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Whether it's managing risk at Disney, or driving growth at scaleups, legal needs to communicate effectively. Electra Japonas, Founder of the Law Boutique, explains how to bridge the gap.
My name’s Electra, I’m the founder of The Law Boutique.
I spent ten years working in-house, but never just on the legal side. My role had always been a mixture of legal and commercial and I usually worked as a conduit between the two. For example, I was a commercial and contract manager at the European Space Agency and Airbus. My role was to bring the legal team and the space engineers into a room where I would translate what each of the parties were trying to achieve and balance the two sides for a successful negotiation. I spent a lot of time wondering why my role was even necessary - ultimately, both sides were highly capable but there was often a breakdown in communication.
The penny dropped when in my last role at British American Tobacco, I spent four months negotiating a multi-million pound agreement for an IT project with the support of a big law firm, only to end up re-drafting the whole agreement when the business was unable to understand most of what it said. I spent the next few months translating the agreement into plain English, introducing visual guides to explain how the various teams need to operate to reach the right outcomes and building tech tools to streamline the contract management process. The idea for The Law Boutique came from this friction.
We primarily work with in-house counsel at Series B and tech scaleups to:
GCs at small scaleups are customer-centric - they have to be, because they’re immersed in this environment and they’re expected to do more than just manage risk
When I was at Disney, I worked with sales teams across the world and had to adapt to the technology they were using to keep the legal function reactive. As a result, I've always been quite tech-literate. I supported in-house lawyers with their overflow, and saw a need for improvements to their ways of working. Tech facilitated this but wasn't a solution.
My projects at Disney and EY were fast-paced, so I had to be agile. I used a lot of technology to automate my work and make my life easier. For example, I had a huge document with various clauses so I could copy-paste into my contracts. Whenever I came across a clause that I thought was well-drafted, I dropped it in. This became an imperative tool for me. I also created automated NDAs so people would just be able to fill in a form and get a populated NDA sent to them.
I’ve never worked at a traditional law firm, so I've always taken a project-based approach to legal services. I think that’s why The Law Boutique is unique because we deliver legal support holistically - we look at the delivery as a service, rather than looking at the letter of the law alone.
At a large corporation, legal is generally trained to manage risk, whereas in a scaleup, legal is expected to drive growth. GCs at scaleups are customer-centric - they have to be, because they’re immersed in this environment and they’re expected to do more than just manage risk. They’re expected to drive growth, find the right tools, create efficient ways of working, cut costs, and manage the daily functions of the legal team.
Definitely. Change in large organizations can feel almost impossible due to the layers and layers of governance, especially in a regulated environment like a big corporate bank. Change in a huge organization is definitely not impossible but it is really difficult as it means overcoming years and years of training that encourages risk-averse behaviour.
Comparatively, that kind of behaviour is almost unacceptable at a startup. The first question in a startup is ‘can I survive?’ and the second is ‘is this acceptable from a legal point of view?’ Change management is easier at these small organizations, and GCs are much more reactive - they’re typically more exciting, dynamic, innovative lawyers; well-crafted for this volatile environment.
Lawyers generally aren’t the first to say 'I don’t know' and that fear of vulnerability prevents innovation. Lawyers need to let their guard down, collaborate and embrace change to build a solution that works
The biggest misconception is that a ‘minimum viable product’ approach isn’t suitable for the legal environment. Lawyers generally aren’t the first to put up their hands and say 'I don’t know' and that fear of vulnerability prevents innovation. Lawyers need to let their guard down, collaborate and embrace change to build a solution that works.
Another misconception I hear is people saying they want to buy technology to drive change. They often think they can buy a piece of tech and all their problems will be solved, when really they should be looking at how they work holistically, and how they can get the buy-in on specific solutions to make them more effective.
Technology has the potential to be amazing, but if you haven't spent enough time understanding the problem you’re going to solve, and most importantly, an understanding of the end-user, it just won’t work.
We’ve got a formula for this at The Law Boutique:
After all those steps have been completed, it’s important to iterate and get constant feedback - not just from the team but also from the wider business in order to achieve what you need to.
Find out more about how The Law Boutique can help legal teams work more efficiently.
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Electra Japonas is the CEO and founder at The Law Boutique, and co-Founder at oneNDA