Leading With Trust: Tricia Kinney on High-Performance Legal Teams at Scale

Today's guest is Tricia Kinney, a seasoned General Counsel and executive who’s led legal, compliance, and corporate affairs at some of the largest and most complex organizations in North America. 

Most recently the GC and Corporate Secretary at BlueLinx Corporation, Tricia has built and led teams across industries—from manufacturing to services—navigating M&A, enterprise risk, governance, and global operations. Her leadership experience includes time as Chief Legal & Compliance Officer at ServiceMaster and over a decade at Kimberly-Clark, where she advised across the company’s global supply chain and professional business units.

In this episode, Cecilia and Tricia unpack:
– What it takes to operate legal as a C-level business partner
– How to build legal teams that thrive through change and complexity
– The role of governance and communication in scaling trust
– Why leading with clarity and empathy matters—especially at the top

Whether you're building your legal team or stepping into executive leadership, Tricia’s story is packed with wisdom and hard-earned perspective.

Follow Tricia Kinney:

@Tricia Kinney on LinkedIn

Show notes: 

– How to operate legal from the boardroom to the business
– Building legal teams that perform through transformation
– Governance, trust, and communication across executive leadership
– Advice for GCs moving into the C-suite

Books/Frameworks Mentioned:

– “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman
– “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni

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⁠@Cecilia Ziniti⁠ on LinkedIn

⁠@CeciliaZin⁠ on Twitter/X

⁠@GC AI⁠ on LinkedIn

⁠gc.ai⁠ website

Transcript

Tricia Kinney: 0:00

What if we don't take this action? Exactly. What's the risk of staying still standing still here? What's the risk to the business? And oftentimes, in my view, I think that can opt that can be the greater risk here.

Cecilia Ziniti: 0:22

I'm your host, Cecilia Ziniti. As a former GC, founder, and now AI exec, I know that as lawyers and business leaders, we love to keep up and stay curious and learn more about businesses and the people driving them. And do that while leading and getting better at what we do. That's what this show is about. Today's guest is Tricia Kinney. She's a seasoned C-suite executive and general counsel with over 20 years of global experience across private and public companies, lots that you've heard of. She was the general counsel and corporate secretary of Blue Lynx Corporation out of Atlanta. It's a leading North American building products distributor. She led Legal Compliance Risk, Global Trade, and Corporate Communications. Previously, Tricia served as the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at ServiceMaster and spent over a decade at Kimberly Clark, the leading consumer packaged goods company, where she led legal strategy for both their global supply chain and their professional services business units. Her track record across board advisory, governance, litigation, and organizational transformation globally and at scale. In this episode, we're talking about what it takes to lead legal as an executive, build high-performing teams, guide through complexity, and scale trust inside the business. All right, so excited. Let's get into it. Welcome, Tricia. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Awesome. So glad you're here. So you've led legal, compliance, risk, trade comms at public companies, at private companies. What does that look like day to day as an executive in that environment?

Tricia Kinney: 1:46

I mean, day to day, it looks different on from one day to the next. You know, you're in a super dynamic global environment, and that can vary, particularly given what we're all facing, you know, nowadays with um on the on the global landscape. Partly, though, I'd say like if you're kind of dividing what you're, you know, where you're spending your time, the vast majority of the time I'm spending is how am I helping my team and coaching my team and unlocking whatever obstacles may be in front of them so that they're successful. And then it's significant engagement uh with the other leadership team members, engagement with the board, um, and constantly focusing on where are our customers, where our investors, how we're putting our employees first. I love that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 2:28

So when you first take on a role, either a GC role or really any role, what are there some of the first things you do to kind of like both as a lawyer and uh on the business, to kind of survey what's going on, get in there and get in with the team? What how how do you approach that?

Tricia Kinney: 2:44

Yeah, I mean, the first, especially the first 90 days, I think are so critical to understanding what you're walking into. You gotta figure out what's working, you gotta figure out what's not working. And to do that, you've really got to listen to not only your team members, but all of their clients, um, and and really get the hard feedback and understand how can we get better, how can we serve better in a lot of ways. Once you have that and you kind of figure out where it is, you gotta align what current state is against where the business is going overall, and making sure, first off, that your team is working on the right stuff, right? So is there a legal strategy or strategic plan that aligns with the overall business strategy? And so that your people can have a kind of a direct line of sight on what they're working on day to day and how that's enabling and unlocking where the business is trying to go overall. Without that plan, I think it's really difficult for people to understand and to all start to work in the same direction on the right stuff that's the business has has designated as these are the things that are gonna move the needle for us. So let's all get behind it.

Cecilia Ziniti: 3:49

Got it. Okay. So how so that was love that. Any kind of like so so when people use the word strategy, sometimes I'm like, all right, what does that mean? So like when you come into a place and you're like, all right, our legal strategy needs to align with the business, what is that, what does that look like? Is it something like so? My examples all come from tech, of course. I mean, you know, all of all our listeners, you know, it's like, okay, what's our strategy to get XYZ regulation of return or what have you? But like in, you know, in other industries that means different things. Like, is there anything where it's like, and maybe it's even just like, hey, we're reviewing every single NDA and we're not gonna do that? Like, I, you know, I don't know what what it means for your business, but anything to make that kind of strategy alignment concrete? Any any examples you might be able to share?

Tricia Kinney: 4:30

Yeah, so um, you know, I'll use an example. Let's assume that you've got you're in a business that has a pretty significant competitive threat. And, you know, your product development teams are working on that from an innovation standpoint, but what is the business and legal team doing to support the business on how we're positioning ourselves in the market? You know, can we be more aggressive with our marketing claims? Can we be more aggressive with our advertising claims? Are there avenues that we might be able to tap into that we haven't even thought of? Maybe perhaps from a trade um, you know, uh trade group standpoint, or even maybe from can we get some um if there's sort of industry standards out there, is there a way that we can help to shape those or understand so that perhaps there's a you know competitive advantage given to one or the other? So more on that kind of advocacy side of things. But that's the type of stuff that you want to really start thinking through on if this is where we want to go, how are we thinking through that? You know, another example is we want geographic expansion. Fantastic. That's great. What's our team doing to enable that? You know, moving into another country is a big deal. And how are we helping to set that up, move that as expeditiously as possible, understanding the landscape they're walking into? So if it's a country, for example, that could potentially have higher risks than what the business teams are otherwise used to operating in, how do we teach them to operate in that landscape as opposed to, and there's a way to do those things compliantly, you know? How do you teach them and give them the tools so they understand what they're doing and can help the business and move as expeditiously and efficiently as possible? That's great.

Cecilia Ziniti: 6:02

So you you mentioned risk and you mentioned, you know, maybe you dial it down or you dial it up your risk awareness depending on what's going on. What are some situations where you were maybe supporting that aggressive growth or operational change in a business? And you know, I realize like, you know, confidentiality, obviously, but like to the extent you can, how do you manage that risk while supporting that aggressive growth? Or vice versa. Maybe you know, you've had situations where you've needed to be a little bit more risk conscious and be a little bit more cautious. Any any to share there?

Tricia Kinney: 6:33

Yeah, sure. So and and you know, I started my career as a litigator. And so I, and it's probably not your typical pathway to the GC, you know, route, but I found it to be extraordinarily helpful because I felt like my risk analysis got shaped pretty precisely early on. I do think there's some times where you have a perspective in-house that the risk of litigation is one that really governs a lot of decision making. And I don't really view it that way. I view it as one of the risks, right? And typically when you're fearing litigation, you're fearing if we take this action, we might get sued, right? And that can sometimes cloud the conversation to ignoring what could be an even greater risk, which is what if we don't take this action?

Cecilia Ziniti: 7:21

Exactly.

Tricia Kinney: 7:22

What's the risk of staying still standing still here? What's the risk to the business? And oftentimes, in my view, I think that can opt that can be the greater risk here. And so sometimes that can play out in the perspective of do you have the right talent there? Do you have the right people who you think or the right role structure that you think can set this forth? And so, and a lot of times too, even if you do end up with litigation, there's a thousand exit ramps that you can take to kind of mitigate that on the backside as well. And by the same token, there's risk inherent in every decision that is made, right? And I wish I had one, but I don't. I I don't have a magic wand to immunize the business. So um it's got to be a really honest conversation with the business team, right? To say, you know, here are the the 20 things that could possibly happen. I actually think we're at risk of maybe these two or three. And let's figure out a plan to how do we mitigate against those two or three, and then see what we can do with otherwise to help drive um the growth objectives that the business has. But I think sometimes if you stop too soon in that conversation and discussion, you just get stuck on, oh my God, there's 20 things that might happen. And then that paralyzes the decision-making process. And that that often is not the right result for the business overall.

Cecilia Ziniti: 8:37

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, in the security context, there's a thing that's like, okay, the most secure software does nothing, right? And so it's like this idea that the stasis itself is a risk or of not taking action is a risk. So in that scenario, you know, in your personal journey as an attorney, it's amazing that you're a litigator. I actually think a lot of, I think ex-litigators make great GCs. I was one as well. And I, you know, a lot of a lot of folks, you know, uh come from that background. Uh Savon Whitely at Square and others, it's been it's been great to see the the GC become, you know, David Zapolski at Amazon was a litigator famously. But I guess question on that, on that idea of risk is like you said, okay, you've got the 20 risks. How are you presenting that to the business? So you said it's an evolution. You know, is it something where you tell your team members, so pretend that I work for you, Tricia, and I'm, you know, a relatively new attorney. If I see these 20 risks of opening up an office in India or of, you know, um uh taking a certain regulatory position and I'm talking with the business about it, what how do I how do I go about that?

Tricia Kinney: 9:42

You've got to triage it. And if you give them what I'll call kind of the the torts exam answer where you're just flagging all the parade of horribles that can happen, right? You're gonna lose them. You've got to speak in the language they understand, which is, hey, you know, this may this isn't clear. It's gray here. And here's where I think it's gonna end up. Here's where I think we may, what actual issues we may have coming towards us. And let's plan against those with the caveat that again, no magic wand, no crystal ball, we could, you know, this could be something that we don't see. And that's where that trust factor has to come in with the leadership team to say, right, like this is how we understand the situation right now, but it could change tomorrow. And we'll adapt to that too. We'll figure it out as it goes forward with it. But I um you have to be really careful though, is that that conversation, and this is where the coaching comes in with your team, that you don't open with, oh my God, here are the parade, you know, here's the 20.

Cecilia Ziniti: 10:37

Here's the 20 things, but we got it down to two. Like, yeah, you can you can't do that. So, okay, that's interesting.

Tricia Kinney: 10:42

You're gonna lose with that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 10:43

And so process-wise, just really like drilling in because if this this was a podcast for a lot of folks of a lot of us are in-house and it's legal in friends, like, okay, how do we, you know, help our friends across the business? So, in that scenario, all right, we're opening up and yeah, there's 20 terrible things that could happen. Maybe two are a thing. I'm going to the meeting. What's what's your coaching tip?

Tricia Kinney: 11:02

The coaching tip is to come in with a plan, right? And address and say, look, guys, here's the reality of the situation. You've got to be able to, please don't anyway think that this needs to be a way that you're sugarcoating anything, right? We've got truth to power, have honest, really um honest discussions, perverte debate, all of that has got to be there. But you open with, hey, look, here's where this is what we want to do. Here's the two or three things that I think could happen here, and here's where we think we can mitigate what that looks like. And whether that is we can't get to those two or three what we want to do, the pathway you want it to, but maybe here's another option for us to do it, or there's a way to, you know, potentially get ahead of it. Whether it's a customer issue that we think might raise concern, how do we leverage our business relationships with them, perhaps, that can try to mitigate it. Um, but you have to think creatively on what what it is. Are there are some times too, and please don't get me wrong, where you have to tell the business, we can't do this, right? This is this is stepping on a landmine, it's not worth the risk. Yeah. Here's why that's few and far between. More often than not, you're able to figure out a pathway to get to to get to you know, going forward with it.

Cecilia Ziniti: 12:13

So this isn't on the script, so I'm gonna go slightly off script, but I love this more often than not, you can figure out a way. So, have you seen how how do you help people be creative? And like, you know, as lawyers, and you know, now that we've got AI helping us spot the 20 risks, then it's like, okay, how do we get creative and getting to that solution? So what do you do, you know, either personally or with your team to encourage that and to to have that approach?

Tricia Kinney: 12:40

I mean, you know, with the team, it's really thinking through like, okay, let's turn the question on, you know, on its head. How realistic do you think this this or how possible it is that you think the risk is actually going to materialize, right? So are we talking 100%? Are we talking 5%? Because that really governs where you're gonna go. Um, and if you're somewhere on the 50 plus, that's something you really should be able to flag for. And then you start looking through and saying, well, is it something that we might be able to again come up with another solution for? So I'll give you an example. Um, and you also want to teach people to um again potentially um be a little aggressive on that. And so there's been some um we some prior roles that I that I had, we were facing a fairly significant competitive threat, and the competitor was um pretty formidable, pretty litigious, pretty aggressive in in kind of striking out first. But there was some really good data that we had, and we really had a strong, really strong story behind um, you know, our our claims in the market. But there was this kind of fear factor, right? Is it worth the litigation? Look what they've done to others, you know, do we really want that? And the reality was in that instance, when we started to really map through what is it that we're losing by not from a market share standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, by not potentially taking on the potential risk that we might get a lawsuit that's valid or not from somebody who just that's what they do. Um, it really started to equ, you know, kind of equalize the playing field for us. And then you got to figure out okay, how do we do this knowing we're gonna get this lawsuit in a way that we're in a super defensible position. And when you've got the backing on, especially when you've got good data on your side, I mean, that's a that's a that's a that's a situational take on any day.

Cecilia Ziniti: 14:25

I love that. I think of, you know, now so you were in consumer goods, right? So Kim Lloyd Clark makes a lot of really recognizable brands. And, you know, I think about I ran the lawsuit. There was a lawsuit where um Bill-dear made basically a doll that looked like squishmallows, right? So squisamellows, these pillows that are super popular. And you can imagine in-house counsel of Build-A-Bear absolutely knew that that lawsuit was coming, but yet that line of business, that product, is doing incredibly well. They knew what the market wanted. They've had people begging, their users basically begging for a softer Build-A-Bear, and they launch it. And so then it's like, okay, what are we gonna do in advance to make sure that, you know, it's marketed in such a way that it's not using the squishmallow name, that it looks different enough, and all these other things. Where, you know, even for me as an IP attorney, seeing those fair use claims, super fun. We could put it in the show notes, but basically there was a lawsuit, and you know, Build A Bear is defending it. And that's something where you're gonna look at creatively, just like you described, you're gonna look at that revenue, and then you're gonna look at, okay, we're gonna defend the case, it's gonna cost us X, Y, or Z, but we're gonna win it. And by the way, there's a new line of business. We got to, you know, squishy bear. So yeah, good fun.

Tricia Kinney: 15:41

That's exactly what I think is the unlock for folks, because again, that conversation could have gotten stuck in the very beginning to say, oh God, you know, we're really treading into some difficult waters here. And frankly, that's our job, right? There's nothing, there's no like free, clear lanes anywhere. We've got to figure out how to navigate around on those rocks that may exist.

Cecilia Ziniti: 16:00

Exactly. No, I love that. Um, and the other one, the I recently heard um, so I was at a tech GC event and they had David Hyman, the GC of Netflix, and he said he recounted the story of when they um the company decided to uh you know Netflix became available globally. Like they just pressed go and they were like, kind of, you know, F it, we're gonna be available globally. And you can imagine that analysis being a lot like this because you know, the number of regulations. Do you have any sense for for your last couple of employers how many regulations globally you're even subject to?

Tricia Kinney: 16:33

I mean, it certainly depends on the industry that you're in and with that. And I've been in some regulated, regulated industries and non-regulated, but uh, but it's you know, it's a morass. And that's why you need to make sure that you've got the right structure underneath you with it. And, you know, and some, by the way, some regulatory schemes change really, really fast overnight. Some have the ability to be retroactive in their application, and so you need to, if that's the landscape that you're working with, right, in the country you've decided you want to be in, part of the job is how do you figure out how to navigate this and know that it's not a it's not a landscape we can control, but how do we maybe make some changes within the own our own business to be able to um to make this less um less of a concern going forward?

Cecilia Ziniti: 17:15

I love that. So you mentioned kind of structuring, let's talk about about legal teams. So you've come in either as a new GC or head of a division GC a few times, and you've restructured legal as part of that. Like we talked before, and you mentioned that you've done that. How do you approach that process and and what do you do and what are you optimizing for?

Tricia Kinney: 17:33

So, you know, again, when we start with you figure out what should the team be working on and having that, you know, laddering directly into where the business, what the business strategy is. Once you've got that aligned, you then need to figure out a couple things. One, do they have the capacity right now to work on that? And more often than not, the answer is no. Typically, um, you have more work than you have people to do it, and so you've got to be super efficient on how you are deploying those resources. There's only a finite amount of time that every person has to devote to the job. So you gotta make sure every hour is working in your favor. And so one of the critical things I do on the front end is look at and say, okay, what other work is coming in that may be choking the team, right? It's lower value work. The high value stuff is the strategic stuff that you want to go after. And so, how do I free them up to have the mind space, the time, and their calendars to be able to go do that? And so you got to get really ruthless about how do you handle the low value work that often still needs to get done? How efficient can I be with that? And some of that may include, for example, not doing that work at the level you're doing it right now. So I've walked into teams before where they have been reviewing a hundred percent of the contracts that are signed, period. And while that's that shows a lot in terms of how valued um legal may be as a business partner, it's probably not the right risk analysis, right? There's some contracts, low value, maybe low risk, that we can take, you know, the idea if the bottom falls out on those contracts, it's not gonna be detrimental to the business. So, how do I optimize those and um to the fullest extent? AI is a great tool on some of that. Providing, you know, typically what you what we're able to do is provide some you know templatized formats for the business to use and say, look, if you're within these parameters and you, you know, negotiate with this template, go for it. We don't need to see it. This needs to, you can go ahead and get to contract a heck of a lot faster as well. Or maybe there's some, hey, if you have some disagreement on a few provisions, here's some alternatives. There's a thousand ways you can do that. The other piece is, you know, I think leveraging third-party partners that you have is the work that you're doing internally that frankly you have external support that should be doing for you, and are you getting the full value out of out of that as well? And then thirdly, is there work that maybe your team is doing that really probably is um maybe they're checking up or um on other teams that you should should be standing up fully. So I've had situations before where um I've been told that my team is they were kind of the last stop for editing on anything because, quote, they were really good at proofreading. And I'm like, that's fantastic, but I need 50 more people if really that's where we're gonna go. Um we've got to have, you know, others on the team kind of handle that piece of it. And this is the role we're playing in this, this, um, this review process. And then once you get kind of that, like, how should the workflow be going through, and what is the workflow that should be going through, then you start to look and say, okay, do I have the right people in the right roles on that? And more often than not, you know, there's gonna be some tweaking on it. And it doesn't mean that you're moving people out of the organization, it just means maybe you're shifting what they're focused on. Um and you know, the interesting thing about in-house work is um it is an awesome opportunity to just pick up and learn as you go through it, right? And I'll use myself as an example. I've been placed in roles where I've had no prior experience with it. And it, you know, you got to figure out how do you jump in, you know, roll your sleeves up and figure out how to add value on this pretty quickly. And so when I hire for on my team, I it's very rare that I'm able to hire somebody and just kind of plug and play them into the role I'm looking for, right? Because more often than not, I may be looking for something that doesn't exist on the marketplace. I'm looking for, I've got a gap on my team for IP and union negotiations. Well, that doesn't exist anywhere. So I'm looking, what I'm looking for there is somebody who's who's smart, who's hungry, who has some substantive expertise in maybe one or two of those areas and is willing to learn. And the rest of it I can teach them as we get into it. But that adaptability and that agility to kind of run to whatever fire it is that the business needs you to put out, that piece of it I think is really critical when you're designing teams.

Cecilia Ziniti: 21:53

I love that. I love that. I also, it's like, I think, you know, again, my my frame of reference being tech, it's always like, oh, there's always something new. But no, there's always something new in every business, right? So, like, you know, the the tariff situation, I know you and I chatted last fall, and that was affecting your business, you know, very much. And, you know, all this stuff, like even areas like you mentioned, unions, you know, we've got the political situation that affects that too, and just like the ability to learn. Like, I still remember for me, little story, I joined Amazon and the CBAA Communications and Video Accessibility Act had just come out. It was 2010, and it was like, congrats, you're an expert on this now. So, and that was a great career opportunity because that was how I ended up working on Alexa and all these other devices and really getting this incredibly cross-functional view of the business and developing that trust. Yeah, that that resonates tremendously. I'm not surprised that I've always, I guess I've always admired you as a GC. And so hearing you say that, it's it's it's it's great to hear. Awesome. All right, so let's let's see, how about cross-functional work? So you mentioned like, you know, you were the editor for your team, was the copy editor for the business. I've done that role. I had a CMO, same thing, tell me, like, why are you so good at copy editing? It's like, well, law school. But anyways, how do you, in that context of figuring out what the right highest leverage work for your team while still maintaining client service and working a cross-function?

Tricia Kinney: 23:09

So, what's what's your advice on on working cross-functionally? I mean, you have to partner with them, right? And they've got to view you as a, you know, you have to be the legal expert. Don't get me wrong on that, but you've got to be the business partner to them. So they're thinking of you as a thought partner, a strategic, you know, somebody they can come in and bounce, you know, an issue that has nothing to do with legal law often just get your judgment on that. And and I think, you know, there's a worry if you're not serving in that that type of capacity. That does not mean though, and I think it's um, I think lawyers are often, especially those of us who came from law firms, we're kind of reflexively trained to answer yes to whatever the client asks you to do, right? And even if it's not the highest and best use of your time or it's not really value add for the business or any of that, and the you just don't have the capacity to be able to, it's not the business model internally to do that. It really isn't, because unless you've got a team of 125 lawyers that can do that, that's the law firm model, right? Where you are in-house is you've got to make sure that you're getting to um moving through efficiency as quickly as possible. And you know, sometimes that requires that other teams, you know, you do have those conversations with them to say, Hey, look, we'd so love to continue editing, for example, here, but we're not gonna do that and let's let's talk through and how do we collectively solve this problem? I think we can get into troubles when if you approach that conversation to kind of say, well, it's not my team is gonna do it, and kind of it feels like you're tossing it back over the fence onto the other team. You got to work through it and collaborate it because you know, somebody needs it edited, right? And so how do we work together to be able to stand, you know, stand that up a little bit more from a you know, easy one-step shop as opposed to kind of viewed as like self-help and walk away.

Cecilia Ziniti: 24:55

Yeah, that's great. I love it. And I it's funny because I that example resonates with me because I kind of like copy editing, and then it's like, well, okay, you know, and it's like and it's definitely when people give you the kudos and whatever. So I reflecting on that as an IC, and then obviously eventually as a GC, it's like, okay, you know, marketing should learn to like, you know, copy edit their own stuff. Although I've heard AI is really good at that. So um pro tip use AI for that. So good stuff. All right. So what about let's talk about MA? So you've done a lot of MA, you were at Service Master. If I'm a GC or if I'm an in-house lawyer new to MA, what's kind of like your like MA works better when you blow?

Tricia Kinney: 25:34

You know, honestly, I think MA is such an incredible opportunity and it's just an exciting, you know, there's an infusion happening, right? Whatever's happening, whether it's a devestiture or an MA or whatever, whatever it is, the business is going to look different after that's done. And that's a really unique ability to be able to help shape, right? More often, very different litigation when all of the facts have already kind of fallen into place and you're just trying to tell the story of what happened. Here you actually get to shape the story. And that's super exciting to be a part of. And so, you know, if you're new to it, I would, you know, again, like anything else you're doing, roll your sleeves up, right? Get immersed in it, dig in on all the due diligence and figure out kind of where start with the lens of okay, once we, once this is completed, where am I gonna, what do I have to do? What's gonna be on my list that we're gonna need to look at? And so that starts to shape like here's here's where we are as a company right now, here's where the target may look like, and what do we need to do, you know, to to to reconcile that. And I've been in deals where the target looks a lot better, maybe sometimes than where we are. I'm like, fantastic, this is this is this is exactly great. But start to think through like if I am the one who has to solve these issues on the backside, how am I identifying them? And then B, what could potentially be the plan? I think the area where you can see sometimes MA going wrong is on the integration. And there's a lot of philosophies on what that looks like and how you do it from bolt-on to full integration. But typically, if you are acquiring a company, there's something about them that you really want and it's it's a value, it's a it's a benefit to where you are right now. You know, often if you are kind, you know, my experience is that when you try to come in and sort of the the larger consumes the smaller, you're losing some of that value of the deal that you that you uh attracted you in the first place. So figuring out what that blend is and what that balance is and how to integrate, that's always where the secret sauce is.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:25

So you talked about MA. That was great advice. The secret sauce in MA. You've also done some really interesting things that a lot of our listeners I think will find fascinating. Crisis management and cybersecurity readiness. What's your on either of those topics, what's your system or framework for those? Yeah.

Tricia Kinney: 27:42

Well, and you know, I think cybersecurity is just one type of crisis, and frankly, it's probably the most prevalent type of crisis that most people are going to going to experience just in the the world we're in, right? And it's not a it's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when. The bad guys in this space are prolific and it's just a matter of, it's kind of a war of attrition, right? Who's who's next and who are they gonna go after? So, you know, with that piece of it, you just have to be ready. It is going to happen. And again, kind of on that prep of, hey, we know we're gonna get sued on something, let's put ourselves in the best defensible position. Same mindset on this, right? We know we're gonna have an incident because incidents are happening everywhere. So, how do we put ourselves in the best position when it happens? And so, what I would start with is, you know, the last thing you want to do when it happens is to be figuring out what you should be doing in that moment. You want to be able to have that kind of your muscle memory already in place, your team already in place. And so it's just a matter of dealing with the with the situation when it happens. So, for example, have all your vendors lined up. Know who you're gonna who the first phone call is to outside counsel, who your insurance broker is, who your threat negotiator may be. All of that you want to have set up. You want to make sure, for example, all your vendors are set up from a they're on your panel that are approved with all of your carriers, so you're not dealing with that kind of nonsense with as it's going forward. You also want to make sure that your internal team is ready and that people know they're on the internal team and that they're ready to go. Um, with the caveat that typically if you're in this situation, your normal means of communicating with your internal team are not going to be available to you. So, for example, do you have your cell phone, uh, cell phone numbers for every, not only people on the crisis team, but maybe several layers down? Because while you're dealing with the crisis, you also need to make sure that you're getting your business stood up and ready and back up as quickly as it can be. And a lot of times those are operational guys who wouldn't be involved on the crisis team. And so, how do I, if I don't have my systems are all paralyzed, how am I getting in touch with somebody maybe in the field that I need to go do X, Y, or Z to handle getting the field back up and ready? And then on top of that, you um you need to make sure you have an understanding with what how the board is going to be brought in, when they get brought in, when at what point you start to trigger crisis. So you're going to be getting thousands of these flags through your IT team on a you know very regular basis. At what point do you start to convenient this? Like when is that trigger happening? And then you want to practice. You know, again, I would highly recommend doing at least one tabletop cross-functionally, not just within the IT team or not just within the legal team, but cross-functionally, you know, get your ops teams there, your commercial teams there, get your supply chain involved as well. So that we all understand exactly what's happening here and you understand kind of the leadership and the the communications cadence as well too. It's amazing what comes out by the way when you start to do your scenario planning and your tabletop exercises and how much that profile and bolster what you think may be a good process altogether. And you start to uh to see the need on the backside. We had an interesting situation where and we used a third party by the way too which I would recommend to kind of run the tabletops. And they had a situation that frankly we hadn't thought about which was in one of their prior clients there's they had an attack and the systems were shut down. There was a notice to employees and of course it always happens weekend as well right or holiday when people are not normal working hours. The uh so because the systems were disabled they were trying to let the general employee population know hey we know that this particular system is down working on it before they as they're trying to throw you know assess the full the full magnitude of the threat. Well one of you know an employee tweeted about that and ended up you know that can kind of pick up and go viral and so then suddenly you had um you know all of this kind of external like wait what's going on how's this happening so you know that highlighted for for us and maybe we need to kind of strengthen some of our our approaches and and conversations with employees on what they're doing with you know internal communication something we would probably never really thought about before but um it really highlighted um it um going forward but I think the bottom line with all of this is that when you are in a crisis it is all consuming it's all hands on back everything else you know goes by the wayside the last thing you want to be you want to happen is that people are learning on that job. You want them to learn through it at one point or another.

Cecilia Ziniti: 32:17

Yeah I mean I think it's it's one of these like you know even the very tactical like making sure that your law firms are impaneled and you don't have a conflict like literally because every minute counts and then you know the other thing you said reminded me there was a really interesting so I was at Cruz which was autonomous vehicles and they had a crisis in the form of you know a struck pedestrian and come to find that there was a Slack channel with I think it was like 40 people in it footage of the incident was dropped and it turns out that no one person watched it for four hours. And it's the kind of thing that you hear about afterwards and you're like no okay they could have said like okay Jane Doe you know X person you are the first to watch this you know Brian Doe you're the second and like literally had that and it ended up being something that like in retrospect is like horrifying but then you know with some advanced planning it could have been like literally tagging people to those very specific tasks that you can predict in advance could happen.

Tricia Kinney: 33:20

That's a fantastic example of it exactly because you can see and there was no ill will and nobody not watching it they're completely consumed with everything else.

Cecilia Ziniti: 33:28

It's just not something that was on somebody's list to exactly exactly and yeah so I I think like that very detailed like well I'm excited to actually have AI create a checklist from what you said, Tricia. So yeah so let's talk um real quick about AI. What's your view on AI? Who you use legal AI, how are you using it to do some of the things we talked about?

Tricia Kinney: 33:46

I think it's um is uh not using it is almost to the same in my view of saying I'm not going to use the internet 25 years ago or 30 years ago, right? It's just an essential and again to my point of having too much work and not enough people, um you've got to get as efficient as possible with the the heads that you have using it in the right way can expedite your timing on you know turning around relatively routine items or even you know on prep that would otherwise you know you would otherwise consume your time with that. I was reading the other day that I think there was a study that just came out from Harvard that showed that on average it's giving I think it was law firm lawyers about four hours back per week and you think if you're billing a 40 hour week that's 10% of your time right getting a 10% FTE on my team like that's a massive massive boost on any front with it. And especially as you're starting you know now the critical thing is making sure that that 10% time is really used effectively right so if it's something where I am um having I I'm not I just kind of expect that you know we get this new AI tool and it works beautifully on the front end it's it's gonna fail miserably. But um I think I mentioned this to you previously I had heard Ethan Mollock speak who runs the AI lab at Wharton and his admonition has just stuck with me that you've got to think of it as a a new hire on your team right and if you have a brand new person who starts and you just set them free, they're not gonna be effective, right? You've got to coach, you've got to give context, you've got to give background, you've got to you know and also you've got to give feedback so if if as you start using AI, it's not giving you the answers that you want you've got to speak to them like a human being would and say this is not what I want not just redo the prompt which is our typical response when we're using something like Google or a search engine on that. But really that kind of you know kind of training mechanism I think is critical. I also am a huge fan of using legal specific AI tools as opposed to consumer specific AI tools. I think the efficiency on building that knowledge base not only from a proprietary standpoint but you want them training in the same context that we're operating in and language you know legal language is very different legal context is very different than it often is in the in the wider world overall. Now the other piece to it is you got to make sure that you've got the security you know there's a thousand horribles that can go wrong here you know on making sure you've got the right security measures in place and having some conversations with your IT team and make sure they're comfortable with everything as it's going forward too. But all of that to me seems like something that you can it there's a pathway forward on all of it.

Cecilia Ziniti: 36:26

I love it. All right so we're gonna go to the um we're gonna look at the lightning round so basically what is your favorite part of being an attorney Tricia?

Tricia Kinney: 36:37

I really like to build things um as part of the leadership team and there's a different um uh you know to be able to come in and figure out here's where we are right now and look at the growth potential the white space we have on where we can go as a business and how do we figure out how we get there that to me is is the the fun stuff it's the real unlock. I love that the builder so good.

Cecilia Ziniti: 37:01

I mean just to be a builder because people I don't think people think of that as a lawyer. And so I think I think that's a wonderful what um what about what's one tool mindset or practice that keeps you grounded?

Tricia Kinney: 37:11

I think it's that it's really important to potentially crawl before you try to run. And I've made that mistake before where you come in and you can see um 25 things that need to get done right there are these fires in front of you and it's a good or maybe you've got 25 great ideas to go after which is an awesome problem to have right but if you start if you try to go after all 25 of them at once you're not gonna have the resources you're not gonna have the time you're not gonna be able to be effective on anything you spread the peanut butter way too thin. So figuring out what are the the three best of these 25 great ideas to go after go after them get them taken care of really embed them and use them from a you know that needle mover perspective and make sure that they really are impactful in the business that requires though that you park those other 22 ideas and and that's a hard thing to do not only just in you know when you're developing your strategic plan it's really hard to do when you've got clients calling you about those 22 other ideas. And that's why it's so important to get alignment on the front end on the on the plan to say understand these are awesome but we aligned that this is where we're gonna go or maybe it's something where now we got to you know check and adjust and we've got to move from these three are not the best ideas anymore. We want to add the um add the add the additional or we need more heads and let's go after it. You know there's a thousand conversations you can have on on how that all looks but really being choiceful and careful on the front end um before you actually go after it I think is really really important and it'll set you up for better success on law.

Cecilia Ziniti: 38:47

Love that it those other 22 ideas is painful but I I I I've seen your advice again and again super timely. Before we wrap Tricia any final thoughts to leave with the legal leaders listening whether they're in-house scaling their first team sitting at board table the first time anything that we missed?

Tricia Kinney: 39:05

The one piece that I would really recommend is that you got to teach your team to be business partners and who happen to have legal skills. And by that the language of business is numbers and a lot of us a lot of lawyers myself included originally went to law school to avoid numbers altogether and and if we come in speaking in the way that is normal to us we're not communicating with our clients. And so they have to understand the dynamics of the PL. They really do and that takes time that takes effort that takes a lot of self-study but take the time to really understand and and learn that and ask the questions right on okay if we do this in an inflationary environment why is there this impact on this seems counterintuitive to me for example but go through and really take the time to meet with your finance team and understand how that all works. And that'll help so much in your team shaping your advice about legal issues in a way that gets communicated and the risk analysis gets communicated in a way that will get understood in a way by your team and more most effectively.

Cecilia Ziniti: 40:10

But Tricia where can folks find you if they'd like to follow you or your work or get in touch. I'm on LinkedIn and I'd love to hear from anybody. That'd be great. Amazing all right well hey thanks so much it's been such a pleasure having you on it's really I I I just like I'm absorbing all the advice and shaking my head about of everything that you said. Thanks again. This was a pleasure this is my conversation with Tricia Kinney from boardrooms to global operations to cybersecurity. So her approach to legal leadership we've heard a lot of great thoughts it's a model of being strategic while also having that operational clarity and your checklist and your 25 things you're doing just super inspiring. And whether you're a first time GC or looking at scalar influence a lot we can learn from Tricia kind of across the business I'm sure that um I'll I'll take a wild guess and say she's probably hiring at some point. So um you can come to her for you know mentorship or great leadership. And thanks again for um for being here to hear more stories like this follow up wherever you get your podcast I'm Cecilia Ziniti. You can find me on LinkedIn or at gc.ai to learn more about how we support um in house council building an AI and beyond thanks everybody bye bye