Naturally, that town is Silicon Valley, the home of innovation. And the innovator in question is UC Berkeley – a leading US law school, renowned for its prowess in technology and IP.
GC: Could you tell me about your background and how you came to be working in-house for Seattle Genetics?
Jean Liu (JL): I started out as a scientist, not a lawyer. I went to grad school to study molecular biology, but when I started my PhD programme, I realised that I didn’t have the temperament to focus on very specific, minute details – I preferred to have a broader vision.
Continue reading “In conversation: Jean Liu, general counsel, Seattle Genetics”
‘Once a Raider, always a Raider’
Al Davis
In the 1980s and 1990s, few sports teams were as culturally transcendent as the Raiders.
The unmistakable pirate logo, accented in silver and black, was a mainstay on attire around the globe – proudly displayed by countless people, many of whom had likely never seen the team play a game in their life.
Pinsent Masons, DLA Piper, Ashurst and Bird & Bird have all missed out on William Hill’s latest UK adviser panel, with Linklaters and Addleshaw Goddard the only firms to retain their places on the FTSE 250 bookmaker’s slimmed-down roster. (August 2017, legalbusiness.co.uk)
Continue reading “Behind the scenes of recent panel decisions”
GC: Could you start by telling me about your own background and how you came in-house?
Chris Sundermeier (CS): I spent 15 years at a Silicon Valley-based technology law firm Cooley LLP. At Cooley, I spent a lot of time working with tech companies, doing a variety of different types of litigation. I always felt like it would be interesting to go in-house and, rather than consult as an outsider on litigaton and make recommendations about what the company should do, really work on the bigger picture business and make the actual decisions about what the company should do. I came to Reputation.com specifically becausete former CEO of this company was a client of mine, and when I realised he was looking for a general counsel, I reached out to him. It was a good decision and I have been here for the last five years.
Continue reading “In conversation: Chris Sundermeier, general counsel, Reputation.com.”
Mention the word ‘Uber’ in any European capital city these days and chances are you’ll provoke some kind of emotional reaction. Uber is famous – infamous, some might say – for its revolutionary personal transport booking service, but the company is a major player in the personal food delivery business too, with more services to come.
You wouldn’t normally mistake a lawyer for a designer. One is usually armed with a pen and a rulebook, the other with a Mac and a black turtleneck. Right?
Wrong.
Continue reading “Back to the drawing board – lawyers who think like designers”
1998 seems like a lifetime ago, where global e-commerce was a futuristic fantasy for ordinary people just discovering the internet. Yet 1998 was year zero for the European Union’s Data Protection Directive – the basis for legislation protecting personal data across member states today.
Outside of the catwalks of Milan, there’s probably nowhere on earth where fads come and go as quickly as in Silicon Valley. For every groundbreaking idea or transcendent success story, there are one hundred others that have just as quickly gone by the wayside.
What role should the general counsel play in a crisis? How central should they be?
All crises require a point person to be decisive and lead the company through uncertainty. Oftentimes, companies turn to individuals from the c-suite to serve in this role. But increasingly, general counsel are finding themselves both coordinating and leading crisis response, given that the fallout often goes hand-in-hand with legal challenges.
The general counsel needs to act quickly by:
a) Defining the crisis.
b) Assembling a team.
c) Creating a flexible plan.
d) Instilling confidence to successfully implement the plan.
Crises come in all shapes and sizes. In some cases, the crisis is so huge that a company’s existence is at stake. But it is equally important to identify when a matter is at the lower end of the crisis scale. It is necessary for the general counsel to classify crises against levels appropriate to a company’s culture and industry.
Levels of Crisis:
a) Level 1: Low – problem identified, but probably only has one day in the press cycle.
b) Level 2: Medium – problem identified and seems significant, but diminishes over time.
c) Level 3: High – problem is an ‘existential crisis’ where the brand is at risk, affecting employees, the board of directors and potentially even the public at large. For a public company, this type of crisis will often have a significant impact on the share price.
Real life tip: Some companies have situation alerts, which immediately warn the GC of an impending situation if a certain number of criteria are met. These alerts can help tease out themes. For example, are there systematic compliance failures which could be building to a major crisis? Are there problems with the chain of command in certain departments or jurisdictions?
A general counsel will typically have a substantial Rolodex of contacts in a variety of industries, who will be able to serve as trusted advisers in a crisis. Advisers will include (but aren’t limited to) people in the following areas:
Real life tip: Don’t panic and ‘over-lawyer’. Less can often be more, as advice may become confusing and contradictory. If a ‘black swan’ event hits, it might appear that immediately consulting a range of advisers is best, but often this is not the case.
When you are in surgery, you don’t want five doctors, each with a scalpel, performing the operation – just one skilled surgeon being allowed to get on with the job.
Information available during a crisis, particularly in the first 24 hours, will often be imperfect. The general counsel must take steps to assess the facts and how they correspond to plans already in place, adjusting responses to the press, regulators and the public accordingly. As more information is obtained, the response plan must also take into consideration regulatory, litigation and communications issues, aligning the strategy of all three.
The company’s employees, particularly those in the c-suite and on the board of directors, will look to the GC to provide assurance that they are effectively handling the process, which means that the GC needs to:
Real life tip: Understand that not all news is created equally.
Social media can descend into noise, and sound bites can become ‘facts’. To avoid this happening, wait for the facts, and assess them thoroughly before making pronouncements in the media. Initial statements can address that all facts are not known, and that the company is waiting to gather these.
As with any leader, the GC needs to remain calm in a crisis in order to be effective. Therefore, the GC:
Using these guidelines, GCs across industry sectors can develop a framework that will not only mitigate damage from a present crisis, but could also avoid future crises.
GC: You have worked in the technology sector for much of your career. What are the most significant developments, in your opinion?
Continue reading “In conversation: Mark Chandler, general counsel, Cisco”
Collaboration is cited as one of the key challenges facing business today. That challenge can be exacerbated for lawyers, due to the very nature of what they do. While humans are inherently social animals, we are just as likely to compete with one another when resources are scarce and conditions are dynamic or uncertain. For some, that could characterise the modern law firm!
Continue reading “Trusted adviser: the power of collaboration”
GC magazine: Can you tell me about your journey to becoming a lawyer? Was it something that you always wanted to do?
Continue reading “In conversation: Peter Ferola, general counsel, BioTelemetry, Inc”
Patent ‘trolls’, or non-practising entities, remain a thorn in the side of innovating companies in the US and abroad. But recent developments in both the courts and legislature are simultaneously attempting to deal with the issue – amounting to what could be a sea change for intellectual property law.
GC magazine: How did you come to be working in-house?
Continue reading “In conversation: Charlene Ripley, general counsel, Goldcorp”
Palo Alto may conjure up images of unbridled wealth, hip workplaces and Tesla dealerships, but there is another side to Silicon Valley and its environs – that of East Palo Alto, with its underprivileged schools and one in four youths living in poverty.
Continue reading “Inspiring the next generation: not a moot point”
Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of my time talking to GCs, in-house legal teams and partners in private practice, to ensure that what we are doing at The Legal 500 matches up to the needs of the market.
Succession planning in the c-suite is a high-stakes game. Even well-managed transitions in the top jobs can lead to stock price fluctuations and queries about a company’s strategic direction and goals.
Continue reading “Passing the baton: succession planning for GCs”
Mounting client demand for secondees has long been a bugbear for City law firms, a reality that one of the most feted New Law brands is now hoping to turn into a business opportunity.
Lawyers On Demand(LOD) is today (31 August) launching a service to provide lawyers specifically for secondments to law firms for their clients, a shift from LOD’s core model of providing short-term placements direct to in-house teams. Continue reading “Lawyers On Demand thinks it’s going to solve your secondee problem with its latest product launch”
Another chapter in the turbulent story of Slater and Gordon (S&G) has unfolded, with the beleaguered listed legal pioneer today (31 August) announcing the splitting off of its UK business from its Australian parent.
S&G’s UK arm will change into a new holding company, called UK HoldCo, which will be owned by the firm’s senior lenders, in a separation agreed as part of a recapitalisation programme linked to its ill-fated acquisition of the Quindell professional services business. Continue reading “Five years on from pioneering S&G acquisition of Russell Jones, Aussie pioneer splits from UK business”
