In 2023, we hosted insightful webinars with subject matter experts about everything from legal technology and cybersecurity to M&A playbooks and mastering productivity. Here are a few nuggets of wisdom from some of our favorites.
The Business Impact of Legal Ops: A Deep Dive into Efficiency
In this webinar, Hayley McNeill, manager of legal operations at Zywave, and Patrick Won, director of services at LinkSquares, discuss how legal can quantify the value they drive in the business, the role of documentation and efficiency in affecting growth, and how legal technology can be like another employee.
One key takeaway: Legal teams can quantify their value.
Won gives the example of a time at Google when they realized a vendor contract offered a massive discount for payments made within 15 days, and his team collaborated with accounting to reorganize the payment process to go straight from invoice to payment, ultimately saving more than $100 million.
“This is what I was talking about becoming a revenue driver, not a sunk cost for the organization,” Won says. “If you can perform projects like this that show value … review contracts and manage your obligations so the value of the contract isn't being lost (or less of it is being lost over time), then you’re really providing value to the company and essentially driving revenue for the company through efficiency.”
Since a lot of value leakage happens when you don’t meet your contract obligations, using technology to track your terms allows you to impact the bottom line.
Watch The Business Impact of Legal Ops: A Deep Dive into Efficiency here.
Building and Leading Great Teams with Steve Young
In this keynote session with LinkSquares CLO Tim Parilla, Superbowl MVP turned private equity businessman Steve Young (who went to law school between seasons!) shares the wisdom he gained on and off the field, frequently drawing parallels between football and business.
One key takeaway: Accountability and vulnerability are essential to strong leadership.
He gives an example of throwing an interception during gameplay. When it happens, he says, the instinct is to speak your “truths,” or the things that led to this unfortunate thing — e.g. “the receiver turned the wrong way,” or “the lineman didn’t block this guy.” Young points out that while all these things are “true” they didn’t help to inspire him or his team. It led to an environment of excuses, not accountability.
“Instead, what the team needed more than anything for me at that moment in the field was to say, look, I screwed it up. The ball is in my hands, and now it's in their hands. That's the fundamental truest truth, I'll call it. There's truths underneath it that are mitigating factors, but there's a truer truth: I screwed it up.”
Vulnerability and accountability from leaders can help inspire the team to try harder even in the face of defeat.
Watch Building and Leading Great Teams with Steve Young here.
Your M&A Playbook
In this webinar, Luigi Testa, chief financial officer at LinkSquares, and Haley Altman, strategic advisor at Litera talk about how to be a good leader in M&A, your mission-critical legal tech stack, and why buyers with a playbook are taken more seriously.
One key takeaway: Without a playbook, you fail at M&A.
Testa and Altman discuss how to build a playbook and how a lack of a playbook makes it easy to lose focus on what matters in an M&A deal. “Without an M&A playbook, you will fail,” Testa says.
Altman mentions that the top thing to do when buying or selling is to understand your “why.” Why are you selling and what are your expectations post-sale? Will you stay on in the company? Why specifically are you choosing to exit at this time?
It’s equally important for the buyer to know their “why.” Are you acquiring the company for the people, the tech, the IP? Knowing this helps you to prioritize better during the due diligence process because it makes you check out the important factors first to see if the M&A is viable.
Watch the Your M&A Playbook here.
Cybersecurity and Data Privacy 101 for Legal Teams
In this roundtable webinar hosted by Jonathan Greenblatt, VP of legal at LinkSquares, legal and cybersecurity experts come together to break down the landscape of cybersecurity and the risks businesses face today. Mollie MacDougall, product and cyber expert breaks down the basics of cybersecurity, and Andy Lunsford, CEO of BreachRx, and Cody Wamsley, partner at Sterlington PLLC Cybersecurity, Data Privacy and Intellectual Property, add their wealth of knowledge to the conversation, providing a well-rounded picture of the cybersecurity world.
One key takeaway: Cybersecurity is (also) a legal issue.
Both Lunsford and Wamsley emphasize how important it is for legal to be involved in cybersecurity before a crisis hits. Lunsford notes that while the cybersecurity team’s response will follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Cybersecurity Framework — identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover — there are legal inputs associated with each phase.
For example, in the identify and protect phases, legal can help security identify and protect the “crown jewels” — the IP, customer data, or other data that is most valuable to your business. Legal can help by creating policies and procedures for handling certain types of data, and enable employees on safer data practices.
Watch “Cybersecurity and Data Privacy 101 for Legal Teams” here.
How Legal Can Be a Better Business Partner
In this webinar, Ashley Adams, director of legal at Contentful, and Krista Russell, deputy GC at Airbus OneWeb Satellites talk about what it means for legal to be a partner to the business. They also discuss the difference between strategy and tactics on the legal team, the risks of working in a silo, and the absolute necessity of curiosity for this to work.
One key takeaway: In-house lawyers are business people who know the law, not lawyers who sometimes deal with the business.
“Law school teaches us how to think like lawyers, but not how to practice,” says Russell. “And there’s a different way to practice in-house vs. at a law firm.” She also says that lawyers who are a little too good at working independently yet aren’t flexible enough to adapt to the changing work environment tend to fare poorly in in-house roles.
The best in-house lawyers are business partners who know the law. These lawyers care about understanding the business and providing the most value. Doing this requires you to ingratiate yourself into the teams you’re working with and bringing them along with you. That’s when you start to move from tactician to strategist in your team’s eyes.
Watch How Legal Can Be a Better Business Partner here.
