Leveling Up In-House: Leadership, Strategy, and Professional Development

Transcript

Stacy Bratcher 00:00

The number one priority when you are in-house is building relationships with the business. Be a strategic partner.

Alex Su 00:07

How do you develop ways to contribute to the company goal if it’s revenue growth?

Stacy Bratcher 00:13

You kind of have to shed that traditional legal training. It’s not, no, it’s yes and.

Candice Reed 00:20

What is a piece of advice that you would give to in-house counsel to, in your words, level up?

Stacy Bratcher 00:27

I encourage all in-house departments to start looking at ways that their companies can recover affirmatively. Put it out there, manifest your future.

Candice Reed 00:37

This is Leveraging Latitude, cultivating a full life in the law. Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Candice Reed 00:51

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

Alex Su 01:05

Thanks, Candice. I’m so excited to be here today because we’ve got a wonderful guest. Stacy Bratcher is here today with us, and I wanted to quickly introduce her so we can dive right away into it. 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 20 years of in-house experience, but before joining Cottage Health, she spent 15 years as a healthcare attorney at the University of Southern California. Stacy began her career as an associate attorney for healthcare legal firm, Hooper, Lundy, and Bookman in Los Angeles. Stacy is also the host of her own podcast 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 today.

Stacy Bratcher 01:58

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

Candice Reed 02:02

Stacy, it is great to talk with you and we appreciate your time and the perspective that you will be sharing with us today. But I have to ask you, because Alex mentioned your podcast, The Legal Department, 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, but I enjoy that part of your podcast. So I wanted to turn the mic on you and see what you would say and answer to that question.

Stacy Bratcher 02:37

Thanks so much for listening, and I love that you grabbed that nugget. It is a fun way to open the show, and I find, although I do find the guests get a little stressed about wanting to be really interesting,. I have two fun facts, but the one I think I’ll use for this show is growing up our family car was a 1969 Stingray Corvette convertible. And if you’re not familiar with American Heavy Metal, there’s only two seats in that car, and ours did not have a car seat for children. So I sat in the middle quite a bit.

Candice Reed 03:11

Just yesterday, I was saying something to my 11-year-old daughter, like, back in the day. I think I was talking about the number of bicycle accidents that I had as a child. And of course I never wore a helmet because as I mentioned to her, this was the eighties, and she looks at me quite seriously and says, “Mom, the eighties sound like a crazy time.” I was like, “You have no idea.” We were riding around in Corvettes without car seats.

Stacy Bratcher 03:42

That’s right. That’s right. Just sit on the console, it’ll be fine.

Candice Reed 03:46

Well, what was the second fun fact?

Stacy Bratcher 03:48

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.

Candice Reed 03:57

Wow, those are both really interesting.

Alex Su 04:00

Wow.

Stacy Bratcher 04:00

Yeah. But everybody has a fun fact. I just do find, especially lawyers, and I don’t know, you guys interview a lot of lawyers on this show. There’s this pressure to present in a certain way, and so 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 in it. So it’s just really interesting.

Candice Reed 04:31

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

Stacy Bratcher 05:14

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

Candice Reed 05:30

What is it?

Stacy Bratcher 05:31

Well, I have two. The PG version, which I actually really identify with is a Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake. It’s all about a bad-ass woman who I very much identify with. And then my other one, which I am quite open with is Dirt Off Your Shoulder by Jay-Z, because ladies is pimps too.

Candice Reed 05:56

This is great. I feel like we could totally derail the conversation right here.

Stacy Bratcher 06:00

Yeah, let’s talk about music.

Candice Reed 06:02

Just go in this direction. Leveling up your in-house legal career as you like to say, and managing your legal department, that could be a conversation for another day, but I won’t do that. But that needs to be part two where we talk about music, pump up songs, fun facts. I feel like I’m going to need some time to prepare just so that I can engage in that conversation with you. I would be one of those people who was desperately trying to think of something that was actually fun. I mean, as I mentioned, I’m a mom of an 11-year-old. Nothing about me is fun right now, apparently. I get told that on the daily.

Stacy Bratcher 06:43

Well, your risky life growing up in the eighties, I think might be a source of some-

Candice Reed 06:46

That’s right. Those crazy times when you didn’t wear bicycle helmets or buckle up when you were in the car. Okay, let’s get it back on track then for everyone who’s tuning in to hear you talk about effective strategies for managing a legal department and working with the business to align legal’s goals with the business objectives. So Alex gave us a quick introduction of 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 now? How did you get there or how did you get here?

Stacy Bratcher 07:33

How did I get here? That’s a great question. I got to Cottage Health after a beach walk, so that’s an interesting, that’s a fun story. My legal career though started, my mom always told me usually when I was mouthing off that I’d be a great lawyer. So that kind of planted the seed that was a career I should pursue. And like many of us, I’m sure, started at a law firm, which Alex mentioned, and it wasn’t as fulfilling as I would’ve liked it to be. From my roots in government, I really 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. So I actually told the story recently 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, and that was 20 plus years ago.

Stacy Bratcher 08:36

And I landed there, had a great career, but in, it was December 31st of 2019, I was on a beach walk with my husband. We were on vacation up in Cambria, California, which is like a little sleepy beach town. And I said, “I would love to live here up here in this area, but there are no jobs.” I said, “Unless Cottage Health ever called me,” because that’s the big health system up here. And in February of 2020 I got a call from a recruiter. So put it out there, manifest your future. That’s how I got here.

Candice Reed 09:14

Wow. What an interesting time to start a new job too, especially in healthcare.

Stacy Bratcher 09:18

Yeah, absolutely.

Candice Reed 09:20

Did you intend to specialize in healthcare either upon going to law school or coming out of law school, or was that just a fortuitous accident, if you will?

Stacy Bratcher 09:35

No, it was sort of intentional. As I mentioned, I’d worked in government before and I had worked on health and social policy issues, and healthcare is something that we all experience. Our health is probably our most important asset, and there’s just a huge infrastructure behind getting the healthcare that you need. And so I was already interested in the area. And then the law school I went to, St. Louis University, has the number one ranked health law program, and so it would just sort of naturally threaded my career that way.

Candice Reed 10:10

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

Stacy Bratcher 10:28

Well, I mean the healthcare experience, I mean, that is what I do. I’ve always, even when I was at USC, most of my work was in our healthcare enterprise, Keck Medicine. So it really gave me a foundation for what I wanted to do. And then the government experience, I say it was sort of my first love. I worked in the governor’s office in Missouri. I was very young and had a lot of exposure to what I call dinner table issues. So we talked about gay marriage at that time, reproductive rights, expanding healthcare to kids, guns, all the kinds of stuff that you debate with your family or whatever or avoid with your family these days. And really, I was in love with it, but guess what? I’m going to just, 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.

Stacy Bratcher 11:35

So that was, I mean, a very entry level job obviously. But when I came out of law school, like many folks, I had a lot of debt and going into a government job making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, I wasn’t going to be able to live on that. So that coupled with the need to really learn what health law was and what the… I wanted to be a real lawyer, quote, unquote. I’m going to make some, since we’re on camera, make my air quotes, a real lawyer. And so that’s why I went to a firm, but a big part of that decision was a financial one.

Candice Reed 12:16

So was the goal ultimately to end up in-house?

Stacy Bratcher 12:20

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

Alex Su 12:50

Stacy, you’ve worked in-house for quite some time now.

Stacy Bratcher 12:53

Yeah.

Alex Su 12:54

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, CLOs like yourself transform that perception and demonstrate its value as a strategic business unit?

Stacy Bratcher 13:17

Well, I think this is one of those, I don’t know what you call it, but we’re carrying this around with us. This, oh, we’re the cost center. And I don’t think that that’s true. And I think that one of the interviews I did on The Legal Department was with a CFO, Kevin Rubin, who’s the CFO of Better Up, and we talked a lot about that and his direction, and it’s the same, I’d say, north star that’s guided my in-house career is be a strategic partner. I know I go into a lot of rooms, a lot of meetings, and I think 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, finance, and you can put all those things together and if you can share that advice, that perspective in a clear value add way, it’s really not about the dollars and cents.

Stacy Bratcher 14:26

I really think especially senior level in-house folks, 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. So 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 really put that aside and think about how, if I was the business, what would be helpful to me? Yes, there are these minefields, but tell me how to get through them so we can accomplish the business objective. So really changing the framing of how you’re looking at different problems, issues, bringing a solution-oriented strategic mindset would be number one.

Candice Reed 15:25

Stacy, do you think that most attorneys come into an in-house role with that mindset, and so therefore it’s almost this self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, where it’s like, “Oh, everyone’s going to see me as the house of no,” and so we’re almost creating our own reality when we go in-house with that perception? Or 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, and 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?

Stacy Bratcher 16:18

Yeah, so that’s two questions. First of all, I don’t think, 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. And an episode I did with Dana Lyra, who’s an SVP at Warner Brothers, she talked about, “It was my first week of the job, they gave me a contract or something to review. I sent up markups or it was a press release. I said, ‘No, we can’t say that.’ And I sent it off and I thought, great job. I’ve done my job for the day.” And guess what? That did not go well. She has three VPs on the phone saying, “What the hell is this all about?” So I think that there is not an awareness of that it is a different job.

Stacy Bratcher 17:05

Your job in-house is to facilitate the business. I think actually the best outside counsel know that too, but I think especially if you’re early in your career when you make a change, I think you don’t necessarily know that. Then to question about how do you rebrand? I think that you have to start out as business first, make it a priority. 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. Really immerse yourself in learning that business. That alone sets you up 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. So that’s the number one.

Stacy Bratcher 18:01

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

Alex Su 18:39

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, and 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 and I know that you and I have talked before more tactically about how do you do that, especially if your company is focused on revenue growth. How do you do that as a legal department or as a GC or CLO? And I’m sure you have stories from what you’ve seen over the years, and I know that our listeners would love to hear any tactical advice you may have.

Stacy Bratcher 19:21

And the question is how to learn about the business?

Alex Su 19:24

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

Stacy Bratcher 19:39

Sure. Well, I mean a lot of times the legal department can be, it can either be a facilitator or a blocker to business and let’s just say enterprise level contracting is certainly a great example of that, where the business is trying to make a big sale and maybe there’s a contract associated with that. And if you’ve got to align your team that this is the priority of the business and we’re not going to litigate every comma, we’re not going to 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 by before the end of the quarter, before the investor call, whatever the benchmark may be. Sterling Miller, as you may know, is sort of the, I call him the OG of in-house, but he’s talked about attending those sales meetings so you know, what are the sales team’s top three things? Because your department is getting every piece of paper or every, Tom, Dick and Harry is asking you some which may not be relevant for the company’s revenue goals.

Stacy Bratcher 20:53

Likewise, so in my industry, insurance company contracts are a big deal. Managed care contracts are a big deal. So making sure we get those done quickly is an issue. But I’m not just processing paper. I might be coming up with ideas for them to strategize, “Oh, hey, we’re also developing this urgent care platform. Maybe we can expand our reach with this payer by giving them a contract.” You know what I mean? Just thinking about the business and giving ideas that may not even be legal ideas.

Alex Su 21:30

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

Stacy Bratcher 21:40

Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of… First of all, measuring the data in your department is a job in and of itself, and you mentioned legal operations, and that’s something that I’d encourage folks to develop if you don’t have it, which is a way to show some hard data. But for example, we don’t, other than the insurance side of the business, we are here to take care of people. And so 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, and there’s a delta between what you were willing to accept and what I got you.

Stacy Bratcher 22:21

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

Candice Reed 22:57

As the general counsel or the chief legal officer, how do you determine who does what in your department? So 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 and how you structure or manage your workload?

Stacy Bratcher 23:44

Well, I’m glad you mentioned legal ops. We’re exploring, I don’t know if we’re calling it a matter management, but an intake management system because as I mentioned, the inbound requests and need, it is, I always call it a bottomless pit of need. It’s like your children, right? They’re always going to be needing something. I love my clients, I love our organization, but they’re hungry. They always need to be fed. And if we don’t have a good handle on what they’re asking for, it’s hard to know who has expertise to do a certain thing. I’ve had a few, not infrequently, I’ve had people ask multiple lawyers the same questions, looking for the same work, and that’s not efficient at all. So 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?

Stacy Bratcher 24:47

I also try to, I have a small department now, at USC, we had a much larger department, so there was more people to allocate work to. So my current team is broken up between legal and litigation and operations and then transactional, and then I’m over both of them, so that’s a little cleaner. But there are, I call ERISA issues. Where does that go? That’s not transactional, but there’s both employment issues, there’s litigation issues, compliance issues with that. I try to also match people’s interests with the work. That’s probably the golden rule. I still do this. I just take a piece of paper and I write out all of the different work that we have, and then I write down who are the people 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. So that’s kind of a high level of how to do it, but subject matter, interest, and then if you want, we can talk about stretch projects, which is something that I like to do also.

Stacy Bratcher 26:09

And again, this tends to be more something that you worry about in a larger department. But me personally, one of the things that lights me up is professional development. That’s why I have a podcast about professional development for lawyers. So I am always looking for ways to help my team get more exposure, more experience, etc. Larger teams, and I’ve talked to Valerie Portillo at the Diversity Lab about this, having a very visible dashboard for stretch projects to show what are they, who are the key stakeholders, is there a board component, and making those widely available so people can volunteer for those.

Stacy Bratcher 27:03

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

Candice Reed 27:39

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

Stacy Bratcher 28:08

It depends on the size. Again, I have a very small department now, 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, they just kind of come up organically. “We want to explore this transaction. Oh, we’ve got this big class action lawsuit,” or just different, or we’re going to implement a new GDPR compliance program or whatever. They kind of come up organically. We do certainly at the beginning of the year, set goals that track our organizational goals. So I’ll meet with folks individually and as a team to talk about what these are and whether people, how they want to be involved in it. So yeah, it is both one-on-one and in a group.

Alex Su 28:57

I’ve got a question about how you balance all of that with your team. So as we hear, many in-house legal departments are stretched thin, maybe some of these folks want to take on these stretch projects for professional development reasons, but 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?

Stacy Bratcher 29:21

Yeah, again, 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. And I would guess I would tell your audience, if your team is doing every hotel contract, catering agreements, there’s a bunch of noise not to spend any time on, zero time on. So having a handle first on what are the demands of the team, that’s why that intake tool that I’m trying to get is really, I think going to be important. It’s going to help me see exactly what is coming. But Sterling Miller, again has a concept he calls the not-to-do list. What are the things we’re not going to do just because there’s no value add there or the ROI on doing that and the tax on our time just isn’t worth it.

Stacy Bratcher 30:18

So that’s one way is just don’t do certain things. The next is outsource. So using different resources I think is really important, Alex. And technology, that’s where we’re all really kind of, I think 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 first time. Maybe you have an AI enabled solution that does a first cut for you, and then you can go through and just focus on the key areas. So I would say tools, technology, what not-to-do list, and then outsourcing where necessary.

Candice Reed 31:09

I want to go back to something you said earlier about relationships because I believe, 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, getting an education on what the business does and what the various business units do to benefit or move the collective whole forward. How do you develop those relationships as an in-house lawyer, or do you often meet with initial maybe kind of a skittishness like, “Oh no, 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?

Stacy Bratcher 32:19

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. And I try to set up, as I said, regular one-on-ones just to get to know them. And if I am starting at a new company or it’s a new leader, I just offer like, “Hey, 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, every other week, whatever works for you, and let me know, are there people on your team you think I should meet with or do you have staff meetings or other meetings that would be helpful for me to attend?” Just showing an interest and a willingness to get engaged, I find people are very receptive to. If I got pushed back like that, I would be really concerned, like, what happened before I got here that they’re worried about the police coming to their meetings.

Candice Reed 33:30

I think the interest is so key. I think one component of building or cultivating a strong relationship is to develop trust between the two people and showing interest or even being slightly vulnerable to admit that you don’t know it all already. And I think that oftentimes as attorneys, we were talking about our image earlier, we want to seem very competent. You can trust us to handle all of your problems or your legal needs. And so I don’t want to admit that I don’t know exactly what your business does. And so hearing you give permission for someone to ask questions, to show an interest, to dig a little deeper, recognizing that they’re not going to know everything about a business the first time they step into the role, I think that’s key.

Stacy Bratcher 34:32

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that a hundred percent. Alex, I wanted to ask you, because you’ve been from a legal role to a business role, what’s your impression of working with a company’s lawyers and what would help you feel connected and build trust?

Alex Su 34:50

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 X, Y, Z reasons for the company, we need to prioritize what red lines we submit. So again, it ties back to what you’ve said, Stacy, and I think that 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 and it’s always so fascinating hear how those of you on the other side see everything.

Stacy Bratcher 35:43

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

Candice Reed 36:36

Yeah.

Alex Su 36:37

For sure. It sends a message in all of your interactions, and both 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 are they with our red lines. And so you’re absolutely right. It’s a preview of the relationship. And the bigger principle that I’m sensing from you, Stacy, is that you’ve got to weigh everything and be resourceful and always be aware of all of the dynamics that are happening. And one thing that I wanted to ask that I thought of when Candice and you were talking about relationships is 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?

Stacy Bratcher 37:27

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

Stacy Bratcher 38:09

The ask just can’t be putting your budget spreadsheet across the desk and say, “Give me my money.” And it goes back to being a leader and being a strategic partner like, “Hey, this is what I’m thinking. We don’t have to,” and I’ve said that plenty of times. “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,” and just 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. Really bringing them into your thought process and having them be a partner in the work is how I would do it.

Alex Su 38:57

And 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, but 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 workload demands and how you’re resourcing them. So I have to imagine all of that adds credibility when you’re having that budget conversation with the CFO.

Stacy Bratcher 39:22

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

Candice Reed 40:10

Stacy, I feel like there are so many gold nuggets just in the last few minutes with this particular podcast, but you have been such a leader in that professional development space, particularly for in-house counsel with your own podcast, The Legal Department. You’ve mentioned a lot of resources or people to look at some of their writings and already in this podcast. 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, their influence among the companies within which they work? What would you tell them?

Stacy Bratcher 41:06

Well, first of all, I just appreciate you saying that. I mean, 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 career and helping them get there. I really, really do. And if I had one piece of advice, it would be don’t sleepwalk through your career.

Stacy Bratcher 41:29

I think there’s so much work, and I feel like I’m crying that, “Everybody wants me. They’re asking me too many questions.” No, there is so much work, and it is very easy to avoid thinking about what you want in your life and in your career just by having your head down and doing that work. 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? And why? Why did I feel good? Oh, 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? And conversely, what don’t I like? Oh, I was on Zoom all day yesterday. It was a super bummer. Okay, well, that tells me I need to have in-person meetings, or I need quiet time, or I need a different change of space. So it would really be pay attention to what you want and what gets you going and do more of that.

Candice Reed 42:34

I love that.

Alex Su 42:36

Such good advice.

Candice Reed 42:36

It’s such good advice. Okay, we’re going to end there because I feel like that’s the conclusory sentence of the paragraph right there. Stacy, thank you so much for sharing your time and your perspective, your expertise, your advice. I would encourage anyone listening to listen to your podcast, The Legal Department.

Stacy Bratcher 43:02

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

Candice Reed 43:06

It is such a great resource, particularly for folks who are in-house or considering going in-house. I think 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.

Stacy Bratcher 43:27

Thank you.

Candice Reed 43:27

So thank you for all of it today, Stacy. I really enjoyed being with you.

Stacy Bratcher 43:31

Yeah, super fun. It’s fun being on this side of the mic.

Candice Reed 43:34

Yeah, well, you’re good at it. So thank you.

Alex Su 43:38

Thank you, Stacy.

Tim Haley 43:39

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