Q:
Describe your background and the path you took to becoming in-house counsel.
A: After law school, I was privileged to work under some great litigators and mentors at the law firms of Wiener, Weiss & Madison and later, Phelps Dunbar. I ultimately spent the majority of my litigation career at Phelps where I focused my practice on construction litigation. In early 2021, LEMOINE reached out about an opportunity to become their first general counsel that I could not pass up. The last 4 years have been both rewarding and challenging. I’ve worked to build structure and process around our legal and contracts departments as we have experienced tremendous growth.
Q: How does working in-house compare or differ from firm life?
A: I think the difference that surprises people the most is I definitely work more than I did when I worked at a law firm. I just don’t have the billables to prove it! Another key difference is I often don’t get the opportunity to collaborate and research issues comprehensively like I used to. The days of creating a research memo are certainly gone. My focus has to be on coming up with the best practical solution to help our project teams keep things moving forward.
Q: How and when do you use outside counsel?
A: While I still enjoy a healthy sparing match from time to time, a general rule of thumb for me is when something starts to escalate towards litigation (or I start to get aggressive emails), it’s time to call my litigator friends. From a capacity standpoint, I can’t be tied up for extended periods of time with hearings or depositions, and I need those valuable extra resources a law firm has to offer.
Q: What are the work/business-related issues that tend to keep you up at night?
A: It’s the unknowns that keep me up at night – i.e. what new legislation (or currently, executive order) is coming down the pipeline that we need to be aware of and take into consideration as we expand in new geographic areas and service lines. I rely heavily on firm blogs/updates to keep leadership and our project teams up to speed on new industry issues.
Q:
What qualities or characteristics do you look for in outside counsel?
A: Responsive and practical – Because of the pace at which things move in-house and the number of emails I get each day, I truly value those outside lawyers we work with that timely respond with succinct, practical guidance and updates. If I’ve gone to outside counsel it’s because I’ve likely already run through the pros and cons and I need a recommendation based on their experience.
Q: What advice would you give to outside counsel about how to meet or even exceed their client's expectations?
A: Spend some extra time (even if it’s non-billable) getting to know your client’s business – the specific industry they operate within, their leadership structure and the way they approach litigation and business issues. If you’re giving legal advice in a vacuum without that background information, it’s not going to be as effective.
Q: What is the biggest problem that you see when working with outside counsel?
A: I’m still only a few years removed from the litigation practice so I remember how easy it can be to go down a rabbit hole on a particular legal issue. But from an in-house perspective, we often have a very limited budget to spend and countless issues that will come up throughout the year. On occasion, outside counsel will spend a lot of time on an issue that doesn’t necessarily warrant that allocation of resources from our end. I’ve tried to be more intentional about communicating expectations/goals/budgetary restrictions at the outset, but it’s great to proactively address those issues as outside counsel even if in-house counsel doesn’t raise them.
Q: What are some of your interests or hobbies?
A: Baseball and books! 13U baseball consumes a LOT of our weekends these days and gets me away from the computer screen. It’s therapeutic for me to be outside watching our son (Wyatt) and his teammates compete in travel baseball tournaments. Our daughter (Jules) has even started to join in on the fun and is learning to record the plays in game changer. In the last 9 months, I’ve also taken up reading for the first time in over 20+ years. It’s been a great way to keep me on the elliptical machine longer and provides another escape from the constant flow of work emails.
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