Business Judgment, Risk Management, and The "Office of Yes" with Ruben Camacho

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. World Today have the opportunity to interview Ruben Camacho, who is an Associate Corporate Counsel at RSA Security. He focuses on corporate and commercial matters and I'm very excited to interview him today, learn about his position, how he got to where he is, and also to hear a little bit about his involvement with council. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to being with us today, Ruben. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me, Claudio. As you said, Ruben Camacho, Associate Corporate Counsel, RSA Security. I mostly focus on commercial transactions. As an IT company, we're mostly dealing with SAS agreements, but we also do a lot with vendor contracts, Dpas, just other partnerships in general with channel agreements as well. For the most part, my day-to-day is kind of varied, which is one of the things I love about in housework. So that's kind of what brought me to that Roman general. Amazing. OK, that's, that's quite cool. Happy to learn a little bit more about your your background and day-to-day. And I'd love to ask you from what I saw here, you begin your career in business and sales before going into law. So wouldn't you ask you a little bit more of that if having that experience helped you to, you know, shape the way you approach contract negotiation, if it helped you to, you know, have like a different eye set when you go to, you know, risk management and all of that. What do you feel that that looks like and how has that changed your practice? Yeah. So honestly, especially after having discussions with other in-house attorneys during interviews and then just discussing it during my day-to-day with business partners and within my company and also with the other companies that we're dealing with, customers and vendors. I would say that my kind of sales and business background in, in my own opinion, is probably one of my biggest competitive advantages as an attorney. I used to work for Inside Enterprise, which was actually one of our now channel partners. So I was a sales Rep for them. So I'm very familiar with it sales. I also come from a background of an immigrant family who started their own businesses most of my life growing up through high school and even while in college and law school, I was working full time for my dad as well. And I just got used to negotiating and discussing and talking with customers and using that business language, right? It's a different language that we use lawyers versus business people and kind of coming from that business background gave me the ability to have those discussions with them and know that if they're not quite understanding what I'm saying, because I'm using quote, UN quote lawyer speak. I, I know their language as well, so I can convert it into something that makes sense to. Them that's amazing. And from what I see here too, you've worked across both private practice and in house as you are right now. So I wanted to ask you too like what what was the difference or what are a few things that stood out to you in terms of mindset, pace and even how success is measured? Yeah, yeah. So the definitely, definitely a big difference. I'd say probably the biggest difference is who the client itself is and then what success looks like at the end of the day, an attorney is a individual who is counseling a client, whether it's in my case, it was insurance defence or now at RSA counseling a company and our business associates within the company on how to get deals done safely but efficiently. So in private practice, I was the service provider, right? My clients were all external, they were insurance companies and I was dealing with success based on billable hours, case outcomes and just overall client satisfaction. The pace was really reactive. A case comes in and you're working the case, you're building the case, you're closing the case, you're moving to the next one. In house, I'm actually part of the business and that's one of the things that I love and why I wanted to go in house is I'm not just there to be a tool. I'm actually a part of the business assisting the growth of the company itself and working on the deals with my business reps. My client is the company and success is measured by the overall business outcomes. I'm not simply there to build a client that the insurance company. I'm there to help our company close deals in a safe and successful manner. Alright, quite awesome. Yeah, Thank you so much for sharing that. So I understand that working across all the fields of technology, commercial law, the kind of contracts you're dealing with, it sounds like there's a lot of change that goes on all the time, right. So when I hear about technology obviously and all that comes with that and I guess privacy and all kinds of things, I'm curious to know what kinds of challenges do do you enjoy most about supporting IT business in this kind of environment? As you just mentioned that you're not, you know, just kind of coming in fixing one thing you're you're kind of having a little bit of like a, a systemic approach to the business and it's go and and all of. That, yeah. So for me personally, I love the speed and the complexity of tech. Everything's changed in every single day. Every deal is different because every customer is looking at a technology and what their requirements are. From a different perspective, 1 enterprise customer might be worried about data residency requirements, for instance. They're in financial services, that's what they got to worry about. Whereas another customer, they're going to be more worried about something like security controls because they're in healthcare, right? So there's a lot of difference that they're looking at just based on where they're coming from. I'd say within that, the challenge that I enjoy the most, as I mentioned before, is being the translator, right? I'm, I'm translating between different worlds, legal requirements to our security teams, security requirements to our business teams, business requirements back to the legal team or the security team and how to kind of mesh all those. I play a crucial part by being kind of in the middle of all three of those realms and just mixing everything together, translating from team to team and bringing everything together kind of help close the deal at the end of. The day amazing. I've taken a look here at different things that you've engaged with in the past and I see that you've talked about correcting legal advice with business goals. And basically that's what we've been talking about in today's episode as well. But I'd love to hear a little more about, you know, what that looks like in practice and, and how do you balance, you know, protecting the company, helping it grow? I know that that can be very context dependent. Some companies have a huge legal department and you just, you know, work in a very small fraction of what legal is. But what does that look like in your experience? Yeah. So honestly, that's overall that's a great question and it's one of the things I think a lot of people struggle, especially younger attorneys who don't have a business background. I actually usually have this conversation quite often with our ex turns that we hire every semester because this law school kind of teaches you, hey, an attorney needs to be risk averse. We are running away from risk, running away from risk. That's what an attorney's job is. However, in the business world is not that right? It's a balance of it. So here's a practical example. Let's let's say sales comes to me with a customer that wants a $5,000,000 liability cap and we typically do a $1 million liability cap. The management approach you want to look at is from a normal attorney. The risk approach is no, that's too much exposure. We don't want a $5,000,000 cap. It's too high. But if you look at it from a business minded approach, you're going to think about a couple of things. You're not just going to look at $5,000,000 and be scared of the number. You're going to say one, what's the actual likelihood that we run into a $5,000,000 issue with this customer, right? What are the, what are the issues that we're looking at? What's the revenue of this deal? If it's, if we're going to be making 500 to 500 K to $1,000,000 a year, he'd be that 500 million cat Richard, that $5,000,000 cap is reasonable. Whereas if it's, you know, a $50,000 deal, then maybe that cap is way too high. And then you want to also look at the strategic value of the customer, right? Is this a, oh, I get to put a giant company like Microsoft or something on my website that I protect them versus is this some tiny little thing that other than, you know, a small check every year, we're not really going to be collecting any value from it. And then how can we kind of structure this differently? Like can we segment certain liabilities out? Can we give them a larger cap for this where we're protecting some others on the other side? So overall, when I'm talking to leadership, it's not here's what the legal risk is, right? It's here's what the risk is. Here's what the business value is. And then here's my recommendation, right? Because we want to play the two of those together and see where the overall outcome is. That's going to help the business while also protecting us. In my opinion, the key is really being a partner in the decision making process, not a gatekeeper. I'm very, very opposed to the quote UN quote office of no. And we prefer to be the office of yes, we can, but and then there's that dot dot dot right? That's this is how we get the deal done. So that's my approach, that's my belief. And I, I really do think that's a really good way for a lot of people to look at it when trying to enter the business world of. That's amazing. We've all that basically the big advice you just gave. I'd love to hear a little more, a little more about this involvement that you have with mentoring lawyers, helping other in-house counsel who are trying to find a community where they can exchange ideas and, and see what that looks like. So I understand that you serve as a regional leader for council well, which brings in house lawyers to gather for our community for learning and so forth. And I'd love to learn a little bit about, you know, what motivated you to, to join the community to take on that role and, and what have you learned from this experience as well? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, as you mentioned council, well as a community for in-house lawyers, it brings people together to not only have a place to converse with other in-house lawyers, but also to share resources, bounce ideas and just overall help each other as a community. So I serve as a regionally here in Chicago. And really the biggest thing that motivated me to get involved was my own experience when I first started as an attorney in general, I went through some law school time during COVID. So things were a little bit different. I didn't have a lot of the same interaction that a lot of people had. And then as I mentioned before, before and after law school, I was already working full time jobs. And then during law school, I was working full time helping my dad because of COVID. So getting into the law, the laws of lonely profession. And I, I didn't have a very large community around me because I missed a lot of that outreach. Not having a large network of in-house attorneys to really go to questions for I, I love the idea of something like council, Well, where let's say I have a question, how do you negotiate a SaaS contract? What's the market liability caps? How do you build credibility with a sales team? All those questions that in-house attorneys need to know, I can go to a community like Council Well, and I can post it on a chat board and I can get messages from attorneys all over the country, all over the world, in different countries, right? And they'll be able to kind of give that that assistance, give that help and have that community around you. So what have I learned from Council experience? Honestly, everyone is dealing with the same kind of things, right? Again, the legal world is a very lonely feeling world sometimes. And I think as humans just in general, we have a very bad habit of all the world's falling down on me and no one understands what I'm going through, whether it's at work or in your personal life or really anytime something kind of goes wrong, we tend to have that mentality. And so something like Council Well has really helped me realize that there are a lot of other people around in this same position that are dealing with similar themes. And I do have resources that I can reach out and ask those questions too. So having that community, I believe is a big competitive advantage. Again, being able to reach out to people. And my, my overall thought is that lawyers who invest in their network and who share knowledge and help each other are the ones who are going to help advance not only themselves, but all the ones around them. And so for me, Council Well isn't just volunteer work, it's, it's an investment in my own growth and also the growth of all the other people around me and this. Professional, Amazing. A lot of our audience here are law students, early, early career lawyers. And I end up receiving a few questions like, Hey, can you bring some more people to talk about the role of in-house counsel or how do you get into in-house positions? And I've, I found interestingly in the podcast that there is a few different groups of in-house counsel that I've met people who've usually went through a big firm and then after that big firm made the move into the house council. But there's also so many other ways that people crafted their own journey. So I'm curious, you know, if if you have a few personal experiences with that, you know, what steps or even what kind of mindset help into making that transition from basically lost students, young lawyer into an in house role. Yeah. So for the most part, it is correct that traditionally most people wanna go into that law firm realm first and that usually takes a few years before they kind of take that branch over. I'm an example where it's not always the case. I was at a law firm for a pretty short amount of time overall before moving in house, which is usually unheard of. But I've actually seen more and more attorneys these days that do kind of make that early stretch into the in-house world. And the same thing that I kind of hear across the board from my own opinion, but then also when I talk to some of these other young in-house attorneys is you just kind of try for it, right? Really the biggest thing that you'll that most people think they can't go in a house right away is because they're worried that they don't know the law. Here's the trick. Most young attorneys, whether they're at a firm or at a company, they don't know lawyer. Law school really doesn't set you up to know the practice of law. It teaches you the theory of law. So whether you go to a law firm or you get lucky and get into a company, they know you're a young attorney and they are there to teach you. And when it comes to being in a house, the biggest thing they're looking for is knowing the business versus just knowing, you know, risk averse law, things that law school teaches you. So kind of go for it, reach out to companies, talk to people in the community, right? The number one way you're going to probably find a position is shaking the hand with someone and finding out that they have an opening. So I recommend just not giving up on it, reaching out and trying to talk to people and take a few swings. I applied to a bunch of places I knew I wanted to go in house. I applied to a bunch of places and I eventually had one that said, yes. So that's just the way that it works. And you just got to keep taking swings because as they say, you, you miss every, what's the word you, you miss every swing that you don't take right though, you gotta swing forward. And if you strike a couple of times, that's OK, eventually going to hit that. Ball fantastic. Now that's awesome. Well, to to get kind of towards the end of our interview here today, I'm curious to hear a little bit about your thoughts on the future of this row of corporate counsel as well. So we've talked about how in a way in house counsel are not only lawyers, they're really looking into the business aspect of it. They're looking into a very holistic approach to that. And I wanted to know, you know, from from your time in the profession, even if you've noticed differences in, you know, expectations, I'm assuming here that, you know, once you are a lawyer who can integrate all of those qualities, it becomes kind of an expectation that if if anybody's ever to take your place or as you get promoted, the person who's going there is going to have those the qualities as well is going to be able to do that. So I wanted to hear a little bit of what you have to say on that. Yeah. So I mean the the room is definitely changing. Technology is changing a lot of things. It's making it both easier and more complicated in a sense. But overall, I really think the basis of being a good in-house attorney and someone who's looking to go in house is kind of remained the same, right. While everything changes, the steady seems to stay the same. And with that, I mean, I really say that there's a couple key qualities that you want to look for. One, if you're looking to hire in-house attorney, but two, if you want to become an in house attorney. And then three, for those new roles that are opening up that you're discussing there, there's a few qualities you kind of really looking for. So first, let's say it's business judgment. We've discussed this a little bit, but you have to understand the business that you're supporting, not just the legal issues, the revenue model, the competitive landscape, the customer base, who your biggest competitors in the realm are, right? The best in-house lawyers are the ones that can sit down at a meeting with anyone in the company and contribute strategically and have a discussion, not just responsive legal questions. An example of that, when I first started with RSA, the first thing I did in my first month, two months there was not start whipping out a bunch of contracts. It was meetings on the calendar with just about every single manager, leader and executive in my company to find what they're looking for from a legal perspective, what issues they've had before with legal and what would success look like for them coming from the legal team, Right? And that's how you start to learn things about the company itself. Second quality, I would say is probably a good scalability mindset. If you are being successful within a company, the company is going to be growing. And typically legal teams are usually pretty lean, lean. You're not going to be able to touch every single contract or fully review every single e-mail or every single decision. You have to be able to build systems around you so people understand, are involved, and then you can trust what's going on around you. So for example, my GC, he's the one who ultimately signs off on things that go to the legal team. He doesn't touch every single contract, he doesn't review every single NDA or quotes or anything else that comes from customers. That's, that's what the rest of the team is there for. And we've all worked with him and trained with him to know exactly what the company is looking for. And we know the company enough to know what the risks are. So if we send something to him, he knows it's been done correctly. And then third, I would say adaptability. But one of the biggest things that was a huge difference for me from being at a firm to being in house is every single day is different. Every single thing I'm looking at is different. So you have to have to have to be comfortable with change new products, new markets, new regulations, new competitors, Everything is happening all the time. And the lawyers who are going to succeed in the in-house business world are the ones who say, I don't know the answer, but let give me a little bit of time. I'm gonna go figure it out. And then we can discuss an approach to it, right? That's, that's what we're looking for. That's that's definitely what I recommend. Amazing. So Ruben, we've we've discussed quite a bit about the value of community. You mentioned about your role at Council and I wanted to ask you here a little more about, you know, have there been, you know, mentors or specific moments that really shaped how you lead or make decisions nowadays as a lawyer? Yes. So a couple definitely come to mind. When I was at the law firm, I had a mentor there for sure who was one of the partners at the firm. He kind of helped me from the beginning, taught me a lot about what I was doing, um, how to approach a lot of the things and just how to kind of get these cases and situations handled. And it was kind of funny because he also came from a business background and that's kind of the approach that him and I started taking with a lot of the cases that we were dealing with, right? Because again, it's insurance defence. And so we were, Hey, it's not necessarily the perfect deal, but how can we get this done to where it's going to cost our client less money than going to court or going to trial, right. And it just so happened that he was also a very good friend of my now GC, my now boss. And I've actually worked for my GC a couple times at this point at his last job is as that's a company that he was at GC4 as well. And so he's been a mentor of mine for many years at this point and is kind of helped me understand and he's the one who who teaches me a lot of these things of the difference between just pure risk and the business value that you're also facing. The immediate moment that kind of was a light bulb for me. I'll never forget the day that he looks at me and says, hey, we're going to breach this contract with the vendor, send the notice out and it's like. Young out of law school, my first response is what are you talking about? We can't breach the contract. We're gonna we're breaching the contract. Number one rule, don't breach the contract. And then he tells me why not I said, well, what do you we'd be violating the country goes yeah, sure, but what is it going to cost us to breach the contract? What is it going to cost them to enforce it? Not worth us paying out something that we're no longer using and we're just going to breach the contract and we're going to have a much smaller payment in the long run because we it's it's it makes business sense to get out of it right. And it's something as simple as that kind of opened my eyes to everyone is very black and white when it comes to legal and in the business room and there's a lot of Gray area right. It isn't you enforce the contractor, you breach the contract. It is there's a whole lot of middle ground where, yeah, maybe maybe it is more worth it for me to walk away from this or maybe it is more worth it for me to give this to this customer, but not to this one or take a little bit more risk here to get this deal done. Definitely, definitely a moment that I I looked to my GC and I know that he's kind of helped me realize a lot of those differences that that were very different than law school kind of preps you for. What a story. What a story to To close today's episode, I wanted to ask you if there's a piece of advice that you would give to young lawyers who want to build their careers in a way that's both strategic, but it's also authentic to who they are. Yeah. So the first thing I would say is a unique background is an asset, not a liability. A lot of times people think, you know, what's the old saying? I believe it's a Japanese proverb or maybe a Chinese proverb. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in this world. I, I would say it's the opposite, right? The unique background is, is not a liability. It's definitely an asset. So whether someone is internationally trained or they're changing careers or they're coming from a non traditional path like myself, that different perspective makes you valuable depending on what you're looking at. So I was literally told by the 1st in-house attorney GC that hired me that the reason why they were pulling me into their company, even at such a young career stage was because of the background I had working for my dad's pizza place. And they said I am looking for someone who understands what a small family owned business is because that's what we have here, right? That's a different background that most people who are going through high school probably don't have growing up working in a family owned restaurant, right? So it's a very different thing. And I, I think they should definitely not try to hide those that different background. They should usually lean into it because while diversity is not the greatest thing in the world, it is a very important thing in the world, right? It's very important to have those different experiences. It's very important to look at a problem and see it from different angles. And that's what that diverse experience and that background will give to people. Second, definitely be strategic about building skills. You do not have to be an expert in everything. You do have to be really good at a few things, right? You want to be the one who's known for this, this and this, and then I can figure everything else. That's that's definitely something I would say people should focus on and find a couple things that they enjoy and they like and they get really good at it. Third, again, shout out to council will build your network, right? The bigger your network is, the better it's going to be and the more beneficial it's going to be for your career and also just for your personal growth. And by that I don't mean I join a bunch of organizations. So my name is on the on somewhere on their website or something, right? It's actually get involved, actually talk to people, go sit down and have coffee, right? We have a externs that we hire. I mentioned that earlier at RSA, every single semester and outside of RSA, outside of council will, outside of any of those, I have a LinkedIn group of those externs and I have a spreadsheet that shows on that spreadsheet. When's the last time I've talked to each one of those externs and I'm talking to them. I'm keeping up. I'm sending them things like job opportunities that I see at other companies or other friends of mine or law firms, and I'm keeping up with them and their career growth as well. Because guess what? Those are going to be the future, right? I got my job with RSA as a previous extern of my current GC. So when it's my turn to be a GC at a company, guess who the first people I'm going to look for? The ones who I've known for years and the ones who I've guided and the ones who I've worked with. Growing that network is a very, very important thing. Another thing I would say is make sure you're focused on adding value, especially if you're trying to get to the in-house world in the business world. Because most of the time legal is looked at as a cost centre and you wanna help other people realize that we can be valuable asset to the company and to the sales team and helping them get that done. And then last but not least, I really just say just be authentic right there. There's not a perfect mold of an attorney out there. You look at myself, my GC and five other attorneys and guess what? We're all going to look different. That's not the important part. The important part is your professional, you get your stuff done and people enjoy working with you. Everything else just kind of rolls along right? So be yourself. Don't try to fake it till you make it. How sometimes they'll tell you because eventually, one, the mask is going to crack and two, you're going to not enjoy what you're doing if you're doing that. So I genuinely believe that there's really never been a better time to kind of build that career because of how vast some of these communities like council well, are getting where you have those resources available. So it's, it's a great time and it's a great opportunity. And I mean, anyone who does hear this is more than welcome to reach out to me as well. I'm more than happy to add them to my network and kind of see and if they ever find themselves around Chicago, let's get a cup. Of coffee. Amazing. I'll have to to let you know as well when I stop. Alright, thank you so much for sharing that. You know, that piece of advice and really this conversation. We've been really appreciate you taking the time to to be in the podcast today and to share this really, really good. Insights. Absolutely. Claudio, again, thank you for having me. Definitely don't hesitate to reach out. You'll find yourself in Chicago. Let me know and I hope. We'll talk soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much and thank you all for taking a listen to today's episode.