Guiding Principles To Becoming A Great Legal Leader | Episode #025

Contract lifecycle management, or CLM for short, is a hot topic in the world of in-house legal. With Leeway being a CLM provider, we know how important it is for legal teams to prove the return on investment of their chosen tool to the relevant stakeholders. But often, people don’t know where to start. In this episode, we’re joined by legal tech enthusiastic Marie Widmer and Head of Legal Operations at Nextdoor, Dave Evans, to explore just exactly how you can prove the ROI of your CLM solutions.

The words “fun” and “law” don’t often come in the same sentence. --- But what would it mean if we started weaving fun into the day-to-day of in-house legal? --- Sure, it might sound a bit flippant at first, but more and more studies are proving the value that a fun approach to tasks can have on the quality of the output and the fulfilment and sustainability of individuals and teams. --- Thankfully, in this episode, we’re joined by two advocates for fun law. --- Elizabeth de Stadler calls herself a rehabilitated lawyer and is now Founding Director of new-era legal consulting firm, Novcon. --- Elizabeth’s colleague Liezl Van Zyl is a communication designer and plain language enthusiast, and today they share what exactly is “fun law” as well as how in-house legal professionals can embed fun in their day-to-day.

I think we can all agree that there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to in-house legal. --- And if we want to progress your legal team, your business or the industry more generally, we’re going to need to challenge conventional thinking. --- This means we need more in-house legal professionals to have an entrepreneurial spirit, to be activators of ideas and be willing to take calculated risks. --- You’ll know the term entrepreneurship, but what we need in the context of in-house legal, is intrapreneurship. This is when people think and act like entrepreneurs but from within a company. --- One person who’s especially passionate intrapreneurship for in-house legal is Joel Roy. Joel is a Legal Business Partner with pharma company Novartis and, in this episode, Joel shares how in-house legal professionals can adopt an intrapreneurial approach to deliver better outcomes AND build a more fulfilling career.

In this day and age, I think we can all appreciate the value of great leadership. --- And yet, leadership isn’t usually taught in law school. --- In fact, most leaders in the world of legal have stumbled upon the opportunity, and it’s often a big learning curve. --- So why should in-house legal folks care about leadership? And what are the guiding principles to become a great legal leader? --- This is what we’re exploring in this episode with Shaun Sethna. --- Shaun is Deputy GC at real estate marketplace, Altisource. --- For the past 10 years, Shaun has been a senior legal executive for tech companies, and he also ensures that coaching and mentoring are top priorities in his team.

By now, there’s no denying the rise of legal tech in the in-house legal community. And the most popular category in legal tech is, of course, contract management solutions (or CLM for short). With Leeway offering a CLM platform, we can’t help but get excited about the huge potential of CLMs for in-house legal teams and their businesses. However, one challenge we’re often asked about by in-house lawyers and legal professionals, is how to secure buy-in from the various stakeholders across the business. Thankfully, in this episode, we’re joined by the wonderful legal ops expert and legal tech enthusiastic, Marie Widmer. Marie has established herself as a forward-thinking and effective legal ops professional during her various in-house roles with the likes of LinkedIn, Pinterest and startup Dapper Labs. And having implemented numerous platforms, today Marie shares how to secure buy-in for your CLM from stakeholders across the business.

Whether you’re moving to a new city, shifting from private practice to in-house, or it’s your first experience in the world of legal all together, it’s likely that it’ll take some adjusting. Often, a new environment or new responsibilities can leave you feeling out of your depth. This persistent inability to believe that your success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved thanks to your own efforts, is called imposter syndrome. It’s something that many if not most people will experience in their lifetime, and learning to manage and respond to this feeling in a healthy way, is critical to ensure that you can continue to thrive. One person who is no stranger to imposter syndrome is Sara Fukuhara. Sara is now Associate Corporate Counsel at fast-paced startup, Glowforge. And after opening up about her imposter syndrome on LinkedIn, she experienced an overwhelming response from others who could relate. In this episode, Sara walks us through her experience and how she’s learning to thrive in spite of her imposter syndrome.

Legal tech has become an integral part of scalable legal functions. When chosen correctly and integrated thoughtfully, technology can help teams work more efficiently, become more productive and free up time to work on higher-value tasks. In some shape or form, legal tech has been around for a good while now. But in this new era of in-house legal, how can we make sense of a crowded market? What can we expect from technology? And how can we choose and make the most of the right tools? In this Part 2 of a two-part series with legal ops expert Marie Widmer and Senior Legal & Business Operations Manager at Uber, Jonathan Johnson-Swagel, we continue to explore the key legal ops trends that were talked about at the CLOC Conference in Las Vegas. And of course, a huge trend was technology.

The value of diverse teams has been a hot topic over the last few years - with greater diversity offering faster and more innovative approaches to business, as well as a fairer environment for everyone to thrive. To date, the legal industry has been lagging when it comes to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. Yet, the unique position of in-house legal teams presents a great opportunity to influence positive change. This topic was very much front and centre at this year's CLOC conference in Las Vegas. Thankfully, legal ops expert Marie Widmer and Senior Legal & Business Operations Manager at Uber, Jonathan Johnson-Swagel, are open to sharing their insights from the event. In this first episode of a two-part series summarising the key learnings from CLOC, we’ll explore how Legal can influence diversity as well as support business initiatives to better measure and take responsibility for their diversity commitments.

When should legal get involved? Traditionally, checking with legal was the last step in business projects. But we're now seeing legal teams becoming more and more integrated into the business. And when legal is embedded in the day-to-day running of a business, you can better manage risk and spot opportunities. So how can Legal get involved at an earlier stage of the project? This is exactly what we’re exploring in this episode with Adam Gibb. Following nearly a decade in private practice, Adam is now Legal Counsel at software company, Ideagen. When he moved in-house, Adam realised the importance of having awareness and input from the outset of projects. And today, Adam shares his tips on how to get legal involved at an earlier stage of the project.

Contracts have been long, confusing and dare I say, boring documents for too long now. This makes it difficult to identify and retain key information, or build strong, trusted business relationships. Verity White is the Founder and Chief Contract Enthusiast at Checklist Legal. She is a commercial lawyer turned legal innovation expert, with a passion for redesigning legal documents, contracts and processes to be easy to read, easy to use and, my favourite, jargon-free. When designed well, contracts present huge value for businesses. And thankfully, in this episode, Verity shares with us exactly how to go about redesigning your contracts.