Introduction: 00:00
- Introducing Seismic’s VP of Legal Celaena Powder, her background, and what Seismic does in the sales enablement space.
Finding inspiration for what you want to do in your career: 02:39
- Being inspired by women figures in media to choose a career in law.
- Discovering a passion for start-ups and venture capital during law school.
- Finding a passion for building businesses at law school.
- Realizing what you want to do in your career and going after it.
Accelerating professional growth when working in small teams: 11:08
- Working at Gunderson Dettmer, located at Abbot Kinney in Venice.
- Learning by osmosis and getting greater exposure when working in a small team.
- Experiencing exponential professional growth and facing off against partners as a fourth-year.
Going in-house and becoming VP of Legal at Seismic: 14:01
- Building strong relationships with clients, exposure to boardroom dynamics, and the desire to actively contribute to business challenges.
- Actively exploring and evaluating career choices to become an operator in the business.
- The transition from being an outside counsel to an in-house counsel.
Transforming the perception of Legal within the org: 18:20
- Overcoming initial challenges and Legal’s negative reputation at Seismic, and demonstrating legal value.
- Building credibility over time, leading to a significant shift in how Legal was perceived by stakeholders across the business.
- Showing up, getting budget, and building out a legal team.
- Understanding perception of legal through surveys and monitoring growth.
Setting your legal team up for success: 22:20
- Building a high-performing team through coaching, investing in talented individuals, and being available for guidance and feedback.
- Building a brand for Legal as a whole, and not just for yourself as its leader.
- Fostering an environment of openness, providing opportunity to learn from mistakes, and embracing a culture of growth and support.
Navigating enterprise sales as a legal team: 26:12
- Supporting the enterprise sales motion as an in-house legal counsel.
- Contrasting sales and contracting processes at SMBs vs. enterprises.
- Adopting a customer-centric approach to contracts and legal matters.
Leveraging privacy education to drive revenue generation: 32:43
- Allocating resources towards privacy, an important part of revenue generation.
- Building trust and confidence with customers through effective communication and understanding of privacy and regulatory issues.
- How the global nature of business operations and the increasing importance of privacy in a remote-first environment drives the need for effective privacy discussions with customers.
Nurturing productive relationships between Legal and Sales AEs: 35:22
- Optimizing and strengthening the legal-account executive partnership for smooth and productive deal cycles.
- Having perspective into what’s important to your AEs.
- Understanding your leverage when it comes to negotiating enterprise contracts.
- Backchanneling and conducting internal strategy calls to improve collaboration.
- The value of GC-CRO relationship in driving success for Legal.
- Identifying advocates and champions for Legal within the organization.
The intersection of the Legal and Security functions: 40:54
- GCs managing the security and privacy functions at organizations.
- Navigating security incidents as an in-house lawyer.
- The importance of integrating security within the legal framework.
Bridging the gap between Legal, Security, and Privacy: 44:50
- Overcoming friction and embracing shared values of Legal, Privacy, and Security.
- Nurturing the relationship between GCs and CISOs, and Legal and Security.
- Building a foundation on risk mitigation, value protection, and being stewards of the business.
- The friction between Security and Privacy.
- Building strong working relationships through open and honest conversations.
- Educating yourself on security issues and news for better collaboration.
- Dividing and conquering as a GC-CISO duo.
How the GC’s role will evolve with tech and AI evolution: 54:10
- Legal tends to be later in tech adoption, but a class of GCs tech companies are taking the helm in adopting tech into their workflows.
- Looking to AI as the future, and incorporating it into processes to enhance efficiency – not to replace decision-making.
- Why AI is department-agnostic, bringing Legal to the same playing field as other departments.
- Harnessing the power of CLMs like SpotDraft, which acts as a co-pilot for legal teams.
Advice for younger attorneys: 57:23
- Making the distinction between good and bad advice in relation to your own career and ambitions.
- Chasing your "North Star", if you have one, and not waiting for green light from others.
- Taking action and not settling for a career path that doesn't align with one's aspirations.
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