New to a global company? Working with lawyers in different parts of the world and struggling to connect? It’s not just about understanding the language: to work cross-culturally, you need to understand the other party’s culture. In this episode, Juliana Calil, former in-house attorney at Google, Intel, Disney and other big name companies shares her experience as a Brazilian lawyer learning how to practice in the US and eventually taking that experience back to Brazil. As Juliana shares, working internationally takes more than being bilingual. She shares how many of the in-house fundamentals are still key in international roles and how being curious about the other party’s culture ensures success. We also tackle key differences in how US and Brazilian companies handle IP issues. Estou empolgado com isso!
—
Listen to the podcast here
Direito Sem Fronteiras: Building A Global Legal Career With Juliana Calil
My name is Juliana Calil. I am a Brazilian and US-licensed attorney. I’m based in Santa Cruz, California. Over the past two decades, I’ve navigated legal challenges at global companies like Disney, Intel, and Google, often working across language borders and cultures. My fun fact. I am a black belt in Aikido, and I love learning languages, so I am always trying a new one.
‐‐‐
On this week’s episode of The Legal Department, I’m excited to welcome Juliana Calil, who is a former in-house lawyer at Google, Looker, Disney, and a bunch of other companies. This is a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for a while. I realize that I have somewhat of an international audience, including a concentration in Brazil. When I noticed that, I reached out to Tricia Montalvo Timm, who was on episode 66. She put me in contact with Juliana, who is a lawyer also from Brazil. We’re going to be talking about working internationally. Juliana, I’m so excited to have you.
Meet Juliana Calil: Her Journey To A US Legal Career
I am super excited to be here, Stacy. Thank you so much. Thanks, Tricia, again for the connection. This is exciting. I am happy to be here.
It’s random. As I said, I was surprised that there is an international audience for this show. In particular, what I noticed on some of the LinkedIn posts was that the international audience uses the show to learn about practicing in the US, US legalese, and all that. I thought this would be a nice opportunity for us to dig into some of that, but also for the US lawyers who work internationally. We could teach them a lot about how to optimize those relationships.
Being bilingual sometimes is not enough. We need to understand other cultures, so we can work better with them and adapt as needed.
I’ve teased that you’re Brazilian and had this big career at all these brand-name companies, but tell us a little bit about your background and why you pursued a legal career in the US.
I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. I got my legal education at McKinsey University back in the day. Early in my career, I never wanted to do the courthouse style of practice. I wanted to be transactional, so I worked in small firms, boutique firms. I got a break with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which gave me exposure to international law. With them, I was working on tax law and tax transactions internationally. In 2000, my husband and I started talking about having an experience abroad. He got an opportunity with a company. I decided, “This is a good opportunity. I’m going to get my LL.M. in the United States.”
I applied and got accepted to Boston University. I thought I would get a better understanding of the US legal system, how things worked here, and how different they are between civil law and common law. What ended up as a one-year or two-year plan ended up turning into a lifetime journey. We’ve been here since then. Having that little break with the LL.M. gave me the intention to try to get something here and learning by practice what I was learning in academics. That’s how it all started.
I remember from our other conversation that you came in thinking that the LL.M. was going to be the ticket and the runway into getting jobs and working as a lawyer in the US, and that was not the case.
It was very interesting because it’s not easy to find a job in the US. Sometimes, foreign attorneys come and think they’re going to do the LL.M., and they’re going to be hired right away. Some do because we have the OPT, the Optional Practical Training, right after the LL.M., which gives you permission to work for about a year. Some people will get it, but not everybody.
Is that a visa thing?
It is a visa thing. It’s connected with your LL.M. When you get the student visa, automatically, you get this one-year Optional Practical Training opportunity. Some people will be able to step into a job for that one year, but the majority of places don’t want to invest in somebody who is only going to be here for a year. If you don’t have a proper working visa in the US, that gets complicated. The second complication is that you are a foreign-practiced attorney or a foreign-licensed attorney, but you don’t have a license in the US. Unless you do, you’re not going to be a lawyer long-term. There are two hurdles that you need to think about and strategize if you think of having a career in the US.
From Paralegal To Attorney At Disney
You were working pretty early after your LL.M. at Disney. That’s a marquee company. How did that happen?
It was a bit of luck mixed with a lot of planning and figuring things out. Right after the LL.M., I learned that I could only apply for the New York or the California Bar exam with my credentials. New York was a city that I love, but I didn’t want to live there. My husband and I moved to California. We lived in Southern California in the Los Angeles area. I started working in boutique law firms, attending any types of networking events that I could find.
Law firms have a lot of CLE days. I paid for those at the time because I didn’t have any connections then. I attended CLE days. I attended everything that I could attend, even though I wasn’t licensed as an attorney in the US yet. My roles were primarily paralegal, contracts negotiator, and contracts analyst. They would give all these creative names, but I kept going. My stroke of luck was Monster.com, which used to be a job platform back at the time.
It was a Monster job platform. It was the thing.
I had my resume there. I kept sending very targeted resumes to the companies I wanted. I would tailor my resume specifically for the company I wanted, not just a one-size-fits-all approach. I would spend a lot of time doing that, and nothing panned out. One day, a recruiter found my resume on Monster. This recruiter was from Disney. He had a job for a paralegal position. I was a little heartbroken because it was like, “It’s Disney. I’m going to go sweep the floors,” but I was like, “I wanted to be a lawyer at Disney, not a paralegal.”
I thought hard about it. I said, “This is my foot at the door. Once I have my foot there, I can take the bar exam.” This would be my third time taking the bar exam because I had taken it twice and didn’t pass. I was a little bit disheartened with that, but I accept it. I went to a paralegal job at Disney. I had a fantastic boss, Daniel Frommer. I’m going to give him a shout-out because he was a great mentor and a fantastic boss. He incentivized me to take the bar exam again. I did, and I passed.
In conversations with him, I was like, “Now, I passed. You have to make me into an attorney now. We need to pull the strings.” The entire team there was fantastic. We were very close-knit. Our head of the team pulled some strings and figured out a way. In a few months, I was promoted to an attorney at Disney from a paralegal position. I want to make a quick caveat on that. Disney doesn’t promote paralegals to attorneys very often. It’s not a thing. I was lucky to have a supporting team and a supporting head of the legal department at Disney Interactive Media to have the trust in me. The other part was that I built the trust.
You earned it.
I was like, “I need to make sure that when the opportunity comes, they will look at me and say, ‘Yes, she’s ready. She can do this work.’”
Being bilingual sometimes isn't enough; we need to understand other cultures to work better together. Share on XBridging Cultural Gaps In Legal Communication
I want to bring it back to the international piece. You said early on that it’s not enough to be bilingual. When we were in prep, you had a very interesting story about a Disney experience where you learned and sharp-focused the cultural differences in practicing as a US lawyer and in Brazil. I was hoping you would share that.
When I started working at Disney, and I was doing that learning process, paying attention, following my boss in every single meeting, and asking a gazillion questions about every single red line he would make, I noticed that when I was communicating with him, my emails were very verbose. They were long and detailed. I wanted to explain everything. I wanted to prove that I knew everything. It went on and on. One day, he sat me down. He was like, “You need to sharpen your communication. Think a little bit like the IRAC model that we do on the bar exam.”
For foreign attorneys, the IRAC model is you state the issue, you have the rule of law, you apply the rule of law to the issue, and you have a conclusion. It’s a very scientific way to communicate. I was like, “That’s a good idea. I know how to do that. I took the bar.” I started sharpening my communications to be more direct. With time, I learned the three bullet rules and things that, at a glance, somebody higher than you or the audience of your message will quickly understand what it is that you were you’re trying to tell them. That worked great in the US.
Back in 2011, I went back to Brazil to set up the legal presence for Disney in Brazil. I went with all this baggage, all this knowledge, and feeling very good. I’m here in the director position at Disney. It’s impressive, a big step in my career. I was following my parameters. One day, I was in the hallway and I overheard a colleague talking to another colleague. They didn’t notice me, but they were saying that my emails were so short and so rude that I didn’t have any warmth in them. I never asked about how the weekend had been or how things were going. I would jump straight into the issues. It sounded like I didn’t care.
I was like, “I never thought of this.” I didn’t consider that the short form of communication was so abrupt for a different culture and let alone for my own culture, the culture that I grew up in. I went to talk to her and clear the air, and I got some tips from them. “Maybe I can do a couple of things like this.” Again, I adapted. I figured out ways to communicate in a warmer tone with my audience in Brazil and not lose sight of what’s important, but being a little bit more present with them. That’s why I said being bilingual is not necessarily enough. You need to be bicultural. You need to understand the culture of the audience you’re trying to reach.
I want to talk about you continuing to work at these global companies, like Google. I’m wondering, as you were continuing to work, and I’m sure in many different markets, not just Latin America, Brazil, etc., how did you get up to speed on those cultures? What advice do you have for other lawyers in doing so?
The main advice for me is to talk to the people in the culture that you’re trying to reach. At Google, for example, I worked with my Asian Pacific colleagues. I worked with people in Europe. When you say Europe, each place in Europe is a place. Figure out how they work. Dublin is a different place from London, and it’s going to be different than Italy. All of those places, you reach out to the attorneys in those areas and talk to them a little bit. Say, “I’m going to be entering a negotiation with a client that is located in Ireland. Do you have any advice on cultural things that I should watch out for and things that I need to pay attention to?”
Learn from your colleagues. Lean in on colleagues. If you don’t have colleagues in those areas, build your network. Go on LinkedIn. Find somebody in that area. Reach out, but don’t reach out on a cold call. Reach out and say, “I would love to have a conversation with you. I’ve seen your background. You are in this area. I’m entering a conversation with clients in this area. I would love to learn a little bit about your culture and anything you can share with me.” Be brave. Don’t be super shy. You will make mistakes. Learn from them. Just keep them in your mind. Next time, you’re going to do a better job than the first time. Just keep going.
I haven’t done a ton of international work. Most of my work has been for US-based organizations. I did do a couple of deals with companies in China. What was interesting, and I’m sure you’ve worked there as well, was that there was a lot of emphasis. It was funny. There was not so much emphasis on what was in the paperwork of the deal, but on the presentation of the deal. They took photos when we signed. It was so unusual to me. I didn’t know anyone practicing in China at that time. I wish I had your advice. They wanted me in the picture, which I was so taken aback about. I was like, “What?” Usually, the lawyer does the legal work, and then you’re like, “Forget it. Move on to the next person.” That was an interesting experience.
That’s very amusing. Particularly if you’re working with government clients, they do want the ceremony, the photo op, and everything. I think it’s more about political interest than anything else. I never did a deal with China. That’s interesting to hear how they work. That’s good advice.
It was interesting. It is a great point about trying to find somebody who can help you get up to speed. I’m guessing that that advice applies both to the US lawyer and to the lawyer in another country.
Absolutely. If there is one thing about US lawyers, because most of the action starts here, sometimes, we lose sight of other cultures. We may need to adapt to other cultures. Just because we are starting everything here doesn’t mean that we are the center of the universe. We need to remember that other cultures will appreciate it if you meet them halfway. If you start the conversation meeting them halfway, you’ve already gained so much in trust, in building a relationship, and in creating a rapport, even with the other party, the attorneys on the other side. It’s a game-changer. It helps a lot.
Brazilian Vs. US Legal Practice: Key Differences
That is great advice. In thinking specifically about differences between Brazil and the US, I know that it’s a different civil law versus common law, but what are some key differences that you noticed?
Particularly if you’re in law firms in Brazil, there is a hierarchy here, too, for sure, but I think there is a lot more deference in the hierarchy in Brazil. It means junior attorneys being too deferent to the senior attorneys, and the senior attorneys tapering down the junior attorney. If you’re on a call and there are three levels of hierarchy in this call, most of the time, the only person who speaks up is the senior one. The other two just listen, nod, and pay attention.
We have a little bit more leniency in the US. Younger attorneys will speak up, not all the time. I’m talking about what I’ve seen in law firm scenarios. When you do have more in-house, it feels a little bit more like we are one team. Let’s all have a role. We all speak up. We all have something to say. In Brazil, I feel there is still a little bit of that lingering deference, and that’s normal for both sides. Most people who come to an in-house have been in law firms before, so they learn a lot. Including some of the things that they should forget when they go in-house. The deference is one of them.
The other thing I would potentially suggest is that I feel like in Brazil, attorneys are very much what they are. They’re attorneys. The business is going to come to them. They will solve the problem, and then they will be out of the picture completely. In the companies that I worked in, that was not quite like that. We were always part of the business team, part of the entire solution. It’s not just, “Solve this problem and get out.” It’s, “Solve this problem and stay in the room because I need you to see what else we’re talking about so that we can continue this conversation and you can see the next problem in a better way.”
Keeping legal as a trusted business partner is more of a thing in the US than it is in Brazil. That helps a lot because we want to understand how they structure the deal. That’s the easiest way for us lawyers to advise them on where are the pitfalls, where are the things where they could have pushback, and where are the areas where they can move forward without any problems. Having the lawyers be more engaged in the business in Brazil would be ideal. It would be very positive for the country.
It seems like that might be hard for folks to break out of that box, especially if it’s very hierarchical. When we talked before, you were talking about negotiations when you were a Google attorney, and negotiating with some company in Brazil or another country, and the differences in negotiation expectations and style.
IP Ownership And Negotiation Styles Across Borders
That’s a big one. In one of the deals that I worked on, Google was creating a new product for this company. It was based on their experience. This is normal for big companies. Microsoft does that. Intel and all of these big companies do that. From our perspective, when you’re building a product and you’re building based on a use case from a client, you’re not necessarily building that product uniquely for that client. It may be, but in most cases, big companies are not building a product for one unique person.
They are building a product that will be scalable and that is going to be sold to other clients. There is a lot of fear in Brazil that these big companies are going to take your confidential information, or they’re going to start selling the products based on your use case. All of a sudden, your competition is going to swoop in and take you down. Their primary approach is, “We want to own the intellectual property on this product.” There is a little bit of, “Do you understand what owning this means?”
First of all, if you own this product, you’re going to own the maintenance. You’re going to own the bug fixes. You’re going to own the hosting of this product. We are out of the picture. I don’t have anything more to do with this. You won’t have any more of our expertise from now on. Is that what you want? You have to dig into those details and explain. They’re like, “No, you need to continue maintaining the product. I just want to own it.”
I laughed earlier because I’m thinking, you’re at a Google, Disney, and Intel company, and some small company that you’re doing a service for thinks that they’re going to own something. That is such a departure. Speaking about Brazil, I’m wondering if there is awareness or a concept of a different positioning in negotiations? You’re lucky they’re talking to you.
Be brave. Don't be super shy. You will make mistakes; learn from them. Keep them in mind. Next time, you'll do a better job, so just keep going. Share on XYes, there’s a little bit of that. There is a little bit of fear that I’m being duped by this big company. I’m not as tech-savvy as they are. My fallback has to be, “I need to own it. I don’t quite understand what they are doing, but it’s Google. They’re probably taking advantage of me,” or whichever company. I’m not bad-mouthing Google, but there is always that fear of if you’re a small party playing with a big partner, that this big partner is going to be chewing you up. You try to go as aggressively as you can.
In conversations with those parties, you can explain. The main thing is to understand what their issue is. What is the fear? What is the problem that they’re trying to solve with ownership? Most of the time, you can solve it with short-term exclusivity. You can solve it by carving out very clearly that we’re not adding their confidential information into the product. We’re using it to build the expertise as a use case, but it’s not going to be their confidential information in the product. Things like that will help build that trust.
Most of the time, they are like, “You’re not just trying to yank this away from me and make a million dollars with every client. I’m going to be here paying you the first million for you to continue building your revenue.” One of the things I learned early on is that building a relationship with the other party is sometimes more important than getting every single clause that you want. That’s another thing I learned in Brazil. People want to negotiate every little detail of the contract. Sometimes, that’s to show work.
Sometimes, that’s because that’s how they learn how to redline an agreement. Going back to that thing of being a business partner, not just an attorney, if you are a business partner, you will let some things go because they’re not that important. They’re not the main topics that you want to go through. If you have a limited amount of time, you need to focus on what’s important. You need to go to the clauses. That will take time, and do not get distracted by redlining the whole thing. I would tell them to focus on what’s important to you.
That’s an interesting point, specifically about the relationship. I’m thinking of the framing you gave earlier, where it’s very hierarchical. The junior or mid-level person has been told, “Get this done,” or “Negotiate this contract.” Their success metric is, “I’ve redlined all this. I’ve won. I’ve gotten work.” In the US, it’s, “Get it done. Be a business partner. Think of the big picture.”
If you don’t have a cultural alignment about what our role is in getting this project done, people are going to be very frustrated. Your business partners in the US are going to be like, “Why is Juliana taking eighteen months to get this simple thing done?” The people in Brazil are going to be like, “I’m not getting every comma and period the way I want it.” It strikes me that setting the table at the outset is important.
That’s a big difference, particularly in Brazil, which is a place where I’m quite familiar. I’m speaking of my own experience. There are outliers. There are companies where people are very embedded in the business, even in Brazil, and are doing similar work to what we do in the US. In general, that has been my experience with Brazil.
We’re just giving folks a big picture. The advice applies to folks, even if they’re not working internationally, building a relationship, being clear on their business objectives, and being a business partner. Those are the blocking and tackling of in-house practice. I want to talk a little bit more about transactional blocking and tackling because that is your specialty. I could go on and on about all the cool stuff that you did for Google, and then the sale of Looker to Google. I wonder if you could give a couple of examples of common contractual issues where you see a difference in how Brazilian lawyers handle those and US lawyers.
The main one I mentioned is the IP provisions on ownership. There’s a lot of conversation in Brazil sometimes in a joint IP. For us in the US, when you say joint IP, we’re like, “No. Wait a second.” Joint IP is a very complicated terminology for the US because it’s not just like, “We both own together,” and that’s it. No, we have a ton of obligations. We need to determine who is going to do what, who is going to talk finances, who is going to separate, how much is going to be divided between us, and who is going to do the filings. We avoid that as much as possible.
Is joint IP seen as a compromise position?
Some schools are always strong because they address specific issues, bringing politics and culture into a vibrant scenario. Share on XYes. I had a couple of deals in Brazil where they wanted to own. I explained why not. They were like, “Great, then let’s do joint IP because I am putting the use case and you’re putting the development.” I was like, “Yes, I understand. It sounds like this is a joint development, but it’s not. I’m getting your use case as a sample to develop this product, but your use case is not going to be the foundation of this product. I already have the foundation. I’m fine-tuning this product with your use case.”
Interestingly, that became a fallback provision for them. With a lot of back and forth, it becomes one of those begrudgingly, “We’ll let you own, but we want an exclusive license. Nobody else can buy this product.” I was like, “That also doesn’t work. We are in the business of selling this product to the world. You can’t be our only client. Otherwise, the cost of this product would be so ridiculously high.”
You have a bespoke special thing just for you.
It takes a while to go back and forth with that.
Navigating International IP Negotiations
As you’re talking about this, one question I have is, as the in-house attorney, how are you explaining some of these? For a US attorney, it’s unusual that these questions are coming up or these issues are maybe snagging the deal a little bit. How are you communicating with your business partner about these deals and how the negotiations are going?
First of all, at Google, I worked with the strategic initiatives team. They’re very high up director-level internal clients. Most of them have done a gazillion of these deals. They are incredible business partners, so a super shout-out to the Google folks. They are incredible. Most of the folks who worked in Brazil were either specialized in South American deals or spoke the language.
I was able to explain to them, “Remember that deal that we did three months ago? This is coming up again. I’m walking them through the whole IP licensing situation. Bear with me. I know it’s going to take a little while, but we’ll get there. I need to walk them through the scenarios.” They come on the call, and they wait. They sit quietly. Sometimes, I was like, “Can you talk about the product?” When we enter into the product conversation, sometimes, the attorneys were like, “I understand how the product works. Now, it makes more sense.”
You were using the business partner as a facilitator for the negotiation. That’s brilliant. That’s great.
It’s funny. Sometimes, I have been asked to participate in negotiations primarily because I speak the language. Sometimes, in Brazil, not all people involved in the negotiations will speak English, or they won’t be comfortable negotiating in English. The fact that I speak Portuguese alleviates that gap. My internal clients were like, “Can we have Juliana on this deal? She’ll be able to bridge that gap that we have with the client.”
What you said earlier, though, is important. Being bilingual is a superpower, important, and table stakes for somebody who does certain types of international work, but it’s more. It’s understanding the culture. It’s engaging your business partners. It’s having the business mindset. It is fascinating.
It’s a fun job. It’s a fun career to be one foot in each place and trying to expand my international approach and learnings, and trying new languages. We’ll see what happens in the future.
I wonder if you’re getting pumped up about international practice again.
Yes, for sure. It’s my bread and butter. My entire career has been in-house. I’ve done boutique law firms, but always in transactional. I feel like I’ve always been in-house. It’s so interesting to learn the products or services of the company you’re at and then learning how to distribute that broadly, not just in your own country, but everywhere, especially when you believe in the product and the service. It’s a fun job.
Pump-Up Anthems: From Pop To Brazilian Samba
Another fun question I always ask all guests is the question that helped me realize that I do have an international audience in Brazil. What is your pump-up song?
As cliché as it’s going to sound, my pump-up song is Flowers by Miley Cyrus.
That’s a good one.
It’s such an empowering song. For women, particularly, it is being okay on your own and feeling like you’re enough, that you can do everything you want to do. You don’t need anybody. It’s great to have a lot of people around you. You want to have a lot of people around you, but you don’t need them. It’s very empowering. It’s a fun song. It’s a great dance song. It’s a great moving song. Go to the gym. You’re in the car, you’re in traffic, and it comes up. All of a sudden, you’re singing and dancing, and traffic is gone.
That’s awesome. Is there, by any chance, a Brazilian song?
I’m a big fan of samba schools. The old ones were my favorites. I don’t recall the exact name, but Mangueira had a fantastic song back in the day. Mocidade Independente also had a fantastic one. I’m going to find the names. I can’t remember the exact name of the lyrics, but samba schools are always so strong because they’re talking about specific issues. They bring so much politics and culture into a vibrant scenario. They are fantastic, all of them.
It is so very rich. Thank you so much. This has been super fun.
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the invite. I am looking forward to hearing this on the podcast soon.
It’ll be great. Thanks.
Episode Resources
- Juliana Calil on LinkedIn
- Creating An Inclusive Legal Department with Tricia Montalvo Timm
- Monster Jobs
- Daniel Frommer on LinkedIn
About Juliana Calil
Juliana Calil is a dynamic corporate counsel with 20+ year of experience supporting global leaders in tech, entertainment, and e-commerce. Licensed in California and Brazil, she specializes in complex deals, involving IP, AI, data privacy, and international law.
At Google Cloud, she led strategic partnership deals—including Latin America’s largest digital transformation—and revamped legal frameworks for global scale. At Intel, she negotiated high-value IP agreements and supported campaigns for CES and the Winter Olympics. At Disney, she advised U.S. digital platforms and complex technology deals and later built and led Disney’s legal team in Brazil, managing key content, tech, and licensing deals.
Now on a career break, Juliana is exploring new directions aligned with her passion for global impact, innovation, and creativity. Fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English—with growing proficiency in Italian and Japanese—Juliana’s passion for language and culture complements her global perspective. As black belt in Aikido, she brings discipline, balance, and a mindset of continuous learning to everything she does.
