Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues! This week, Scott is joined by Jim Reid, Chief Legal Officer at Fortis, the $35bn North American utilities group headquartered in Newfoundland, Canada. Jim’s career shift is one many lawyers dream about but rarely execute—moving directly from partnership at leading Canadian firm Davies into his first-ever in-house role as a general counsel. In this episode, Jim reflects on the lessons forged during nearly twenty years in private practice and the ...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Stephanie Lopes, Chief Legal Officer at Volt.io, the UK-based fintech scale-up powering global instant payments through open banking. Stephanie joined Volt after a decade in the tech transactions team at Bird & Bird, where she worked closely with the founders from their earliest days and even drafted Volt’s first client contract. In...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Katja Fenton, General Counsel and Executive Team Member at Fugro, the global geo-data company supporting safer infrastructure, offshore wind development, cleaner energy, and sustainable cities. Remarkably, Katja joined the conversation during her first 90 days—a pivotal moment when lessons feel sharpest, transitions feel largest, and in...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Andy Cooke, Chief Legal Officer at Perk, the global business travel and expenses platform. Andy shares a grounded, refreshingly practical look at what it means to build and lead an in-house legal team inside a high-growth tech company. Drawing on his experience at Perk and his earlier career in private practice and in-house, Andy unpack...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Carolyn Herzog, Chief Legal Officer and Board Secretary at Elastic, the Dutch-headquartered, NYSE-listed global search and AI company. With a career spanning senior legal roles at Symantec, Arm, and now Elastic, Carolyn has led through major transformations in cybersecurity, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, ...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Emily Barker, Global General Counsel and Executive Committee member at Arcadis, the Dutch-headquartered, Euronext-listed design, engineering, and sustainability consultancy employing more than 32,000 people worldwide. Emily reflects on stepping into her first executive leadership role, moving beyond legal advice to help shape global bus...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by James Sullivan, an experienced General Counsel and business leader who most recently served as Group General Counsel at Bitstamp, one of the world’s longest-standing cryptocurrency exchanges. James shares an inside look at what it’s like leading legal in the fast-moving world of digital assets — an industry that blends rapid innovation ...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Jonathan Cope, Managing Director of the Specialty Lines business at RSA Group Insurance. After a decade as General Counsel and executive-team member, Jonathan made the rare move from legal leadership into a commercial managing-director role. He reflects on what it’s been like to step out of law after nearly twenty years and into a marke...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal-AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott is joined by Portia Thornhill, General Counsel and Partner at Elixirr, the challenger consultancy competing with the Big Four. Portia shares her journey from nearly a decade at Allen & Overy to building a thriving in-house career that ultimately led to partnership an exceptional recognition for an in-house lawyer. Her lessons are grounded in res...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law continues in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal AI platform built for in-house teams. This week, Scott Brown is joined by Frankie Williams, Chief Legal Officer at DeepL, an AI-powered language platform transforming how people and businesses communicate across borders. Frankie shares insights from leading a global legal team through rapid growth, reflecting on lessons learned from an in-house career that’s taken her through IPOs, acquisitions, and adv...
Season 8 of Lessons I Learned in Law kicks off in partnership with Wordsmith AI, the legal AI platform built for in-house teams. Emilie Mathieu, General Counsel at Checkout.com, joins Scott Brown to share her journey from Amazon and eBay into the fast-paced world of fintech, where she now leads legal, compliance, and enterprise risk across a global team of 110. In this conversation, Emilie reflects on stepping up from managing 14 people to an executive role in one of the world’s most dynamic ...
Doug McClure, Senior Counsel at Northrop Grumman, shares lessons learned from more than two decades of in-house practice across heavy industry, infrastructure, and now one of the world’s largest aerospace and defence contractors. Doug reflects on his eight years supporting Northrop Grumman’s European operations—navigating a highly regulated, high-stakes sector that demands clarity, trust, and creativity. He begins with the cornerstone of his approach: communication. Doug explains why over-com...
Nick Havers, General Counsel for Europe and now also Managing Principal at Lockton, the world’s largest privately owned insurance brokers, shares three sharp, experience-driven lessons shaped across more than a decade in the insurance broking sector. Nick’s recent promotion to Managing Principal, an honour usually reserved for client-facing, revenue-generating leaders, is a milestone not just for him, but for how lawyers are recognised as true business partners at Lockton. His elevatio...
Pola Karolczyk, General Counsel and Chief People Officer at Cowboy, joins Scott to share her dynamic legal journey: from competition law in Poland and US law firms, to regulatory work at Apple, and now building the legal and people functions at a fast-moving e-bike scaleup. Pola reflects on three powerful lessons, beginning with the need to ditch legal jargon and speak human. She learned early on that most people, especially in business, aren’t interested in the mechanics of th...
Tara Haig, General Counsel at Multiverse, joins Scott to reflect on a legal career driven by curiosity, courage, and instinct. From saying yes to opening a New York office two years post-qualification to leading legal, privacy, and governance for one of the UK’s most prominent edtech scale-ups, Tara’s story is all about leaning into discomfort, and figuring it out along the way. Now part of the exec team at Multiverse, a $1.7B AI-powered apprenticeship platform, Tara shares her take on ...
Shelley McKinley, Chief Legal Officer at GitHub and Vice President at Microsoft, joins Scott to share career-defining lessons from two decades at the sharp edge of tech, innovation, and regulation. Now leading GitHub’s global legal, policy, and trust teams, Shelley offers a behind-the-scenes look at the early days of GitHub Copilot, launched before ChatGPT put generative AI on the map, and shares what it really means to advise on emerging technology when the law hasn’t caught up yet. Sh...
Roel Staes, until recently General Counsel International at FedEx, joins Scott to reflect on a 22-year in-house legal career that scaled from Benelux counsel to overseeing a 500-strong international legal, regulatory, security, and government affairs team. In this wide-ranging episode, Roel shares candid lessons from the top—on everything from managing complexity in global organisations to learning how to communicate with clarity, brevity, and precision. A strong believer in over-communicatio...
Emma Moloney, experienced General Counsel and in-house leader across media and tech, joins Scott to reflect on a career that has spanned continents, contracts, and crises. From early GC roles at National Geographic Channel and News UK, to launching crisis management workshops and mentoring lawyers, Emma’s journey blends legal leadership with creative problem-solving. In this episode, Emma unpacks the lessons that have shaped her approach. She shares why mastering difficult conversations is a ...
Jane Hyde, Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at RWS Group PLC, shares a refreshingly non-linear legal career that took her from City law to investment banking, via a sabbatical in wine tasting — all the way to the executive team of a global AI-enabled language services business. In this unfiltered episode, Jane reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped her leadership journey. From leaving Freshfields for the trading floor at JP Morgan, to taking a career break and topping the glob...
Daniel Winterfeldt, General Counsel for EMEA and Asia at Jefferies, shares his powerful journey from Wall Street to London and from capital markets partner to in-house legal leader and diversity champion. In this candid conversation, Daniel opens up about his early experiences as an openly gay lawyer navigating the stark culture shock of moving from New York to London in the early 2000s — a time when being out in the legal profession was far from the norm. This culture gap eventually led him ...