Episode 82: Marcie Getelman
Deputy General Counsel of Lennar Corporation
01:09:05
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Show Notes
Marcie Getelman, Deputy General Counsel of Lennar Corporation, shares her career journey, the myriad roles held by in-house counsel, and how she supports the careers of the female outside counsel with whom she works.
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About Marcie Getelman:
Marcie Getelman is the Deputy General Counsel of Lennar Corporation. Lennar Corporation is a publicly traded company and the largest home builder in the United States. In her role as Deputy General Counsel, Marcie is responsible for managing all litigation in the eastern half of the country through oversight of a team of in-house attorneys and outside counsel. She is responsible for managing all disputes, claims and litigation including developing overall litigation strategy.
She works closely with the Chief Operating Officer, Regional and Division Presidents and advises them regarding risk management and claims. She is also responsible for selecting and managing outside counsel. She is responsible for and has led the company in the implementation of many operational and best practice initiatives relating to the areas of ediscovery, litigation holds, cybersecurity and data privacy.
Prior to joining Lennar Corporation, Ms. Getelman spent 16 years as the Associate General Counsel for Turnberry Associates, a commercial retail and multifamily real estate developer. At Turnberry Associates, Ms. Getelman was head of litigation and bankruptcy for the company.
Ms. Getelman earned her JD and received a B.A. in finance from the University of Florida
Transcript
In this episode, I'm pleased to have join the show, Marcie Getelman, who is the Deputy General Counsel at Lennar Homes. Marcie, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much. I was so pleased to be able to work with you and meet you on a panel for the ABA Litigation Section. You have creative and strategic views as an in-house counsel in terms of putting teams together and a lot of experience in that role that you could share with others who might be interested in becoming an in-house counsel. Also, you're a great supporter of women and have a lot of good things to say in terms of women supporting other women in the legal profession. I want to cover those things in the show, but first, I wanted to start with how you came to the law, to begin with, and how you decided to go to law school and become a lawyer.
I wish I could say I had some great epiphany or anything like that. For me, it was a simple process. My father was an attorney. I come up as 1 of 3 children. I have an older brother and a younger sister. My brother became a doctor. I became a lawyer. It was simple. I was close with my father growing up and had a level of respect for him. He was an attorney, so I decided to follow suit.
I'm sure you know Paula Hinton from the ABA and also at Winston and Strawn. Her father was a well-known trial lawyer. He would take her to court when she was young, like, “This is where you're going. This is what you'll be doing later on.”
We used to sit and talk about cases, especially when I started law school. He would like, “What would you do here? What would you do there?” It was a nice experience. I remember even when they teach Civil Procedure to you, they teach it in an esoteric way, nothing concrete. This was before the days of computers and the internet. When I was in law school, I remember one day getting a package. It was pleadings from a case and him sitting down and going, “This is what the complaint looks like. This is what an answer looks like.” I could physically see it and touch it. It was a nice experience, going through law school and having my father, who I adored and respected, as an attorney.
Also, that's so pragmatic. I feel like I got to see those things, the reality of it, maybe as a summer associate but definitely when I was a law clerk and an extern for a judge. I would finally see, “That's what a summary judgment motion looks like.” Here's how all of this stuff fits together. It's a lot. You have an epiphany of what's going on, but until you can see that, it is theoretical.
It was a nice experience. Yet to your point, my first clerkship was with the Third District Court of Appeal. I worked for a particular judge who was the Chief Judge at the time. He's since left the bench but is one of the main appellate lawyers that I use. It's interesting how the relationship has turned, but it's a nice experience working with him as well. He went from teacher to collaborator with me.
That's so amazing, and to have that give and take over your career is great. There is that special relationship with the judges that we work with as a law clerk that you have in terms of long-term mentorship and as someone who has your back in a way that you may not be certain about in other ways in the profession. They always want the best for you. They always have your back in your career long-term. To think about having that person in that role, leaving the bench, and then working with you, that's a great deal of confidence and comfort you would have in terms of the advice and strategy he's providing to you.
Being an in-house counsel is not for everybody.
It seemed a natural step, although not so much because he was such a mentor to me. He was the Chief Judge on the bench. To be able to strategize and collaborate with him is nice.
I've never heard of anyone having that opportunity with the judge that they clerked for before. It's certainly unique. It's not something that happens in most cases because, in most cases, at least in our time, the judges would join the bench a little bit later. There wouldn't be the next career thing in terms of doing things post judicial appointment. That's unique for that generation as well, although it might be different where you are. People do that more often, but the whole retired judge and turning into appellate advocate thing is newish around, at least in California. That's great.
That was summer clerkships, so we can clarify. My first position outside of law school was as a Bankruptcy Lawyer. I had a Finance degree as an undergrad, and I've always enjoyed business and numbers. I'm very much a Math thinker. They talk about the creative right brain and left brain. For me, when I started law school, I started to take Bankruptcy and SCC. Those were the classes that I excelled at and booked in. It was a good way for me to marry my legal career and my love for business.
I started my career as a Bankruptcy Lawyer and did that for a few years. I was at a big, national law firm. After that, I switched to a different national law firm, but I switched to the commercial litigation department to learn a little about commercial litigation. It’s funny. I never had intended or had a goal to be in-house counsel. It was never, “I'm going to go to law school, and that was going to be my planned trajectory,” but it found me. It has worked out well because it still gives me the opportunity to take my business background and to take my law and legal education, marry the two, and create this relationship.
I had been working at this commercial litigation firm. One of my main clients was a real estate developer, and I was leaving the firm. I called my contact at the company and said, “I'm leaving. I’m going to be switching to another firm. You need to tell me how you want me to transition your stuff. Do you want me to write memos? How do you want me to do it?” The principal that I was speaking to says, “Before you take that job, come, let's have lunch, and let's talk.”
I went over, and I met with them. They did not have an in-house legal department at the time. We decided to start one. Rather than me moving on to another law firm, I came in-house. It was one other attorney and me. He and I started the legal department at this company. Watching it build was exciting and fun. Now they probably have 10 to 12 lawyers. It’s interesting. It was learning on the job, so to speak, because they had never had one before. It gave me the opportunity to figure out for myself what works best to handle inside, what works best in hiring outside counsel, and how the whole thing works both efficiently from a business standpoint and from a financial standpoint.
That's a great opportunity because you're essentially doing the startup of the legal department within the company. You're not going within an existing framework. You're there and deciding what the best framework is. I know a lot of people who go into that. It’s the first in-house counsel and then it never does scale up or grow. That's a different opportunity and relationship than you have when, “I'm the first, but we're going to create a structure and have more than just me providing advice.”
What a neat opportunity. That's a good commentary about your relationship with the client already within the law firm. They thought of you and said, “If we had anyone in the trusted advisor role to come in and be our advisor in-house, maybe we'll take this opportunity.” That says a lot about that relationship already.
It was a great relationship. I was there for 17 years. I wasn't out looking for my next position, which my next position is the position I have now. I was contacted by a recruiter to take the position that I have now. That's how I got to Lennar.
I assume that opportunity already had the infrastructure of a department and things like that as opposed to where you started.
Where I started was a large real estate development firm, but it was a family-owned real estate development company. It was different than what I'm doing now. Lennar has had a legal department in place for a long time. I was hired by the general counsel for my position.
What are your responsibilities with the company? How do those look in your position?
As the Deputy General Counsel, I have several different roles in the company. Mostly I am responsible for all things legal, let's say, for the Eastern Region of the United States. It is neat that I practice in several different jurisdictions. I practice in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. It's interesting because the practice of law is different, and you learn the significance and importance oftentimes of having a good, strong local counsel versus when you were putting teams together.
I spend a lot of time and effort making sure that the teams I have for each particular matter are the best to put together for that particular issue. What would work necessarily in Miami, Florida, won't necessarily work in Charleston, South Carolina. You have to learn to adjust. A unique part of my job is learning how to adjust not only to my business partner, technically my internal client, but also to learn what works in the different jurisdictions and what doesn’t.
By the same token, it’s taking what I've learned in one jurisdiction and trying it in another jurisdiction if it's never been done to see if we can push the ball a little further in that area of law if it hasn't been addressed before, but it has been another jurisdiction. I do that on a regional basis and then am responsible for a national platform for e-discovery and cybersecurity. That's my role.
There are different portfolios within that.
We all wear more than one hat. There are three of us that have specific regional roles, and I also have a national platform role.
What's interesting to me is that you have a regional role. Within that region, you're conscious of adjusting to the region in terms of strategy but also institutional issues or cases that would come up across regions. How do you coordinate responses to that and create cohesive teams that are moving forward in the same direction on key issues for the company? That's a special skill set. Some of it must come from your experience in the appellate realm.
Always give credit where the credit is due.
Also, it's a combination of business acumen but also looking at the bigger picture of a whole portfolio of litigation that goes across state boundaries. From a business standpoint, that is forward-thinking. From a legal standpoint, it's forward-thinking in terms of not just battling what's in front of you but also thinking about the bigger picture. I don't know how you came to that approach or how that happened.
You live and learn. It was different because the first in-house position I had was at a family-owned company. I would address the issues with the family and suggest, “This is what we do,” and it was done. Here, it's different because, within the region, I have different divisions and 13 or 14 different division presidents. I work with all of their different divisions, and not only are the judicial systems a little different in each one of these. The businesses are run differently.
The division president that runs the Delaware division is going to do things differently than Charleston, South Carolina, Miami, Florida, or Tampa, Florida. It is much knowing what the corporate directive is as I address each issue but also taking into account very much what the division is trying to get out of any particular case. When we're moving forward, you can't look at a case narrowly. I can't take a position in South Carolina, let's say, that an adverse ruling could potentially affect a different one of the divisions.
We are strategic about what we do and how we do it. We always make sure that we're looking at everything on a much bigger picture than looking at it narrowly. When we had met and we were sent on that panel, I had worked hard on a particular issue that we wanted to take to the Florida Supreme Court. We ultimately did and we won.
Because we started the issue in Florida and we're so successful with it, it's now being argued at the Supreme Court in Texas. We're trying to take that area of law that we were successful in creating and taking it across the country into other jurisdictions to see if we can get some like-minded opinions. That's what makes it interesting and fun. By the same token, sometimes, I will come up with these creative ideas. They may work in one jurisdiction and then I will call a lawyer and I'm like, “What if we do this?” and they're like, “No.” They laugh.
“That's not going to work here. That's not how it works here.”
To me, that is a good outside counsel who says to me, “That’s creative, but no.” An outside counsel that does whatever I ask is not necessarily an effective outside counsel for me. I need them to push back and tell me what works and what doesn't work. I do come up with some crazy strategies. A good portion of the time, they work and sometimes they're not even capable of being jotted on there.
It’s not recommended here or it can't be done. It isn't done that way in this jurisdiction. There's give and take. It's a partnership between outside counsel, the company, and inside counsel. I always feel better having debates and pushing back on different things than people saying, “Yes. We'll do it that way.” It's like, “I want to vet that out first. Should we be doing it that way? Should we tweak it? Should we do something differently?”
It is interesting. and sometimes it takes putting it on paper and give and take. We had a case where we lost a summary judgment and appealed it. Once the argument was put down on paper, we went back and forth and through the briefs. There was a plaintiff, us, and then a third party. It was the third party that was able to obtain the summary judgment. We appealed it and the plaintiff appealed it.
As we were finalizing the argument, we realized, “Rather than fighting the appeal or trying to undo the summary judgment, let's jump on their coattails and get out on summary judgment on the same basis vis-à-vis the plaintiff.” That wasn't something that we had come up with. We were first, “We lost the summary judgment. We need to appeal.” Sometimes, it's interesting. With the collaboration between inside counsel, outside counsel, and the division, we know we will sometimes start on a legal path, make a complete U-turn, come back, and try a completely different strategy.
Sometimes you think, “We need to appeal something.” When you look at it, you say, “We want to achieve X. Is this the way to achieve that? Is there some other way that we haven't thought of that will essentially get us to the same place and perhaps be an easier lift than doing an appeal on this more judgment?” That's part of the teamwork that's beneficial in terms of going through that and saying, “Once I wrote this, I don't think that's the best way to go. I think some other way is.”
That's why for me, it is important that I have good working relationships and respectful relationships with my outside counsel because we will strategize together, be able to take these positions, and make these right turns and left turns. You never know where we could end up. My outside counsel does a good job of counseling me, but at the same token, respects what I have to say and is willing to take the ride with me. Whether it works out or not remains to be seen, but it is important to have a good respectful group of outside counsel that you can rely on.
I think about it that way of you take something down a road, that road might turn to be a dead end. You go, “Okay. Not that way. Let's try another road. See where that goes. What can we work with there?” It happens to us in doing legal research or other things, too. We're like, “Can't argue it that way. Let's think if there's another way to do it.” That requires a level of trust and collegiality between all levels of outside counsel with each other and in-house counsel. Also, it's much more fun when the trial counsel, appellate counsel, and in-house counsel are all willing to brainstorm things together to figure something out the best approach.
The flip side happens, too. An appellate argument or even a child court argument can come up and I'm like, “That's a great legal argument, but it doesn't necessarily achieve the business goal that we're trying to achieve here.” While it could be a great legal argument, we may end up passing on it anyways because it doesn't achieve the business goal that we are trying to reach.
I thought that was interesting. Sometimes people think about in-house, we have business objectives and focus on the business that somehow can be separate in a way of the legal considerations. They are, but how can you marry those two together to reach a result that's best for the business overall? We want to achieve this objective. It might be through this legal method, this legal argument or it might not be. It might be something else that we do to achieve that. It’s looking at that from the appellate realm in terms of making the law about that, too.
For us, too, especially in-house, it becomes difficult to make your worth known and appreciated. When you work for a company, you have your income producers and we are clearly not an income producer. We are an expense. Whereas if you are a private firm and you're a lawyer, you're an income producer. When you're in-house counsel in a corporation, you are looked at as an expense.
One of the ways that you show your value, aside from keeping your budget appropriate and your outside counsel within budget, is by creating a strategy that will ultimately allow you to create a new law that helps cases down the road. It’s like the one case we took to the Florida Supreme Court, it could ultimately change all of our future litigation significantly and will end up being a different way that we litigate these cases. Creating different areas of law or different strategies can affect the business in a way that there's a value add, even though you are an expense for a company and not income-producing.
Being a general counsel gives you an opportunity to grow and change your practice even though your position, title, and everything stays the same.
That is a unique perspective on demonstrating value. Most of the time, you're thinking, “I can show money saved, within budget, or something like that discrete within a particular case. When you're saying, “We have gotten a great ruling from a particular court which affects how we do business in a positive way, how we're organized, how many cases we might face in the future or what those will look like,” that is much more of a game changer way of saying what you've contributed to the company and that they can see.
I am lucky in that respect that I do have the capability and the freedom to make a change either through a case or we get involved in legislation. We get involved in different areas of the law and make the best strategic decisions to make the best and most effective change. It is a good way to establish your worth when it's otherwise difficult because the metrics are not so easy.
It's always hard to boil it down to a measurable thing in that way. “We didn't have to spend that.” “How do you know that? How do you know exactly how much that would have been?” Also, there are natural times when the law is changing in a particular area or at least the question might be coming up across multiple states. You have the opportunity to have an impact in some of these cases.
You want to be there to make that impact, whether through legislation, your own cases, other people's cases, or maybe with an amicus or things like that. That could make a difference for the business overall. I knew you would have interesting things to say, Marcie, but I've never heard another in-house counsel describe it that way in terms of the intersection of the legal, the business arguments, and demonstrating value.
It's a difficult way to do it. Otherwise, metrics are not in our favor.
It's almost like it's measuring something different than the value that's provided. It's almost like different languages in a way. What advice do you have for those who might be considering going in-house? It might be something they would enjoy. How do they position themselves best in terms of skills and moving from a firm to in-house?
The best thing I would suggest is that if you do want to come in-house, if you have clients that do have corporate in-house counsel, develop relationships with them and get to know them because in-house counsel tends to know about other in-house counsel positions. Even if they're not one in your area, there are a lot of in-house counsel organizations that we all belong to.
I could run into somebody or get an email from somebody that says, “We're looking for somebody in this area.” If you have clients or corporations that do have corporate counsel, I would talk to them. I would express an interest in them. For me, in-house counsel found me. I didn't find it. Develop relationships with them and understand a particular field. I fell into the real estate development world and went from one real estate development company to another real estate development company. You tend to find an area of law that you like and then understand the business aspect of it. Being in-house counsel is not for everybody.
We have several attorneys that have come in-house, worked with us, and lasted 1 year or 2 because their answer is, “It's not what I thought it was.” People seem to think that you work less, but you don't. I probably work harder in-house because I'm always available to my business partners. Incidents happen on the weekends, on Saturdays, and Sundays at the company. Incidents happen 24 hours a day and I am available 24 hours a day to them if that's what they need. I am there.
If you had a lawyer that you could call anytime and not get billed an hourly rate, you're going to take advantage of it and they do. While I do get involved in the strategy and all that, it is giving up a lot of control. I have way too many cases that I probably should. I don't have the ability to read every answer, every affirmative defense. I don't have the ability to read every discovery request.
It goes back to trust and great relationships with your outside counsel. My outside counsel has learned, “I need to review this. We can talk about this, but I don't have to review every single word.” I develop different things with certain counsel. I have a different trust level than what I do with other counsels and different jurisdictions. It's exciting and fun because you can create change and people think, “In-house, you have boring cases,” but I don't. To me, from a real estate standpoint, they're still exciting, but I'm not doing the drafting.
If you are somebody who enjoys writing and researching an issue, you don't have the time for that. You are involved in it, you understand it, you learn it, you come up with strategies, but then you've moved on to the next case. You don't have the luxury. The two lawyers, in particular, didn't realize they were going to be giving that up as much as they did. There are a lot of people that enjoy not only coming up with arguments but creating and establishing them on paper. We don't have that time and freedom to be able to do that. The bandwidth is not there. We strategize, but somebody else has to do the writing.
I could do the reviewing and the editing, but I can't do that first pass. That's hard. A lot of lawyers take great pride in being able to enjoy research and writing. You have to give all that up. It's not for everybody. You have to be able to move quickly from matter to matter and issue and not get bogged down on small issues. You need to focus on the bigger issues. It is what I enjoyed from the beginning without me even realizing that this is what I wanted to do. I have a Finance degree and a Law degree. The company that I work for is business-oriented. The in-house counsel might be different if it was a different type of company or organization that you work for.
You have the training and the background in both the business aspect and the legal aspect. You seamlessly put those together. When you go in-house and you don't have the business background, you have the legal background. You have to spend some time adjusting to thinking about the business questions. You're going to have the dual tracks and, therefore, analyze things along the dual tracks and merge them together. It's unique.
There is this one young female attorney that I work with. I have tried on numerous occasions when we've been looking to bring her in-house. For those reasons that we talked about, she enjoys coming up with the arguments, the research, and the writing. She was like, “I don't want to give that up.” I said, “I understand.” I think she would be a fantastic in-house attorney, but it's not the goal that she wants for herself.
Sometimes people can see things in you that you don't know or don't see in yourself. It's helpful to have somebody point that out and say, “You may not have thought of this, but you would have some good skills in this area. You might want to consider this.” You still have the choice not to do that, but it's nice to have people see things because you could be blind to it in yourself.
She and I have developed a unique relationship where she's outside counsel and I'm inside counsel. I have become her mentor, even though she's my outside counsel. It tends to be a different type of role where you're looking to your outside counsel to counsel and guide you. I have become her mentor and have counseled and guided her, not in the practice of law, but in the advancement of her career and in helping her to get where she is.
Ironically, it was a lawyer that I found on the internet one day when I was googling a specific lawyer in a certain jurisdiction. I came upon her. Through our relationship over the last several years, she's grown significantly. We both have, me through her legal acumen, but her through her professional advancement. I've helped her grow and helped her partly by asking her to come in-house. I partly helped her hone what she's looking for in her future.
As in-house counsel, you almost feel like you are the company. You have a hard time understanding where the company stops and you begin.
You are a big supporter of women and of women supporting each other in the profession, which we can never have enough of. What does that look to you when you think about, “We need to be sounding boards for each other and support each other?” Sometimes people say that, but they don't necessarily know what that means. What does that look like? What kinds of things can we do to empower each other?
She was a young lawyer that I happened to find on the internet. She did a great job. From the beginning, we hit it off from a personality standpoint. She got me. She got what I was looking for in an outside counsel quickly. She was bright. At the time when I first retained her, she was an associate. She was not a partner. This was not a law firm that our company had a longstanding history. At first, her law firm was a little concerned about her ability to maintain a relationship with a company of our size and magnitude.
When she started on the case, they assigned her a partner, not anybody I chose. It was somebody that the firm chose to help and assist her. As she was doing a great job, I was giving her more and more work. Eventually, she came to me and said, “I can't keep continuing to do your work because I'm a younger associate.” She was starting to be in that 7th or 8th year where you needed to start creating your book of business. She could be up for partnership.
She said, “I need the freedom to work on other matters. I appreciate that you're so happy with me that you keep giving me more work, but then I don't have time to work on other manners and build my business. I'm not getting the credit for your work.” I was like, “What do you mean you're not getting the credit?” When she explained to me that this other partner was getting the origination credit and what was going on, I reached out to her managing partner at her firm and told the managing partner that it wasn't fair. She needed to receive the credit where the credit was due.
Unless they were going to treat her the way she deserved to be treated and give her the respect that she deserved for not only obtaining me as a client but, more importantly, retaining me as a client, I was going to pull all of the business and go elsewhere. It's one thing to obtain. It's more important and a more difficult task to retain. They ultimately changed her structure. She was happy and she stayed for a little bit longer. She came to me and she's like, “What do you think? It's time to move on.” I said, “Okay.”
I worked with her and helped her based on my experience with other firms in the jurisdiction. I worked with her on helping her ultimately land the position that she has now. I guided her in the pros and cons of the different firms she was interviewing with and provided her the support she needed by reaching out to the partners of the other firms and helping to facilitate her move over there.
This was nothing more than a young lawyer that I found on the internet. We have since grown close. I do very much enjoy mentoring her and helping her with her career choices. Whether she rejects me when I want her to come in-house, I'm fine with it because it helps her hone her goals as to what she ultimately wants for her career.
It's good to have options in that way, consider them and say, “I prefer this. I would like to keep doing this. That is something we hear about in terms of in-house counsel saying, “We want our partners in the law firms that we work with to get credit and make sure that they're properly rewarded or designated for the work that they're doing as we perceive it as the client. People talk about doing that, but doing that and being proactive is something else. That's good. That's honestly recognizing the currency and also, what's important in each of the firms, too.
You want to work with this person and the way things are structured, this person's disincentivized from doing your work. No matter how much she enjoys working with you, it's a hit to the pocketbook to do that. Still, there's a lot of strength in you for taking the initiative and doing that. Also, with the other law firms, you have a unique perspective as an in-house counsel about those other firms and how they operate and what's positive and what's not, that you couldn't get any other way. That's helpful in making that decision as well as where to go.
The truth is, for me, having strong relationships with my outside counsel makes my job easier. If I'm struggling with or at odds with my outside counsel, whether it be a personality conflict, a strategy in a case, or whatever the case may be, it makes my job more difficult if I don't have a good, strong working relationship with my outside counsel. It makes me way more successful. Another in-house counsel with my company tells her outside counsel all the time, “Your number one job is to make me look good.”
We laugh about it all the time, but the truth is by having strong relationships with trust and a good working relationship makes our job much easier. It was worth it for me to put up the fight or to send the email. Whether I overstepped or not remains to be seen. For me, it was worth it because she was doing such a good job for me. It was easier for me to do that than it was for me to go back out into the marketplace and try to find another outside counsel that would fill her shoes. I do enjoy the role of being a mentor to her.
The other thing you do well from a leadership development or personal development standpoint is that you identify people's strengths and what's needed to grow them to the next level. You enjoy that process. You enjoy giving them that. At least some place rewarded in-house in companies that isn't rewarded in the same way in a law firm context. Developing people and their leadership abilities are something that a lot of companies take seriously in the in-house department as well.
There's a little bit of difference. Here is the other thing that makes outside counsel and, to your point, the development a little differently, at least my general counsel. When you are in private practice, you're an associate, a senior associate, a junior partner, a partner, or an equity partner. You have steps that you go through. Everybody knows what they are and works hard to achieve those steps.
When you go in-house, particularly at the level I'm at as a Deputy General Counsel, there's only one position left for me. That is general counsel. My general counsel isn't going anywhere anytime soon and I'm okay with that. He is big on you developing yourself in other areas of law or anything you want to do because he knows there's nowhere.
I see what you're saying. If you're not growing, you're going to go somewhere else because people want to grow.
When I first started, there was no such thing as cybersecurity back when I first started at this firm. When I expressed an interest, he was like, “Is that something you want to develop an expertise in? Go for it.” He supported me in my efforts to attend CLE and do whatever I needed to do so that I could be put in that role, be comfortable, and feel confident in that role. He happens to be good. Every year he likes us to tell him what we are going to work on to help us grow.
Even though my title may not change and I'm not going to be the general counsel, I continue each year to grow my practice and level of expertise. The company, and particularly my general counsel, are very supportive and in favor of it because the company also benefits from it. Rather than having to bring in another attorney who specializes in cybersecurity now that it's a big thing, I have learned to create that role, and I've taken it over. A lot of us do that. He wants us to grow and not stay stagnant. As a department, we're not stagnant. As a department overall, we're continuing to grow and establish ourselves.
Within a company, having a broader base of knowledge and more breadth where you're touching more parts of the business and adding value in different ways to the business, it's better. That broader knowledge is better and helps you in your position as well.
I never thought I would have an interest in getting involved in legislative changes. Now I'm a part of the team in Florida that attempts to make legislative changes as they affect the real estate and construction world. If you had asked me a few years ago if I had an interest in that or whether I was going to do that, I would've told you no. It's been a natural progression for me and I do enjoy it.
Everything follows behind respect.
Even though you're not stepping up like you would a practice over time, we still do have the opportunity to grow, which is a unique opportunity. I don't know that every in-house counsel has that opportunity, but we do. If you don't have it or it hasn't been considered, I suggest you bring it up with your general counsel or legal department because it pays back tenfold. Any investment that they make in us in growing, I believe that the company recouped the benefits significantly.
How did you select cybersecurity? That was a little while ago. Did you know it was going to be a continuing issue?
It started when I first got there and I had this one case in particular. That was probably one of the largest cases that the company has ever had to date. The discovery in it was outrageous, for lack of a better term, and e-discovery was a new thing. I started to learn about e-discovery and the different ways to produce documents.
Through that, I started to get involved with the company, helped create an e-discovery program and an e-discovery protocol and a lot of it in-house, created a procedure and, from the beginning to the end, a defensible litigation hold program all the way through preservation, collection, and production. I started with that, which I was doing at first on a national platform.
As cybersecurity became a bigger issue, it was my general counsel who came to me and said, “You do the technological part already. Would this be something that you would be interested in getting involved in and taking on to the next level?” I was like, “Sure.” For me, I liked doing and learning about it, understanding it, and working with the team. We have an incident response plan. It's been nice. it's almost like going back to starting a law firm. It always seems to come full circle.
Where I was involved in starting a legal department at my first position, I've started an e-discovery protocol and procedure and created the cybersecurity, our incident response plan, and all of that. It seems to be my forte starting new programs that aren't otherwise in place. It's been exciting. Being a general counsel, the company changes but not so much. It gives me an opportunity to grow and change my practice. Even though my position, my title, and everything stays the same, I do expand.
Everybody has one portfolio, which would maybe be the regional portfolio, but then a national one as well, which gets you at different levels within the company you're operating. It also gives you a broader view of the issues and business concerns the company has at different levels. That's good, too, in terms of informing your decision-making all around.
Being in-house counsel for me has been a great career and opportunity. Even though I've been doing it for many years, I'm constantly growing, learning, and expanding my knowledge of it.
If you weren't, you wouldn't be staying either where you are or in an in-house position because we always want to grow, learn new things, or be challenged, at least I do. The second you're not challenged, you're like, “I'll have to find something else somewhere else that could challenge me because I enjoy that, too.”
That's my personality. I don't do well sitting still.
If it's too familiar over time doing something, it’s like, “I already know how to do that.” It doesn't have the same challenge but also pushing yourself to do new things that you haven't done before and maybe find some new skills that you didn't know that you had, too. I can tell when you talk about it that you enjoy the various roles that you have in being in-house. It's always lovely to see someone who finds meaning and is happy most of the time in the position that they're in. We can't be 100%. It's probably too much to ask, but it's always nice to see your passion for it and that you're engaged in it.
I appreciate that. It's funny because I was in-house counsel for the first company. My husband is a lawyer as well. He was in private practice for a lot of years. It would be Saturday night. We would be out. It would be 10:00. My phone would ring and I would get up. He would look at me and go, “What are you doing? It's 10:00 on a Saturday night.” I'm like, “She needs me. I'll be right back.” I would take the call and he couldn't understand it.
Let's fast forward. When he was in private practice, he ended up being diagnosed with cancer. He went through his treatment and it took him a little longer to get through his treatment. He ended up selling his practice or partnership while he was recovering. When he returned to work after his cancer, he was a general counsel for a real estate development company. It's entertaining when on a Sunday afternoon, he gets a phone call. He walks out, goes into our home office, and takes the call.
I'm like, “Isn't that interesting how the tides have turned?“ I don't know how to explain it. You almost feel like you are the company. You have a hard time understanding where the company stops and you begin and you end up having this. They become your family and you want to be there for them. It is funny that my husband never understood that.
He's automatically adjusted to that.
He does the exact same thing and my kids will all laugh when the phone rings and he says, “It's so-and-so, and I got to take it. I'm like, “Huh.” I totally understand him. I get it. Now he doesn't say a word to me if my phone rings at 11:30 at night or 11:00. I look at him. He goes, “I get it.” It's funny because it's different when you're in-house. You almost become like family. Everybody becomes like family. You all have one goal, which is the success of the company. Everybody's working towards that goal. You create this feeling that I never got when I was in private practice.
It's funny from your husband saying, ”I don't get it,” when he's in his own firm. It then automatically translates to that when he is in-house. There's something different about that he acknowledged in doing. The first time he did that, did you say, “Now, do you understand?”
I just laughed. He got up. He comes back and I go, “Huh.” He goes, “I know.”
You can listen to other people’s opinions. You may not agree with them, side with them or empathize with them, but you can always respect them.
I want to make sure it was their self-awareness the first time.
He'll say how he didn't get it. In private practice, he had a huge practice with a bunch of other lawyers. He would work late, but there was an end to his day sometimes, not always, if you have deadlines and all of that in practice. He would say to me, “I could work 24 hours straight and still not get ahead,” but it's different when you're in-house.
I'll do a few lightning-round questions if you have a few minutes. Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
I wish I could play a musical instrument. I would love to be able to do that. I just don't.
Any specific one or any instrument?
I would like to play the piano.
When I was younger, I wanted to learn how to play the harp and I never did that because my mother said that I should probably choose an instrument that fits on the bus a little easier. I played the violin, but I've always had an interest in the harp and drums.
You played the violin. You played an instrument. Even when I was little, I always wanted to do it but never seemed to accomplish it. I told my kids, “I'm going to take piano lessons.” My kids were like, “Okay.” I am determined at some point in my life to be able to play a musical instrument. I don't know. It's something I always wished I could do that I can't.
You got to keep that on the list.
It is on my bucket list for sure.
I had a fun experience. One of my friends, for her birthday, had this ladies' rock band camp. We went for one day. In one day, we got a crash course in different instruments. We wrote a song. We wrote lyrics, worked on the music together, and then performed in a club that night. It was amazing. I got basic lessons in drums which I had always wanted and had an interest in doing. We performed and it was fun. It puts it in the category of something you would think would never be possible in that timeframe. I'm not saying we were the best band in the world, but it was fun. It was more of a punk band with about three chords because that was pretty easy.
I've tried. My son played the guitar for a short period of time. One of my daughters took piano because I wanted to live at least vicariously through them. If I couldn't play an instrument, I wanted one of them to play an instrument. That didn't work out either. That's something I would like to do.
It's possible. What trait do you most deplore in yourself and then what trait do you most deplore in others? It might be the same trait.
For me, it would be respect. That is a big thing for me. Everything follows behind respect. One thing my husband and I both instill in our children is respect. You can be at odds with somebody you may not feel warm and fuzzy, but there's never a reason not to respect somebody. That has always been a big thing between my husband and me, respect for my children to me and my husband and I towards our children. We like to show them respect.
In business and in work, everybody can have differing views and opinions towards anything. That's what makes us all great in all of that. You can be able to listen to other people's opinions. You may not be able to agree with them, side with them, or empathize with them, but you can always respect them. Respect would be my strongest trait. The flip side of that is I would always want somebody to respect me. The one thing I tried to do most was show respect to people one way or another.
What does respect look like?
It could be such a broad base, things that are as simple as my children not cleaning their room. I explain to them, “While it may not be important to you to have a clean room, it's important to me. It's at my house. It's important to me that you have a clean room. You respect me by cleaning your room.” The same token to my children, being in their room and having their door closed or being on their phone or whatever, or me not reading their text, that's a level of respect. While I think maybe I am a title to read, it's what they ask for. I respect their wishes. I'm using this as an example. I don't believe this.
I've explained to my kids that when I was growing up, you never knew anybody's political affiliation. It was not part of your landscape, of a relationship, or a friendship. Now, unfortunately, it is. That's the other thing. I have a lot of friends or colleagues that, up until a few years ago, I had no idea what their political affiliations were because it didn't matter. Now that you've learned them, you may agree or disagree, but regardless, you respect people and don't treat them differently. You don't disregard their thoughts and feelings.
Always be inclusive, don’t leave people out.
With me and my outside counsel, respect is a big thing because they respect me, coming up with whatever their deal is, and also with time. Don't come to me and give me a 35-page pleading and say to me, “I need this back tomorrow.” The same token is when I give them assignments, I'm respectful of what I'm giving them, how I'm treating them, and what I'm asking them to do. For me, it's respect. I'm all about respect.
That was a great summary and description of the different ways of what that looks like, treating people like human beings, treating them well. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
I'm going to say, my family. We've had it a little more difficult than most. My husband is a cancer survivor and I'm a cancer survivor. We've both gotten to experience what it's like to be a caregiver. I was a caregiver first, and then I was a cancer patient and then a survivor, and my husband was the opposite. He was a cancer patient, survivor, and caregiver. For us, I think that as a family, we are much more committed to each other than most. Our children are committed to each other and to us.
It can be hard to find the light in the darkness from that.
My oldest is a little over eight years older than my youngest. My oldest is a boy and my youngest is a girl. Despite that, those two are as tight as they can be and speak every day. He's grown up, lives in Manhattan, and she's still in high school. They relied on each other so much during the two difficult times in our family life. It's brought them a level of closeness that I don't think I had with my siblings when I was growing up as they do.
Especially with the difference in age, you wouldn't expect that would be the case. That's so great and wonderful.
The other part, too, is that both my husband and I have different perspectives than we did before. We don't sweat the small stuff. We enjoy each other's company and the children's company. We don't sweat the small stuff anymore. It rolls off our back and we move on.
I can understand that approach. It might naturally flow from that situation. It is a challenging time. You're like, “Compared to that, it’s a transitory problem. It's okay.” That's amazing. I think it’s a testament to you and to your family that you came out of that stronger, too, but some people wouldn't.
I get that. I understand how you have a road to choose. You can go one way or the other. Both my husband and I are lucky that our personalities are such that. We're strong people and strong individuals and took the road of coming out of it better than we were before.
Suffer the small consequences rather than making a mistake much later in life when there are much larger consequences.
Last question, what is your motto, if you have one?
I don't have one. I would have to think about it. I would have to ask my children. They could probably come up with three quickly, but none that I can think of. The one thing I've tried to teach my children, in particular, is to always be inclusive. Don't leave people out. I remember when they were little and they had to make a choice between something blue and something green. They would say to me, “Mommy, what do I pick?”
I'm like, “You need to learn to make the choices on the small stop that don't have major repercussions without the assistance of others. As you get older and you have to make bigger lifetime decisions, you can learn to make decisions on your own, learn how not to be influenced so much by others, and do what you think is right. That's one thing I've always instilled in my kids as well.
That's a good idea in terms of being comfortable with the smaller decisions. You can make bigger ones down the line. That could be hard as a parent to put in to execute. There's a lot of faith, trust, and respect in allowing them to do. Make a mistake.
Make a mistake when it's not that important. Suffer the small consequences instead of making a mistake much later in life when there are much larger consequences.
Marcie, thank you so much. I enjoyed this.
Thank you for having me. It's been great. I've enjoyed this very much.
I enjoyed learning more about you, your approach to things, and a lot of special wisdom, advice, and guidance that you shared. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.