This week on LexBlab, we share a recent panel discussion and Q & A taken from a LexBlab lunch and learn session. In it, we invited four Hastings alumni to come shed light on what it’s like to be in-house counsel with current students of UC Hastings and members of the community.
In this week’s episode, you’ll be hearing from:
To learn more about LexLab and our Lunch and Learn sessions, visit us at http://lexlab.uchastings.edu
This week on LexBlab, we share a recent panel discussion and Q & A taken from a LexBlab lunch and learn session. In it, we invited four Hastings alumni to come shed light on what it’s like to be in-house counsel with current students of UC Hastings and members of the community.
In this week’s episode, you’ll be hearing from:
To learn more about LexLab and our Lunch and Learn sessions, visit us at http://lexlab.uchastings.edu
From downtown San Francisco. You're listening to Lex Blab, a production of UC Hastings center on legal technology and innovation. Lex lab. I'm drew Amerson, the director of Lex lab. And in this week's episode we're going to take a look at what it's like to work in house. Many law students dream about a career working in house, whether for the challenge, the sense of ownership that comes with working for your own client or for a better work life balance. It's the goal for many young lawyers. Traditionally, the path to that goal has required several years working in a law firm, but that's not always the case. As part of our weekly lunch and learn series at Lex lab, we asked for alumni of Hastings law school to share their stories. Here's our lunchtime discussion. So why don't we start, Sam, with you. Tell us the difference between a general counsel and a chief legal officer and what you do.
Samantha V.H.:Hi everyone. Uh, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of differences on paper that don't result in real life. Um, but one of the differences is the relationship with the board. Uh, in particular with your individual board members and how you interact with them. Um, and also as you sort of scale globally, there are some different implications to titles. And, um, to be really honest with you, titles is not something that's important to me and it's not really something that's important to the company that I work for. However, in order to move within certain spaces, you, you sometimes need to, um, grow in title in order to do that. Uh, so that was the decision of our board and have our CEO who is my boss, uh, in order to do that. Um, but, but really the, the biggest part of my journey has nothing to do with title and everything to do with working for a great company and solving complex problems.
Drew A. (Host):Um, I realized, I forgot to mention, you might've seen Josh King's name played up here. I'm not Josh King. Josh is the general counsel of a company called real self, which is based in Seattle. He hopefully is landed at SFO by now. He was supposed to be here this morning, but SFO is fogged in. So if he arrives, we'll, we'll bring him up here as well. Um, Josh, let's turn to you. Can you tell us how did you get to your first inhouse position?
Josh H.:Um, so I, after coming out of law school, uh, I was helping, uh, and working along with, uh, professor Feldman and worked on creating what's now I guess the center for innovation. Um, and concurrent to that I was also working on building some companies and then had my own legal practice. One of my clients, uh, it was called crowd tilt at the time and I was doing work for them on product council work, commercial work, and we really enjoyed the relationship and they sort of said, Hey, I'm want to do this quite a bit more often. Uh, and I was like, you know, sounds like a pretty good idea to me. So, um, I ended up going in house for the first time through one of my clients. Yeah.
Drew A. (Host):And Lucia you started your career at a big firm, right? What was the transition like from big law to t wo i n house?
Lucia G.S.:I did. So I graduate in 2002, and that was like the.com bust. But, um, the summer before I had summered at WSU R and then that was the summer. They decided they weren't going to make any offers to any to L. so that was unfortunate. But, um, for me, I actually was, uh, I took the bar seven months pregnant and so for that year I decided to just stay at home with my baby. And then, um, I started at Sherman and Sterling in 2003 as a first year. So I got really lucky and, um, I dunno, I stayed there for about five years. Got trained up, very like typical, you know, law school to law firm to in- house path.
Drew A. (Host):Um, as a working mom. Can you talk a bit about what it was like to go first? A big lot to Sherman and Sterling with a basically a newborn?
Lucia G.S.:Uh, yeah, that's a great question. Um, yes, it, it was really crazy. So, um, what happened was I didn't know I was pregnant when I took the Alsop and then I ended up having my first son two weeks. And then I started law school. And interestingly at the time I thought about deferring a year. And so I sent in my deferral payment papers to Dean Cain who was, uh, the same Mary Kay Kane. That's a in the 200 building now. And um, anyway, long story short, I was always having babies throughout. I ended up having a third and in a law firm and you know, it's not like impossible, right? You just have to be really focused. And I had a really, um, supporting husband, so we made it through. But what I do it again, probably not
Drew A. (Host):fair. Um, so I think one thing that a lot of students are going to want to hear is what can they do in law school? Are there certain classes they should be taking? How could they prepare for a future in house career? I'll just throw it up in to anybody.
Josh H.:Um, so like I'll just share my personal experience around that and how I thought about it as a student. And, and I'll tell you now that my thoughts on it haven't really changed much. Um, and I took classes that I found fascinating. Um, I trained myself to learn new stuff. Um, and then on top of that I took practical classes, like negotiations classes, contract drafting classes. Um, I thought I wanted to go into startups. I took a business class at Berkeley school of business at Haas. Um, so for me it was just like, what really interests me, I'm going to go do that. Um, and that's kinda how I prepared myself. What it did mean was that, uh, during bar prep I had to learn evidence for the first time cause I never took it in law school. Um, so there were like some backend things that I had to solve for, but I really enjoyed my time in law school. Like that was, that was my experience. I love taking these classes. It was fun. Um, so that's how I prepped for it. And then another aspect to it that I did not do as much back then, uh, maybe is just, um, understanding the ecosystem a little bit here and making friends with people who are in that world. I didn't really do that much. Uh, and I think I could've done better at that back when I was in school. How could you have done better? Um, probably I would've gone to like meetups, uh, like in the city. So there's tons of different groups that hosted meetups. Um, and so one aspect of that would have been just meeting people and saying hi and just letting serendipity happen. Like you never know if someone's like, Oh my God, there's someone starting something and they need help with just miscellaneous X, Y, and Z. um, and that helped, that you provide can be totally non-legal work by the way. Like they may be like, I just need someone smart who can help with certain things. I'm like, all right. Sure. Um, and then the second piece of that is just like learning industry because like I learned about law, but what did I know about general industry trends and stuff? So I asked one of my professors once and he was like,[inaudible] he did IP work and he's like, check out tech crunch. I was like, what is that? I don't know what that is. I'm just trying to learn about what's going on in different industries because we apply law to someone's business in an industry and having an understanding of what that industry is generally helpful. But again, it's in some sort of a sense like kind of you have different pieces that you're building in law school or like legal skills network like business knowledge, right? Pay attention to whichever one is most applicable to you at that point and fill each bucket as much as you think like should be filled at that point in time. But that's kind of how I would have maybe done a little differently. Other thoughts on how to prepare in law school?
Samantha V.H.:I'll echo the sentiments. Um, and also say that it's really important to sort of know and understand that the, there are a couple of different versions of using your law degree and all of them are okay and great. And, and people don't say that enough. Right? And so you to the point you were making, there are people who use their law degree because they are expert lawyers and they know areas of law in such subject matter expertise. They could, they could basically sit across the table from anyone else and, and, and win any negotiation argument, whatever the case may be. There are also people that use law as a tool to answer complex questions, to guide discussion, to force people to think differently, especially about areas of risk in a business. So, um, one of our board members for my company actually challenged me on that a few years back, right? Because I had a lot of growing pains around that stretch of being part of a leadership team that actually didn't need me around the table to go, well, according to the federal statutes on blank, we really shouldn't be doing that. Right? What they needed me there to do was help them guide strategic discussion around risk assessment and analysis. And so once I was able to understand that differentiating factor, I was doing it all day long, much like everyone on this panel probably does. But once you know that it's actually okay to sometimes use your legal knowledge and skills as a tool to help you do X, Y, Z. It unlocked sort of a superpower in a lot of general councils and CLS that you'll meet throughout your time, networking and others because I'm a huge advocate for that as well, to know that that is also a really important skill that you have. Um, just like with, uh, with teams, there were some articles in the past couple of years around engineers and some of the businesses in the Valley, right? And engineers typically in a typical management style, you would grow up as a, as an engineer, you'd be really good as an engineer and then suddenly they would take you from your engineering role and turn you into a manager of other engineers. Well that doesn't make sense if you don't like managing people and you really want to be an IC and individual contributor and continue to be a bad ass engineer. I would say the same is true for you in your legal skill sets is figuring out what path you want. And by the way, being a GC or as CLO is, is a sexy role in some ways and it's totally unsexy and other ways it is not the end all be all of being a great lawyer. And so figuring out early what it is that that makes you tick and gets you really excited in those conversations and being okay with the fact that you might not be a subject matter expert. I spend 90% of my day not being a subject matter expert in anything. Now I have hired a team of people that are subject matter experts who can guide me and I leverage them heavily. But, but that's not what my CEO leverages me for. And I'm okay with that. It means there are gaps. It means that sometimes I have to show up to the table saying, I don't actually know that. Let me go ask my team who's way smarter than I am. Let me consult someone who's way smarter than I am on this. Um, but that's the bridge that I am playing with my company. Um, so, so does to the point around networking and classes, which was the original conversation. Do classes do networking that that resonates with you and that pushes you a little bit outside of your comfort zone so that you can absorb some of that knowledge and be okay with the fact that
Lucia G.S.:it might be something that you say, wow, that's not for me. That's okay too. And, and helping you set those boundaries will help you to grow into whatever role you want to see yourself in.
Josh H.:I just want to do that was powerful. Like people don't talk about that a lot, which is what do you really want for you? What kind of a professional life really resonates for you and go for that. Don't follow what people were like, Oh, that is what the pinnacle of practicing law means. All that stuff is bogus. It's what's right for you individually. And people don't really talk about that much. And so I, you said it so powerfully. Yeah. Alright. To try to get some insight into what would be a good fit. Can we talk a bit about what your day to day work life is? Like, what do you work on? Feel free to take that any direction you can. Talk about your company, what you're doing and what you're working on.
Lucia G.S.:Um, okay. So law school's not gonna prepare you if you want to go in house. And that's because the skills that they teach you in law school are not the ones you're going to be using day to day, let's say. Uh, the types of skills you usually use when you work in a job and you've probably all worked in a job before is very similar to what it's like in house. Um, and that at the end of the day, it's all about the relationships. So, uh, my job function is I'm responsible for pretty much anything that goes into Tesla, solar, anything that goes into Tesla energy and anything that goes into our cars with the exception of battery and infotainment. And so you can imagine my sort of daily diet is working through agreements and resolving business issues around that, you know, supplier relationship. Right? And so what does that entail? It entails, you know, great negotiation skills. I'm on the phone with suppliers all day long. And then the other half of the time I'm on the phone with or you know, having FaceTime with my clients who are saying, Luchea we have this issue, what do we do? Or Luchea this is what's happened, what do we do? And then, you know, you go into problem solving mode, but at the end of the day it's always about the relationship you have with your clients, the relationship you have with opposing counsel. At least that's, that's what it's been for me.
Josh H.:Um, so I mean, I, I figured you all maybe assume this, but I'll just make sure it's clear. I'm not the general counsel at PayPal. Uh, and so my day to day at PayPal is, uh, uh, not too similar I think from what, uh, our general counsel is dealing with. But I'll share. But it has a lot of overlap actually. And in my sort of view, the product council role is very similar to a general counsel role. Um, it has a few pieces that are sort of missing like employment law and corporate law for like fundraising and, um, potentially some broader like strategy questions or some, uh, like maybe not including like, uh, brand and reputation questions as great of a degree as might happen at the general council seat. But it has actually has a lot of the elements. Um, and so at PayPal I serve as product counsel to a business unit. That business unit does international money transfers, used to be a public company called Xoom PayPal bottom like four years ago. Uh, that legal team has sort of left and done other wonderful and great things. Um, and now I'm the only dedicated lawyer servicing that business unit. And so the things that I handle day to day is stuff ranging from, uh, we want to expand into new markets. Um, we are a very large organization who are the people that we should engage across the company, uh, to make sure that we can start offering our services from a new market. Okay, cool. Let me go find out and I'll go talk to government relations, legal, regulatory compliance, et cetera. Um, uh, being in a very large organization is a very different life than when I was at a startup. Just talking about what kind of a, like a work life do you want? Um, like that has implication in terms of size of org. Um, other things, our commercial matters. Um, so I handle our commercial agreements as well because we do international money transfers. Uh, we leverage partners around the world. So I'm doing commercial deals with banks and Africa, money transfer operators in Asia. Um, and there will be slight different, um, cultural sensitivities along with that, which I enjoy. Um, and so that's sort of a fun aspect of it as well. Um, when we're working on product feature changes, Ooh, I'd really like to, um, let's see what's one that came recently. Um, I would like to, um, let's see, change hat where we place our disclaimer, uh, about potential taxes that may come up. Um, when your money arrives at its destination. Well turns out that has like regulatory implications and I go look up the rag and Oh there it is. And Oh sorry team. Actually we can't put it on this page. We have to put it on this other page. That's also part of my job. Um, privacy questions that come up. The marketing team says, we want people to know about our product, we'd love to do X. What do you think? And so we'll sit down and be like, Oh cool, let's look at the campaign. How do you want to push it out? Oh, you want to do it? Like push notification on a phone. You want to send an email, text messages, cool. Who's getting the text? Does it, the person who sent the money, the person who might receive the money, let's have a conversation. Um, so it's a whole range of different topics. One of the things that I enjoy, I really like breath. Um, and I think to one of the things that you mentioned earlier, which is Hey, actually don't know the answer a lot. Um, I think part of the job when you're, um, when your coverage is broader is being really comfortable, not knowing. Um, some people hate it and some people are cool with it. Um, like those are the ends of the spectrum and you're never going to be on either end completely. But like that's kind of what happens and it's also contextual. Sometimes you really want to know the answer. Um, but, uh, anyway, that's the kind of stuff that I handle. Um, and uh, yeah. Um, Ooh,
Drew A. (Host):well let me interrupt for a second. Our final panelist has arrived. This is Josh King. Welcome Josh. So as I mentioned upfront, Josh is the general counsel at a company called real. I'll let him tell you a bit about it. Before that he was general counselor or chief legal officer at AVO, which was the largest attorney network in the country. Um, so I'll, uh, Josh, why don't you introduce yourself and Oh sure. For real question your way. Yes.
Speaker 6:I was at SFO just a few minutes ago. And uh, thanks to the fog here, we were delayed getting out of Seattle this morning, so, so happy to be back at Hastings though. Um, and yeah, I've been general council at RealSelf for a year before that. I was general counsel at AVO from almost 11 years. Um, and I've been in house for close to 25 years now. Um, had my first GC job just a few years out of law school, um, here in San Francisco. And um, I don't know how, how in depth you guys have gotten into how to like finding legal jobs. Mine was probably not the traditional path and that I was a litigator and I applied to a job in the back of the recorder. Didn't know anybody, just applied for it and got it. Um, and I've been in house ever since and loving it.
Drew A. (Host):Cool. So the question we were working on right now is sort of what is your day to day as a general counsel?
Speaker 6:Yeah, there's not, I, I would say it's somewhat unpredictable. I mean, particularly in a smaller company, you're usually wearing a lot of hats and so you're, you're fairly generalized across all of the areas of law that any smallish business would face. Um, but you're also dealing with all sorts of, um, inbound craziness, uh, that may be specialized in your area. Uh, like in our company it's privacy, um, healthcare law and then some healthcare marketing. Um, and then all of the, um, you know, day to day stuff, which might be employee relations, it might be new contracts you're dealing with, uh, some issue or dispute or threatened lawsuit. Um, so it's, it can be the, there can be a lot of variety and you have to kind of like that. Um, you're not really going to be a technician who gets to dive in and spend a lot of hours each day working through, um, specific projects.
Drew A. (Host):Um, and Sam, let's go to you on this and I wanted to ask, follow up to what Josh was talking about. The difference between a small company, large company and you've been with enjoy technology for a long time and seen it grow. How has your day day changed in that time?
Samantha V.H.:Yes, I can, I can speak to that. So, um, when I joined enjoy, and this is a plug for constantly sort of being open to new possibilities, I had a very meandering path at which will take a whole nother panel just to go through. So we don't need to go through it now or you can find me afterwards. Um, but I was working with an, it was working with an investor who ends up being invested in investor of an intro, enjoy. Um, and they had a very nuanced trademark issue that I helped them with when they were startups, startup startup party of seven. Right. And the only reason I knew that trademark issue is because the European union law had just changed and I happened to know it because of my other internship that I had done. So, um, there's a lot of luck and there's a lot of just being out there and being open and genuine to helping people and move things forward. Uh, that gets you in certain places. When I joined enjoy full time. Um, I was, we were in two markets and we were, uh, less than a hundred overall employees. We're now about 1500 employees. We're global. Um, and so going through that change from being a startup to being a growth company is a really big change. Um, and going through that on the legal side, the regulatory side, the compliance side. So I'm now responsible in my role for all of our global legal and compliance. And so, uh, a majority of my morning this morning was spent with our UK legal team working through some, uh, dare I say super obnoxious issue issues that, that we have to solve. Um, and, and the teams are working on them now. So my day today, uh, is, is always varied. Um, I have people who come in and shadow me with some frequency, uh, by asks of my team or asks of other teams in the business. And I always feel, I'm always very open to that, but I also always feel slightly bad because I, it's totally unpredictable and there are certain meetings that people who shadowed can not be in for a variety of reasons anyway. Um, and so I always start those days with, um, well, you know, we'll see what happens today. Um, because the best laid plan, uh, what I look at in my calendar every morning is often not how my day ends up resulting. Um, but making sure that the teams are thinking through things strategically, uh, for a variety of paths. This includes very large commercial deals. Um, when we ink partnership deals, we're talking multi hundred million dollar deals with various strategic partners. So these take months and months and months and months of work. Um, and I often will go on planes and meet with people ahead of time, the business units and the legal units to make sure that we're all aligned because I wear a very large business hat in my organization as well. Um, and, and thanks to Ron, our CEO for really pushing that. Um, we deal with a lot of intellectual property matters, a lot of ER and HR issues. Um, we have large field teams so of course we have people and we are a people first company and we deal with branding issues which were mentioned earlier, product issues. Our software engineers have a variety of things that they work through, everything from open source and otherwise. So there's a lot of things that bubble up, uh, regulatory and compliance needs across various jurisdictions that have to be cared for. An example that you mentioned earlier, um, a lot of things bubble up so it's, it, if you are someone who likes that kind of speed, then a general council CLO track is absolutely something that you should consider. Um, however I would, I would push it, push everyone, like I mentioned earlier, to not think about it as a track and more or less a set of experiences. And you will mold yourself as you go through those experiences to see if that is the thing that you want to do day to day, hour to hour and sometimes minute to minute because it does change. And then when you add in all of the corporate structure around the board and interfacing with the board and, um, the, the governance, the true governance that has to exist, some of those conversations are not fun conversations. And so if, if that's not what you want to sign up for, then don't sign up for it and use your skills in other areas. Um, but, but that's, that's my day today in, in a very large nutshell.
Josh H.:Yeah. So one thing you mentioned from there was that you find yourself often wearing a business hat. And I'm curious for everybody on the panel, how much of your job is business and how much is still being a lawyer or is it not really a bright line like that?
Samantha V.H.:Mine quickly, since I have the mic and I'll pass it, I think I mentioned this earlier, 90% of my day is, is business side and I am catching things and identifying risk and then, uh, uh, asking certain members of my teams to engage, scope the issues, figure out where we are reporting back. Um, 10% and, and sometimes even less than that is, is true legal issues that, that I am looking into and solving
Speaker 7:[inaudible]
Josh H.:when I was back at tilt, uh, I joined them when we were in the teens. Uh, when we sold the business at Airbnb, we were around like a hundred something. Um, and about I'll say mm, 50 to 50 to 70% of my time was let's say business time. And the other part, like I was an individual contributor on work. Um, the biggest legal team got was two people. It was myself and a counterpart in LA, in our London office. Uh, and so, uh, in addition to like thinking strategically, I also had to get tactical and, and do like directly go work as well. Um, at PayPal now it's a call at like 20%, like 10, 20% of the time. And that's considering like, uh, maybe when I think more like legal ops in a way. Give me an example of a particular matter where it's legal, but it's also just like good business decisioning and operational. Uh, we as a large organization, uh, tend to take time when signing contracts. Well, our business folks are not excited about that. They're like, I worked really hard on this deal and I'd like to ink it as fast as possible so the business can benefit, makes all the sense in the world. Um, and we had a recent example, uh, we're going to get a price reduction, which is good for us in this case because we're paying someone to do stuff for us. We're going to get a price reduction. Um, and it's taking a while for us to countersign us getting a benefit of a lower cost. Um, well in my mind I'm like, might it actually be possible that we don't have to countersign anything? If they would like to charge us less, they can let us know. Kind of like someone waving a benefit that they have in a contract. Uh, maybe we can try to restructure how we deal with these types of matters because they come up structurally. Um, and so to me it's like I applied legal knowledge, but it was with a business hat. It's like, how can we work better as an organization and move faster? Um, so they're kind of intertwined. Um, but yeah, that's kind of what it looks like now.
Lucia G.S.:I definitely agree with that. Um, I would also say, going back to your question, you know, as you think about your careers and you way, you know, what kind of career do I want? Do I want to be in a firm? Do you want to do solo practice? Do you want to work for a nonprofit to want to work for a company? There is some fairly significant differences even within in house counsel. So if you're working at a big company, you're probably gonna be fairly, you know, you'll have a discrete set of issues and then maybe, you know, like, uh, everybody was saying, you know, maybe 10% of your work will be illegal. If you manage people, you're going to have to allocate time for managing people. And then, you know, if you work for a larger company like Tesla, you know, it might be structured like that, right? But if you're at a startup and I've been at both startups and you know large companies even like Intel, um, it can be very, very different in terms of the scope of your work. So you might want to think about, you know, do I like to focus on one thing like IP, which is where I started out or do want to focus very broadly and kind of dabble across the board. If you like that kind of dabbling and you have broad knowledge, you like to work in executive level, I think like the GC role is really great and then you'll get more opportunities to do that at a smaller company, right? Like a seven person startup, you're their GoTo for everything. Legal lunch you get to the Googles or Facebooks of the world, you're going to be much more siloed. You're going to be the the subject matter expert, but in terms of the amount of time you spend like drafting, reviewing, negotiating, right? That's probably going to be the minority of your time. The majority of your time is going to be, like I said earlier, it's the people's skills, which they don't necessarily teach you in law school, but you can still learn right throughout all the different experiences you have, whether it's an internship or you know you're working part time or even you're going to have to work in legal. Like you know, there's so much flexibility around that. Right. Other thing I wanted to mention to you, and I think you guys mentioned this earlier, I would say like if I had to give one piece of advice to any law student, I would say give yourself freedom to explore. Like that's what it's all about, right? I, I practiced law for a long time and then I stepped out. I quit my job at Intel to go do a startup cause I don't know. I wanted to do that and then I came back and lost. So you can always take like a off ramp and then come back in. Right. It's not to say, Oh wow, if I exited I can never go into law again. So give yourself the freedom to explore, try different things. Go to big company, go to a small companies, see what you know, Sue, what you like. You might even decide you don't even like law. Maybe you'll go, you know, be the next, um, John Grisham or, or whatever.
Josh H.:Yeah. And I'll throw one other piece on there, which is, uh, and maybe, I don't know how applicable it is now, but it will maybe be at some point, which is I also took a year and a half off recently. Like I was a little nervous cause like I'm leaving. Oh no, I don't know where the job lined up. I've never done that. That feels scary. Um, but I went and I came back and I applied for jobs and then I got one. Um, so, uh, also know if there's like something that you want for yourself, like go for it. Like along those lines, right? Like it can me, Andrew, it doesn't have to be some conceptual straight line. Like life is for you. Like do what makes you feel good.
Lucia G.S.:So I took four years out to do my start up. And the reason why I came back into law is because we're running out of money and unlike, I can't pay my bills that well anymore. I'm taking on a lot of debt, I'm just going to apply. And I thought, you know, maybe people wouldn't really like that. They think, Oh, you're not committed. You're not serious. You forgotten the law. Right. But none of those were true. Like I literally just sent my resume in and recruiter from Tesla called me and he thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I was a lawyer in an entrepreneur and he's like, you know, that's exactly what Elon wants. ILADS an entrepreneur. He wants someone that's gonna give business relevant advice. Nobody wants you, you know, quoting statutes or, or whatever people want to say. What is like your common sense approach. Also as legal counsel, the one thing you have to remember is yes, you're giving business advice, but at the end of the day they're gonna look to you to hold the line. Meaning, you know, if somebody wants to do something that is just not kosher. I've seen a lot of lawyers just like kind of go along with it. And to me, I feel like my job is to know where that line is and then to give that advice. Right. Does that mean you know they're going to do it anyway? I get in the way? Of course not. But you know, usually it's like the voice of reason in the room and I'm not talking just yet. I'm not talking specifically about Tesla, I'm just saying generally speaking.
Speaker 8:[inaudible]
Speaker 6:yeah, I want to, I wanted to take on one point there. Um, let's see. I made about the business orientation is really critical. Like you're not gonna succeed in house if you don't have some business orientation. Um, you have to, and I've seen a lot of lawyers in house struggle with this over the years, particularly if you've spent a lot of time in a big firm where you're used to giving very conservative advice, um, you're going to struggle if you come in and you're basically telling everyone, well, here's the risks and you know, this is, this is the legal issue and that's all I can really help you with. Um, you have to understand that the way business people succeed is they succeed by taking smart risks. And so you really have to develop an opportunity mindset where you're spotting issues, but you're also spotting the opportunities that'll build your credibility to the point where you do have to hold the line on some things. But there's a lot of stuff for you if you know the business well enough. And that's critical to, is getting in and learning your business as quickly as you can. Um, you can know that, you know, maybe there's a, a very tangential minor legal risk on and the other side, there's a multi hundreds of millions of dollars opportunity. Um, and at the same time, you'll start to see things where someone will want to take what may be a relatively significant legal risk, um, and it's in order to make their team's job a little bit easier. And then you can easily stand there and say, no, you're not gonna do that because there's this huge legal risk and what's the benefit over here? You know, tell me what the business benefit is. And I think you'll, if you have that business orientation, you'll find it a lot more rewarding. And one of the things you'll also find is that there's, um, a lot of opportunities in house to move into business roles. I mean, even the first company I was at, which was about 1100 employees, um, once I'd been there a little while, they wanted me to take on some projects like running an alternative payments program, like to find ways that our customers could pay us in different ways. Um, I took five years in the middle of my career and did a completely non-legal job doing corporate development, um, before going back in at the startup where, um, in addition to legal, I also had HR and finance and facilities and customer care. And so managing some other teams of people. Um, if you like that, if you have that business orientation, um, there's not only the opportunity to make that part of your day to day of practicing law, but literally to make it part of the day to day of your job where you can go out and find if there, if there are other ways that you can contribute to the organization besides just being the lawyer.
Drew A. (Host):Great. And I'm going to ask one more question and then we'll throw it open to the audience. So start thinking of what you would like to ask these folks. Um, and this question is, we've talked a lot about the upside of working in house. Um, although I do like that you caution people and said, you've got to make sure that this makes sense for your skill set and what you want out of life. But what has been the most frustrating thing for you and working in house?
Speaker 6:Well, okay, I'll just throw, I don't know if it's frustrating, but it's a couple of downsides. One is that unlike a law firm, um, you're not the main event. You're a cost center. Um, you may be a highly valued employee, you may be highly respected employee, but it's not the same as being the, you know, the big thing that you are if you're in a law firm. I mean, there's just no two ways about that. And if that's an issue for you, I mean, I've certainly seen lawyers who've, who've bounced back to law firms because they couldn't get over that fundamental problem. Um, I know you laugh, but it's, it's a very real thing for some people and so I got to throw it out there. The other is that, you know, I've got friends who are still with the same law firm they joined when they left Hastings 25 years ago. Um, and there's, well, there are certainly exceptions. Law firms tend to be more stable than companies. I had my first GC job here in San Francisco. I was loving life, loved my colleagues, loved the business, it was going great. And then, you know, with twins who are under two years old, the company was sold and I lost my job, um, right into, and this was at the same time as the.com meltdown. And so you know that that can be the kind of instability where things can change very quickly. I've been through three corporate sales now in my career. Um, they've actually all worked out fine. In fact, great in different ways, but that can be pretty unnerving because you may have all your plans and everything is going great and then all of a sudden things can happen with businesses that totally overturns the Apple cart and you've got to scramble and find a new plan and you got to be comfortable with that level of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Samantha V.H.:Uh, yes. I think my main point would be exactly what you just mentioned, the, there's risk involved. And a lot of times when I speak on panels and talk about my career path, et cetera, I often find myself talking about being able to allocate and understand your own level of personal risk and what you are willing to tolerate and what you're not willing to tolerate. And that includes financial risk, emotional risk, right? Like all of the pieces of risk, um, that you might need to care for as you, the human who wants to in some way, shape or form change the world in whatever way that is. Right. Um, and for me, one of the, one of the risks assessments that when I find myself in my most frustrating parts of my job, um, which earlier this year was one of them for a variety of reasons that I don't need to go into here. Um, I revert back to what does the opportunity cost of me being in house. Because ultimately, and I, I'm very upfront with people about this. I want to go back into the classroom at some point. I was a teacher and administrator before going to law school and before having this career as a lawyer, that's something I want to do. And so when I input, when push comes to shove and I'm sort of like, Oh gosh, this is really frustrating, then I start sinking into that mode of, well, the risk of me being here is that I'm not doing that good work that I'm supposed to be doing the world doing this other thing. Um, and, and that's, that's the mental gymnastics that I think in house, uh, really forces you to face facts with, uh, much more so than the, than the traditional law firm path where there are stairsteps. You know, what you're looking at, you, you know, and understand what happens. Um, and with, with any company, as you grow, there's always the risk of sale, the risk of markets. Look what's happening in the capital markets right now. We just came out of a talk with our company yesterday around, we work over and Lyft have fundamentally changed the capital markets and the IPO structure and what investors are and are not looking for. That's a big difference. Um, between where we were two years ago. And so what does that mean in terms of exit strategy and what does that mean in terms of the work that you allocate towards all of the things you want to see grow with this company. So I think it's a very large of risk assessment that you've got to do. Um, and going back to that center of what makes you happy as a human and, and what what skillsets do you build to that. And um, the fast follow to that is the relationships piece. There are just far more relationships to care for in an inhouse space and they are cross functional, they are business oriented. And if that bothers you or if you find yourself being more on the emotional side of like, Mary said this to me today and suddenly my whole day is ruined in house might be more of a challenge for you because business people and legal people and all of the people, we just communicate differently sometimes and that's okay. But you have to have a little bit of a thicker skin to know and understand. When a business person pushes back on a recommendation you have made. It's not because they don't like you and it's not because they don't trust you, it's because they're thinking about it differently. And that's where the two of you have to be the ying and yang a little bit. So I think that's the, the other big downside to me of, of being in house is sometimes those might throw you off kilter a little bit if you're not ready for them.
Josh H.:Y'all did a really good job with your answers. I don't like much else. I mean I'll echo some that have like I was at a startup, uh, we had a difficult time fundraising. We sold to Airbnb. They have a lot of lawyers. Like they didn't really need another one at that time. Um, so like there is just that risk that comes with working in startups. Now that said, I had a beautiful journey there along the way. I learned so much. I got to do so many things that I would have never otherwise gotten to do. Running legal, running like payment strategy, running finance for a little while till we found our CFO. Um, running, running people like merchant risk. It was great. Like I learned a ton. It was my giant like learning factory. Um, but then I had to figure something else out. Um, and so that's one piece. Um, and then I guess another aspect, uh, let's say of being at a bigger company, um, is yeah, there's the, uh, managing personalities, uh, kind of an aspect to it. Um, and one of the things that I've like come to, uh, understand and appreciate more at a big company is that you're also managing a bunch of personalities for people you've never met. They're just like email people to you. Like you've never met this person. You've emailed them, they're on a team. Like they're in Omaha, they're in New Jersey. They're like somewhere in Europe. I have no idea. Um, but you try to be as nice and as professional and as understanding because I've received messages sometimes from people on the other side where they thought I had done something that I absolutely did not do. They felt very hurt and offended. I assured them that I did not do that and demonstrated that they were like, Oh, okay, thank you so much. And I tried to do it in as nice a way as possible because people can have tough days. Um, and so being like very tactful and gentle, um, is I think very useful in a company where you actually don't get to see folks that at all sometimes. Um, but, uh, to me that's also just like a part of life. So that's going to happen almost anywhere. But yeah.
Lucia G.S.:Um, so I can't think of much cause I absolutely love my job. Um, I love my job. So what can I talk about that is a downside, although I would say if you don't love your job, don't stay in it no matter what kind of job. Okay. The money is not going to be worth it in the long run. So, um, I would say, uh, I'll talk about one of my former companies. So at one of my former companies, it was very challenging to get stuff done. And this could be a personality thing. Like I like to get stuff done, I like to get deals closed. I'd like to get things like closed done, we're done, we're done, we're done. Um, and that company, just so many layers, talk about onions. You probably, you probably get this at eBay. PayPal too, right? But yeah, that, that was not a good job for me because I couldn't get stuff done. I would, you know, move it an inch and then it would get stuck somewhere. Everybody had to weigh in and I move in another inch and it would get stuff and you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't get that at law firm live. So I would say, again, don't stay in a job that you don't like. Try different things. Give yourself flexibility. There's all lots and lots of on-ramps and all ramps off ramps within the legal field. So just explore, try, take internships, meet people, work on your soft skills. Those are going to be really important going forward.
Josh H.:Great. All right. It's anybody in the audience have a question.
Drew A. (Host):You've been listening to Lex blob recorded live during our biweekly lunch and learn sessions at the life slab legal tech innovation center. Lex lab is UC Hastings hub for legal technology in San Francisco featuring our residents startup accelerator, regular panel discussions and legal resources for entrepreneurs
Josh H.:to learn more about Lux lab or to attend a lunch and learn session in person. Visit us online at[inaudible] dot. UC Hastings.
Speaker 8:[inaudible]
Lucia G.S.:um, I don't think you guys touched on this but if you did, I'm sorry. I've heard a lot of varying um, talk on this and I think it, I guess it depends on like how large the company is. Um, but how would you describe the work life balance for people that are wanting a little bit more as in house? Um, in house is awesome. Lots and lots of flexibility. You get less of that obviously as you're a junior, which makes sense cause you're just learning the learning ramp is going to be harder for you and you're going to have to put in more hours to build those relationships you write with stakeholders and so on and so forth. But then as you get more senior, tons of flexibility. I mean I say, you know, I have three kids, one's in college, one's going to college and one is in middle school and it's been, it's been fine. It's doable. You just have to be really committed to having that. You might not have it all at the same time. Right. But you can have it all a few if you, um, if you structure it like that.
Josh H.:Um, back when I was at a startup, um, the work life balance, uh, really was not great, but it was also like self-determined. And I think it took me a little bit to realize how much influence I could have in my own work life balance. Cause before that I was just like, I got to work. I'm like, why is nobody else here at IBM? I don't get it. Um, and so, uh, that was on me to learn and then I learned it and I'm like, okay, cool. Um, but, uh, now at a bigger company, I'm noticing it still varies too when I talk to lawyers who work at big tech companies. Like some teams are great and others are not. So I'd, um, encourage, uh, if you're thinking about like where to go, it can really not only be company specific but like team within. And so, sorry to introduce that there's that much like variance, but I think they're actually maybe
Speaker 8:do we want to do another?
Josh H.:Yeah. Is there anybody else who has a question in the back?
Lucia G.S.:Hi. Um, would you guys mind talking a bit about the kind of internships that you worked, um, during your law school experience and how those set you up for the eventual jobs?
Speaker 6:Okay. I wanna I want address this one because I did, um, I did an internship. It was actually a work study job my second year of law school that led to every bit of goodness I had in my career for the next five years. Um, no kidding. I worked for, I could have worked in the library for like 50 cents an hour more, but I took this job part time with the public utilities commission just down the street. And it made law school really relevant for me suddenly because I'd found it really hard to grasp my first year. And this was the beginning of my second year. And doing that work, not only to make law school more relevant, it created some great written work that I had and it's set up this background for my resume, which, um, a allowed me to get an externship despite less than stellar grades my third year. Um, and then be it, I think it really is what got me my first in house job, which was in the telecommunication sector because I had, I was able to, to point out when I applied for it that I had worked at the public utilities commission. Um, now of course I'd worked in nothing but like rate payer advocacy and oil and gas issues, but it was, you know, still the same framework and, and, and it gets you in the door. So I think you want to look for stuff like that where you can have some kind of hook into something later. Um, and you, you have no idea how far it's gonna take you.
Samantha V.H.:Well let's do one more question.
Speaker 8:Oh wait, did you want to ask a question because your bright spots.
Samantha V.H.:Just a quick question first. Amanda, Samantha, thank you for coming here. Um, you mentioned that you went straight in house from law school and I just wanted to know what you did in law school to land that position cause honestly that's amazing. That is always the most common question. Um, and thank you. Thank you for asking it. Um, uh, yeah, so, so the, the party line on this is there is, there is no straight answer and you and I can talk after about my career path. The truth is it was meandering in nature. What I did was, and T to your question a little earlier, I tried everything. I came to school after working in the very, very public public education space. I was an engineer before that. I mean like the world is varied. And I was like, what am I doing in this new life and law school? This'll be fun. Uh, I did family law litigation my first summer day too. I was like, absolutely not. Never doing this again except for the rest of the summer because I'm a committed person. Um, then I did an internship, uh, during my two all year. I work 20 hours a week plus took a full course load plus did the trial team because I was just like, I got to see stuff and I got to figure stuff out. And I did that and intellectual property. Then as luck would have it, I was, I ran into a few investors and they were like, you need to work with us and do work with female founders and grow businesses and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, uh, the truth is all of those things have one very, very important piece of connective tissue, which is you have to be your genuine self and you have to be open to taking risks when they're presented to you. And that is what I did. And that is what you can do. And it takes no special magic and it takes no special hierarchy of knowing the right people. It is truly just putting yourself out there and the world is a favorable place. It will come back to you in space. Just be out there and be a good person and tell people what you want. I think that came up in an earlier part of the panel. Be open about what you're looking for. That's not, that's not a bad thing to do. It might not be what that person can give you at that time. Be open to it. I have a man who I did not hire for a role that reaches out to me with some frequency, um, maybe once every six months. And I said, Hey, why don't you come and have lunch on campus? And he did. And he said, Sam, thank you for your mentorship. I still haven't hired him and he still, and he still comes around and he has had great job since. And that's a really fulfilling thing for me in a fulfilling thing for him. So put yourself out there, be involved with people, build relationships, and just be yourself. The right things will happen at the right time, and I'm a very big believer in that.
Drew A. (Host):I like that. Be out there and be a good person. Um, all right. Please give our panel a round of applause. Thank you all.
Speaker 8:[inaudible]
Drew A. (Host):thanks to our alumni for sharing their stories today. Make sure to tune in again next week when we go hunting swamp monsters with the freedom of information act. That's right. We're going to hear the story of how the Sierra club use logical, a legal tech company to help take down Scott proven the former director of the EPA. To learn more about Lex lab or to learn how to attend our lunch and learn sessions, visit us online@lexlabdotuchastings.edu. That's Lex L a B. Dot. UC hastings.edu the show was recorded live at UC Hastings by Jay Quintin and has been edited and produced by Ben Ambrogi.