Anne Kerwin Payne: From Law Firms to the C-Suite and the Future of In-House Legal Leadership

Welcome to the Legal Leaders Podcast brought to you by InView, Law Views Community for In-House Legal Professionals. In-Views mission is to accelerate the evolution of the In-House Legal Profession and with this podcast we showcase modern legal leaders from across the globe. We explore their unique journeys and how they're driving the transformation of our new profession. Join David Lancelot, Law Views Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President of Advocacy as he explores the cutting edge of In-House Legal Leadership. This is the Legal Leaders Podcast. Hey everybody and welcome to the Legal Leaders Podcast. I'm David Lancelot, your host, the CLO and EVP Advocacy at Law View and I have the great pleasure to have with me here today and Curwen Payne who is the founder and managing director of Curwen. I've known about Curwen and known Anne for quite a while. Curwen is an iconic executive in-house legal recruitment from based here in Silicon Valley founded in 1989 and thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks David for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes it's it's great to have you. I always love talking to you and I feel like somebody with your background, lengthy background in In-House Legal really has a great perspective on the evolution of the In-House profession and in particular legal leadership which is which is where the firm focuses. I really like to for our audience around the world just to hear a bit about what Curwen does. Curwen is an in-house legal recruiting firm. We're based in the Silicon Valley and a lot of our clients and initial relationships are based from here but as we know everything is exploded to the East Coast and internationally. We build in-house legal teams from CLOs, GCs, heads of legals to legal ops, paralegals. We're specifically focused on probably venture backed leadership roles and building out public company legal legal teams, complex hiring problems that we're trying to solve and then we have been really we hired a recruiter in legal tech and I specifically have gotten into a lot of legal ops roles over the years which I really enjoyed and have followed that market pretty closely. At the same time I would say that Curwen has always been really dedicated to the development of candidates, careers and it's just been I think it's at the core of who I am I feel like. Just it's so important for me and I've had the opportunity to witness the growth of the careers around the world of individuals I've known and so counseling, coaching them, working with them is also just kind of near and dear to our hearts here. Awesome. That's absolutely the vibe I've always got and is that you really do care about the people involved. It's not just a business like you sometimes find, you know, in the recruiting space. And you just have this this really broad perspective on the evolution of our profession. So that's why I wanted to get you here today. Maybe you could give us a bit of background on you know how you got into this space and how you've seen it evolve over time. So I when I got into this space, I've been at this for a very long time and when I started recruiting attorneys in the late 80s, early 90s, it wasn't that extensive in house legal departments. And I started recruiting transactional lawyers at a practice and LA based recruiting firm and I was in San Francisco and I handled all the transactional and I remember my first in house legal search was for B of A and no one would even pick up answer the phone to go in house. It wasn't what people wanted to do at the time. They wanted to be partners in law firms and you know look at today we've got thousands and thousands of attorneys in house across the globe that have tremendous practices and it is a bit of a care people want to go in house. And I have just witnessed that from the very beginning, especially being in Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley watching the law firms grow here and then the in house departments grow here. I would say initially the in house departments for more law firmish, right? And as they've grown, these lawyers now are just right sitting on management teams, helping run companies, owning additional functions, strategic advisors and really just so much expected of them. It's incredible there. You know, I really have the opportunity every day to work with these people and I'm just in awe of what they do. And so anyway, that's a little bit of a broad overview of what I've seen. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think that's fascinating. I'm thinking back. I think I was I was an undergrad undergrad when you had already started recruiting in house roles. And I think it's amazing, right? Because I'm always trying to go back and back and back and and someone yes, I've had it's sort of a journey we're on to to understand the evolution of the profession. But you've seen it literally from the beginning, particularly in the tech context where I think a lot of the sort of being a business leader with legal skills comes from, right? Yeah. So I think I think you're you're really have some great insights. So where do you think the market if that's the journey from from way back to today? Where do you think the market is now? I know you've you've just done a report on sort of 25 and looking forward to 2026. Where do you what do you think the market is today? So I think, you know, I think it's important to note, David, that we're coming out of a bit of a rough time. I think in 21 and COVID, we thought, you know, it was really going to go south, but the year after COVID, there was a lot of hiring. It was crazy. And Colve was driven up on the in house market. And then in 22, we really took, you know, a lot of contracting, a lot of layoffs. And this was unlike, you know, I've I've seen four downturns in my career. And usually they last about 18 months. And this was different. The 22 to 25 downturn was longer than 18 months. You know, I talked to people, be laid off. I think it get better. And then, you know, two years later, you're talking to more people that are getting laid off. So it was a very tough time. I do think and in the last six months, the in house market has picked up tremendously. I think some, a lot of these candidates have found new roles. And, you know, it's it's really starting to pick up. It feels a bit on fire. I think the innovation of AI, I think a lot of the restructuring has settled out. Some of these companies need to find talent again. So the hiring has picked up. I would say that for candidates who were laid off a couple of years ago. And for whatever reason, are still looking for that right opportunity. When I talk to them, David, I feel like they're, it's hard because they're down. They're a little bit depressed and down. And how am I going to get out of this? And I tried to cheerly them a bit that things are getting better and they've got to just stay positive. Because I think people will be able to find work in the next six months, nine months. If it continues to do what it's doing now. Right on. There I am. No, and I, I mean, I agree with your assessment, certainly. Just from what I see people who are contacting me, looking for, looking for connections with, with candidates, there appears to be a sort of like, I don't know what you'd call it, take off of the market. Yeah. And not just, you know, not just in Silicon Valley or the US, but also in continental Europe and Australia and Canada. Pretty, pretty strong market growth. And it's it's sort of an ironic thing. But, you know, the chaos that we're seeing in the legal sector politically in the United States is actually driving, I think, some of that growth. Because there's, there's, you know, not only is legal a fundamental part of businesses these days, but you have even more issues to deal with than you did before. And a ton of uncertainty and you need somebody in the room who can, who can make really, really challenging calls, often, you know, with sort of contradictory information from one day to the next. So, I think that may, may be part of what's driving the market to, certainly from an international trade perspective, I see that a lot. I would agree. I think that it's just, I mean, at first, I think the political climate of the beginning of 2025 was tough. And, you know, there were stalls because of the tariffs. It was like, you could feel the market wanting to go. And then the political overterms are holding everyone back. And, you know, it just kind of stalled the month of February 2025. And then I think once people settled out with the new administration and the summer, they're like, like, we got to get back to work here. We got to hire some people and it started to churn. So I think, you know, the other thing is that you've got this in house ecosystem. You've now got all this venture money going into legal tech. And what's happening also is that the legal tech industry is pulling on law firm lawyers. It's pulling on other in house lawyers. It's pulling on legal ops leaders. So you've got this pull going on that's pulling people away from jobs and they're needing to hire more on that side to take up what legal tech is taking away. So it's pretty fascinating. And it's actually, I think it's really exciting for the legal industry for these lawyers that maybe didn't go to Harvard, Stanford, talk tier to be able to have these, the, to be customer success at a legal tech or legal engineer and to have these other avenues to really do something with their career and add value. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And I, I've, for many years, talked about the diversification of the in house legal profession or the overall legal profession, right? It used to be, as you said earlier, very much like I want to make partner. Right. And I think long gone are those days, right? Like we know have as you said, thousands of thousands of in house lawyers who have very, very exciting careers and, you know, stock options, etc. Right? But also, you know, I'm thinking back to maybe 2009 or something like that where we started seeing in in house a diversification and, and, you know, the privacy team became its own sort of in house function, right? The compliance teams started building out really significant groups of people who were, and now, well, and then there was operations, legal ops, which is a mixture of, you know, legally qualified and, and other people who were, you know, in many cases more qualified than lawyers to do the job, I'd say. And now, as you're saying, we have the sort of legal tech explosion, sort of Cambrian explosion of legal technology companies where you have, you know, name your legal tech company. We're in the same position at Lawview. I don't know. I've tried to estimate how many legally trained people we have at Lawview, but it's got to be at least 20% of the company, right? Like everybody's trained to be a lawyer, been a lawyer, is what they call a recovering lawyer, you know, etc. Right? So it's, I think as you say, it's a really exciting time. The only place that I don't see those trends being followed are law schools. They don't seem to get it yet, but, you know, that's for another day. That's for another day. I, I, I actually wanted to ask you, and so when, when that, that downturn occurred after the, after the pandemic, did that also affect legal operations? I do think so. I, I think the downturn affected legal ops in the sense that what happens in a downturn, especially in the in-house market, is that people just hold, they hold on these jobs. And a lot of times you need these people to start, you know, like you look at the CLO market today and the Microsoft lawyer going to Facebook to be GC and that, the GC, a Facebook going to Apple. And sometimes it needs, there needs to be some movement at the top. And I feel like it's the same thing with legal ops. There needs to be some movement at the top. That doesn't mean that, um, that and the innovative like startups, a lot of these GC's, David, that were heads of legal. They know if they're educated that they have to have like a junior legal ops paralegal to start, I call it the hub of the wheel to start really building the infrastructure of that legal team. And if they're smart, it's their, you know, second or third hire. Um, and so that was still happening a bit, but you know, as well as I do that what they try to do is they try to like, Oh, can I pay really low for that hire? Um, and they, they're just trying to save costs rather than paying whatever would take to just get someone who's a little bit more experience that's going to save you the whole department time and money in the end. So I do think there was still some of that work, but, um, it was, it's now, I think it's now more on fire right now that then ever because these general councils, every single person I talk to is like, gee, at the leadership level is like they have the pressure to, to put the infrastructure in place to save costs to put the AI. Everyone's talking about AI and that's, you know, not perfect, but it's not just coming from them. It's coming from their CEOs. It's coming from their board and they want they, they look better if they can show metrics that they've saved money. They've implemented systems because it's, it's not just what they need to do. It's all over the press. So everyone's reading about it because of the money that's been infused in it. So just this added pressure on these people that are legal leaders that are ready. What do I mean, what do they do in a given day? Assess risks deal with regulatory issues, build companies. I mean, it's crazy what they're, they're tasked with doing. This is just one more thing. Yes. Yeah. Very well said. And I think it's, it's fair to say that, um, a modern and effective legal leader has, has, has a, has a strong understanding of, of sort of what a modern legal function looks like. Yeah. Either, either, either they're building one now or they're being brought into build one and they have a vision for that. And, and they, they, they understand that and the people that hire them understand that having the ability to, to build a team, build in a spree decor rally, rally the team around a vision and a mission is critical. You know, because change, change is coming, right? And you can't really drive positive change and accelerate a business without that ability to, to, to get people to rally around that, that vision. And on the other hand, you absolutely need an engine room because you, you can't, you know, the way I always think about it is you can't have one without the other. You can't, um, do all of this additional stuff that we're asking, as you said, legal leaders to do, run other functions, you know, on top of running a really effective legal function, unless you have something that's taking all of the road sort of, operational work off the plate. Yeah. And, and they, I think the fascinating thing to me, the real tipping point for me is that people like you are being instructed by boards of directors and CEOs and, and all the other sort of cease-weat to find people that get that that's necessary now, that, that legal operations is your first hire, that you need infrastructure, that running a legal function isn't just about answering questions for the leadership team of the business. Yeah. I think it's really interesting. I talked to a GC this week who doesn't have any, it's a 100% legal department, they don't have a legal operation function, which is really unheard of because most of them, you know, do, there's the operations piece, but what I hear the most, I would say, in high, in searching for legal leadership and head of legal ops is the strategic visionary, right? And what does that mean? And how do you vet for it? And people think they're strategic, but they're not, right? And that's what, that's what I hear a lot in hiring is outstanding judgment, or they're replacing people because they're not strategic enough, but the expectation on the individuals, David, is like to be strategic, to have this vision, but to also a lot of times get in the weeds, so it's not easy, right? To consistently do that. But it's a lot of what, why people get replaced, it's a lot of what people are looking for. When you do a GC search, when you do a head of legal ops, one of the many things, but just that visionary, and so for candidates, it's like, how do you talk about that? What does that mean? What kind of business development plan do you have if you're going to come into one of these functions? You know, how have you learned it? So it's a lot of articulating that in interviews. Yes, yeah, no, I don't know if I've told you this before, but I teach this course at the University of Florida, and I think it's the only course at the school on how to have to run a in-house legal function that I know of, you know, it's something that comes up every day on the law school curriculum. But what I had hoped to give the students was a level of practical understanding of that exact thing that you just talked about, which is going into an interview and telling a leadership team of a business, presenting to them, this is how I'm going to set up and run a modern legal function. Because I think that's the part that they absolutely do not teach you in law school and they don't teach you in a law firm. It's a big, big gap for a lot of people. Yeah, they don't, you know, unless you've been, that's why sometimes it's good to go to a large legal apartment to just see for a few years, like how it's run. Like you don't even know what you learn by being in these environments, and then you jump to a startup and you bring that knowledge with you of how they did it, maybe on a mini or scale, but definitely. I mean, that's a great, a great class because a lot of these people that leave law firms are really kind of in the dark. They don't really understand it. And they were, yeah, it's a different business model. It's, you know, really people that are in house are just, you know, they're, they're business people with JDs and they're specialists in certain functions. And, you know, it's not when these people interview, it's just really important to be able to share what their value add, whether you're interviewing for legal leadership role or the head of product or a commercial attorney. It's really important to get across your value add, you know, what, why they need you, what you can do for them, what you've done in your past. And a lot of times it's very hard. It's hard for me. It's hard for people to sell themselves. Lawyers aren't trained to sell themselves. Head of legal ops people aren't trained to sell themselves. Really, you know, they're more like operations like they get stuff done. And a lot of interviewing is that subtle selling of yourself and your value add, whatever it is. And it, it's a really takes work and it's challenging. But it's so important. It's a big cultural shift. I think it's fair to say that it's a big cultural shift to take people out of the law school and law firm environment. And even in, you know, if you're in a really big in house legal function, it's a big shift to go from I'm working hard. I'm getting stuff done. Merit comes from it's almost this billable hours culture. Right? The harder you work, the better you are. I'm taking that to your business people actually don't want you to work really late. They want you to get stuff done. They want to meet strategic business objectives. And that mindset shift can be very challenging. And yeah, I agree with you when you say like going going to a larger in house function can give you some of that. If it's the kind of place that is that is good at sharing that kind of thing, can keep you that background. Definitely. I think, you know, when people move in house, it's a lot of quick twitch, right? You're meeting these business people intellectually. You have to be intellectually curious. You have to get to yes. You have to assess the risk and you have to move on. And there's the mind shift, right? From the law firm, but you know, many people do it. The, you know, very successfully. Some people don't do it as well. But people generally love it, you know, because these lawyers are so smart, they have so much to offer and they get to hunker down. They love to solve problems. You ask them, you know, I ask people, what's the favorite thing about what you do day in and day out? It's like, I love to solve complex problems. And they're great at it. So once they get in there and they get the vibe of it, they excel, right? It takes off. So, yeah, it's pretty very much. Pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, obviously, for me, it's the favorite profession. It's just a wonderful, it's a wonderful job. And I think we, we as people who've been in the industry for a little while have an obligation to help people who are coming into the industry understand, like the avenues for success and the complexity of what's going on, particularly with this diversification that's happening at the moment. And I think also the expectations of leadership, right? If you have a goal of going into legal leadership these days, the expectations are very, very different. With past, now I think a tipping point in terms of expectations. And I think maybe that's a good segue into sort of the trends that you're seeing in the industry. So what, you know, coming out of 2025, going into 2026, what are the sort of main headlines you give to an audience of in-house lawyers looking at the market? I think, well, I think for sure to be positive. In terms of generally, I think there's has, as I've said, an uptick, a lot of AI, a lot of AI governance, a lot of privacy, product rules. But, you know, commercial is going to be strong as these companies grow. So just really to take a look at your career, I mean, there's a, there is a lot going on. Even though it's been bad, like try to stay positive, I would say as far as legal leadership, like on the general council level, that more than ever these leaders are doing more. You know, yesterday I was on the phone with a GC who's managing, who's also head of legal ops for a 400 person startup. He owns HR, he owns facilities. I'm like, okay, you know, he's managing litigation, he's managing the commercial, he's building his team. You know, so I mean, I think these leaders, you look at when you're hiring leadership, it's like you look at the substantive of what they know, like where they have former corporate lawyer, commercial lawyer, what are their strengths? Generally, they can figure anything out and then you're looking at their soft skills, right? And what, what do you hear from management teams in terms of what they want? And, you know, for sure, that's outstanding judgment, probably front and center, EQ, smarts, outstanding judgments, strategic visionary, I've touched on the ability to scale in a department, build a team like a world class developer of talent. And I think something very important on these legal leaders is someone who brings a following. And what that means is people like working for this person, right? And I don't think that management teams and boards focus enough on that. You know, these people are great at managing up oftentimes, but I recruit for a lot of these people. I hear a lot of what it's like to build out these teams, who's great to work for, who's not. And I think that that's really important. So if you hire someone that is, you know, a name or brings a following, who just people love to work for and want to do well for, it's such a positive. So, you know, I think there's going to be a lot more heads of legal for venture back, all these companies getting funded. There has been movement at the public company side, but I think as always, like when you go to look for your candidate and you're looking for that plum, late stage, you know, company that's going to go public, there's a lot of competition for it because everyone's gunning for those jobs. So that's always kind of tough. Right on. Right on. And I think one of the things you said in your recent sort of state of the industry report is, is a growing preference for what you call tech native legal talent. We'll have explain what do you mean by tech native legal talent? Okay. Well, a couple of things come to mind. So I, I mean, I think someone who has seen a lot of scaling growth at a product driven tech company is one one way I look at it, but the other thing is someone who is also very up up up to speed on AI, they get it, they talk a certain way. They, I mean, they've been deep in that and they they know a lot legally about AI, what it's going to mean, where we are with regulations on AI, every which way, how to use it, etc. And I actually have been talking to a lot of candidates. I talked to one GC who like kind of old school GCs like and I took a year off. I took a course. I've been studying it. I got myself, you know, up to speed on it and I'm ready to go, you know, so and a lot of people up and down the food chain are doing that. Right. Make sure they're up to speed on it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, I'm reminded of a conversation I had just last week with somebody, you know, talking about legal technology and she came to the table with a, you know, I, and I'm sure you've spoken to people as well like this, who've been through one, two, or more sort of iterations of building and scaling of function. And they actually know the industry and they know the capabilities of, you know, what, when I think of, of legal operations and, and building a function, I think about people, processes and policies and technology. And they have a, they know those things. They know the tools. They know the ones that, you know, are three generations old and are painful to use. And, you know, business won't use them. They know the ones that are cutting edge and might be a little bit too cutting edge. That sort of thing. So they come to the table really sophisticated in that way. And to me, that, that is becoming more and more a part of being a leader as opposed to just being a substantive expert. Yeah, definitely. I have to say that even like the general councils and the legal leaders, the head of legal ops role is becoming incredibly sophisticated. You know, I was talking to a, you know, a head of legal ops. And for me, I'm like, how are you supposed to know every single vendor out there? You know, it's just a lot that these people are under. And most of these, most of these legal operations teams are running incredibly lean because they can't get the resources. And they're doing a lot with less, just like the GCs are being called upon. Do more with less, right? Get it all done, but do more with less. So these leaders, I don't know, I find some of these job descriptions for head of legal ops. And, and I'm just really expecting a lot out of these people. And the people that do it are pretty impressive. I have to say. Yes, absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, it was an eBay that I met my first sort of VP level head of legal operations, right? At a big American corporation. And I had not experienced that that previously. And as you say, it is just a whole different level of the game, right? Like that, like that profession is relatively early in its development. Clock hasn't even been around that long if you think about it, right? But that development is relatively early in its development. And we are now seeing really, really sophisticated people come into the field. I think there's a pretty small group of them currently, right? There's a larger group of people who've worked in operations and have sort of like around like a penumbra. But then there's a real sort of bullseye of very, very strong legal operations leaders who have a strategic sort of vision, the leadership skills that it takes to build out a function as well as the technology understanding to do that. And it's almost like they're becoming, you know, sometimes the the chief of staff. That sort of thing. They're getting closer and closer to the general council rule. Yeah, they're like the consigliary on the operation side to the GC. And they do hold the chief of staff role. You know, one thing I do want to touch upon is, you know, when I think about legal ops, I think about general councils is just the compensation. And a lot of times what I see in hiring, you know, I'm talking to a client and they're saying, you know, I want all these things. And then like, all right, so what what are we going to talk about? What's the compensation ban going to look like for this? And a lot of times the comp does not match the demand for talent or the bar for talent. And it's through this process of me and our team kind of going through candidates, educating the client on what people make that it actually will either change or it won't change, right? And it'll it'll kind of drive what that bar and what that leveling is going to be. But I think it's just interesting how these clients aren't aware of the cost of really hiring ahead of legal ops at a certain level or a CLO at a certain level. And what that means. And it's interesting. And so a lot of times it's a consultancy role for us to just let them know, okay, you need to bring the bar down, you need to bring the years down. Or you need to pay more, you know, to acquire the talent you need. Yeah, I'm one of these are interesting. It's the these are roles that, you know, if you're if you're a I don't know how to describe it. If you're if you're a business leader who hasn't worked in this context before, right? With a legal function that is modern and scales and actually accelerate your business, I think it can be hard to say there are different roles now. There's a different way of doing this. Yeah. I think that the tipping point that I've seen though, even in continent to Europe, is boards and and C suites hiring for that person, that legal leader who has that understanding because somehow and it's always interesting for me to understand how that happened. Somehow they've seen somewhere else in business a business with a legal function that is like that. Right. And they're like, I want that now. I want that now. So I imagine you're getting more and more business leaders coming to you with that sort of expectation. Yeah, they want that. They just have to be educated. What is it going to take? Right. What to solve the problem that you need. And the other thing is, you know, it's the resources. You can't just hire the person they have to have the resources. It's a little bit like the privacy function in 2018. Everyone's hiring a cheap privacy officer. They're telling these people they're going to give them the resources, but do they, you know, they need the resources to do what they need to do to same with legal ops. It's the same with general councils. So, you know, I know it's interesting that you say that. That absolutely aligns with with one of my sort of pet peeves is this idea that you would hire a C H R O. Yeah. And of course they would have some kind of HR ops person. It probably even a team, right? Like that would be that would just be de facto. And of course they would have budget for workday, let's say, right? Which is a very expensive piece of technology, as we all know, right? Right. You'd hire ahead of sales. And she would have ahead of sales ops, a BDR person, an SDR person, and sales force, which is a very expensive piece of technology, right? But then you'd, you still have people who would go out and say, well, I need a GC. I want them to do everything on this list of 10,000 things. And I want them to get the legal budget down to like 50% of what it is now. Or maybe nothing because they'll just do all the work themselves, right? And here's a yellow pad. That's what you guys use, right? Right? So it's this real mindset shift to go from that perspective to the more modern idea that a CEO has a COO, a COO has a team and a ton of technology behind them, right? To get that job done. How do we get business leaders there? I think that's what you do, basically, what you're talking about doing. Yeah. You definitely, I think legal. I don't know what it is, but it's been slower to the game, right? Than everything else. And we're getting there. We're definitely getting there. And even at the top levels, these C, CLOs, GCs, just, you know, completely exploding and what they do and who they are and being so integral to, to really a lot of these companies know they cannot, they can't build a company without the right person in place. And so from that, it's driving it. And more, the more these legal leaders have successful head of legal ops, one lawyer I was on with on Friday was like, I was like, oh, your head of legal ops left. And they're like, oh, my God, no, they're like my big, they're my everything. No, like it came right out of his mouth. And I had read his LinkedIn row long to think this person had left his game. So, um, I'm a bit of a heart attack. I'm a bit of a heart attack. So I don't know. It's, um, you know, or the flip side, I think, you know, one other thing I wanted to just say, like, I think it's really very challenging, um, to have a head of legal ops job to be a GC, to be in these legal teams and look for another job or have to look and look outside. The defans are, you know, so incredible on these people. And if you have a family, it's just tough. And, you know, how do you build a brand? How do you look outside? A lot of times the people I'm talking to the candidates are operating from just a black box. They just are like, what is going on out there? I don't know. I don't know how to do this. I've never looked for a job on, and I've thought a lot about this. And I really do think like, and it, you know, if you can take the time, these candidates can take a time once a quarter, you know, once a month and set us and just call it their career time, look, they're linked in, look at jobs out there, network with one person, you know, it's just so important to kind of stay in the game because these jobs are so intense. And, you know, I think like anything else you do for yourself, you know, if you're like me, if it's for you, you do it the last, but these, this is so important, like you have to put it front and center if you want to build a career for yourself to build a brand. So, I mean, there are people that, I just think sometimes the networking is over the top, the expectation for these people to network on, but I think it could suddenly be done over time to make sure you know what's going on out there and you keep relationships, just like you build relationships inside your organization, you know, building those relationships outside the org is important. Yes, absolutely. I think we often see people with a really high profile, becoming sort of a node in terms of recruiting or what's the next role. And you can wonder, how do they have time? Yeah. Both be the general council of the large public company and be speaking at all these events and being on all these podcasts and on the front of all these magazines, right? Yeah. I think that comes from my, my thought on that is that comes from what I think you would call as well, continuous career development. It's not, it's not my everyday job is posting on LinkedIn. It's a little bit, but consistently. Yeah. Putting, I think the other thing that seems to work for, for people is just put your hand up. Just say, Hey, if you guys have a conference or a webinar coming up, think about me, right? And I found when I, when I was looking for roles after, after eBay, that there's always somebody that needs somebody on a panel or who had somebody drop out from something. And then it's about, I think taking that little piece of content and putting it on your profile, like making it into your shop window. So that when somebody like you comes along, right? They see, oh. So and so did speak at this conference. They spoke about the thing they're interested in. And they were able to post about it. And other people said something about it. So they've got, they've got some profile. They've got some following there. There are a bit of a, I think you're in the space. I think, I think those little things consistently done, lead to more, you know, network builds network, right? Right. Exactly. We need, we need, we need somebody to speak at something. Oh, let's think about that guy or that girl who did that thing. And then you find yourself being like, oh, wow, how does that person have so much time to do all these things? Like, yeah, they actually don't. They don't. They don't at all. But I think, you know, I think also that you can only do so much, right? If you do a little bit, but I think when you go to, from a search perspective, when you go to look for talent, you're looking, a lot of times we have to look at these companies and who's had to solve some really hard problems. Sure. And that's what management teams want is they want to see, they want someone who's seen something like they're going through, right? A lot of times you have to understand the pain points of whoever you're interviewing with. And a lot of times there's nothing you can do if you can't solve those pain points, you can't take it personally. Sure. Got to move on. Yes. Oh, but experience is good to have. Yeah. I think that that just speaks to the same sort of raising your hand. Like, yes, I will take that project internally. Yeah. I may not have the bandwidth forward at the moment, but that's okay, because bandwidth will be created. You know what I mean, right? So many leaders that I've interacted with have said, yes, I'll take that on with the understanding that if you want me to do this, somebody else is going to have to do that, or we're going to need more resources to do that, or, you know, eventually, there'll be some kind of rebalancing and and their roles just continue to expand it and grow. Yeah. Yes. Sure. I think that's a tour de force. A tour de force. Your experience in the industry is sort of unparalleled. And I really appreciate you spending spending time with the with the audience today. As you are, I am optimistic about 2026 from a from an in-house legal perspective. And I'm very optimistic about where this profession is going from a legal leadership perspective, just from what I've seen, you know, out there publicly in in job descriptions and talking to people, talking to people like you. So I think it's going to be a great year. And thank you for joining us. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Let's look forward to a great 2026. Yes. Thank you, Matt. And thank you everybody for joining us on this episode of the Legal Leaders Podcast. And we'll see you next time.