Host Stacy Bratcher steps onto the Leveraging Latitude podcast with Alex Su and Candice Reed to share her practical, hard-won tips for leveling up as in-house counsel. From building genuine relationships with business leaders to positioning yourself as a strategic partner, managing and inspiring your team, and being intentional about your own professional growth, Stacy offers an energizing roadmap for success. She also reveals two fun facts about herself and the pump-up songs that keep her going.

This episode first appeared on Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law, a podcast by Latitude. Learn more at LATITUDELEGAL.COM.

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Leveling Up: My Conversation With Alex Su And Candice Reed On Leveraging Latitude Podcast

This episode of the Legal Department is my conversation with Candice Reed and Alex Su at Leveraging Latitude. We talk about all things in-house. I give my advice on how to be a strategic business partner, how to demonstrate the value of your legal department, how to manage your team, and, my favorite hot take, how to not sleepwalk through your career. I want everybody to think about what they enjoy at work and what makes them excited. Once you do that, you are sure to level up. Please enjoy my conversation with Alex and Candice leveraging Latitude.

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Welcome, everyone, to the show. It’s so great to be with you all again. Alex, it’s nice to have you in the co-captain seat on this episode. Welcome.

Thanks, Candice. I’m so excited to be here because we’ve got a wonderful guest. Stacy Bratcher is here with us. I wanted to quickly introduce her so we can dive right away into it and talk about all sorts of interesting things. Stacy, for those of you who don’t know, is the General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer at Cottage Health. She’s got over twenty years of in-house experience.

Before joining Cottage Health, she spent fifteen years as a healthcare attorney at the University of Southern California. Stacy began her career as an associate attorney for the healthcare legal firm, Hooper Lundy & Bookman, in Los Angeles. Stacy is also the host of her own show called The Legal Department, which delivers advice on what busy in-house lawyers need to know to level up in their career. Stacy, thank you so much for joining us here.

Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to connect with both of you.

Fun Facts & Pump-Up Songs: Breaking The Lawyer Mold

Stacy, it is great to talk with you. We appreciate your time and the perspective that you will be sharing with us. I have to ask you, because Alex mentioned your show. Can you give us a fun fact about yourself? That might be unfair right off the bat. It’s like, “Tell us the most interesting thing about you within 30 seconds of meeting.” I enjoy that part of your show, so I wanted to turn the mic on you and see what you would say and answer to that question.

Thanks so much for tuning in. I love that you grabbed that nugget. It is a fun way to open the show, although I do find the guests get a little stressed about wanting to be interesting. I have 2 fun facts, but the 1 I’ll use for this show is that growing up, our family car was a 1969 Stingray Corvette convertible. If you’re not familiar with American heavy metal, there are only two seats in that car. Ours did not have a car seat for children, so I sat in the middle quite a bit.

I was saying something to my eleven-year-old daughter. I was talking about the number of bicycle accidents that I had as a child. I never wore a helmet because this was the ‘80s. She looks at me quite seriously and says, “Mom, the ‘80s sound like a crazy time.” I was like, “You have no idea. We were riding around in Corvettes without car seats.”

That’s right. Sit on the console. It’ll be fine.

What was the second fun fact?

The second fun fact is that I’m from St. Louis, and my husband and I got engaged at the top of the St. Louis Arch.

Those are both interesting.

Everybody has a fun fact. You guys interview a lot of lawyers on this show. There’s this pressure to present in a certain way. The two things I get a lot of anxiety around are the fun fact and then the pump-up song. The number of people who pick Eye of the Tiger or Enter Sandman. They don’t want anything with profanity. There’s no Eminem. It’s interesting.

That’s so funny that you mention that because that’s one of my favorite questions, too. For those who may have read some of the earlier broadcasts of this show, I used to ask guests that same question. You’re right. There was so much anxiety around it that I no longer do it. I reserve that question for all of the new Latitude team members. In fact, we had an all-teams meeting with two new members joining us, and I asked that very question to them. I feel like we all need introductory music. When we walk into a room, there should be songs playing, announcing our entrance.

I spoke at a conference in October 2024. The conference producers were familiar with my show, so they asked me, “What is your pump-up song?” They played it when I was getting on the stage. It was like, “This is my moment.” It was cool.

What is it?

I have two. The PG version, which I identify with, is Short Skirt/Long Jacket by cake. It’s all about a badass woman whom I very much identify with. My other one, which I am quite open with, is Dirt Off Your Shoulder by Jay-Z because ladies is pimps too.

This is great. I feel like we could derail the conversation right here and go in this direction. Leveling up your in-house legal career and managing your legal department could be a conversation for another day, but I won’t do that. That needs to be part two, where we talk about music, pump-up songs, and fun facts. I feel like I’m going to need some time to prepare so that I can engage in that conversation with you. I would be one of those people who is desperately trying to think of something fun. I’m a mom of an eleven-year-old. Nothing about me is fun, apparently. I get told that on the daily.

Your risky life growing up in the ‘80s.

Those crazy times when you didn’t wear bicycle helmets or buckle up when you were in the car. Let’s get it back on track for everyone who’s tuning in to read what you say about effective strategies for managing a legal department and working with the business to align legal’s goals with the business objectives. Alex gave us a quick introduction to your career. Would you mind telling us a little bit more, maybe filling in some of the gaps as to maybe how you started and where you are? How did you get here?

From Government To In-House: Stacey Bratcher’s Career Journey

I got to Cottage Health after a beach walk. That’s a fun story. My mom always told me, usually when I was mouthing off, that I’d be a great lawyer. That planted the seed that it was a career I should pursue. Like many of us, I’m sure we started at a law firm. It wasn’t as fulfilling as I would’ve liked it to be. From my roots in government, I enjoyed being hands-on and being in it, which is what an in-house job is. You aren’t just giving advice from the sidelines. You’re living the business every day.

In an in-house job, you're not just giving advice from the sidelines; you're living the business every day. Share on X

I told this story where I had lunch with a girlfriend while I was still at the firm, and she mentioned that USC was looking for a healthcare attorney. That was many years ago. I landed there and had a great career. It was December 31st, 2019, that I was on a beach walk with my husband. We were on vacation up in Cambria, California, which is a little sleepy beach town. I said, “I would love to live up here in this area, but there are no jobs, unless Cottage Health ever calls me.” That’s the big health system up here. In February of 2020, I got a call from a recruiter. Put it out there. Manifest your future. That’s how I got here.

What an interesting time to start a new job, too, especially in healthcare. Did you intend to specialize in healthcare either upon going to law school or coming out of law school, or was that a fortuitous accident, if you will?

It was intentional. I’d worked in the government before. I had worked on health and social policy issues. Healthcare is something that we all experience. Our health is probably our most important asset. There’s a huge infrastructure behind getting the healthcare that you need. I was already interested in the area. The law school I went to, which was St. Louis University, has the number one ranked health law program. It naturally threaded my career that way.

Healthcare is something we all experience. Our health is probably our most important asset, and there's a huge infrastructure behind getting the healthcare you need. Share on X

In either your former experience in government or the healthcare specialization, how has that influenced your approach in-house or as a general counsel?

The healthcare experience is what I do. Even when I was at USC, most of my work was in our healthcare enterprise tech medicine. It gave me a foundation for what I wanted to do. The government experience was my first love. I worked in the governor’s office in Missouri. I was very young. I had a lot of exposure to what I call dinner table issues. We talked about gay marriage, reproductive rights, expanding healthcare to kids, guns, and all the kinds of stuff that you debate with your family or avoid with your family. I was in love with it.

Guess what? I’m going to do a big reveal here. You make no money working in the government. I made $9 an hour, and I lived in a friend’s barn for free. That was a very entry-level job. When I came out of law school, like many folks, I had a lot of debt. Going into a government job, making $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000 a year, I wasn’t going to be able to live on that. I wanted to be a “real lawyer.” That’s why I went to a firm, but a big part of that decision was a financial one.

Was the goal ultimately to end up in-house?

No, I didn’t even know what in-house was. I don’t know that there was a capital G goal, but I wanted to get back to that passion and impact that I felt like I had in that early job in government. I did the law firm thing for about six years and was like, “That’s not it.” When I pivoted to an in-house role, I had much more of that connection to what drove me in the first place.

The In-House Value Proposition: Beyond The “Cost Center” Label

Stacy, you’ve worked in-house for quite some time. Let’s talk about some of the biggest challenges that legal departments face, which is proving value to their organization. We’ve all heard this cost center term thrown around. How can GCs and CLOs, like yourself, transform that perception and demonstrate its value as a strategic business unit?

I don’t know what you call it, but we’re carrying around with us this, “We’re the cost center.” I don’t think that’s true. One of the interviews I did on the show was with a CFO, Kevin Rubin, who’s the CFO of BetterUp. We talked a lot about that. His direction, and it’s the same North Star that has guided my in-house career, is to be a strategic partner.

I go into a lot of rooms and a lot of meetings, and I, as the in-house lawyer, see things at the 30,000-foot level. You see what happens with your contracting folks. You’re seeing what’s happened in operations. You’re seeing what’s happened with the revenue part of the business or finance. You can put all those things together. If you can share that advice or that perspective in a clear value-add way, it’s not about the dollars and cents. Especially senior-level in-house folks and general counsel, that’s why they are hiring you. They’re not hiring you to manage the P&L of the legal department. They’re hiring you to be that strategic partner.

The advice I have to people is, “You have to shed that traditional legal training, which is the house of no.” Everything is, “It’s too risky. You’re going to make these mistakes. The government’s going to come get you.” All these reasons why you can’t do things, you have to put that aside and think, “If I were the business, what would be helpful to me? There are these minefields, but tell me how to get through them so we can accomplish the business objective.” Changing the framing of how you’re looking at different problems and issues and bringing a solution-oriented strategic mindset would be number one.

Stacy, do you think that most attorneys come into an in-house role with that mindset? Therefore, it’s almost this self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, where it’s like, “Everyone’s going to see me as the house of no.” We’re almost creating our own reality when we go in-house with that perception. Do you find that it is necessary to rebrand the legal department for the business? Do they also see legal as the house of no? Are there things that you can do from your in-house seat to help them see you as that strategic business partner versus a cost center?

That’s two questions. First of all, especially if you’re coming from a law firm to in-house at your first transition, I don’t think there’s awareness of exactly how the job is different from the job you were doing. I did an episode with Dana Lira, who’s an SVP at Warner Bros. She talked about, “It was my first week on the job. They gave me a contract or something to review. I sent up markups. It was a press release. I said, ‘We can’t say that.’” I sent it off and thought, “Great job. I’ve done my job for the day.”

Guess what? That did not go well. She has three VPs on the phone saying, “What the hell is this all about?” There is no awareness of that. It is a different job. Your job in-house is to facilitate the business. The best outside counsel knows that, too. Especially if you’re early in your career when you make a change, you don’t necessarily know that.

To your question about how you rebrand, you have to start as a business first. Make it a priority. The number one priority when you are in-house is building relationships with the business. Set up one-on-ones. Go to coffee. Go to lunch. Ask to learn about a particular person’s portfolio. Immerse yourself in learning that business. That alone sets you up as somebody who is in a problem-solving mode because you’re trying to learn about your colleagues and the business that you’re trying to serve. That’s number one.

When you're in-house, building relationships with the business is priority number one. Set up one-on-ones, go to coffee, go to lunch, and ask to learn about a particular person's portfolio. Share on X

As a leader, when I onboard new folks who are new to in-house, we always talk about how it’s not no. It’s yes and, or yes. It’s, “You might want to think about it.” I’ve had a number of conversations on my show about that particular issue because it is such a stark contrast to the law firm life, where you’re like, “Can we do this?” You then write the five-page memo about this and all these different cases and reasons the business can’t do what they want to do.

Stacy, a lot of what you’re saying also reminds me of a conversation that Candice and I had with Mike Haven, the Global Head of Legal Operations at Meta. He said that you should always be guided by what the company’s overall objectives are. That ties in very closely with what you said about getting to know your business stakeholders and understanding what they care about. I’m curious, because I hear this a lot. I know that you and I have talked before more tactically about how you do that. Especially if your company is focused on revenue growth, how do you do that as a legal department, a GC, or a CLO? I’m sure you have stories from what you’ve seen over the years. I know that our readers would love to read any tactical advice you may have.

The question is how to learn about the business?

How do you develop ways to contribute to the company’s goal if it’s revenue growth? Maybe there are ways to help drive revenue or assist with any initiatives relating to growth. How do you do that as a legal department?

A lot of times, the legal department can either be a facilitator or a blocker to business. Enterprise-level contracting is certainly a great example of that. The business is trying to make a big sale, and maybe there’s a contract associated with that. You’ve got to align your team and say, “This is the priority of the business. We’re not going to litigate every comma.

Oftentimes, the legal department can either be a facilitator or a blocker to business. Share on X

Included, but not limited to, we’re not going to overdo it. We’re going to facilitate the larger goal, which is getting this contract done before the end of the quarter or before the investor call,” or whatever the benchmark may be. Sterling Miller, whom I call the OG of in-house, has talked about attending those sales meetings. You know what the sales team’s top three things are because your department is getting every piece of paper, or Tom, Dick, and Harry are asking you some questions, which may not be relevant for the company’s revenue goals.

In my industry, insurance company contracts and managed care contracts are a big deal, so making sure we get those done quickly is an issue. I’m not just processing paper. I might be coming up with ideas for them to strategize, like, “We’re also developing this urgent care platform. Maybe we can expand our reach with this payer by giving them a contract.” I’m thinking about the business and giving ideas that may not even be legal.

Structuring Success: Managing Workload & Legal Ops

Are there ways to demonstrate the impact of that? For example, we always talk about whether there are KPIs that you can use to measure that. What have you seen?

First of all, measuring the data in your department is a job in and of itself. You mentioned legal operations. That’s something that I’d encourage folks to develop if they don’t have it. It is a way to show some hard data. Other than the insurance side of the business, we’re here to take care of people. We have a lot of vendors. I show value by showing I’ve gotten a discount from a vendor. They were going to charge you this, and I negotiated and asked them for this. There’s a delta between what you were willing to accept and what I got you.

I am in the affirmative recovery business. I encourage all in-house departments to start looking at ways that their companies can recover affirmatively. I’ve recovered over 8 figures 3 years in a row for my company, and I’m planting more seeds. Too often, in-house ends up on our heels. We’re reacting to inbounds. We need to take some time and try to throw out our own net because there’s money to get.

All in-house departments should look at ways to recover affirmatively. Share on X

As the general counsel or the chief legal officer, how do you determine who does what in your department? You mentioned that there is a whole profession, legal ops, that is dedicated or primarily responsible in many companies for determining the KPIs and the metrics and using the data to support legal and its alignment with the business. How do you, as the leader of the legal department, make decisions about who does what? How do you structure or manage your workload?

I’m glad you mentioned legal ops. We’re exploring an intake management system. The inbound request and need is a bottomless pit of need. It’s like your children. They’re always going to need something. I love my clients, and I love our organization. They’re hungry. They always need to be fed. If we don’t have a good handle on what they’re asking for, it’s hard to know who has the expertise to do a certain thing. Not infrequently, I’ve had people ask multiple lawyers the same questions, looking for the same work. That’s not efficient at all. It’s trying to put in some structures and tools that can help you see what people are looking for and what they’re working on. Are there any repeats?

I have a small department. At USC, we had a much larger department, so there were more people to allocate work to. My team is broken up between litigation and operations, and then transactional. I’m over both of them. That’s a little cleaner. There are ERISA issues. Where does that go? That’s not transactional, but there are employment issues, litigation issues, and compliance issues with that.

I also try to match people’s interests with the work. That’s probably the golden rule. I still do this. I take a piece of paper, write out all of the different work that we have, and then write down who the people are and try to match what people like to do. If they have something they like to do, they’re going to want to do more of it. That’s a high-level of how to do it. Subject matter, interest, and if you want, we can talk about stretch projects, which is something that I also like to do. This tends to be more of something that you worry about in a larger department.

For me, personally, one of the things that lights me up is professional development. That’s why I have a show about professional development for lawyers. I am always looking for ways to help my team get more exposure, more experience, etc. For larger teams, and I talked to Valerie Portillo at the Diversity Lab about this, it is having a very visible dashboard for stretch projects to show what they are, who the key stakeholders are, and whether there is a board component. It is making those widely available so people can volunteer for those.

Kate Dugan at Energizer also has a great system for that. They did a survey of their in-house team to find out what people want to work on. We have these stretch projects to try to get people interested. There can be a perception that growth and the sexy, high-profile projects are only for certain people. The best in-house leaders make sure that that’s not the case. They make sure that those are widely known about, and that others are encouraged to participate.

Professional Development: Identifying & Assigning Stretch Projects

I’m going to ask you to get into the weeds a little bit here with what you said. How do you identify, develop, and then assign or communicate those stretch projects? Is this something that’s done through annual evaluations? Do you have a regular legal department meeting where you communicate those stretch projects on a regular basis so that people can raise their hands? How does that work?

It depends on the size. I have a very small department, so I have one-on-one meetings with each of my team members every other week, and we have a staff meeting every week. Stretch projects come up organically. We want to explore this transaction, like, “We’ve got this big class action lawsuit,” or, “We’re going to implement a new GDPR compliance program.” They come up organically. Certainly, at the beginning of the year, we do set goals that track our organizational goals. I’ll meet with folks individually and as a team to talk about what these are and how they want to be involved in them. It’s both one-on-one and in a group.

I’ve got a question about how you balance all of that with your team. Many in-house legal departments are stretched thin. Maybe some of these folks want to take on these stretch projects for professional development reasons. What about the other relatively lower value tasks, the blocking and tackling, so to speak, of your daily work? How do you balance that with your team?

Looking at that, it’s like a one-page dashboard of all the work that we have. I always look at what is the highest and best use of the in-house team. I would tell your audience that if their team is doing every hotel contract or catering agreement, there’s a bunch of noise not to spend any time on. Have a handle first on what the demands of the team are.

That’s why that intake tool that I’m trying to get is going to be important because it’s going to help me see exactly what is coming. Sterling Miller has a concept that he calls the not-to-do list. What are the things we’re not going to do because there’s no value add there, or the ROI on doing that and the tax on our time isn’t worth it? That’s one way. Don’t do certain things.

The next is outsourcing. Using different resources is important. Technology is where we’re all on a foot on the cliff to figure out what’s going to happen with a lot of the AI tools that are out there. We don’t need to review every comma in an agreement for the first time. Maybe you have an AI-enabled solution that does a first cut for you, and then you can go through and focus on the key areas. I would say tools, technology, what-not-to-do list, and then outsourcing where necessary.

I want to go back to something you said earlier about relationships. I’m paraphrasing here, but you said that relationships are key. Building relationships with people outside of the legal department with your key business stakeholders is so important. Attending those sales meetings for some of the more junior in-house counsel is important. Getting an education on what the business does and what the various business units do to benefit or move the collective whole forward is important.

How do you develop those relationships as an in-house lawyer? Do you often meet with initial skittishness, like, “We don’t want legal to sit in our business meeting because they may tell us all the things that we’re doing wrong.” How do you open those doors and get closer to the business so that you can have those relationships that help you help them?

I have not had that reaction. I have not had the, “Stay out of our business,” reaction. I always start with a one-on-one conversation with the head of whatever unit it is. I try to set up regular one-on-ones to get to know them. If I’m starting at a new company or it’s a new leader, I offer, like, “I’m here. I want you to succeed. I want to learn about you. How can we best serve you?

If it’s helpful for you, I’m happy to meet with you monthly or every other week, whatever works for you. Let me know. Are there people on your team you think I should meet with? Do you have staff meetings or other meetings that would be helpful for me to attend? I find that showing an interest and a willingness to get engaged, people are very receptive to that. If I got pushback like that, I would be concerned. I’d be like, “What happened before I got here that they’re worried about the police coming to their meetings?”

The interest is so key. One component of building or cultivating a strong relationship is to develop trust between the two people and show interest, or even be slightly vulnerable to admit that you don’t know it all already. We were talking about our image earlier. Oftentimes, as attorneys, we want to seem very competent, like, “You can trust us to handle all of your problems or your legal needs. I don’t want to admit that I don’t know exactly what your business does.” Hearing you permit someone to ask questions, show an interest, dig a little deeper, and recognize that they’re not going to know everything about a business the first time they step into the role is key.

Building Bridges: Nurturing Relationships With Business Stakeholders

I agree with that 100%. Alex, I wanted to ask you this because you’ve gone from a legal role to a business role. What’s your impression of working with a company’s lawyers? What would help you feel connected and build trust?

It’s a lot of what you said earlier. If they take the time to understand what I am focused on, which is revenue growth, everything else is easy. Where I’ve run into challenges in the past is when the lawyers stay focused on every single word in the contract, for example, without seeing the big picture of, “We need this deal to happen for XYZ reasons for the company. We need to prioritize what red lines we submit.” It ties back to what you’ve said, Stacy. It’s been fascinating for me to hear from you and others who are in the CLO or GC seat because I’ve never worked in-house. It’s always so fascinating to hear how those of you on the other side see everything.

Cultivating Your Legal Network: The Power Of Connections

A conversation I have a lot about is those red lines. There are a lot of calories burned in producing that. I always ask, “Are we going to litigate this? Why are we trying to paint the Mona Lisa here? What happens if the business goes sideways? Are we going to sue or get sued?” Try to put some risk parameters around the ink that you’re spilling. I don’t think that people realize that over-editing a contract is business communication to the other party. You’re telling them what kind of company you are. They may not want to do business if you’re a pain in the ass.

A contract is business communication to the other party; it tells them what kind of company you are, and they may not want to do business if you're a pain. Share on X

It sends a message in all of your interactions if you’re on the sales side, but even on your buy side if you’re looking at a vendor. We look at how flexible they are with our red lines. You’re right. It’s a preview of the relationship. The bigger principle that I’m sensing from you, Stacy, is that you’ve got to weigh everything, be resourceful, and always be aware of all of the dynamics that are happening.

One thing that I wanted to ask, which I thought of when Candice and you were talking about relationships, is about the CFO. This is a business stakeholder in your business, but also happens to often hold the keys to resourcing for your department. Any specific tactical advice you have on building the relationship with the CFO or finance, specifically?

It’s the same recipe as the other relationships, but maybe you need to spend more time with the CFO. I have not had the circumstance where the CFO is telling me no. They may say, “Not now. Can we wait until the second quarter results?” It’s talking to them like a business person, like, “I need this other headcount because we’re opening up these new sites. There are going to be leases, and I need somebody to have eyes on that with the new leader. This is what I think they’re going to do.”

The ask can’t be putting your budget spreadsheet across the desk and saying, “Give me my money.” It goes back to being a leader and a strategic partner, like, “This is what I’m thinking.” I’ve said that plenty of times. I’m like, “We don’t have to do this work. If you want us to pay flex talent, or if you want us to pay a law firm to do this work.” Involve them as a partner in the decision-making, as opposed to setting it up like they’re the boss with all the bags of money and you’re just trying to figure out how you can grab it. Bringing them into your thought process and having them be a partner in the work is how I would do it.

I would bet that your tendency to be creative with resources adds a lot of credibility because you’re looking at smaller firms. You sometimes look at flex talent. Sometimes, you’re looking at AI or technology. The fact that you’re looking at something to track inbound requests shows that you’re evaluating the work workload demands and how you’re resourcing them. I have to imagine all of that adds credibility when you’re having that budget conversation with the CFO.

That’s why I say relationships are everything. It is showing them who you are and showing, “I care. I’m not trying to grab the money from you,” on a consistent basis. I appreciate your observation because that is what I’m trying to do. It’s the same with doctors. We, as lawyers, have technical training. There’s a little bit of a mystique about what we know. We need to bring people in and help them understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. That’ll get us a lot further.

Don’t Sleepwalk Through Your Career: A Final Word Of Advice

Stacy, I feel like there are so many gold nuggets in the last few minutes of this particular episode. You have been such a leader in that professional development space, particularly for in-house counsel. On your own show, you’ve mentioned a lot of resources or people to look at some of their writings already in this show. As we end this conversation, what is a piece of advice that you would give to in-house counsel to, in your words, level up their careers, their performance in their current jobs, and their influence among the companies in which they work? What would you tell them?

First of all, I appreciate you saying that. Professional development is something that lights me up. I am pumped about it. I love helping people figure out what’s important to them in their careers and helping them get there. If I had one piece of advice, it would be, “Don’t sleepwalk through your career.” There is so much work. It is very easy to avoid thinking about what you want in your life and your career by having your head down and doing that work.

Don't sleepwalk through your career. Share on X

It’s like Ferris Bueller. Don’t let it pass you by. You have to look up and see. Every day when I leave work, I think, “Did I feel good about today? Why did I feel good? I felt good because I helped so-and-so move something forward, or I got all these things checked off my list.” Whatever it is, what is it about what I’m doing that I like? Conversely, what don’t I like? I could be like, “I was on Zoom all day yesterday. It was a super bummer.” That tells me I need to have in-person meetings, or I need quiet time, or I need a different change of space. It would be to pay attention to what you want and what gets you going, and do more of that.

I love that.

That’s such good advice.

We’re going to end there. I feel like that’s the conclusory sentence of the paragraph right there. Stacy, thank you so much for sharing your time, your perspective, your expertise, and your advice. I would encourage anyone reading to tune in to your show.

Thank you so much for the plugs. I appreciate it.

It is such a great resource, particularly for folks who are in-house or considering going in-house. It gives a great overview of what some of the challenges and opportunities may be if you’re looking to make that transition from a firm to in-house.

Thank you.

Thank you for all of it, Stacy.

Thank you, Stacy.

I enjoyed being with you.

This was super fun. It’s fun being on this side of the mic.

You’re good at it. Thank you.

Thank you, Stacy.

   

Episode Resources

• Latitude Legal
• Leveraging Latitude
• C-Suite Series: What The CFO Wants In The Legal Department Kevin Rubin, CFO BetterUp
• What It Takes To Be A Good Lawyer In The Legal Department: Dana Lira Warner Bros. Discovery
• ResourcesPodcast Accelerating Business Velocity: Legal Ops in Focus with Mike Haven
• Using DEI To Level-Up The Legal Department: Valerie Portillo, Diversity Lab
• Don’t Say “No” Ask How: Developing A Team In The Legal Department Kate Dugan Energizer