Skills & Know-how

In-house + Hyper-growth

For anyone in-house at a hyper-growth company or for those looking to join a startup as lawyer #1, here’s a wrap of the main issues you’ll face (and how to deal with them) from four lawyers steering the course at Stripe, Lending Club, Thumbtack and Silicon Valley Bank.

On figuring out top priorities, managing counsel at Thumbtack, Steve Siger adds:

“I find that figuring out what to do and the order to do it in is, often times, harder than doing the actual work. It takes quite a bit of time to determine what ‘urgent’ actually means at a given company.“

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PR Crisis: Full Disclosure or Silence?

Here's a handy new column for lawyers who are their company's first legal hire, needing advice from an in-house lawyer who has been there before.

In this instalment, following the PR crisis such as Uber’s recent sexual harassment allegations or the Yahoo hacks or even the recent United incident, how should a legal department be dealing with the negative publicity? One of the lessons learnt:

"sometimes the best legal outcome is not necessarily the best business outcome (and that’s OK.)"

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The GC's Public Policy Role in an Era of Political Distemper

Here's a detailed look at the GC's increasingly important role in corporate public policy in an era marked by geopolitical uncertainty and change.

In the words of former GE senior vice president-general counsel, Ben W. Heineman, Jr.

"As a result of the inside counsel revolution which has made her a core member of the top management team, the GC as lawyer-statesperson must go beyond the basic question, “is it legal?” to the ultimate question for corporate action, “is it right?”"

To help GCs carry out their extended mission, they should adhere to six core principles in public policy:

  1. Develop fairer, clearer facts in policy disputes
  2. Balance values in conflict
  3. Defend globalization while addressing its problems
  4. Build broad coalitions
  5. Promote bi-partisanship and compromise
  6. Take ethical action in the absence of regulation

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Raising Your Profile to Get Board-Ready

How do you go from being an industry expert to becoming a board-ready thought leader?

These are the questions that helped SC Moatti–bestselling author and member of multiple boards including Opera Software–develop a framework to increase her visibility and raise her profile for board opportunities.

The framework consists of three steps that are continuously repeated and refined:

  1. Join the conversation
  2. Shape the conversation
  3. Drive the conversation

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Do You Sell Yourself Enough?

Have you ever updated your LinkedIn or website profile and asked yourself this question:

Am I overselling, or underselling myself?

Well here is, let’s say, an inspirational tool showing you how a profile can transform from “Less Hard Sell” to “More Hard Sell,” using a slider you can move around at the bottom of the page.

Some of the phrasing in here is gold.

In the words of it’s creator, British copywriter Joe Coleman:

“I started in the middle—the page you land on—and worked through the progressively more hard-sell messages… Then I went back and did the soft-sell end of the spectrum.”

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A Crash Course on Liquidation Preferences

Here’s a super helpful crash course on liquidation preferences (participating and non-participating), complete with worked examples by VC Investment Manager at rampersand, Eloise Watson.

For any curious lawyer (practising in corporate or perhaps dabbling in some investing), it’s one of the best explanations I’ve come across for an otherwise complex deal mechanism.

In Eloise’s words:

"Why do investors often insist on this term? There can be many reasons but, in my experience, the most well thought through reason is that it is a type of risk levelling. It ensures that if the founders do look to have a quick exit at a lower valuation, which might still be a good outcome for the founders who will get a few million each, then the investor is at least not losing money and will be able to get their money back."

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Nietzsche's 10 Rules for Writing with Style (1882)

There’s a bit to get through before the good stuff, but Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writing with Style are packed with old fashioned brilliance.

My fav: Rule #5

“The richness of life reveals itself through a richness of gestures. One must learn to feel everything — the length and retarding of sentences, interpunctuations, the choice of words, the pausing, the sequence of arguments — like gestures.”

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"Best legal related snippets I have read/watched in ages."

— Caroline Ferguson, Business Transformation Manager at Simpson Grierson.