Legal Leadership, Global Perspectives and Culture with Fernando Garcia

Welcome to your Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Klaus. 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. This episode is sponsored by Contender. How are you doing on LinkedIn? If you're like 99% of lawyers, your answer is not great. Which makes sense. You learned LinkedIn as the place to stash a digital resume and share firm pressers, so no wonder your LinkedIn presence is somewhere between vanilla and nonexistent. But I've got good news. Since we all learned LinkedIn the wrong way, it's pretty easy to attract more positive attention for you or your business. Since 2022, Contender has been the premier agency helping lawyers go from invisible train. Possible to ignore on LinkedIn. To learn more, check out www.contenderllc.com. Tell them Claudio sent you. Today, I have the opportunity to interview Fernando Garcia, who is the Chief Legal and People Officer at Author Group. Thank you so much for joining us today, Fernando. My absolute pleasure to be here and thank you very much. Well, thank you for your time and willingness to be here in the podcast today. We are super excited to ask you many, many questions about your profession and how you got to where you're at today and just started off. I'd love for you to introduce yourself to your audience. Yeah, great. My name is Frank Garcia porn Argentina and grew up in Canada. So I've been here for a long, long time and just My role currently is a mix of both legal and HR, but I have close to 20 years in the general counsel role at different organizations. And my background previous to law school or to to my legal profession was labour relations and HR. So I had a, you know, I did my BA labour studies, it didn't masters of labour relations and I decided to go to law school, it the the legal education and then completed afterward the NBA as well. So I've always been interested and I've always had a passion about sort of the legal realm, but also business and HR. And I think those those three are three critical components of any organization they work for. And so it's something that I've always wanted to have a good understanding and a good grasp of three different type of practices and try to make best to bring them together in terms of my profession and in terms of how. I do my work. That's amazing. Alright. I love that you said that your, your background mixes everything that, that it sounds like what a good in-house lawyer would have, right, a good notion of, of what goes on in a business and then the HR portion of it. So that's just so fantastic. I would love to see if there was a master plan behind it, but it's sort of just happened as I that became knowledgeable, aware of one particular practice area. And then I thought, well, that's really interesting. I wonder how I can marry it with the other one. And so it just, I can't say I had a master plan. It just sort of happened. And then I went with opportunities as they came up. But it just, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, complementary elements of the, of the function and the roles that, that I play. And that's how I've I've really fashioned my, my career and how I fashion my approach to to the legal practice. Amazing what you to dive right into the questions of today's podcast. I'd love to hear, you know, what first sparked that interest on you to become an in house counsel and you have a little bit more of this applying all of this education that you had and all these skills together. Yeah, absolutely. Why again, I started in human resources and labour relations. So I did some some work at Ontario Power Generation, the labour relations department there when I was when I was doing my masters. And, you know, I got to work with some really, really good professionals, both with regard to, to in house at the company, with regard to my labour relations department and also with external counsel. So that, that sort of got me thinking about maybe I should go to law school. I think it would be kind of cool. I did have, you know, a passion for labour relations at that time, the negotiations element of it, feeling grievances, arbitration, that kind of stuff that you, it's a good, logical next step to go to law school. So I did that. And I had already, like I said before, I had already masters of, of labour relations and background in that. So when I, when I was going through law school, like I tried to focus most of my courses in labour relations type realm. And I graduated, went to work at a, at a law firm, a boutique labour employment law firm. And I really enjoyed it was great experience. But I, I made a decision at that point that I didn't necessarily want to be brought into a file to deal with an issue and then go away. I, I love more the being part of the initial strategy, developing the strategy, be part of the implementation of strategy and seeing it through to the end. I also liked the idea of being with the same people, working with the same people over and over again on a longer term relationship. You know, I always say it's like a marathon rather than a Sprint. And so that those were things that really attracted me to be in house versus sort of in a law firm somewhere where you got to deal with specific issues and then you walked away. Or even more importantly, when you're in the house, you tend to work on different elements. So, you know, one day, especially the GC and a smaller mid-size firm, one day you're working in real estate, not in the next year dealing with labour relations matter. When you're working on a contract for you, then you're working on negotiation. So if no single day is the same as the other, I'm just the type of person that if I was the lawyer in charge of forms 374C or whatever, I would just say I would not do well. I like the diversity of, of, you know, work. I like the, the being involved early on, not just firefighting. So I thought that was more a better fit towards in house. And I will say that my experience has been that indeed that was right decision for me, not for everybody maybe, but for me that is the best choice for for my own capabilities and my own interests. Well, that's amazing. And in the in this work some years ago, you, you launched this whole idea of being, you know, plus shaped lawyer. So you talked about the importance that in-house counsel to to be a little more of that, you know, be that pre active lawyer as you put into articles in the past. And I'd love to to know a little more about what those terms mean and and how they change the way we think about legal carriers as well. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a concept or model out there called the T shaped lawyer and it's a great concept. And the concept is that, but you're sort of horizontal skill set is your ability to know the law and work within the law. And all lawyers have that right. And you go to law school, you get trained to be a lawyer. So you're very good at that piece of it. But then there's something else. I think especially for in-house counsel, the the value that you bring is not not just naughty pay. This is what the law says. Great. But you have to be able to tie that into the multiple elements of being a proper, you know, multiple lawyer. And that that means, you know, knowing us, having a good understanding of the business, having a good understanding of the financial elements, having a good understanding of the, you know, the team that the risk of tolerance of the organization. Why did we sort of things. So the the broader perspective or the broader tool sets that you bring in to being in house counsel mean that you can have political knowledge you want and be a very good lawyer. That doesn't necessarily mean you will be a good in-house counsel. In-house counsel requires a deeper understanding of other areas as well of that affect your decision, that affect the, you know, the implementation of the decision making you evolved. So that the lawyer sort of influenced me quite a bit that the concept. But then I said, hey, listen, there should be another element too. So just trying to get cute with the model. I added the little plus sheet, that little piece at the top, which said you can know all the skills and past and know how to do that. You could be good at, you know, project management, You can be good at all these other elements, But there's also an emotional intelligence element that's very critical of being a successful in-house counsel. That means, you know, being able to work with people across multiple jurisdictions, you know, in diverse working environments, a good mindset in terms of, you know, not being a department of no, knowing how to deal with internal conflict, being able to manage all that. And that that's sort of not a skill per se in terms of a skill they can learn. That's sort of an emotional skill set. And that I think that's right. Added that the additional piece at the top of the, the plus shape layer concept. I mean, it was just an idea. It's out there. And he had quite a bit of success at the time. And, you know, I wrote a lot of articles about it and it was an interesting battle. At the end of the day, if you were to sum all that up into one, you know, small box, the concept is when you're in house, you should try to always develop yourself and gruel to know as many different areas, get involved in as many different matters as you can get in there early. Ask for, you know, additional responsibilities and always grow, right? Always look at what am I doing to gain more knowledge, gain more experience or grow my own experience and be part of the team whereby you not just part of the team to give legal advice, but you're part of the team to implement decisions and to, to build those decisions and strategies. So it's, it's, it's a whole perspective of, you know, how you can grow yourself, improve yourself and become more and more valuable to the organization. That's fantastic. And I'm so happy to hear that this is something that that more professionals are thinking of. And thank you for, for taking your time to, you know, put some, some words out there on this topic as well. I think it's so important more and more that we realize that our, our responsibilities, not only legal work, right, but really understanding all of those things. And I'm sure that the most successful in-house counsel or just lawyers in general do have those notions really clear to them. Because they couldn't find the, the, the amount of legal work you do becomes less and less of proportion in terms of your, your day-to-day right. Managing people, working with teens, coming up with strategies, dealing with those kind of things become increasingly more important. And you tend to find you do less and less law and you do more and more managing those relationships, you know, managing those strategies and becoming involved in that. So it's a different mindset. You're more, I always say you're more of a business person with a legal degree then you are a lawyer in many ways. So you got to like that. If that's what you like, if that's what you're passionate about, then that's when in-house counsel type functions or opportunities really become valuable to you. I know some people say, well, if you're going to, you know, have an easier work life balance, yeah, that could be true. Not always, but that, you know, it's a it's a function. But really what should be driving your interest is to, you know, really become part of the business and be ingrained in the business and, and take responsibility for what happens and be a real part of a team. I think that's really. The key that's amazing and steering the in this general area of, you know, doing all you can and all of that. I've, I've read some of your work again and you've been very open with your views about remote work, especially for early careers and young lawyers. So I'd love for you to tell us a little more about that, about why you think working in person will matter so much, especially for those junior lawyers and especially those with diverse backgrounds. Yeah, handful of the time that's invested in getting into work. I mean, especially younger lawyers now they're faced with really high cost of living in in major metropolitan areas where your job might be. It takes a long time to get into work and out of work. So if you have and you have the technology and the abilities to do things externally and remotely and from home, I don't think it's an issue so much of, you know, you're working less or, you know, an issue about being lazy. I think it really is an issue about being there in person and learning from others. When I look back into my own personal career. And again, everybody's situation is different. So I always like to preface that, right. But in my particular case, being on the ground, but walking from point A to point B for an arbitration hearing and discussing with their senior lawyer the strategy that we're going to be implementing it, why it's important. Being able to to get to that level of building a relationship, having you thrown into things last minute, meeting the parties, understanding the, you know, the reasons behind certain things and the strategies that you're going to be implementing. There was a huge value to that. There was a value to that. That only happens when you're there in person. You know, in the labour relations, some of the the hallway meetings that took place that resolved the matter or that resulted in a collective agreement being signed. Those are things that happen in prompt you. Those things were that were informal conversation that took place. They say, hey, junior, come along, listen to the conversation we're going to have. That's when you really learn that skill set And you know, you just can't battle that part in you can't just be, you know, hey, let's jump to a zoom call and and, you know, talk about the strategy. There is some of that, but most of it happens informally and happens without plan. And it happens sort of in an environment where if you're not there in person, you're missing that. So I think it's two parts 1. I think, you know, after investing so much time and effort and money into your legal career, if you can put in a good 4-5 years and go into the office and learn from the people there, especially if you're working on a big firm and you know, you're getting thrown into pieces. Like I remember when I was at the, at the boutique labour employment law firm, we wanted to be the first person in the office everyday because guess what? A lawyer would walk down the hall, say, hey, I need somebody to go to court for me today. I can't make it. Who's going? You want to be the first person there to get the best assignment to be able to get in there, to get into court, to get into a meeting with a client. You got to, you just need to do that in person. On the other side of the coin, the senior orders, I think they can work from home. Hey, look, they, you know, they already have established their relationships. They already know what they're doing. They already have their practice. They don't need to learn from anyone, but they now have an obligation to teach others. And in the same vein, you can teach others through a conversation. You teach others through a video conference. But I think the biggest value still comes from taking that person under your wing, taking them to a session or a hearing, getting to meet the clients, getting that, you know, to understand how the the strategies developed or how we're developing, you know, you know, relationship with the client. How do we get a new client? Like there's so many elements that you really got to pee on the ground. And again, once you've invested that much time in effort into your career, just to add those other four or five years at a time, maybe hopefully you don't have as many other challenges or commitments of your time. Why not, Again, hard to see because I'm not unmindful that some people are single parents or some people don't have maybe childcare services and don't have all these other things. And I get that. I'm not trying to be mindful of that. But what I'm saying is if you can, you should be there whether it's required or not. I would be the first person there in the morning and I'll try to be the last person now. And these were the first 4-5 years to learn. I mean, that's what you're trying to do, trying to be out there to learn. And I just can't see it because as good as technology is, I don't see the same value. Like I've, I've been in situations where especially during cold where, you know, we're having virtual calls with a lawyer, a junior lawyer pops in and the senior lawyer after what goes? Yeah, I don't even know who that was. I never met them before you, you need to be there in person. And again, I'm the person that really values, you know, human relationships and human touch and, you know, just being, you know, a situation or advocation with the person. And I just don't think you can call it enough. Can you work three days a week from the office and maybe 2 days from the home? Sure, why not? But you know, I, I really think that if you can, then there's a value to that because if you're present, you're more likely to be visible. And when you talk about diversity, you know, I, I look at it and I think, you know, coming myself as a racialized lawyer early on when I came out and lost one particular, I didn't have the network so that people had I didn't have the connections in the profession that other people had. I had a disadvantage in that sense. And I had to build that and I had to develop that and I had to go to events to start building a network. And there was a value to that in person piece. So I think if you were to say, look, just dial it in, never have to come in. The people who are going to be adversely affected the most are can be that people who don't have those networks and who are challenged in that sense. And that has to be new Canadians who maybe don't have the connections here. That has to be diverse in the members from diverse communities that maybe don't have family members or lawyers or friends that are lawyers, grew up around lawyers. So they're the ones who I think even though in some ways it helps some maybe too, because you don't have to come into the office and if you live a little further away. But at the same time, I think there's also potentially that that person is going to be the ones that are hurt the most because, you know, I always like to see, you know, we fought long and hard to get a seat at the business table. The last thing you want to do is to not be at the table when there's decisions or or businesses, you know, situations being made and when you looking at it in house, right, You know, I worked at an airline before your pilots come had to come to work. Your baggage handlers had to come into work. Everybody else had to come into work. How does it look if the legal person, the person is not going to work, right, They're working for it just sends the wrong message, right. So one team effort and you know, it's, it's good to be that a person, somebody walking your own door say, hey, just gonna chat with you for a second because that, that tends to be where most of the issues. Are address very interesting. And I, I have to say that it's not hard to agree with you, right? If you think about especially senior leadership being there in the office every day, seeing who's there. And it does speak a lot, maybe even about the unspoken rules of the office here, right? Of the things that maybe people don't say, but but that are happening every day. And, and going forward, I'd love to hear a little bit more about another topic that I think it's really interesting. And you've wrote about before and it's about going in house after law school. And so we hear a lot about, you know, the traditional career path where you spend a considerable amount of time at a firm and then transition to going into in in household 0. But it seems that more and more different companies are open to having more junior professionals coming in or, you know, people who have who have had another career before law and all of that context dependent, of course. But based on your career and all of that, what would you say about this whole situation of how do you become an inhouse lawyer? Yeah, I'm going to give you the lawyer answer. It depends. And it really does depend on many variables in fact, right. Well, one thing, for example, on my situation, I had already a background in labour relations in HR, I had many years working in that area. So an opportunity became available as a general counsel 2 years after I graduated from law school and the company in a trucking company really nice. But again, I had already quite a bit of experience in that area. That was an area that they had to fill. So it became easier for them to say hire this guy, even though, you know, I didn't work as long as I other people had to do in, in, you know, a law firm. The old model used to be, you know, you worked five years in the law firm, you became a specialist in a particular area or knowledgeable enough you then basically. Became that skill set for that company in that particular area. And then when you were in there, then you diversified and grew into other areas. You moved up, you know, up from a, you know, associate council from council to a senior council to associate general counsel to general counsel. So you moved in, but the key was how did you get your foot in the door? What skill set that you used to get in the door? And once you were in the door, it's all up to you to build your career. And that I mean, and there's still that path available for many people. But the point is now we have people who are coming in with more background, coming in with more experience. I mean, just look at some of the international lawyers we talked about, right? They're coming in the lawyer somewhere else. They're bringing a wealth of information and knowledge and abilities. You don't necessarily need to get somebody like that's the one they're five years to prove themselves to then get into in-house role. Now, if you find the right opportunity and it comes up to you and you know, it happens particularly, why not? If it comes in after your working on law firm, why not? It's all about where you want to end up in terms of your career, what your objectives are and what opportunities become available, right? I mean, I think like I was, you know, preparation and luck, luck comes in at some point and you just have to be able to, you know, when when somebody comes knocking, you gotta be able to answer the door. So is it the right thing for everyone? Maybe, maybe not. Is everyone going to have that opportunity? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, I wouldn't necessarily discount the ability to go in house early on. It just means that you have to to understand that when you learn the law school is important, but it's not going to be the only thing that you're going to do every single thing because you're not just going to do law. You're gonna do a little bit more of everything. And if you're OK with that, I think it's a great opportunity. I always say you, especially as in-house counsel, you fly by the seat of your pants everyday. Oftentimes you get, you know, the whole impostor syndrome thing. I always see that happens all the time. And it's actually a good thing because it means you're doing things outside your zone of comfort means you're doing things that you're not used to doing and you're hurting. You're learning new skills, you're going to practice area and you do a lot of that. And I tend to find the especially in those council that nobody's ever going to see nobody asked to do more work or to help out with the particular matter to be. So it's all about you at that point in time. But the point is, the five year model, is it the only way there? And I'll say that as you know, legal technology comes into play and your AI and all these other things, there might be less and less need for, you know, law firms, you know, junior articling students and law firms. So you need to find another approach. And that in-house counsel, I think is a perfect opportunity. Very, very interesting. Thank you for sharing those videos and going for really the end of this very interesting conversation today. Fernando, I wanted to ask you also about thinking that a great portion of my audience today in the podcast are people who are law students graduating law school or really early career professionals. So I'd love to to know what kind of advice would you give to people who are finishing that up and are going into the the market right now on their first few years? What's What are some of the things that you usually tell people when they ask you for advice? The one piece of advice I was getting is how do they deal with you want to get to, but don't have a single approach of getting there because that's not how life works, right? There's all, you know, you always have a plan to somebody punches you in the face. This sort of the old saying, right? There's going to be lots of things that come up, lots of challenges and lots of opportunities that you have now planned for that you shouldn't necessarily discount. And I'll give you a good example of my background, right? So I, I graduated from law school. I did the articling at a boutique labour employment law firm and that early on in the US, some amazing firm. I got to work amazing people. But again, I do that. That wasn't necessary for me. I wanted to do more of the business side. I want to do more of THR more of the labour issue side. So I was presented with an opportunity to a six month labour relations consultant at one of the companies that had done some work with was firm. And I'm like, you know what? I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, so I'm going to take. And so I did six months labour relations manager, well, after going to law school, you know, and the comments everybody said was why would you do that? What are you doing? How does that make any sense? So everybody questioned it. But for me it was a logical next step, or at least possible because look, I had that background, something that was an interest to me. I had worked with this client, had given him some advice, what worked on some stuff for them. So I did that for six months and when that came to an end, I went to another boutique labour employment offer for another year and a half and then the general counsel retired. When that general counselor retired, they were looking for general counsel and I said, hey, listen, I applied for no. Was that maybe a little bit? Maybe. But by that point I already knew the people, I knew the contracts, I knew the issues, I knew, you know, you know, the strategies. I knew everything that was happening with that firm. And I think that gave me an opportunity to jump into that role as a general counsel 2 years on the law school. And then once you're in, then at that point you're learning everything and you have an opportunity to learn from, you know, incredible people from incredible business people and team members. So when I when I go back, probably 9 out of 10 times people would have said that's stupid idea where you going to go and labour relations manager role after you graduated from law school. What's wrong with you? But it became the key for me because that role, that general counsel role for five years that allowed me to go into Nissan, as you know, the general counsel for five years, amazing time, great experience. Then that needs experience allowed me to go to cargo jet and the carriage appears allowing me to come here. So I've been able to develop my career from that one opportunity that I took, which most people thinking rationally have been one of the that really make sense for you right now. But it made sense. It doesn't always go from AB. There's lots of little ups and downs and sideways and things that your career takes you that you're not aware for the keys always be developing yourself, always be developing a new skill set. And it's sometimes take a chance and sometimes do something that maybe is outside of your comfort zone. But you know, don't worry about what other people see. Make worry about what you need to do, what you think is right in your situation. So it's always one of those things where, you know, take advice, take people's insights and their perspectives, but yet they haven't. They heal what your values are, what you want to do, where your goals are. And as long as you're moving towards that direction, it might not be linear, but as long as you're moving forward in some sense of developing some skill set, that I think is always a good move. So you know, the world is changing, our careers changing, our industry changing, legal technology is changing at substantially and just look at chat GT, what roles are going to be there at 2-3 years from now? Who knows. The point is still do what you got to do and develop yourself as your skill set. And I think you can't go wrong regardless of what you're doing in that sense. Fantastic. Well, thank. You so very much for all the insights, all the ideas and especially this important piece of advice. You're being up to date, open and also check it out, see what legal technologies coming out there, right. We don't know what's gonna come up, but it's likely that we have to we'll have to interact with those. So there's no better generation better equipped to deal with that than these young lawyers coming in who are you know I like the term they use now like the digital natives, right. So you. Grew up with these tools. And and we should definitely use the most out of dancer and you, right? You go. There you go. I'm old enough to. Remember, right, what we had keyboards, right, Typewriters. Everybody said, oh, well, you know, the computers going to fundamentally change their job and it's going to destroy so many jobs. And it it I mean, yes, there were some modifications and some adjustments, but at the end of the day, you know, lawyers adopted computers and they made them that much more productive, right? Then the Internet came out. That's going to fundamentally change commerce. It's going to fundamentally change. It did. But if things continue, we still needed lawyers. We just needed lawyers with different skill sets, you know, then you came out with, you know, right now the Chateau Tees or the artificial intelligence. Is that going to fundamentally change our practice? Absolutely. Does that mean you're not going to have lawyers anymore? Not a chance. What it what it's going to mean is like, and I would say to people, you're not going to lose your job because of it, But at the same time, if you're not adopting the into practice, then you might lose your job. It's just another tool that you add to your your your tool belt that makes you much more valuable, that makes you much more effective, efficient, and it just lets you do your job that so you can't turn a blind eye to it and you can't be completely afraid of it. You should adopt it, understand what it does, understand its limitations and really help help help you. You don't make you better. I love that. Thank you for. For putting that that inside as well. Well, thank you all so much for tuning into today's episode. Thank you, Fernando, and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you. All appreciate it. Thanks for listening and. We'll see you on the next episode. This episode was sponsored by Contender. Check them out at Contender lc.com.