia: It sounds it. Adam: Yeah, yeah. And so, so one of the senior associates actually came to me just weeks after I joined the firm, I still hadn't even gotten my bar results. And he said, uh, so, uh, I have news, uh I'm leaving the firm, uh, and he was like the, there were two senior associates, so half of them had quit. And he said, I'm, I'm taking a job at Apple, which I thought was very cool. But by the way, I have this, I have this meeting set up with a tech company and um I want to bring you now because, you know, I can't do the pitch. It's, it's on Monday, this is probably Thursday or Friday and it's called Xilinks and figure it out. And so I didn't know what the heck to do. And so I called, I called my father uh of blessed memory, Leonard. And uh and I said, dad, I, I got this opportunity, I don't know what to do and remember this is before there were, there was really much in the way of the internet. Certainly there weren't accessible web browsers in every library um let alone in every home. And so uh he said, hey, look, you go to the engineering library and you do some research and you figure out what these guys are all about. I didn't know the first thing. And so I did that and uh and I found some sort of thematically, there was one particular guy, uh, who had published a ton of articles, uh, for that company in, in different technical journals. And I, I read up and I did my best to understand what was going on just to be conversant. And then, uh, and then drove down on Monday, I think, I didn't know how to get down there. I was probably 20 minutes late to the meeting. I mean, it was a tragedy in the making. And I met these two lovely ladies who were running the patent department there and they were sort of taking in the shock of having this, you know, first year associate pitching them instead of a very senior attorney. And I told them about the reading I had been doing and how fascinated I was by their FPGAs Field Programmable Gate Arrays. And that there was this one inventor, a guy named Steve Trimberger that I was especially interested in reading more about what could they give me any information? And they both laughed and they said, oh, Steve come in, and and it was actually that guy was literally sitting outside their office waiting to meet his new patent attorney. So I, I uh through it just a tremendous stroke of luck, I was able to sort of land, Xilinks as a first customer and a first client and uh probably unfairly therefore developed a reputation uh as being like a rain maker because here it was September of my, of my 1L my first year and I already had landed a, a significant Silicon Valley customer. But that just, just, you know, put me off on the right right foot, gave me the opportunity to start to um get more opportunities like that to cross sell, especially, which is a big piece of being part of a big firm and, and really building the practice. In ’97 we opened the San Francisco office and things kept accelerating from there. So it was a wonderful place to start my career. I feel incredibly fortunate. Alicia: It sounds it. And, and what a time and what a time when so much is going on in the world around you, you know, maybe before we even knew it, this sort of such fundamental change with something like the internet and what that means and think about even now, fast forward a few years and are overwhelming reliance on all things internet, all things, browser, all things being connected. So I'm thinking you're what sort of coming up to mid level, maybe senior associate time is that when you went in house? Talk us through that, that sort of moment in which you said, OK, I've done amazing things here at Crosby Heafey. It's time for something new. What, what was that, what went on for you? Adam: Yeah. So uh that's right. The first five or six years were really this combination of of landing uh my own clients um bringing in a lot of start ups watching, a lot of them get very rich watching a lot of them crash and burn. I just sort of getting a sense for the overall entrepreneurial experience from the safety of my uh of my Embarcadero center office. And then I got approached it was, I was coming up on my, on my sixth summer. So, yeah, senior associate, first time I would have been eligible for partnership and I got a call from, um and I had a, I had a nicely balanced practice. I was sort of a, a backroom guy on litigation and then did patent drafting and had three or four associates with whom I worked uh on different accounts and a lot of counseling and letters and opinion drafting. And I got a call from a uh from a recruiter and a VC who had just sort of uh been working together to launch this spin out from Stanford. It was called T-Span. That was kind of a working title. And T-Span had had come up with the idea of doing high frequency radio on CMOS technology. In other words, using the same sort of chip technology that was used to make uh memory and CPUs like Intel, you know, uh Pentium CPUs were the big brand back then. And instead use that to make high frequency radio, which previously had been much more complicated and difficult to fabricate and expensive to manufacture. And I was like, this sounds pretty cool. But what's, you know, what's the application that you have in mind? Are you going cellular? And they had this cool new idea that no one had heard of yet called Wi-Fi. And, and, and I had been trying to, I had been trying to network. I lived in this little Berkeley bungalow and would take the BART train to commute into the city and uh had been trying to network to gateway computers and was tearing my hair out with all the difficulties. And I just thought the idea of sort of being able to have that connected presence in this new internet era without having to find an Ethernet cable or drill a hole in the wall was just the, the best idea. And uh I, I just found myself sort of drawn to the big opportunity that that represented. And so, uh I found out after I gave notice that I had been on the cusp of being offered partnership. And so it was, it was probably viewed by my, my peers as an incredibly uh reckless move. I, I think in hindsight, it was probably a very low risk move in that, you know, the firm had decided they wanted me to be partner. And I'm guessing that if I had, you know, my start up had crashed and burned, they might have invited me back. But who knows, but I was, I was, I was super happy to become a client and, and work with the team after that, because the day that I started at T-Span, which became Altheros Communications, there were literally two patents that were in risk sitting on my chair. And so I think the first phone call I made was to Scott Baker to say, hey, you know, we're gonna have to do some defense work on this and we got, and we sort of got to work him and Jonah Mitchell and that whole thing. So it was, and Bovich John Bovich, so it was, it was a terrific next phase of my career and, and, and, and one in which uh I was able to begin to sort of indulge that desire to be a member of the executive team. It just kind of indulging this desire to not be the person that got the call when the crisis arose, but rather could sort of see around the corner, could understand the function of the law in the broader context of business. Um And that was, that was wonderful. And it my eyes to how much I didn't know to how much I didn't understand about the different functions in a tech company. I began learning about the operations side of it. We, we were what's called a fabless semiconductor company. And what did it mean to actually design a chip but not actually build it. And what was what were the sort of elements of trust? Why is it that every NDA gets negotiated? Why isn't there just a standard for this? All these questions that were new to me? And unfortunately, still haven't been answered, uh I think, universally, but, but you can come up with sort of your own processes for, for, for dealing with them. Uh And so it was a wonderful first in-house experience and it turned out to be a terrific career move. Wi-Fi was a great opportunity, but also just from a team and process perspective, it ended up being uh a really wonderful team to be a part of really the fabless semiconductor business had started in the, in the late seventies and early eighties. And then these, these sort of dedicated foundry companies like TSMC. And uh now we've heard of companies like GlobalFoundries, of course, Samsung is now in that industry that was kind of a new industry in the eighties and nineties. Before that, there was a, there was an adage that, you know, quote real men owned their own fabs and companies like Intel and AMD, you know, were fully vertically integrated from sort of silicon or from, from sand chips, right? And then there was this notion that no, you shouldn't have to build your own fab in order to build your own product. There's someone who specialized in that who can then, you know, amortize that investment over many more customers and that was working out very well. And, and so we had a bunch of folks in the team that were really veterans uh in building that industry and understood it really well. And I was able to sort of learn the industry from uh some incredible talent and more and more questions for more and more of a desire on my part to sort of better understand their functions led to me actually enrolling in a, in a, in an executive MBA program. At the time, UC Berkeley, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley had teamed up with the Columbia University Business School. And so they had a, a 19-month MBA program and I started in 2007. Um by this time Groq had gone public, so I was learning about, you know, securities and such and I had been able to build a small team. Uh and when I started business school, uh I was still working, but I announced to the company and to my team that I would be stepping back to half time. That was actually the best management move I've ever made in my whole career because since I had been the only lawyer in the company for a long time, everything had sort of come to me and then it would push it down to my, to my team and I ended up becoming the bottleneck, I think for a lot of stuff. And by getting out of the way and saying, hey, instead of emailing me, you'll email the team and they'll let me know if there's an issue and they'll keep me informed. I just reversed the polarity of the workflow through, through legal. And that, that alone kind of allowed me not to have to worry about being caught up on things. I could focus on school and learning about these other functions and working on projects and it just uh it just played really nicely. And I think my, my team members were, were happier for it, like they had more autonomy and more of an ability to build independent relationships with, with their clients internally. Uh And the company just kept, just kept growing. We did a lot of acquisitions. I think we did on the order of a dozen M&A transactions during my tenure with the company, which was from 2000 until we sold it in 2011. And then in the two years after that uh uh as part of Qualcomm, um we did private acquisitions, we did some public acquisitions, we diversified our business and it was an incredible laboratory for learning again, uh that broader sort of function of law uh in business. Alicia: I’m loving the concept of the laboratory for learning. It's sort of, I hear as, as you're, as you're talking about your career, that this sort of continuous development is not only about the law uh that you obviously need to maintain your, your um your knowledge or what your awareness, your experience, your capability. But this breadth of understanding the business, understanding the commercial functions, understanding what you the guys down the corridor are doing and how to sort of integrate into that to be more than just the lawyer and as you say, sort of the bottleneck or, you know, part of the cogs in the wheel. And allowing others to step in and be the ones that are going to solve the solutions quicker rather than sort of, perhaps as you said, sort of standing in the way when there are so many other things that, that, that you are um focusing on that you're being asked to do and also allowing them to shine just as much. That's what I'm getting, that's what I'm getting from the conversation so far. Adam: Yeah, I think that's, I think that's an astute observation. I think that I think the opportunity for that kind of learning in-house is actually in many ways more accessible than it is in a law firm because in a law firm, even if you, as you know, as I did right out of law school, right? Even if you have direct access to your clients, you're still really only having that direct access typically to the legal department, the in-house legal department. And, you know, and they're working, they're, they're not a profit center, they're a cost center generally speaking. And so you're seeing things within a particular lens and not really getting access to the broader business context in which the issues are being brought to you. And typically also not having access to whatever transpired over the year or two that led up to the issue, whether it was the invention of something new, you know, some employee leaving and stealing trade secrets, uh when they took off and so on and so forth or even the sort of board level interaction, there are partners, of course, uh at law firms who have that level of access. But I think it's rare for the young associate to get that. Uh I do see tremendous value in both paths though. There's no question because what I missed when I went in house was especially when I was alone in house until I started hiring other lawyers uh to join the firm, which didn't happen for a few years. What you miss is the camaraderie, this sort of operation at the kind of the pinnacle from a quality perspective of the practice of law. You know, we had amazing attorneys at Crosby Heafey, I remember there was someone who was an expert in legal ethics, like he had defended law firms against malpractice claims and, and, and remember this issue came up with a client, they were going public, the underwriters had a concern about something and the client came to me and he was looking for a way out of this underwriter issue and I was actually able to confer with these ethics experts and get them to get the underwriters to admit that the particular opinion letter or whatever that, that was causing the hang up was actually outside the bounds that they should have reviewed in their underwriting effort. And, you know, I was, uh, uh, as my mother would say, a little pisher, I, you know, I think I had been out of law school. I had been out of law school for more than nine months when I made this observation. And there's no way there's no way even in the chat GPT era that I would have spotted this issue uh independently or through research, it was only by being able to sit down probably over lunch with, you know, with a senior attorney who had 30 years of experience and sort of just harvest that insight that I was able to solve a really a fundamental issue that was preventing a client from going public. So I, I missed that. Uh, I miss it a lot and, and you never really get that back when you go in-house. What you have instead though, uh is the opportunity to learn from any number of those sorts of teams if you have the discipline to always continue to have those sorts of lunches and take the time with all the different attorneys, because now I didn't have just one firm that I could call upon, but I had several and all of them had MCLE sessions and they all wanted me to participate. And so now I had more of a smorgasbord of, of different opportunities available, especially at the end of every MCLE year in January, February, when you have all those hours that are available, you can continue to learn, but you have to be a little more self disciplined about it. You also lose the network. You know, when you're in a law firm, you have uh you have all these colleagues, but you also have a professional network that you're always building because everybody feels obligated to put bread on the table and to win new clients and uh and you lose that when you go in house. But I really made a point of continuing to meet people to have lunches and to not just sort of sit and eat at my desk every day. And I would imagine that that at big law firms right now, that's something that you have to even remind folks of in the, in the post-COVID era where so much work is happening from home. I think it's really easy to sort of feed on your seed corn and not kind of continue to build out your network. Alicia: And it's, it's a curious reflection as well because, you know, it's something that we are trying to encourage, we are reinforcing and that's on the sort of learning side as well as you know, I, I hear our partners saying it just as much to our, uh, associate attorneys get out there, meet your client, they will want to have a coffee, they will want to have lunch. And by the sound of it you did, you know, this is something that you, you actually relish, you take the time for it is helpful to you. Yes, of course. You get to eat, fantastic. But you get to maintain that network. You get to find out actually this guy knows something. This girl knows that. That's, that's the expert. I'm going to bring you in when I need you. Adam: Absolutely. And, uh, I, it was, I think it was Benjamin Franklin who observed that whenever he wanted to get closer to someone, he would ask them a favor, you know, if there was someone who he respected but feared he would ask to borrow a book from the library, you know, something like that. Alicia: Yeah. Adam: And I, and I think that it's through that sort of exchange of information that, that actual exchange of favors as well. That's how Silicon Valley works. That's how I think in a lot of ways business works ultimately. And if you want to sort of break through and become a valued counselor, not just an attorney, but a valued counselor to your clients at the, even the most senior level, then they're gonna assume that you have that level of connection because when they come to you for, with a problem, they're not asking you for the, for the solution in the moment. They're asking me to think about this and to reach out to your network and, and then sort of build the right response, whether that response is, is a written response or is a process that's initiated, you know, by your efforts. Alicia: And, you know, it's, it's curious on that. I'm, I'm hearing a few things about, you know, your opinion and my question, I guess is that that's coming, is what is it that makes a terrific attorney in your eyes, given your experience? You know, I'm hearing, not necessarily the solution in the moment but actually using the platform finding out where the, the level of expertise is from that breadth of network that will sit in the firm around you. What else is it in your opinion that makes a good attorney? Adam: Yeah, that's a great question. So I, I think the theme, but we should sort of pursue it because it manifests itself differently in each, in each of the different branches of business. I think that if you look at the bar exam in California anyway, it's a three day torture test in which, and, and sort of one of those days is spent on what we, we used to be called, uh this was 30 years ago, practical, I think they were called practical sessions or something like that. And they weren't, they weren't testing your knowledge of the law at all. In fact, it was intended to be an area that you probably didn't study uh unless you happen to choose an elective and they actually cautioned, you don't call upon your knowledge of the law because what they wanted you to do is look at this, this sort of portfolio, this, they gave you this little stack of paper. It was good, good half inch of uh of, of materials, two sided and you had three or four hours to synthesize, you know, from those materials which were both facts and law, um memos and discovered information of some sort and then actual regulations and other relevant areas of law, it might have been something like landlord tenant or something like that. And in four hours you had to just kind of answer the sort of key memo question that came from a senior partner in a law firm or something like that. And to me that I think ended up best capturing what it meant to be a good attorney. Not that that's what a good lawyer does. They sit and write memos for a living, but your issue spotting, right? And you're doing that sort of constantly almost as a matter of habit. I didn't even think about it. Right. One of the hardest times I've been having as a, I mean, the reason I have such a long title, right? Corporate development and finance and CLO is that I've taken on more than just legal, more and more through throughout my career to the point where now in terms of the real time I spend on the law, it's maybe 10 or 15% maybe in a really heavy sort of potential litigation heavy week. I might spend 25% of my time on the law. But that is kind of a misrepresentation because I'm thinking about this stuff all the time. And if you were to kind of, you know, if, if I came up with an avatar that represents what I do for a living, it's probably like those um, the agents in the matrix. If you remember the early matrix where they're dodging bullets, I mean, you're, what you're trying to do is just kind of see around the corner what's coming next and how can we as a company sort of best take advantage of or avoid that particular situation with the least amount of energy and money and, and just stay focused on what we really want to do for a living. And so I, I've had a hard time actually fully empowering my, my, even my, my general counsel, right? The woman Cheryl Savage is an incredible attorney and she's, you know, really good at everything I just described. And then she's also, of course, dealing with everything else that comes up. The other 90% of her time is spent actually solving all these problems that I keep making. And, and so, but it's hard because I'm the one who's in so many of these business meetings, constantly spotting these issues. And I have to make sure that she gets the benefit of all those experiences from a legal perspective and sort of is able to evolve at the leading edge of the business in a way that, that, you know, compliments her depth and capabilities. So that's, I think what you're, what a great attorney is, is, is looking for you're looking for, for someone at least in-house that can kind of organically mix that sort of issue spotting and, and practical business perspective into a whole package. Uh And who understands that there's always this imperative to have that network available to always be on the lookout for the best thinkers in a particular space and have them on speed dial of the most relevant. Uh because, you know, time is always against you. Alicia: Isn't it just. In our, in our sort of closing moments, Adam, what, what advice would you give to our young attorneys? What is it that you would offer to them even if, you know, I think the, the phrase that we hear a lot is, you know, the, the advice to my younger self. But what is it that you would say to them, you know, given the potential longevity of this incredible career in this industry? Adam: Well, I, I do think that training in the law is just a wonderful basis for a career in business. I mean, you know, I, we haven't really given any time or credit, of course to other fields of the law. I've been completely focused on the, on commercial and business law, uh, because that's, that's always what I've done as an intellectual property attorney at first and then sort of more broadly as a general counsel. If you're gonna pursue, you know, public interest law, of course, or a criminal prosecution or defense, I mean, these all have their own sort of mission and vision behind them. And I don't claim to speak to those uh in any way. But if your interest is in, is in commercial law, then I think, always do your best to be mindful of the fundamental business interests. That's, that's really at issue because it's, it's probably not captured in your memo or your, you know, the way you're talking to your clients and your phone call, right? And the more I think you can prepare yourself to understand that context and to have a network that's available to help you with that. Um And to, you know, kind of quickly up to speed on what matters most to the client. Then I think the sort of higher that quality of service you're gonna offer also don't have lunch at your desk, like get out there and meet people and build a network. Um And really perhaps most importantly, because the one thing you'll miss if you go in house is, you won't have that just phenomenal network of, uh, senior peers, um, who have spent their whole careers doing exactly that. Right. Not having lunch at their desk and, and kind of getting out there and meeting people and, um, and, and want nothing more, uh, typically than to, uh, than to share the, the benefit of all that time and energy with you. That's why they're part of a firm. And so just kind of fully take advantage of that. I think people worry too much about making a fool of themselves. I, I'd make a career out of making a fool of myself and it's, it's working out great so far. I'm really enjoying it. Alicia: Absolutely is. It really, really is. And Adam, thank you so much for giving us a glimpse of your career journey of your career thus far. And I can't wait to see what new tech innovation is coming around the corner that you're going to be helping lead the way on. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you. Adam: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Alicia: And thank you to everybody else for joining the podcast. We look forward to welcoming you next time. Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, Podbean and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's Alumni Network or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz at alumni@reedsmith.com. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.…

Career Footprints

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Jaimee Farrer: From litigation associate to assistant GC in pharma 28:41

1 year fa28:41