About

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to March 2020. Peter now works at Descartes Systems Group.

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

From a significant transactions and litigation perspective, matters have been relatively quiet. We continue to grow the business steadily and organically without the need to undertake any particularly large or significant transaction. Likewise, we have insulated ourselves from being distracted with significant litigation. The design, development and implementation of our homegrown legal intake software was the most significant achievement of the Resolver law department over this time. We now have a tool to help the law department triage requests for legal services and track these requests across the organisation in real time to help drive transparency and accountability. Additionally, the items that are tracked in the software are used as the foundational elements of our modern, data-informed legal department.

How do you feel in-house legal leaders can successfully introduce and implement a culture within a legal department?

A legal department culture can best be developed through the adoption of a servant leadership approach to management, actively supporting and promoting an innovative mindset and distilling key values into a mission statement that is put into action daily. Our motto of “doing great work, being professional and having fun” informs and governs how we deliver legal services to the organisation. We are equally focused on introducing fresh new ideas that deliver value by challenging existing models of legal services delivery. Finally, I am personally focused on listening to, encouraging and facilitating initiatives and efforts by team members to drive the department and organisation forward.

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or general counsel what would it be and why?

In my mind, the goal of general counsel is to be, first and foremost, a business person focused on propelling a business forward. They should (i) make it a priority to take every opportunity to learn WHAT it is the organisation does as well HOW it does it; (ii) network with peers in other departments inside the organisation as well as peers in other organisations within the industry; and (iii) take the lead on projects, challenges and initiatives for which there is an absence of leadership even if they are not strictly within the domain of the law department.

What techniques do you use to provide commercially-focused advice to your company, and how do you communicate these to more junior lawyers in the team?

At Resolver, I am immersed in our financial model and our Salesforce revenue dashboard regularly to watch leading indicators of how our business is faring. With that in mind, and understanding the wider commercial strategy of the organisation, I am better able to provide tailored, commercially sensitive advice. For example, small dollar transactions with less well-known companies may result in a less accommodating approach to negotiations whereas as a similar dollar transaction with a better known, “marquee” customer may result in a more flexible approach.

FOCUS ON: MODERNITY

A “tech” general counsel’s perspectives on being a modern general counsel.

Forces within and outside the legal industry and profession, technological and regulatory developments and a rapid and continuing evolution of the role of a general counsel in the current and future economy in the past five years have reshaped what it means to be a general counsel. In the role at two different high growth, scale-up technology-focused companies in the past decade, I offer the following observations as to what it means to be a modern general counsel within the context of such changes.

In my view, in relation to the practice of law, the modern general counsel must re-examine his or her approach, role and focus. Fundamentally, they should be viewed as a business person who happens to have legal training and expertise. With that in mind, with respect to the approach, they should be driving towards an organisation dedicated to increased transparency, efficiency, self-sufficiency and collaboration founded upon empathy and openness to diverse perspectives. On the issue of the role, a modern general counsel is no longer just a legal expert, but an individual focused on enabling growth, building and facilitating community (within and external to the organisation) and also enterprise risk manager. Finally, underpinning the approach and role should be the general counsel’s focus on process improvement using technology, acting as an organisation’s change agent and making decisions on a data-informed (rather than data driven) basis.

The foregoing concepts would not be foreign to “business” people; however, for a general counsel, whose formal training may not have exposed them to these principles, it may in fact require a significant change in mindset and practice. Additionally, these concepts should not exist as discrete goals to be achieved; rather they are intimately intertwined and inherently support each other.

Taken together, the modern general counsel should be leading a department that is not a proverbial black hole (where legal requests enter and are never heard from again) but rather one that provides full visibility (subject to confidentiality considerations) to relevant stakeholders on status of matters, at all times. Such a department would implement the necessary processes and tools to give the internal clients the ability to service their legal needs in the most efficient manner possible. This should result in a low-touch, self-serve legal department for matters that are of low value or low strategic importance. However, to make this assessment, the general counsel must be data-informed – understanding how legal outputs provide the constituent and foundational data points to allow them to make changes, if necessary, to the department and to subsequently manage the change management process associated with such changes. Next, the general counsel should keep an open mind in her dealings with stakeholders – appreciating how different perspectives on a business issue or matter may help in providing additional, never before considered, solution sets. Finally, the general counsel should be focused on enabling the growth of the organisation leveraging, as appropriate, their own network of peers (failing which she should take steps to grow that community) while considering the broader enterprise, rather than just legal, risk associated with certain actions and activities.