#65 - What It Really Takes to Be a CLO Today

Hello everyone, and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mario Carroll, Chief Operating officer at Goodwin, and today my guest is April Miller Boyce, Executive Vice president, Chief Legal officer and Corporate Secretary of Intel Corporation. You're going to like this conversation because April is sharp, thoughtful, and brings that rare combination of legal brilliance and big picture business thinking to her work. For background, April's experience spans more than 25 years across both corporate and law firm leadership, including as managing partner, chief Legal officer, and head of Global M and A. She's worked with multinational companies across many industries and end markets, including technology, semiconductors, aerospace, power management, financial services, transportation, automotive, mining, oil and gas, goes on and on. These are totally diverse industry backgrounds which we get into a little bit about how that's been a real asset to her in her career path. In this conversation today, we get into what it really takes to become a clo. Not just the career steps, but the mindset shifts. We talk about making the leap from legal expert to business leader, the real challenges of training this next generation, and what the future of the legal function might look like in a world of constant disruption. April has a big job and an even bigger perspective. And I know you're going to walk away with something that makes you think a little differently about the path forward. Let's get into it.

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Hey April, how are you? It's great to have you here.

Awesome. I'm doing really well. Great to see you and love your pearls.

Likewise. Thanks for wearing them today. They look great. And yours are big and bold. I like it.

Big and bold. There you go.

So I'm super excited to chat today. I think you have such an extraordinary background and such great leadership perspective to share. And I didn't know previously that you've actually come from a bunch of different industries and not necessarily just from tech because we all know that you're chief legal officer at intel now and we don't need to explain what intel does. Hopefully everyone's heard of Intel. Let's touch on your. Your background on kind of where you've come from.

Sure, absolutely. Number one, I spent a long time in private practice, so I was really at corporate law firms for a really long time. I cut my teeth there. I was an associate, I practiced on Wall Street. I was a partner at a law firm in a corporate department and then later I was the managing partner of the office of that firm. And later I was on the firm wide executive committee. So I spent a long time in private practice, which was also a great way to get lots of industry experience. You know, I really grew up as a mergers and acquisitions and private equity lawyer and got to represent clients in a lot of different industries, which I think is super interesting and also just makes you a more well rounded lawyer, but also a more well rounded executive. So I worked with companies like Del Monte Fresh Foods when we were acquiring companies that had private plantations for growing fruit all over the world, including like pineapples and intellectual property related to people stealing their pineapples, which was quite interesting. I represented the government of Mexico and the government of Slovenia when they were doing Yankee bonds and raising money to finance their governments. I grew up in Michigan, so grew up very close to the automotive industry and so spent a lot of time advanced manufacturing I would say. So from automotive to aerospace to big machines that support mining and oil and gas. So just learned a lot about logistics. Shipping reefer containers that ship cold, frozen or cold refrigerated fruit all over the world, looking at going to visit mines in Australia and Brazil and Chile, et cetera. So lots of different industries that I think really helps you understand, number one, global markets, but also how all those industries really fit together and maybe how executives in different companies and different industries are really approaching problems in ways that are similar, but also probably really different based on their background and their experiences. And I think sometimes when people grow up in one industry, you have a more narrow and limited focus of this is how we've always done it or this is how it's done in our industry and we know best. And so I think having that broader aperture can be very helpful as an executive, particularly when you're going through lots of transformation and crisis, which I would say. I'm a transformation executive. I'm. I like to say I run into burning buildings. It's really exciting and interesting to me and I feel like I have a lot to add when there is transformation in crisis. And having that broader experience I think is really helpful.

Yeah, we are cut from the same cloth. I too like to run into burning buildings and be transformation. Crisis is not something I love, but yeah, that's a whole nother thing. So do you think that different perspective? I know I totally am aligned with your point of view. When I have hired people and built out teams in the past, I love to choose people intentionally who come from different backgrounds who come from specifically different industries. Because I love someone to come in and say, oh, wow, you know, I've actually worked in a bunch of different industries and we did the same thing but totally in a different way. You just get this outsider perspective that you don't when everyone's brought up through the same industry. Have you found that to be helpful in your current role?

Absolutely. I also think having spent so much time at a law firm, I think often you have a lot of clos who maybe come up through the business, which I think is great to get that experience. But I also think having spent so much time at a law firm, number one, the training you get in law firms. But then also when you're a partner and you're a leader in a law firm, particularly, I feel very fortunate to have been like a mergers and acquisitions in a private equity partner because you're working with so many different companies in so many different industries that have really different challenges and they're doing problem solving in ways that can be really different and novel. And so I think again, if you spend a lot of or all of your time in one industry, particularly at one company, it is easier to fall into problem solving the same way because it's what you know. Right. A lot of what we do is based on presser. It's based on what we learned during our training. And so if you're working with people who are often attacking problems in the same way, that's what you learn and that's the muscle you build. And so I do think there is something wonderful about bringing in that outside perspective where people have, to your point, approach problem solving in a way that's really different and they have just seen challenges from a different perspective and they can bring a different set of tools to those challenges. Right. And so I think we all learn from those broader experiences. You want to have a mix, certainly you need people that have deep industry experience. You need people who know where all the skeletons are, if you will, or where the bodies are buried or like what happened in these other transactions that we did 10 years ago, or, you know, a failed joint venture that we had with X, Y, Z Co. And you know, why we have this relationship with them. So you need to have that deep historical perspective as well. But balancing that with people who have this outside in perspective and really different industry exposure I think can really round out the team. And I'm a really big believer in the team. Right. You want to have a team that has really different experiences and really diverse and comes at problems from just A different perspective. I think it makes us all better and it makes our problem solving and our solution sets just much better.

Yeah, I agree. It's so useful to be able to pull from different experiences and backgrounds. Someone said to me recently, we all think about and ask about, how did you know that this was the right job to take? What we don't ask people often is like, when did you know that it was time to walk away from the last job? And that's actually a, I think, an equally important question. Sometimes people stay too long, and when you ask people why they leave, sometimes.

It'S time, like running away from a job.

Right.

I'm a very big believer in sometimes. I call it abl, which is always be learning every day in your role. What am I learning? I still feel like I'm being challenged. Is this really interesting? Am I enjoying the people that I'm working with? But I definitely think if you're in a place where you don't feel challenged and you know, you're not learning and you don't feel like you're contributing at your highest level in a way that you can, it's definitely time you want to pursue other opportunities. I feel like I've been really fortunate to just have had some wonderful general counsel roles, especially, and now CLO roles where I just have learned a lot. Businesses have been, in a lot of ways, really similar, but also really different from an industry perspective. And so I feel like I've continued to stack those experiences, if you will. Like, one thing led to the next thing led to the next thing led to the next. I'm always looking for that challenge, and I want to be continually challenged and feel like there's still a lot that I can contribute to the organization. I'm a continuous learner. I'm really curious. And anytime I hear about and have an opportunity to learn about new industries, I'm often really intrigued.

Yeah, you're in a CLO role now. You've been a GC before. That's often the end goal for probably so many people that are listening to this podcast. I'm sure it wasn't, you know, or maybe it was like an intentional clear path, but which parts of it felt intentional? Which parts were just happening? Maybe luck being in the right place at the right time or putting yourself in the right place in the right time. Like, how did you think about this? And I guess to go back, was it kind of always your goal to get into this seat?

Good question. A lot to unpack their marriage. So I wish I could Say, like, you know, I had this, like, master plan when I was like 12 years old or even 20 years old, and I knew exactly where it was going to lead me. And I certainly, you know, when I coach and I mentor people now, I really talk to them about thinking about their plans, both short, medium and long term, and being really intentional about that. I really wasn't, though. I didn't necessarily have that coaching and that mentoring. Early on, I went to business school at Michigan. I loved business school. I loved being on the business side and knew that I wanted to do something on the business side and ended up going to law school and then wanted to be a business lawyer. I really had no idea what business lawyers did, but it seemed like the natural progression. But I'm certainly, you know, I didn't know that I would go on to be a managing partner, a partner. That was certainly a goal of mine. It was not a goal to go and be a managing partner of an office and to be on the executive committee and then to be a clo. I really had not quite honestly thought that far early in my career. Again, I think I've been fortunate to have great opportunities that kind of just led to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Part of it is that intellectual curiosity and wanting to do more and learn more and be more with each opportunity. But for example, when I was at a law firm, had become a partner. This is when I was a very young new partner. I had practiced on Wall street and then moved back to the Midwest where I'm from. So had moved to Ohio to practice law there. And I was highly recruited from New York to Ohio because people were like, this is wonderful. We have this person, this corporate associate who has great Wall street training. We'd love to have her on our team. And then when I got there, all of the kind of major projects and really major clients were really staffed. And so as much as they wanted to recruit me, they didn't say, like, hey, we're going to put you projects right away. I was fortunate in that, number one, I just happened to sit next to a partner who was Larry Senior. And even though I didn't do exactly the kind of work that he did, he was a corporate partner, but his focus is a little different. He would give me swap projects now and then that nobody else wanted to work on. And I always, of course, was very diligent and did a great job. And he'd say, like, oh, this is great. I'm going to give her another project, Another project. I Also got to know him really well. And so I developed a personal relationship with him, which I think is really important. What we do and how we can become successful is really building trusted relationships with people, whether they're your peers, people who are reporting to you, or people who are senior to you. So I built a trusted relationship with them. But he also saw the kind of work that I was capable of doing, and so he encouraged me to do more. But he also encouraged other partners to really look at me for their teams. I also, at the same time, we had a very big corporate client who had been a long standing client of the firm, but their work was really dwindling because no one was babysitting them. You know, that's right. You're at a firm, you know how important it is to keep up those client relationships. By serendipity. I ended up, I would say, really babysitting the senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions because he wanted to have a meeting in our office with some people who were flying in from another city and really just wanted to use our conference rooms. But we weren't working on the deal. It wasn't even a deal yet. It was really just a meeting. And they said, hey, can. Our office was downtown and their offices were not. So somebody said, again, you're not really working on anything. Can you babysit them and make sure everything goes okay? So I said, sure. I struck up a conversation with this guy. He asked me a little bit about my background and where I was from. He had not seen me at the firm before. He ended up becoming one of my most important clients. And because of him, I was very successful. They were doing a bunch of divestitures because their balance sheet was very challenged. So I led a number of major corporate transactions for them. And I was really the lead lawyer on those projects as a senior associate because again, nobody had been babysitting them and we had not been doing their corporate work. I would say really because of that work, I built my visibility at the firm. I was running large teams, global teams, doing global transactions. And it's really why the firm looked at me and said, wow, she's really incredible. We should make her a partner. Not just the corporate work I did, but the relationship I built with this client. And then if you go back to that mentor who sat next to me, who really became my sponsor after I became a partner, he said, really should think about being the managing partner of the office, putting your name in for that. Because you've led these big teams, you have the confidence of this really important client, their SVP of mergers and acquisitions, and the partners at the firm can see the work that you're doing. And I was, quite honestly, flabbergasted. I never thought about putting my name in to be the managing partner of the office. And so I was like, wow, he really gave me that push. I think that gave me a lot of confidence. And just again from there, in each next opportunity, really thinking about my path in a really different way that I would not necessarily thought about without that vote of confidence from him, but also him lending his own clout and credibility to vouch for me with other partners. Right. That's kind of what a sponsor is, where they can really use their power and talk about you in the room when you're not there and say incredible things about you using their power and leveraging that power to benefit you. And so I was incredibly fortunate to have that experience, but I certainly didn't know that at 12, that I was going to get all these opportunities.

Yeah. You say it's serendipity that you are taking care of that client or prospective client. I've had so many of these wonderful conversations. It always comes back to the relationships that you build and somebody putting 100%, you put yourself in that position and that person has helped you be in the right place in the right time. But that's not just luck. Like, that's a lot of hard work and positioning and relationship building that gets you there. The other thing I love that you said is just someone pulling you aside and giving you the nudge of saying, hey, you're really great. You should do this. And I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where I. I go me, like, I've never thought about myself that way. And just having someone else give you that vote of confidence, you wouldn't have considered yourself and you need a little.

Push and maybe seeing things in you that you don't necessarily see yourself instilling that belief and that confidence. I completely agree. I mean, certainly as lawyers who are trained at law firms, we all have a certain sense of competence and Type A personalities, but we all have a little bit of fear as well around being successful in these highly competitive environments and having somebody like that who's a mentor and a sponsor really say to you, you really have what it takes. I think it's incredibly validating, and it does really help you maybe think about your path in a way that's really different. And so I think it's so important for all of us to remember as we become more senior and we're the leaders. How much kind of one little thing you do can really have an impact on someone else's life and their trajectory and their success. It doesn't really take a lot. It can be that one conversation or that one opportunity to succeed on a project that really can change somebody's career path. And so I just think it's so important for all of us to remember about how do we pay it back?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So now that you are in the executive suite, you're the CLO of huge fortune, leading company. I imagine that your day has a lot of different things and is never business as usual, which keeps it interesting and constantly learning. I imagine. You have to be more than just a lawyer. Right. I think you've mentioned to me in the past that lawyering feels like it's 20% of the job. I'd love for you to expand on that because that is surprising to a lot of people who, you know, go in house or become a GC or a CLO is suddenly the role changes tremendously when you're in the exec suite. Tell us what that looks like.

I think that's exactly right. So, number one, I would say being a general counsel is really different than being a partner at a law firm. So I want to talk about that then. I also think there's been this transition of language, if you will, at many companies from being a general counsel to being a clo, and I want to talk about that as well. So first of all, I would say again, I had the luxury and the opportunity of being a partner at a law firm for a number of years. And I think what you learn when you work at these big white shoe law firms is you really hone your craft and you become an Expert. You're like 10 miles deep in whatever your area is. And so I was an M and A lawyer primarily. I did private equity and other types of corporate work, capital markets. But primarily I was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer. So I was 10 miles deep in that area. You know, I knew kind of everything there was to know about being an M and A lawyer. And that's really why clients were hiring me. They wanted me to know about their business and to be an effective project manager and all those things. They were hiring me to execute an M and A transaction. You're like a hired gun, whereas when you go inside and you're a general counsel, it's exactly what it sounds like. So Instead of being 10 miles deep, you're a generalist in a lot of areas. And certainly some areas might be more important than the others. But you're my general lawyer, and you might have a team of lawyers. Some people don't have such a big team of lawyers. Your business is relying on you to tell them what the law is and to give them legal advice. And it could be on anything under the sun. You really are a generalist. You're like 10 miles wide instead of 10 miles deep and maybe 10 miles wide and 2 inches deep or maybe 6 inches or 12 inches deep. But the point is, a lot of stuff comes in your door that you've never seen or you definitely are not an expert at. And so you have to know, like, when do I really need to call in an expert? Or when am I going to give advice that is really based not on my expertise, but. But on my broader experience and my judgment? Because I've seen a lot of business problems before, and I'm comfortable giving advice about how we should proceed based on that experience. And so it is a very different role. Fast forward. I think the role has changed even more, particularly at large law firms or at large companies where I have a very big legal team. I'm in the C suite, and I'm a clo. And so a very small part of what I do is practicing law. Certainly I'm there. I'm the lead lawyer for the company, and the board and the leadership team rely on me as a member of a C suite to give that legal advice. But I'm also probably first an executive. And so I'm expected to operate on a level that all of the other executives do. What is our strategy? Are we aligned on our strategy? How did we set our strategy? Do we need to pivot? What's going on in our industry? What's going on with our competitors? How are our customers thinking about how we're executing? What's our right to win? Are we winning? Have we made that case clear to our customers? And so one of the things we said in preparing for this, anytime you're thinking about succession planning and really helping your team understand what that succession looks like and what the role is, I've sent some of my team members to a program that Deloitte does that really prepares people in the succession plan to be clos and helps them think about the role. And somebody on my team came back and said, ha. It was so eye opening. I understand now that my role as a lead lawyer, maybe for one of our businesses, is only 20% of what you do. Like, I'm a lawyer, and that's 90 to 100% of what I do. Even though I'm a great business advisor, too. They said I'm primarily a lawyer, and so the other kind of 80%, if you will. And I love the way Deloitte laid it out. They said you're a strategist, you're a catalyst, you're an operator, and you're a guardian. And the guardian part is probably how people think about lawyers. I'm making sure that I'm keeping the company out of harm's way and I'm safeguarding our assets and our reputation. But that's such a small part of what we do. We really need to have a deep understanding of our industry and our customers and our competition and our right to win. And we need to make sure that every day the work we're doing and that our teams are doing is really aligned with the strategy that the leadership team has set. And how do we think about, is it the right strategy and how are we executing on that strategy? And then, of course, if you're the corporate secretary as well. So I have the governance team. A lot of what we do is directly interfacing with our OR and supporting our board of directors. Yeah.

I mean, there's a whole. Well, another piece that you didn't mention that I know is a large portion of your job, which you've walked into now inheriting a huge department. How many. How many people are in your team?

It's a big department. I'll just say that we've gone through lots of transition, as you know, and transformation in the last certainly two years. And so it ebbs and flows and we. I inherited some additional parts of my team. So now my team is. More than half of my team is not legal. So I have legal, I have ethics and compliance, I have corporate Security, I have Government affairs and Policy, I have compliance and ethics. So it's a pretty big team. It's about 600. Yeah.

So that's huge. And the scope, again, like, for a clo, much broader than a general counsel. But you have this huge team now that you're responsible for. So you're doing budgets, you're doing headcount planning, you're doing the technology, professional development. Right. Sourcing, all these things, continuous improvement, data and analytics. Right. All this stuff that you also have to wear as yet, like another hat, in addition to being a business advisor, a great lawyer, an executive for the company, deep into the industry, deep into all the things that are going on around the world. That's a lot of different hats.

Yeah. And I know that's something, Mary, that you care deeply about. Having spent time in the industry as an operator and really thinking about the efficiency of corporate functions and certainly of legal and legal adjacent functions. It's a critical part of what we do. As corporate functions have grown larger and larger, we need to also make sure that we're benchmarking ourselves against other corporate functions and that we feel like we're operating in a way that's world class, which means that we have the right people doing the right work, that we're deciding what gets done internally versus externally. We're picking the right part of that talent chain, if you will. And then we're constantly thinking about how can we improve and be more effective and more efficient from year to year. What tools are we using, how are we leveraging technology, are we moving people, you know, around or thinking about how we're staffing projects again so that we have the right team doing the right work. It's a really important part of how we're evaluated and how we think about the effectiveness of our function. And so we always say that's one of our four core things that we do, is having a world class function and a world class team. And you can only do that if you really are benchmarking against your world class peers. How are you delivering on the services, but also how much does it cost the company? What's the value proposition? And are you getting better year over year? So that continuous improvement needs to really be like a muscle that you're always thinking about and always exercising.

And how did you think about this shift that now that you're articulating it, it's so big, it's so different from being a law firm partner, where I sit with a bunch of law firm partners now. And as you mentioned, they're really deep in their expertise. You've had to go broad and shallow. You've had to learn how to work and get partner with the rest of the business. You've got to be in the boardroom and be with executive advising this huge global business. You're also working on all these operations. I imagine some of this is new, some of this you've done before that you're pulling on different experiences from. How do you make that big shift? And what advice would you give to folks who, you know, are currently seeing just the lawyer part of it right now?

Yeah, good question. So, number one, I've been a CLO or general counsel now. This is my fifth different kind of global multinational company. And so in each role you're learning. You should just be taking in as much as you can. I also have a wonderful leadership team, and so I'm not doing this alone. I mean, I have a wonderful team and they have wonderful teams. I would say at Intel, I'm really fortunate. We have such a deep bench and deep expertise that I feel really well supported. And people are executing in their areas of the role all the time or their areas of the function. So we had people who primarily focus on budgeting or headcount or talent development or legal operations or litigation or intellectual property or technology. They're the commercial lawyers for the business. And part of it is making sure that they're always learning and they have exposure and they have the resources that they need in order to be effective, and that we all are holding ourselves accountable to be as efficient and as effective as we can, but also bringing along that next generation of talent. So talent development and succession planning is a big part of what we do, and that's expected of my whole leadership team, and they're expecting that of their leadership teams and so on and so on, so that we are building the best function. So, again, I think I have had the benefit and the luxury of having learned this by doing at so many different companies, but also working with lots of really great people. I like to have a leadership team that has skills and experiences that are really different than mine because I think that just makes us a better team. And I think I have exactly that.

Yeah, that's the key. When your scope is this broad, you can't. You can't be the expert and deep on all of it. And so you have to be really smart about surrounding yourself with the right people. And so I often say you don't have to learn how to do everything. You gotta know how to hire well.

Yeah. And you have to also be really comfortable that you're not going to be the expert at everything. That's not your role. When you're the general counsel or the clo, you need to have people on your team that have way deeper expertise than you do in certain areas, because that's their job and that's what they're good at. Right. You can't be an expert at everything. You have to bring it together and decide where are the best risks and opportunities for the company based on the input that you've received from your team. You have to be really comfortable in that uncomfortable space, if you will.

Totally. And building out that team, focusing on training and development is so key. How do you think about the changes that are happening in the world. We've moved from originally the apprenticeship model to sort of a pooled resource model and maybe the need to go back to apprenticeship. How do we get the next generation of leaders to have that great judgment and experience that folks like you got when the world is different, like hybrid is, you know, also a different environment where you're just not sitting grinding next to your partners day in and day out. Do you have thoughts on how that's changing and what we need to do?

I do. It's changing a lot. And so first of all, I think, number one, there's just no substitution for doing the work and learning your craft. And that just takes time. You know, I like to think of Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about with me to just 10,000 hours. Yes, it takes eight years. And so I think about that as like, I didn't law firm partners get on an eight year track. I think you have something there.

Oh, interesting.

You can't like cram that into one year. And so part of it is you need to really be focused as you're building your career on not just going through the motions, but really learning every day. You should be learning something. And that's why I talked about that at the beginning, like always be learning. That's how you hone your skills and that's how you become a better and better lawyer. You have to succeed and fail and succeed and fail and have some successes and learn and pick yourself back when you fail. And like, oh, what did I take away from that and move on to the next project. So number one, there just is no substitute for that. And a lot of what we do in many professions, and certainly in the legal profession is a lot of what you learn is by the apprenticeship model or kind of shadowing somebody. Right? And so we talked about this especially during and after the pandemic where, you know, when I grew up as a baby lawyer, you'd sit around a partner's office, you maybe sat around their table in their office while they were on a conference call and you just listened. You weren't building your time, you weren't saying anything on the conference call, but you were learning how they negotiate, how they interact with a customer or a client or whatever that was. And a lot of that did change during the pandemic and certainly after with kind of this new hybrid work or remote work. And I do worry, and I say this to our law firms. You also have the technology that people are using now, right? Artificial intelligence and all the new tools that we can use to Be more efficient, which I think is incredibly important. But how are we making sure that old apprenticeship model and learning by doing and learning by watching that we're not robbing people of that opportunity because of the new way of working and new technology tools? I don't know, Mary. What are you guys doing at a law firm? I, I do think every firm is really grappling with this and thinking about it and approaching it differently. Yeah, I think it's critically important for our industry, though, legal industry, that we get this right because this is going to be the leaders of our industry and our law firms and our law departments. And I don't want to sound scared about it. We're always disrupting ourselves. There's always technology and new ways of working. But I think this artificial intelligence especially is a fundamental shift in the way we're going to work going forward. And I think we all just need to be really thoughtful about it. And again, making sure that people are learning and getting the opportunities to fail and get feedback and be successful in ways that are maybe different than we used to do that because now we have all these tools to shortcut it. But you can't shortcut the learning.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it's just different in the way that we've done it, the way that we approach it, the way that we think about it. It's just a different lens and there's a way to make it successful. So I'll tell you this story. Once I was sitting with a bunch of soon to be summer associates are getting ready for their like first summer with a firm and someone was mentoring them and giving them advice. And the advice was things like you should find a first year associate that you can ask the dumb questions to because you should not speak unless spoken to. If you're meeting, look down, don't make eye contact, don't try and like speak up or ask a question because you'll just look dumb. And I'm here thinking, this is, this is crazy. How are you supposed to learn if you don't make mistakes? If you're not constantly asking questions?

I'm like, I don't know that I agree with that.

That's. Yeah, I definitely didn't agree with that. You know, just a very basic mindset shift of these are young, curious. We should be fostering that curiosity and letting them, letting them fail. That's when you can, is early in your career. So try those things. And then I do think, I mean law schools have a whole part to think about as well. But, but as we think about what is going to be necessary for the future, drafting, maybe not as important, like deep memorization and understanding of the law and the way to interpret it, maybe not as important. Judgment. We always come back to judgment. And that's what you were saying, like getting the reps. So you've seen it. This is a weird case. I've seen this before. I'm familiar, I know how to navigate this. That is something that is going to be the nugget that we all have to crack. Like how do you teach that? Can it be taught virtually? Can you get that experience in a different way? I don't think any of us have the answers yet, but we gotta go about it in a different way. I heard there's one school of thought or some folks who are experimenting with this whole virtual reality type where you basically record a bunch of conversations or scenarios and that becomes the training for an associate where you basically put the goggles on and you're, you're doing the reps like it's sped up in multiple speed time. You can get through, I don't know, make this up 50 in a day versus in a year. Like that terrifies me if that's the way to learn things. But it's great that people are thinking completely outside the box.

Yeah, I would say as somebody at a tech innovation company, I'm very supportive of technology and innovation. We have to continue to evolve and we should not shy away from that. I think it's incredibly important and it can in a lot of ways speed up our learning and make us more effective and efficient. So we should absolutely re embracing technology and innovation. And we've seen that in the legal industry certainly over the, the last 25 plus years that I've been practicing. And that's just going to continue. I think it's happening much faster. And again, we want to make sure that we are embracing that innovation in technology and thinking about the way that it's changing how we learn and what are the things and the skills that we need to be focused on. And so I absolutely believe we'll get there as a profession. And I've had a lot of really interesting discussions with people that are focused on technology and tech adoption and what works and doesn't work. And I have a whole team in legal ops that really is focused on that, making sure we know the latest technology, how it works and how do we leverage it so that we can be more effective and efficient and stop doing. If we had people that were doing lower value work to not have to do that anymore so that people can be very focused on that high value, high thinking work that requires high eq, you know, maybe human touch, high iq, things that you wouldn't necessarily assign to your AI copilot, if you will, or your AI tool. And so we shouldn't be afraid of it, we have to embrace it. But we do need to keep talking about it. We need to have some trials with new technology tools and they're not all going to work. And that's okay. Yeah, yeah.

And we got to think about how do we then bring back that human interaction connection. Right. That building relationships that you and I talked about at the beginning being so critical. And that's harder to do in today's world.

And I think the human part of what we do is always going to be important. We talked about building relationships and I think you need those relationships to build trusted relationships and to be able to deliver that kind of advice and counsel and be persuasive based on those relationships. You also need that human interaction with the machines so that we're testing the answers, if you will, that we're getting, or the output that we're getting, or the machines. And so the artificial intelligence can help us maybe get the answer or get the information faster. And then we need that human interaction to review that information. And so I think we're always going to have this human piece that's critically important to what we do. And then we have to just think about how the technology helps us advance.

That there's so much changing in our space and the pace of change is just getting faster. Looking back on your many roles as GC and clo, how do you think the role itself has changed over the years and maybe thoughts on where it's going? As someone who's worked tangentially and next to gcs for many years, two decades plus now, I've seen a lot of change in kind of the scope in the role, what's expected of the role, what's important in the role. What have you seen having been in.

Seat generally, if you look back, I think probably 30 years ago, 25 years ago now I'm like really dating myself. I think the role of in house counsel and maybe it wasn't even called general counsel, maybe it was like the in house lawyer. It used to be a very different role. And I think Brad Denison at General Electric was one of the people who really drove thinking about and Tom Sanger thinking about the role really differently. And so it used to be that the smartest lawyers in law school all went to law firms, right? You would never like, go to want to work at a company because that was just like, couldn't get a job.

You'D have to in house.

Right. And oftentimes a lot of those were women. It was like, because law firms weren't hiring women who were at the top of the class. And so it was kind of like, oh, I guess I'm going to go in house and do this in house role. And so all the best and the most interesting and the most important work was going always to outside counsel. Companies started to realize I need people who are much closer to my business, who really understand and who are sitting at the table with me as we're making these decisions. I want them to be there with me real time to hear that. So you had maybe one, two, you know, bigger number of lawyers in house. And then people started to say, I want to grow that team. I really want to grow. And again, I think GE was really at the forefront of this. I really want to grow my internal team to be almost like a law firm that's captive to my Totally, yes, because I need that expertise. And so I think that really tipped the balance. Number one, you expected to have very bright lawyers, internal, as in house counsel, who also really knew the business and who also were very senior. You weren't just hiring a generalist to be the person who triages and gets the work to the right outside firm. And so I think what's really happened is the most critical work is really done internally. And you have somebody who's a senior lawyer, a clo, who's also an important part of the executive team, who's making a decision of how do we staff our legal matters, when do we go outside? Is it because we need more arms and legs? We need a different type of expertise that we don't have. We've never hired for that because it's very niche and we don't need it often or we just can't afford to have that internally. And so I think it is a very different, very sophisticated executive role in a way that it just was not 20 or 30 years ago. Certainly not 30 years ago. I think that transition really started to happen about 25 years ago.

My thoughts is that's all exactly correct. There's a little bit of pendulum swinging back the other way where in house teams are feeling like there's so many ebbs and flows, there's so much specialization and specialty laws that we don't need to build up in house and more of the work is flowing back out, but flowing out to different types, not just law firms. There's also alternative service providers, flexible talent. It's swinging out, but maybe to different places. And if you agree with that, how does the role or how does the relationship or expectations with outside counsel shift? How do you see that now, what you want from them?

I think it's a balance, it's a little bit different in every organization based on their needs.

Sure.

I think what's very clear is that if you're in house counsel, you need to really be demonstrating the value that you're bringing to the organization. And this is why I talked about this kind of efficiency and continuous improvement. We can't just, we don't have unlimited resources, we can't afford unlimited resources and we can't just grow the cost of our function to the company every year. We have to really be demonstrating that we're bringing value, that we're efficient and we're operating in a way that we really understand what's going on with the business. And so that puts pressure on in house counsel, but it certainly puts pressure on outside counsel as well. Because I want to see that value from the firms that I'm hiring. I want them to understand my business and our strategy and our need. And I want them to understand the value proposition that they're bringing when they're working on a certain project. I don't want there to be a mismatch between. Their view is this is a million dollars project. And I'm like, this is a $10,000 question. And so you need to have those trusted relationships with the right types of firms, different firms and different providers, certainly for different types of projects. But that's where the relationship piece comes in, to really build those deep relationships so that your clients, you're the law firm, they can really rely on you and they trust you to add that value. And if you're the in house counsel, you're really trusting and relying on your law firm partners to bring that value and to understand the value proposition and not to promise things that they know they can't deliver and not to deliver things that are not valuable to me that I'm just not going to pay for totally.

I see that very much. And the 10 miles deep on their specialization practice area, I think that the job has gotten much more complex and difficult. But value add, because you now have to be 10 miles deeper in the industry and your business too. Right. We can't come to you, April, and say, hey, we know everything about whatever you need us to do. But we don't know a lot about Intel. Tell us. You know, we got to come in and know everything.

No, that's right. I think this is why the relationship piece is so important. You don't want to just be a hired gun who's one and done. Totally you can, but you have to really invest a lot in the relationship and the understanding of the industry and the problems and the challenges and the opportunities. And the law firm really needs to do that work to understand what's going on. I don't want to pay them for that. Right. I want them to have that expertise, which is why you don't want to just be a hired gun and be one and done. Because then all of that investment that the firm has made, their perspective could be wasted. And so I want to have those, again, deep relationships with our law firm partners. And I think we have this who really understand our business and who really see themselves as a partner and as adding value. That's my job as an executive at the company, is to make sure the work we are doing is value. Add that it's aligned with our strategy. I'm delivering on the things that we said as an executive team we would do. And part of that is who do I bring to the table to help us execute on our really important legal matters, whether it's litigation or a joint venture or some other transaction like a global merger or acquisition.

100%. And as a firm, I don't think we can deliver the same level of value. When you're just in and out, one and done, you have to invest the time in building those relationships. And that's when you can help intel see around the corners and know what's happening next. In the few minutes we have left, April, like, where do you think things are going as a CLO and in our industry?

I think the role of the CLO continues to evolve and become more and more important and relevant. I think, again, we talked about some of the history of the role. I think, you know, now at most companies, I think this is why we've seen the transformation from the title general counsel, the chief legal officer, that this person is really seeing or should be what companies are looking for. Somebody who's very senior in, very seasoned, who is an officer of the company. Oftentimes, a CLO is one of the top five or six, six officers and executives in the C Suite. They're a Section 16 officer. They're an Neo in the proxy, which means we really are sitting at the crux of what's going on in the company. And we're sitting with this core group of executives and making decisions about the future of the company. We're triaging all of our risk. We're thinking about our growth opportunities, we're thinking about our strategy. Are we going to pivot? Do we have opportunities that are at the core or adjacent to the core? We need to be a really important part of that conversation and part of delivering those solutions and driving that shareholder value. And I think that is what CEOs and boards want when they're thinking about their core executive team and the chief legal officer as a part of that core executive team. In addition to all the things we talked on that. Right. Being effective, managing talent, doing succession planning, managing the risk, helping drive growth projects the team is supporting. I think that's going to continue to evolve, and I think the role will continue to become more and more important. Driving policy relationships with the U.S. government and governments around the world, and really kind of that intersection of law and policy and helping the leadership team, the board, really understand that and how it relates to our strategy.

It's so great. And as you mentioned, legal is at the crux of everything. You have the broadest view across the entire organization of what. What's happening. And to finally see this role in the C suite and the executive table in the right way is, I think, really exciting. And it's about time. It's about time.

Yeah. I think you're right. We do have that enterprise view that not everyone in the organization has. Right. I mean, we really are engaged in every major project across the company, across the globe, across the enterprise, and we really bring that layer, you see, to all of our opportunities and our risk. And I think that's critically important. And I do think CEOs and executive teams and the board really sees that and really relies on the world for that.

Exactly. April, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and for being on the podcast today.

Absolutely. Mary, so great to meet you. Thanks for your time. I love the Pearl. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Sounds great to everyone who's listening. We'll see you next time.

Take care.