CCBJ September 2023 Edition

Corporate Counsel Business Journal

SEPTEMBER 2023

VOLUME 31, NUMBER 8

The Future of Dispute Resolution is Here

BRIDGET M. MCCORMACK TALKS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ARBITRATION AND HER ROLE AS PRESIDENT & CEO OF AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION.

INSIDE

Getting to "Yes"

AI Transforms Legal Service Delivery

The Future of Dispute Resolution is Here

Global Representation of Models, Entertainment Professionals & More

AND MORE!

NETWORK

The participants in the CCBJ Network demonstrate, through their many contributions, their unwavering commitment to the advancement and success of corporate law departments. The engagement and support of these “partners of corporate counsel” assure we continue to develop and distribute the news and information this unique and sophisticated audience relies on to meet the evolving legal and business needs of their organizations.

Strategic Partners

American Arbitration Association

Barnes & Thornburg

Clifford Chance

Contract Logix

McGuireWoods LLP

Mitratech

Thomson Reuters

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

OpenText

Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics

Advisors Contributors

CobbleStone

Kristin

Getting to "Yes"

 Catherine Budzynski, Chief Legal Officer, Ohmium shares her aspirations for the legal profession along with insights on her professional journey

CCBJ: Please tell us what led you to join Ohmium?

The short answer is that I had written down a wishlist for my dream job, and Ohmium checked all the boxes. The longer answer is that my past career experiences really have set me up and led me to this role. I started as a paralegal in the Energy Project Finance Group at Skadden in their New York office, and I loved working on global energy deals. I went to law school with the intention of going back to that group. And then I graduated law school during the Great Recession. I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to go back to Skadden, but with the slowing market there was a greater need in the Capital Market group. There I worked with a very talented group of attorneys on IPOs and other financings and met some of my greatest mentors.

After that, I made the move to go in-house to Aflac where I held roles of increasing leadership responsibility. My most recent role was as the Head of Legal and Corporate Secretary for their global venture capital fund, which included a group of international subsidiaries. While I was doing that, I earned my executive MBA from Auburn University. This had a huge impact on accelerating my career and pushing me to take the role at Ohmium. I’ve always had a business-first mindset, but the executive MBA program deepened my financial acumen and helped me get more comfortable with risk taking. That’s when I realized I wanted to be on the startup side, as opposed to investing in startups, so I started looking for the right opportunity.

Ohmium was the ideal fit. Ohmium produces proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers, which use water and renewable energy to produce green hydrogen. Green hydrogen is a sustainable resource that can be used in many

sectors and applications across the world. I was thrilled to come back to my first love of the law, which is the energy space and it’s an exciting time because this industry is poised for exponential growth in the coming years. We just completed a $250 million Series C fundraising, which was one of the largest globally for the year, so I was able to put my capital markets expertise and venture capital background to work.

I have been incredibly impressed with the highly sophisticated and creative leadership team that we have. We have a very intentional focus on diversity in the energy sector, which historically has not been very diverse. I joined about one and a half years ago as Chief Legal Officer and first in-house lawyer. We have now grown to a team of five. I love

I see being an in-house lawyer similarly to being an emergency room doctor. You are triaging, patching up whatever you can handle, and then you know when it's time to call in the expert.

being able to build my own team from the ground up and develop processes and procedures that work.

Talk to us about your leadership style and who and what has influenced it, and then we'll get into your hiring practices.

I've been very fortunate to have had wonderful mentors throughout my career. I'm a strong proponent of professional development and mentoring, at all levels on my team. For example, I will send other attorneys on my team as delegates to meetings so that they get exposure to executive leadership. I bring business partners to our team meetings to teach us about our product and how we make money because I believe every lawyer needs to understand every way that their company makes a dollar. I end my team meetings with a “professional development tip of the month.”

I also believe in giving exposure to different topics to all team members. I am not someone who believes in silos. If I set up information sessions with outside counsel or with our business partners on our product or an area of the law, I include the entire team. I of course have team members who are more focused on contracts or regulatory work, but I want people to be exposed to as much as possible. I believe it makes you a better lawyer, it makes you a better issue spotter, and may spark a new interest too.

What qualities do you look for when you’re hiring new people for your team?

My team's mission statement is “Get to Yes”, so I really look for people who embody that spirit. Some overarching

characteristics I look for in all of my team members would be curiosity, intelligence, creativity, a drive to learn more, openmindedness, high emotional intelligence, good communication skills and attention to detail, just to name a few.

I want someone who wants to expand their skillset and who will volunteer to take on new areas of the law as the need arises. I know many lawyers are apprehensive about having a resume that's not exactly linear, but I see that as a strength. If you started out as a prosecutor and then you worked in environmental law at a law firm, and then you went in-house and reviewed contracts, that's a plus.

I want that person on my team because it means they are not afraid of change. They are open to learning new things rather than staying in their comfort zone. None of my team members have previous experience in the energy space, but what that has done is it has allowed us to come up with creative solutions by borrowing concepts from other industries.

I see being an in-house lawyer similarly to being an emergency room doctor. You are triaging, patching up whatever you can handle, and then you know when it's time to call in the expert. This is your outside counsel, who are like the highly trained surgeons who do one type of complicated surgery exceptionally well. When it comes to looking for candidates for my team, it also means I look for candidates with good bedside manner. The Legal Department is different from other business units in that each business unit has a small handful of wildly important goals they’re working on along with their “business as usual” matters. For Legal, our “business as usual” matters are working on everyone’s wildly important goals. It's critical to find lawyers who can manage that in a calm and effective manner, so that they can manage the work, but also find a balance with personal time, which is a particular challenge in the legal profession.

Lastly, I have a very intentional focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I stress this with everyone who helps in recruiting and referrals. I'm proud of the fact that my

current team happens to be all women, which is unusual enough in the legal field, but even more so in the renewable energy space.

How would you describe the culture of your organization?

I'd say Ohmium is fairly unique in that we're a young company, so we have a steady drive for innovation and a “roll up your sleeves” mentality where everyone is pitching in to solve issues that arise. However, we also have the benefit of having a leadership team with decades of experience in our field of expertise. That is a very powerful mix to have. Ohmium has a strong emphasis on diversity at the Board level, at executive leadership and throughout the organization that sets us apart from others in our industry.

What is the most influential career advice you’ve ever received?

The first piece of advice is to get comfortable being uncomfortable. If you take a new job and you're fully comfortable on the first day, you likely haven’t stretched enough. The cliché about lawyers is that we're risk averse, but I believe it's important to get comfortable taking calculated risks. Branching out into new areas of the law, moving into new industries, or leaving the law firm life to go in-house or vice versa. Whatever it may be, continue to push yourself to grow throughout your career. This also has the potential to open doors that you may not even know exist yet. That has certainly been true for me.

The second piece of advice is learning how to speak truth to power, but doing so in a way that will be heard. As lawyers, and especially as Chief Legal Officer, it's critical to be able to speak truth to power. But it's equally important to message it in a way that will be best received by your organization.

What changes would you like to see within the legal profession?

I could write a whole book on this, but I will give you my top 3. First, a willingness to try new things and rely less on how it has been done before. It drives me crazy when I ask why something is done a certain way, and the answer is, "Because this is how we've always done it." If I'm really lucky, they'll even throw in how many years they've been doing it this way. Perhaps you've been doing it this way for 20 years, but is it really still the best way to do it today? Or can we do it this other way that would be five times faster and still give us the same protections that we care about?

Second, I wish there was a more intentional focus on developing business and financial acumen. I believe it should be part of any law school curriculum, as well as part of new associate training at law firms. It is crucial for lawyers to understand how their clients make money, so that we can provide solutions that are practical and not lean into the gimmick of, "I went to law school because I don't like math." There should be a much more intentional focus on developing meaningful legal metrics that show your department’s contribution to the bottom line, and you can't do that if you don't understand the business and the finance side.

Third, is more humanity. Cultivate a life outside of work, whether it's with loved ones, passion projects, mentoring, teaching, sports, art, music, travel or whatever else. Somehow lawyers have become synonymous with machines that always have to be on call and willing to drop everything to work nights, weekends and holidays to get the job done as quickly as possible while sacrificing everything else. Could there be a true emergency that warrants this once in a while? Sure, but that should not be the norm. Even if you love your job, you should be entitled to living a life well-lived, which includes pursuits outside of work and an ability to truly disconnect. And I think that makes people better lawyers too. 

Our panel is composed of accomplished arbitrators and mediators–attorneys, former federal and state judges, and business owners specializing in a diverse range of domestic and international subjects. Each brings a lifetime of experience in fields including healthcare, cyber-security, IP, aerospace, energy and more. When resolving your dispute requires industry expertise, trust the American Arbitration Association®

Front

AI Transforms Legal Service Delivery

Is AI magical or mundane? At least in the legal ecosystem, it seems to be both. According to a recent report from Thomson Reuters, “Stepping into the future: How generative AI will help lawyers improve legal service delivery,” lawyers are using AI-based tools every day to help them do legal research, analyze and draft contracts, conduct e-discovery, and automate routine tasks. And that’s just the tip of the spear as the next iteration of AI takes hold. “The new generation is sometimes called generative AI, and its power is based on the scale enabled by large language models of LLMs,” TR writes. “These new tools, when combined with legal data and legal domain expertise, will likely change and enhance the work of lawyers for years to come.”

5th Annual NOVEMBER 13, 2023

The Tarrytown House Estate

CCBJ is proud to announce the 5th Annual Women in Business & Law, Nov. 13, 2023, 2022, at The Tarrytown House Estate in Tarrytown, NY. Back again for the 5th time, this right-sized, in-person event allows for crucial education, mentoring and networking as well as pending CLE-eligibility.

REGISTER NOW!

SHO R T TA K E S

Surveying the Impact of AI on Law Practice

In this piece from the ABA Journal, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters discuss their recent surveys gauging the impact that generative AI could have on the practice of law. TR’s Future of Professionals Report: How AI is the Catalyst for Transforming Every Aspect of Work indicates that two of three respondents think AI will be transformational in the next five years. Over at LexisNexis, the International Legal Generative AI Report found that just under half of respondents think that AI will have a “significant or transformative impact on the practice of law.” Steve Hasker, president and CEO of Thomson Reuters, told ABAJ that AI could address issues such as job satisfaction and free up professionals to perform complex work to meet client needs. “We are at a unique moment where we have the opportunity to realize the benefits of human intelligence, thinking and collaboration differently while using the potential of AI to overcome some of professionals’ biggest pain points,” Hasker says.

Source: ABA Journal

GCs Crave Smarter Data

Law.com recently reported that 98% of in-house counsel say economic conditions are forcing them to cut budgets. “This financial crunch is creating greater pressure on general counsel to show CFOs and executive boards how their legal teams can reduce, manage and forecast costs to meet financial expectations – without compromising their mandate to lessen organizational risk by trying to accurately predict litigation outcomes,” Law.com concludes, citing Mark Smolik, a GC and board member of DHL Supply Chain Americas, who calls for “creative methods” to align financial goals with enhanced delivery of legal services. Smolik calls on law departments to make greater use of data. “The most successful people are the ones that come in with the data, collaborate on the data, get people aligned with the data, make a decision on the data and act on it,” Smolik says. With smarter data, users can evaluate the odds of a judge ruling in their organization’s favor, to the time a matter will take to resolve, to law firms’ win/loss records. That’s a healthy start for aligning dollars and decisions.

Source: Law.com

Law Firms Are Soft Underbelly for Hackers

A growing number of suits allege that law firms are penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to cybersecurity. That makes them sitting ducks for hackers, who see them as “sweet spots.” In a particularly ominous comment, Reed Stark, a former SEC enforcer and current cybersecurity consultant, says, “Whatever drawer you open, you will find something top secret and valuable. This area is ripe for litigation.” Among the firms already in the cybersoup are Proskauer, Kirkland, K&L Gates, Loeb & Loeb, and Orrick. Kent Zimmerman, a law firm consultant with the Zeughauser Group, adds that most firms, which lack budgets to invest sufficiently in cyber defense, are “soft underbelly” targets of hackers seeking client data, because firms “know where the market-moving information is.

Source: Bloomberg Law

Law Firms Face Diversity’s Slippery Slope

TIn this piece from Bloomberg Law, reporters Riddhi Setty and Khorri Atkinson delve into suits filed against Perkins Coie and Morrison Foerster claiming their DEI plans amount to “reverse discrimination” in cases probing the bounds of Section 1981 of the 1986 Civil Rights Act. Another lawsuit filed against Morgan Stanley & Co. concerns the termination of a White male employee who claimed he was replaced by a Black woman to comply with the firm’s diversity objectives. And yet another case concerns an Atlanta venture capital fund allegedly engaged in “explicit racial exclusion” by providing grants and resources to Black women who run small businesses. The cases are the work of the American Alliance for Equal Rights, a nonprofit founded by conservative activist Edward Blum, who brought the Supreme Court affirmative action challenges. The unconventional claims are an attempt to “circumvent all the administrative procedures required under Title VII,” says American University law professor Susan D. Carle. Experts say it’s uncertain whether the legal approach will sway the courts, but that might not matter in the long run. “To the extent that employers are worried about even getting sued, I think just bringing the lawsuits is going to successfully change employer behavior,” says an employment law professor at Saint Louis University School of Law.

Source: Bloomberg Law

Briefly

Todd Beaton and Andrew Mannarino Join McGuireWoods’ Securities Enforcement Team

Shannon Bell Appointed EVP & Chief Digital Officer at OpenText

Lucy Fato to Assume Role of Vice Chair at AIG

Akin Advises Viper Energy in $1B Acquisition of Permian Basin Mineral and Royalty Interests

Weil Advises Rangeland Midstream Canada in Sale of Clearwater Assets to Kingston Midstream

Clifford Chance advised Lumos (owned by EQT Infrastructure) on marketfirst $1.1B sustainabilitylinked infrastructure debt financing

Benjamin L. Hatch to Chair McGuireWoods’ Environmental & Mass Tort Department

Luis M. Martinez Appointed Co-Chair of the ABA’s International Law Section’s International Arbitration Committee

Contract Logix Expands Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Powered Data Extraction Capabilities in its Data-Driven Contract Management Platform

OpenText Completes Acquisition of KineMatik

Weil Advises Goldman Sachs in Sale of Its Personal Financial Unit to Creative Planning

Akin Gump Advised Preylock Holdings in $1.2 Billion CMBS Financing

Elizabeth Bjork Promoted to Chief Marketing Officer at UnitedLex

Required Reading

Too busy to read it all? Try these books, blogs, webcasts, websites and other info resources curated by CCBJ especially for corporate counsel and legal ops professionals.

STUDY: BTI Consulting Group

BTI, long known for its many surveys focused on client service excellence, such as the Client Service A-Team, recently released a somewhat different survey. In each of the last three years, the company mined data from more than 200 law firms on LinkedIn and used that data to calculate performance on 18 metrics, including nine “delivering the most compelling insights.” (This includes the simple tidbit that 83% of clients go to LinkedIn as part of their regular work routine.) From there, BTI drilled down to develop key benchmarks for the 9 metrics and ranked the performance of more than 200 firms. The results are interesting. As firms have done better on LinkedIn, they seem to have backed away from the platform. Each grouping (Am Law 30+, Am Law 31-100 and Am Law 101-200) is posting less frequently, BTI reports, despite “enormous” growth in followers. “The Am Law 2nd 100 are crushing active engagement,” BTI writes. They enjoy 2x the active engagement of the largest 30+ -- with the clear understanding the largest 30+ trounce everyone in number of followers.”

ANNOUNCEMENT: CLOC DEIB Council

Civil rights protections are migrating to exotic new locales to sweep in novel characteristics and categories, especially in jurisdictions led by Democratic lawmakers. The C.R.O.W.N. Act, which stands for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” was created in 2019 to ensure protection against discrimination and is seen as the most widespread of the new discrimination protections. It first passed in California and New York in 2019 and has gained momentum since, becoming law in more than 20 states and dozens of cities. Passage in Texas is widely seen as a major victory given the state’s size and its conservative lawmakers. Worker protections have increased against the backdrop of culture wars, says Michelle E. Phillips, an employment attorney with Jackson Lewis in New York. “At the same time that there’s an expansion of rights, there’s also a retrenchment of rights. It’s difficult for employers to navigate,” says Phillips, noting that many businesses have considered it important for employees to look a certain way, particularly in customer-facing roles. “The idea of a look-ism policy by a company is just no longer acceptable.”

Contributors

Thanks to the law firms, technology companies, alternative legal service providers, management consultants and other supporters of corporate law departments who share their insights and expertise through the CCBJ network. Your participation is appreciated.

Courtney Braun is Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Endeavor. She is currently overseeing Legal Affairs for the company’s representation businesses (including Hollywood Talent Agency WME, IMG Models, Art + Commerce and The Wall Group) and litigation for the company’s representation, fashion and content businesses (including New York Fashion Week, Miss Universe, Endeavor Content, and IMG Original Content). Reach her at cbraun@endeavorco.com

Catherine Budzynski is Chief Legal Officer at Ohmium. She has extensive public and private company experience with a proven record of success in both corporate and nonprofit settings. Catherine started her career at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP before going in-house to Aflac. At Aflac, Catherine held various legal leadership roles, including head of the Corporate Transactions Legal team and then Head of Legal and Corporate Secretary for Aflac Global Ventures. Reach her at catherine.budzynski@ohmium.com

Bridget McCormack is the President & CEO of American Arbitration Association. McCormack served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 2013 to 2022, first as an associate justice, and as chief justice from 2019 to 2022. Previously she was a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, where she taught criminal law and legal ethics and oversaw the law school's clinical programs as associate dean of clinical affairs. Reach her at bmccormack@adr.org

Legal Tech Veteran Steve Errick Joins the American Arbitration Association

iManage Launches iManage Insight+, a Cloud-Native Knowledge Curation and Search Solution

Corporate Partner Joseph Morrison Jr. Joins Barnes & Thornburg In Southeast Michigan

DISCO Showcases Product Momentum and Expansive Vision Designed to Accelerate AI Innovation at ILTACON

Cooley Team Secures Another Win for National Association of Realtors

Chris Rowland Promoted to Global Executive Director of DEIB Strategy at Mitratech

Clifford Chance advises Citi on the sale of its Taiwan consumer banking businesses to DBS

Peter Geovanes Joins McGuireWoods as Chief Innovation and AI Officer

Weil Advises the Initial Purchasers and the Lead Arrangers in Rain Carbon’s Offering of Senior Secured Notes and Term Loan Refinancing

Corporate Partner Laurian Cristea Joins Barnes & Thornburg

Cody Carper Joins Weil in Houston as Firm's Energy Build Continues

iManage Announces iManage Ai, a Powerful New Ai Engine to Transform Knowledge Search Across its Platform

Pulse

The Future of Dispute Resolution is Here

BRIDGET M C CORMACK

AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION

 Bridget M. McCormack talks about the future of arbitration and her role as President & CEO of American Arbitration Association.

Please tell us what led you to join the American Arbitration Association and take on your current role?

I was finishing my term as the Chief Justice on the Michigan Supreme Court. The Michigan Supreme Court has a strong norm that the chiefs who are selected by their peers serve two two-year terms, and I was finishing my second term. And so I was actively thinking about my next professional challenge at the same time that the American Arbitration Association (AAA) was looking for a new leader. AAA is such an important institution in Alternative Dispute Resolution and its role in delivering on the mission of access to justice.

The AAA was founded to help the courts deliver on their important mission and that made it an exciting opportunity for me. Luckily, the AAA Board of Directors thought so too, and here I am. I went from running a public dispute resolution system to running a private dispute resolution system that supports the public one. I care deeply about our public dispute resolution systems functioning well. That's where most people have to go to manage their disputes. But the private dispute resolution infrastructure that supports the public dispute resolution system is a critical part of the ecosystem; it's exciting to be able to serve this part of the ecosystem.

Please share some insight into your leadership style and who or what has influenced you along the way.

When people ask me about my leadership style, it always seems to me it might make more sense to ask the people with whom I work. They’d have a more accurate answer I

bet! My leadership style simply reflects my personality; I don't have the bandwidth to try and be somebody at work that doesn’t align with who I am not at work. I'm authentic, collaborative, curious, and really interested in hearing from people across my organization--and not just the ones who are on my calendar week to week. I like input from as many people as possible. I am always more successful when collaborating with others.

What's influenced me along the way has been observing lots of examples of effective leaders and less effective leaders. I've had four “career chapters,” and they've all been significantly different. Each one has given me opportunities to see leadership that works very well as well as some that works less well. I don't need to name names, but I consider myself lucky to have had all those different opportunities in different contexts to see what makes leaders effective

Please talk to us a little bit about the qualities you look for when you're putting your team together or amending your team.

It depends on the team and the organization. Sometimes there are just gaps, gaps in my knowledge or skills that I need to fill. For example, there are a lot of people who have worked at AAA for a long time who have real expertise in our organization and our industry that I don’t have yet, so they're an important part of the leadership team. I appreciate having people on my leadership team who are comfortable disagreeing with me--they are excellent thought partners in making all of our ideas better. I want to hear when one of my ideas might not be a great idea. The ability to tell me that is an important quality in the people on my team.

I like people who are curious and interested in thinking about whether we've always done things a certain way because that's the best way. I have a slide that I use in presentations titled “Just because we've always done it that way, doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid,” that has a picture of somebody running with the bulls. AAA actually is tremendously innovative, with a continuous improvement organizational mindset, so it's an exciting organization in

that way. That's one of my biggest surprises about it--that it has such a strong culture of innovation. Innovation is often hard in courts, for lots of understandable reasons—public funding, elected leaders, lagging infrastructure. I like to have people around me who question orthodoxy.

We've just finished innovation training for every AAA staff member, a big segment of which is about idea flow--how the more ideas you generate, the more likely you are to come up with a good one. There's good data on that—the importance of numerosity of idea generation to successful innovation.

Please talk to us a little bit about the culture of the organization.

The culture of an organization is so fundamental because, as you know, culture eats strategy for lunch (or breakfast or whatever your favorite meal is). It just does. It doesn't matter how good your strategy is if your culture is going to devour it. I inherited a great culture to build on and build from-- a culture of innovation, a culture of curiosity, a caring and kind culture, and one that values upstream thinking.

That’s a luxury, because it means you have a strong foundation from which to build and grow. We can focus on what our customers need, instead of fixing a broken culture before turning to our core business.

So we can focus on the upstream ways we can help our customers. We can think about where is the puck headed in dispute resolution. We're excellent at managing today’s disputes. But so much is changing in our industry, that we are also prepared to go where the puck is headed. A strong organizational culture is critical to doing that well. More critical than the specific strategic plan that ends up on paper.

Can you share any advice you've received throughout your career that has impacted your leadership style?

I don't remember any specific advice I've ever gotten, but I end up giving it a lot. I mentored a lot of law clerks, and lots of law students too, as I have taught on a law school faculty

We focus on the upstream ways we can help our customers and think about where the puck is headed in dispute resolution.

since 1996. My career has been a series of lucky accidents. For example, my first job out of New York University School of Law was as a Legal Aid Society lawyer trying cases in Manhattan. The legal aid lawyers were in a union and in 1994, we went on strike. On the second day of the strike, the mayor of the city of New York canceled the Legal Aid Society's contract. We all got fired, so I had to go get a different job.

That led me to my first job in legal education, a teaching job at Yale Law School. Law school teaching had not been on my radar! I started a very happy academic career because I had been fired. That job led me to a tenure track position at the University of Michigan. And from there, I was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court. In other words, it was a series of accidents.

Not having too much of a plan can actually be an effective plan. I always tell the students and the clerks that I mentor to be a little bit open to calling an audible and to give yourself space to see opportunities that come along and surprise you.

The average career is almost never linear. When you have a plan, it probably is unlikely to work out the way you expect. If you hold on to your expectations too closely, you might be disappointed when you don't need to be. There may be a really fantastic opportunity that's just not in your planned sight line. It's in your peripheral vision, and your peripheral vision can serve you well. That's more true now than ever, because the legal profession has changed so much in the last three years. The pandemic brought more change than has any other disruption in the last century. And the disruption we're about to see from generative AI to the business and the practice of law, and therefore, to those of us who serve

lawyers and their clients, is going to be tremendous. I tell law students that right now is the most exciting time to be entering the legal industry, even though it might feel terrifying because of all of the change that's upon us. But there are so many new opportunities for new lawyers. I kind of wish I was just graduating from law school right now. Not really--I love what I'm doing. But my second choice would be graduating from law school right now at this really exciting time.

What changes would you like to see within the profession?

Oh, how much time do we have? There is a massive market failure in the civil justice system. The Legal Services Corporation’s most recent Justice Gap report found that 92% of our neighbors have to navigate their civil justice problems without legal help because they can't afford it. They have to do it in a forum that uses a language they don't speak. That's a fundamental threat to the rule of law. The rule of law is just a set of ideas that depends on the public's confidence in them. When 92% of our neighbors can't navigate their civil justice problems, they might think that the rules don’t account for them. If people don't believe the rules account for them, they stop caring about the rules.

This justice gap is the top-line issue that needs fixing because the public's confidence in our justice system, and therefore the rule of law, depends on it. Legal information should be democratized. In a world where of universal legal

Bridget McCormack is the President & CEO of American Arbitration Association. McCormack served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 2013 to 2022, first as an associate justice, and as chief justice from 2019 to 2022. Previously she was a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, where she taught criminal law and legal ethics and oversaw the law school's clinical programs as associate dean of clinical affairs. Reach her at bmccormack@adr.org

information, where everybody could know what the law requires of them and also what it provides for them, we could grow confidence in our justice system. Today, most people don't have any way of figuring out what the law is, and most can’t afford a lawyer to help them find out. That's crazy.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has an important role to play in addressing this fundamental problem, too. The public justice systems are buried in people trying to navigate justice problems without any help or resources. They have limited funding and other resources, and they're swamped. We saw during the pandemic that upstream ADR systems made a tremendous difference in justice-delivery across certain civil justice dockets, where people largely navigate their problems without lawyers. One example was the eviction diversion programs that sprung up all around the country. In a pandemic you have to be creative to figure out how to deal with the large number of people who are going to be evicted at a time when that was going to cause tremendous problems for them and their families, as well as a large impact on the public health emergency. Courts across

the country, stood up statewide eviction diversion programs with American Rescue Plan funding.

Instead of having those cases go to the traditional litigation docket, we sent them all to mediation. We worked out solutions collaboratively, and we kept people in their homes and got landlords their payments. It was a great example of how ADR can play a critical role supporting our public justice delivery system. Obviously at AAA, we've known the benefits of alternative ways to resolve disputes for a long time--they're faster and cheaper and in B2B disputes get businesses get back to work. But it's also the case that in lots of other areas, people, organizations, and businesses prefer to have better choices for resolving their disputes--especially if those choices get them resolved faster, preserve relationships, and let them get back to living their lives and doing what they want to do. The role that ADR can play in the dispute resolution ecosystem is enormous and growing. It's only going to get more important to give people, businesses and other organizations more and better options. 

Global Representation of Models, Entertainment Professionals and More

COURTNEY BRAUN ENDEAVOR

CCBJ: Please give us some insight into your background and what led you to your current role.

I completed undergrad at NYU and then went to law school at the University of Michigan. After graduating, I wanted to return to New York because New York was my first love.

I ended up at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, a great firm with great people. I had an amazing experience there, in the IP group, where the work was a mixture of litigation, transactional, and IP prosecution. Despite the fact that it's a massive firm, being in a smaller department meant I had a very hands-on experience as a junior associate. When my then-boyfriend/later-husband moved to Los Angeles in 2006, I joined him and ended up in-house at Columbia Pictures, Sony’s motion picture division.

Knowing little-to-nothing about entertainment, I was very fortunate to have a wonderful boss and mentor, Roger Toll, who spent his lunch hours teaching me what I needed to know about the entertainment business and how to draft movie deals. I worked with Roger for three years and then I was promoted into the business affairs group at Columbia Pictures, working for another mentor, Andrew Gumpert. As a Business Affairs executive, I was responsible for frontline, motion picture dealmaking on behalf of the studio. Andrew modeled complex dealmaking and strategy. He also taught me about the importance of relationships in Hollywood.

That role in Business Affairs also provided exposure to producers, talent agencies, boutique entertainment law firms and many other contacts across the entertainment industry. I met Tom McGuire, the head of Business Affairs at WME, who offered me an opportunity to join WME in a job

that essentially married the litigation experience I had at Skadden with my entertainment experience at Sony. WME was looking for someone who understood studio dynamics and how talent deals are made to handle litigation, employment, compliance, and other legal matters impacting the company. The opportunity at WME coincided with having my first child and it was perfect because it offered a more flexible schedule. I started at WME part-time, so I could spend the afternoons with my son. The company was much smaller at the time and the role was manageable as a part time job.

I was at WME for about four years when the company took a different and interesting turn by acquiring IMG, a sports, entertainment, and media business. At that time, the new combined company hired a Chief Legal Officer, Seth Krauss, to oversee the legal department at the parent company level. When he first started, he did an assessment of the lawyers he was inheriting from both WME and IMG and started building a legal department to service the new combined company. I would say this was a turning point for my career at WME – I recognized there was opportunity and raised my hand for more responsibility (going back to full time once my son was in school). We now have about 150 lawyers across the company worldwide, sitting within the various businesses under the Endeavor umbrella. Many of the lawyers are embedded within the various businesses, but we also now have shared corporate legal services that work across all the businesses - litigators, employment lawyers, immigration lawyers, compliance, and corporate lawyers.

Today, I would describe my role in three buckets. The first bucket is the Co-Head of Litigation for Endeavor, which is a pretty big job even having a partner in this role, because we have a lot of dispute work at the company. We have approximately 300 matters on our docket, globally, at any given time. We have five dedicated in-house litigators and an e-discovery specialist working on these matters. The second

 Courtney Braun, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Endeavor, shares her insider view of the ever-evolving employment issues facing the entertainment industry.

bucket is responsibility for the employment, labor and immigration practices across Endeavor, which is also a big job as we have approximately 7,000 employees worldwide, as well as about another 20,000 contingent workers in 40 countries. The third bucket is being General Counsel for our client representation businesses, including WME, IMG Models, and other agency or management companies.

CCBJ: Please talk about the changes that you're seeing and anticipating in the entertainment industry in terms of representing both clients and employees.

There’s a lot going on in the entertainment industry right now – whether it’s the changing landscape with streaming or the labor disputes with the guilds, which are, in many ways, overlapping issues. There’s a lot in flux. As the owners of a talent agency and management companies, our talent clients are our North Stars because we are fiduciaries to those clients. While we are not giving them legal advice

(our client is the company itself, not the talent clients), we are helping them get counsel if they have legal issues and translating some of the legal hurdles they may be facing. The biggest issue in entertainment right now is the wrter and actor strike. Many of our clients are members of unions like the Screen Actor’s Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild – and right now we're in a historic moment in Hollywood where both our writer clients and our actor clients are striking the members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the collective bargaining unit of the major Hollywood studios and streamers. A double strike like this hasn’t happened in sixty years. We've met with our clients and their unions regularly leading up to this strike, trying to help them figure out if there is resolution, and if there's not, we’re helping our clients navigate the strike rules. The issues are very real and very important – compensation, benefits, and how AI will impact the industry in the future.

There are many legislative efforts and opportunities to put our clients front and center so law makers may understand their perspective.

Can you provide some insight on some of your ongoing projects, including your work with the Reproductive Rights Task Force?

It’s certainly been a year for thinking about how we best protect our employees and our clients in the face of these large industry disputes, industry changes, technology changes, as well as recent Supreme Court decisions. After the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, we formed an internal Reproductive Rights Task Force to help our employees and their dependents understand the changing legal landscape and get access to information about benefits available to them. I sit in California, but we also have offices in other locations where the laws are different than California and our employees may have dependents in other locations. They might need to know, what is the law in Texas? What is the law in Tennessee? And how are my medical benefits impacted by the changing laws? We rolled out a portal for our employees to ask these questions, get help from our benefit's provider, and get access to information and understand their rights.

We're also doing some work around the recent Supreme Court decisions against Harvard and UNC, where we saw the Court strike down race-conscious admissions programs. We’re looking at how those decisions impact our corporate diversity and inclusion programs. We are auditing our programs and our policies to ensure we are lawfully moving forward with the inclusion work that's really important to us as a company.

We're also thinking a lot about AI. It’s one of the main issues in the Writer’s Guild and SAG-AFTRA negotiations, and is one

of the main reasons why our clients are on strike. Hopefully, when the strike is over and the Writer’s Guild and SAG-AFTRA have reached resolution, there will be creative and innovative solutions for AI. But we've also been thinking about our clients who are not members of a union. There are many legislative efforts, and opportunities to join Congressional listening sessions and put our clients front and center to make sure that lawmakers understand their perspective. It’s fascinating because it's a moving target. Our strategy is shifting moment to moment, but we're really focused on making sure we're ahead of it and our clients are best positioned to control their own name, image, likeness and voice.

CCBJ: What can you tell our audience about your experience with the WME Fashion Team as you worked with Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal on revisions to the Fashion Workers Act?

The Fashion Workers Act was introduced in New York, aimed at providing protection for models. We worked with Senator Hoylman-Sigal and his staff to propose language for the Fashion Workers Act to help get more industry support for the bill and strengthen protections in a way that we hope will help the bill get passed. We're very proud of our practices and protections for our model clients and it would be great if they became industry standard. 

Courtney Braun is Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Endeavor. She is currently overseeing Legal Affairs for the company’s representation businesses (including Hollywood Talent Agency WME, IMG Models, Art + Commerce and The Wall Group) and litigation for the company’s representation, fashion and content businesses (including New York Fashion Week, Miss Universe, Endeavor Content, and IMG Original Content). Courtney also leads the global employment and immigration practices for all companies under the Endeavor umbrella (including the PBR and UFC). Reach her at cbraun@endeavorco.com

3rd Annual

Legal Operations

Executive Leadership Forum

Tarrytown House Estate

September 26, 2023

Legal Operations Executive Leadership Forum, created by CCBJ, is designed for law department and law firm operations executives. This will be an interactive, high level gathering exchange led by individuals revolutionizing the role legal operations in today’s corporations.

Kristin Calve CCBJ

Laura Kibbe Unisys

LEGAL TECH STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

CEO: Gabriel Pereyra

HQ: Los Angeles, CA

# of Employees: 8

Total Raised: $26M

Growth Rate: 12.9%

Institutional Investors:

• Sequoia Capital

• OpenAI Startup Fund

@Harvey-AI

www.harvey.ai/

37.1x SIZE MULTIPLE

Description:

Developer of a generative AI legal tech application designed to help law practitioners with their tasks. The company’s software acts as an assistant in changing the way the legal system operates and interacts with other lawyers via a natural language interface allowing lawyers to delegate tasks via simple instructions and receive work products that would typically take lawyers hours to complete, providing lawyers with the tools they need to thrive in this evolution.

Most Recent Financing Status

The company raised $21 million of Series A venture funding in a deal led by Sequoia Capital on April 26, 2023. OpenAI Startup Fund, Conviction Investment Partners, SV Angel, and Elad Gil also participated in the round. Previously, the company raised $5 million of seed funding in a deal led by OpenAI Startup Fund on November 23, 2022. Elad Gil, Sarah Guo, Jeff Dean and other undisclosed investors also participated in the round.

KCALVE@CCBJOURNAL.COM