CZ and Friends
CZ & Friends is a podcast about what it takes to lead and evolve legal in an era of exponential change. Hosted by Cecilia Ziniti, former General Counsel turned founder and CEO of GC AI, each episode features candid conversations with legal and business leaders who are building for scale, taking bold bets on technology, and leading with humanity. Whether you're a GC, operator, or in-house counsel, this podcast is your front-row seat to the future of legal.
CZ and Friends
Turning Legal Into a Growth Engine: IRC's CLO Chuck Kable on Strategy, Compliance & Change
What does it take for a GC to operate as a true executive leader—driving transformation across legal, compliance, and beyond?
Today’s guest is Chuck Kable, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Innovative Renal Care, whose career includes transformative leadership roles at Axiom Medical, Emerus, and Cardon Outreach. Chuck has guided companies through high-value private equity transactions, built legal functions from scratch, and led turnarounds, including a $400M acquisition delivering a 16x valuation increase.
You’ll hear:
– How to align legal strategy with private equity timelines while protecting long-term business health
– Why judgment, trust, and credibility are the foundation of GC leadership
– Making compliance a driver of business value, not a bottleneck
– The benefits and challenges of leading both legal and HR functions
– How to identify and automate low-value work to free up strategic capacity
– Maintaining influence and relationships in an AI-enabled legal function
– Why “thinking time” is a leadership superpower every GC needs
Follow Chuck:
@Chuck Kable on LinkedIn
Books Mentioned:
– Building an Outstanding Legal Team by Bjarne P. Tellmann
– No Fail Meetings by Michael Hyatt
Show Notes:
– Chuck’s path from litigator to multi-hat executive leader
– Lessons from leading a $400M turnaround at Cardon Outreach
– Navigating high-stakes private equity transactions in healthcare
– Building compliance cultures that enable growth
– Integrating legal, HR, and compliance for maximum impact
– Using technology to automate routine work and focus on strategy
– The importance of designing intentional business interactions for legal teams
– Leadership practices for bringing teams along through major change
Follow us on all social platforms to get each new episode when it drops.
@Cecilia Ziniti on LinkedIn
@CeciliaZin on Twitter/X
@GC AI on LinkedIn
gc.ai website
Legal should not be satisfied being the cost center bottleneck, right? Which is we've, you know, we read around all the time, like we've heard about it for years and years and years, right? Let's not be satisfied. And so, okay, well, what does that mean? It means looking at technology and how we can utilize it to drive enhancements in quality, efficiency, and capacity.
Cecilia Ziniti:Welcome back to CZ and Friends, where we talk with legal leaders, technologists, and operators driving innovation and excellence inside their companies and beyond. I'm your host, Cecilia Ziniti. Today's guest is Chuck Kable, the general counsel and corporate secretary at innovative renal care. Over his career, Chuck has held executive roles at Axiom Medical, Emeris, and Cardinal Outreach, where he led major private equity transactions, scaled legal teams from the ground up, and partnered with boards driving transformation. Chuck's track record is particularly impressive. He orchestrated a turnaround at Carden that resulted in a 400 million acquisition acquisition, 16x valuation increase. At Emiris, he built an entire legal department while leading a $500 million private equity deal and eliminating outside counsel costs. Get this entirely. In this episode, we'll explore how general counsels can step up as true executive leaders, what Chuck has learned guiding companies through high growth inflection points, and his perspective on the evolving role of legal in the C-suite. Little story, I met Chuck actually doing a demo for him and thought immediately this is a cool guy I want to have on the pod. So let's dive in. Chuck, welcome to the show. Hi, it's good to be here. All right, great. So looking at your career arc, you've been kind of a private equity guy. What did what does that mean?
Chuck Kable:Yeah, um, it was actually by accident, but you know, so private equity, right? It's kind of private money. So it's it's not publicly traded businesses. Um, you know, and for me it was right place, right time, and I guess right skill set, right? So I had some unique experiences in my career that led Cardin, the guys at Cardin to kind of reach out to me. And so when I started there, they were not private equity backed. They were kind of a bootstrapped family founded business. And so if you know one thing about private equity, there are kind of different kind of levels, right? Small cap, mid-cap, and then you've got kind of the KKRs and the Black Rocks, et cetera, that go after a big, big, big business. And so, you know, I was in that kind of small to mid-cap space in the early stages of my career, um, and was lucky enough to be involved in kind of my initial private equity transaction when I was with Carton. You know.
Cecilia Ziniti:And how does so we we we have a we've had you know public company folks on the pod. What's different about it? Because I remember a funny story. I I had actually interviewed at a company that was PE backed, and I had a great interview. I was like the second candidate to be GC. And the recruiter came back and said, they liked you a lot, but you just don't understand PE. And I said, guilty as charged, that is not me. So what does it mean to understand PE and from a from a legal perspective as well?
Chuck Kable:I think it's just understanding what you're getting into. You're kind of forced to run lean. The public space, because there's more regulation, there's more focus on governance, there's more focus on infrastructure. There are certain expectations that Wall Street has on a publicly traded business that you have to execute on, right? So there's kind of a whole bunch of expense that gets bolted onto a business when they when they go public or are already public. I think on the private side, they're interested in buying a business, growing it, and selling it. And so part of that is understanding what's expected of legal in a way that can make it tough for a solo GC or even a small legal team to manage, but you have to figure out the right way to balance out the workload, manage outside spend, and then execute on the needs of the business, right? So it can be an interesting challenge. And the one clarifying comment I'm gonna make because my friends at Ameris will be like, Chuck, come on. What I what I did at Ameris was we had a category of spend that was called essentially unnecessary outside spend. That's what got eliminated. So we took that to zero. Unnecessary was essentially stuff that we kind of categorized as otherwise being able to be handled internally. The things that we maintained a relationship with outside council with on were like the sophisticated joint venture agreement negotiation, which I led, but I needed them to do the dirty work, so to speak. So just clear whole.
Cecilia Ziniti:No, no, that's that's helpful. I I I saw that stat and it must have just been, I was reading fast on your LinkedIn or happy, but but that that is helpful. But no, the um I think this concept of the the mix, the blend between outside and in inside spend is I have seen it be different at different kinds of companies. Was that something? So so you get you get to Carta and paint us a picture. Like you you said you'd had some experiences that they liked. Yeah. And what did the company do? And and kind of like what was the legal work?
Chuck Kable:So so Carton was a Medicaid eligibility business. So when you when you talk about like the healthcare revenue cycle, Medicaid eligibility is a part of it. It's not all of it, right? So it's essentially a group of people who are tasked with essentially interviewing uninsured hospital patients to determine if they could be eligible for Medicaid and then doing the work to get them eligible that then allows the hospital to bill for that episode of care, right? So it's a pretty straightforward service, but you know, at the time it was, you know, labor heavy. You know, we had ops center in Salt Lake City, we had headquarters in Houston. And so we were kind of attempting to grow that business to get the attention of private equity because the founders were interested in beginning to realize some liquidity on their investment, right? And so it was it was interesting. I mean, you always have these kind of moments where you take a job, you're like, Are you serious? It's like I remember on my first day, the uh the head of HR, the guy that hired me into the business, said, Hey, let me talk to you for a minute. Walk into his office and he explains to me how they're in bet the business litigation with former founders. I'm like, okay, day one, let's go. So that kind of forces you to focus very quickly, you know. And I think that that was my first GC gig, right? So I had done some operational council work at a subrogation business at the time that was headquartered in Michigan. That was a startup enterprise, and I trained, hired, managed a team of lawyers in that context. And then I was a litigator before that. So I had kind of the right mix. I knew healthcare, I knew litigation. You know, they were big on the hospital lean side as well. That was another service they provided, and I knew a lot about that. So they wanted to bring me in and kind of lead the charge since their former GC had left. And so, you know, I came in, I took the job, they tell me about this litigation. So not only are you trying to just manage baseline growth in the business, we had to manage litigation where we were spending just a lot of money on, I think it was either two or three different law firms were involved. Three law firms were involved that they had hired, they had been convinced, right? You're gonna win. Great. And so it took me essentially having a sit-down with the CEO at the time to say, listen, you know, you need to understand like the economics of litigation. And so we had kind of that dialogue, right? Like it's not just about winning, it's about how much it costs to get there and the risk associated with potentially not winning. And so we had a really good discussion. The one thing I remember from that meeting, and I was a young guy at the time, right? I mean, I'm in my I mean, I'm I've been at GC for a long time. And so I got into that seat really young comparatively. I was in my 30s. Yeah. But I remember him looking at me and saying, and he was a very kind of silver-haired, you know, handsome man who was like leading this business. And I remember him looking at me and saying, You were the first person that's that said this to us, like that said this to me, that there's, you know, we have to consider these other issues. And so that set the stage for our exit from that battle, which we success successfully exited through uh mediation. I can't remember how much later it was. Within a year, I think we settled that. And then we were off to the races. And so they were looking to bring on investors. We brought on private equity group called Serric Capital, headquartered in San Francisco. They now have offices in Austin. That was my first kind of that was my training ground essentially of working with private equity.
Cecilia Ziniti:So, in that, so so I think we with some of us have been there. You walk us through kind of your mindset from the are you serious meeting to the, okay, you probably should maybe settle this because there's a lot of cost here to the actual mediation. You know, because part of what our our listeners are interested in, like, what does it mean to be great in-house counsel? And so obviously you kicked it off well with that that meeting where you had him literally tell you that he'd never had anybody hold up a mirror like that. And so then, like, what are the next steps that you took and how did you continue to build that trust?
Chuck Kable:So I think this is where some of my law firm experience helped me. And I didn't work for big law, I worked for regional small law firms in Metro Detroit. Okay. But what, but because of that fact, our clients were hyper concerned about budget and timing, right? And so when you consider the impact that, you know, bet the business litigation has on a small to mid-sized business, you're evaluating at the point that I came in, I wanted to see the invoices. How much are they billing us per month? What's involved in these litigations, like what's the strategy here? Why do we have three law firms involved? Like these kinds of questions. And so it was a little abrasive at first because I kind of rocked the Apple card a little bit. I contacted one of the firms that was doing most of the work and I said, I'm not paying for XYZ. So that led to a productive conversation with the partner at the time around, okay, well, what do you want? You know, how do you want us to help manage this? You know, simple things like moving to tenths of an hour off of quarter hour increments, you know, making sure there's documentation, making sure we're not paying for, you know, administrative stuff. And so it's kind of just just this is more like um it's the common sense aspect of litigation that you're kind of seeking to understand relative to the way that firm operates. Are they taking advantage? Are they not? And respectfully, I don't mean that in a bad way, but I think it's a revenue-generating business. So are we. You need to have that abrasiveness to make sure it's a good working relationship. And so it was analyzing and understanding what our track record was in terms of buildings and knowing that we were about to approach a ramp, because I think we were getting close to either trial or something like that, right? We're coming up on one of these events where you typically see the load of work built in preparation for that event. So you're trying to cut off that growth curve and fees and find less costly ways to get to a resolution. But then it's also in the back of your mind, you're always like, okay, well, it's going to cost me, you know, a million dollars to get from here today to trial because there's whatever depositions, you know, you know, whatever, whatever else has to happen. So you're playing within that kind of sandbox, right? So you know you've got a million bucks to spend that you're looking at potentially. I'm trying to resolve or get to a point that I can resolve where I'm not spending that money. And so that was the driving kind of influence, um, which led us down a path to then engage in mediation. And then within the context of the mediation, you know, I was the one that architected the game plan that led us down a path that got that case resolved at like midnight that night. We were there all day, all night, and we got the thing done. But I think it's it's understanding, it's taking the economic view and then applying it to the fact pattern and coming up with gives and takes. I mean, that's the people, it sounds rational. People know this kind of instinctively, but you have to kind of hang your head on the right um factual elements and then use that as a counterbalance against this. There's a natural inclination to want to get into just a money discussion. I'm gonna give you 10, I'm gonna give you five, I'm gonna give you seven, I'm gonna give you six. Like it's like, oh, like we need to set the foundation and get a commitment to the foundation, and then that drives you to a much better place. So that's part of the strategic assessment that you go through. But I remember sitting in that, it was Ogletree Deacons was the firm that handled the mediation for us, one of their partners in Houston. I remember sitting in there, sitting in that room, and so I was pitching my view, right? Which involved in these kind of puts and takes relative to the dispute. If they want this, then we need this, right? So we kind of I kind of pitched the concept. I was halfway through it. The guy says that'll never work. I finish it, that could work. So it was one of those moments where it's the young guy, you know, proposing an option that he thinks he knows where I'm headed, but he didn't. And so that's that's the other piece to this. There is a there's a law firm mentality that in many instances is very, very helpful. But in some, it is not. And when you're driving the business towards executing on whatever it is, settling a case, signing a contract, you know, law firms have a process and you got to respect the process and they will run through it and they will issue spot and they will give you everything on the list. But you have to be the one to say, I don't care about that, I care about that, I don't care about that. And so you're the one that distills it into this is the stuff we really care about because this other stuff is like, who cares? And so that's also where you can add a lot of value in terms of that interchange when you've got that hybrid relationship with council. And that also will lead you down a really good relationship path. I've got there's a number of guys I've worked with Norton Rose in Houston, I work with guys in McDermott in Chicago, really good guys that are smart, sharp, helpful. They understand my mindset, they know where I want to go. And when you get to that point, that relationship really becomes a value add as opposed to a cost issue, you know? I love that covered a lot there.
Cecilia Ziniti:One of the one of the things you said, you said you came in and you kind of you're deciding what's important and what's not. That sounds to me like judgment. So, what are the things that you do switching to more of the management side for your team? So now since then you've been a GC, you've managed teams, you've grown people. How do you have others um have the approach you took of understanding what's important and what's not?
Chuck Kable:Yeah.
Cecilia Ziniti:Getting to take those experiments in litigation, doing that that kind of work. And then ultimately also bringing it back to the CEO. Because I imagine throughout, obviously you're dealing with your outside folks and litigation itself, but you you're managing your clients as well.
Chuck Kable:Yeah. Well, I think relationships matter. And you know, with legal, it's a little bit different because most of our interactions are ad hoc or you know, emergency-based in certain circumstances. And so it becomes less intentional. And so, you know, the challenge in that environment is how do we as a team, you know, continue to reinforce the fact that we want to be strategic advisors to the business? Okay. When you report to the CEO and have access to the board, it's a lot easier, you know. But when you have a team, you know, it depends on kind of where you are in the maturity cycle of the department, right? So if and what I mean is, so in some situations, you've got a traditional law department approach. People are managing things on spreadsheets, they have a lot of meetings, they're giving you status updates in the meetings. It's it's kind of taking that and flipping it on its head and saying, wait a minute, you know, I need to share my vision with you of the future of legal and how it could and should operate, you know, which is obviously part of what GC AI is trying to do in the space, you know, provide kind of a really relevant. And I'm gonna I want to talk about, I know we're gonna get to it, but I want to talk to that a lot about that too. But I think that um, you know, you've got these competing executives, you've got CFOs, you've got COOs, they deliver concrete reporting to the board every meeting that if it's done well, is effective, it's insightful, and you can make decisions based on what they're kind of presenting. I want legal to to do the same thing. And the first thing we have to do is get out of get out of our own way and understand that technology has to become part of who we are as a business, as a business unit, right? Legal should not be satisfied with being the cost center bottleneck, right? Which is we've, you know, we read it on LinkedIn all the time, like we've heard about it for years and years and years, right? Let's not be satisfied. And so, okay, well, what does that mean, Chuck? It means looking at technology and how we could utilize it to drive enhancements in quality, efficiency, and capacity, right? And so I'm getting telling you this because you have to set the vision with the team, and that is a never-ending exercise. Like having the vision and explaining it, talking through it is not good enough. Like you have to have a plan where people can look at it, see it, feel it. They have to be a part of that, but you need to iterate on it, they have to get on board with it. You have to show them the way, you know? And you have to recognize this is change management. And change management with lawyers is like really hard, right? Because they're used, even it doesn't, I don't care how long you've been a lawyer. You could be a lawyer for two years, three years, five years, ten years. It's hard to get on board with something that's different than what they've historically experienced. And so you have to acknowledge that and be okay with it and tell people there's this concept in change management. It's called the Valley of Despair. And we're gonna get there. We are gonna bottom out, and you're gonna think the stinks, Chuck, it's never gonna work. It's it's you know, causing me more work. You know what I'm talking about. But I think I do, yeah.
Cecilia Ziniti:I mean, to the metaphors like you, you know, you you've had some beautiful ones here, but you know, I do say it's like riding a bike, right? You're you're gonna fall down and you know, you wear a helmet and whatever, but once you get on the bike, you're going faster, farther, having more fun. And so yeah, I think that's right. So you I want to hold in on something you said, you said you have to show them the way. And I just I I love that. One of my I have an executive coach, and he's is one of his, I guess, proposals is something to the effect of like your team needs to know what good looks like. And so how do you show how do you show them the way? Like literally, you know, so there's other people that like this amazing career, you've had like you've kind of three hits in a row, you're like it's this, you know, you you've found this niche and like you're the guy in this niche. I mean, how do you how do you show others the way? Like what what what does it what does it look like?
Chuck Kable:Give it give us a story. It's a lot of interpersonal communication. I mean, it's you know, you have to build trust and credibility, and you have to do it quickly. And and what I would say is your behaviors have to match your words, right? Like that is the most impactful way that you can you can let them know that I got your back, I support you, this is gonna be okay. And I think, you know, and my personal philosophy has always been if it's wrong, we'll readjust. And if it doesn't work, we'll stop doing it. So I'm not it doesn't scare me to try something that doesn't work. I mean, the example just on the at this job at IRC, I mean, you know, we we were gonna try to utilize an on-demand paralegal for some, you know, support on some kind of other, you know, low-hanging fruit type things. And we did it for a couple months, didn't work, you know. Okay, we're done, right? And so I think it's it's and that's a kind of an over, that's a simple example, but you know, it's also like establishing benchmarks. The team is nervous, right? I've talked about what I've seen, you know, I've looked at kind of benchmarks you can get kind of through the internet, et cetera, through AI tools. I've gotten some feedback around benchmarks. GC AI gave me some really great feedback, by the way, on benchmarks uh when we demoed it. But, you know, people get really uncomfortable and look for excuses and reasons why and what is different. Healthcare is different, it takes more time. We can't guarantee when the other side. I know that's okay. I'm not drawing the line here to penalize you at review time. I'm drawing the line here to hold us accountable to a standard, but more importantly, to set expectations and hold our internal clients accountable to a standard. Because that's the other practical challenge when you run an in-house legal team. You need feedback from the business on any given day on 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 different matters, right? We have to be able to set the expectation with our clients around we're asking you for a good reason. We expect you to get back to us within whatever it is, five business days, you know, because we have to start to track that to understand how that ferrets into our workflow management, our staffing model, how we're leveraging support team members to handle kind of different activities, all that stuff, you know. So, I mean, it's I'm kind of going all over the place, but I think that showing them the way fundamentally is just backing up what you say with words. Yeah. But then also you got to be a broken record. You really do, right? Broken record. Love that.
Cecilia Ziniti:Awesome. So um, so switching gears a little bit, your background, you've been very much owned compliance uh across functions, also done a lot of HR work. I think you had people responsibilities up to you in your last role. Do you have a philosophy of compliance? And and what's your kind of like, I'm a new GC, haven't done compliance before, maybe I came up through transactions or corporate or something.
Chuck Kable:What's your what's your wisdom? So it's interesting, right? I think that so earlier on in my career, there was kind of the beginnings of this kind of concept that compliance shouldn't actually report to legal. And there were a number of instances in the public sector where that kind of came home to roost, right? You had GCs that ran compliance that, you know, in their role as GC were seeking to protect the business, but they were not appropriately addressing issues that needed to be reported out. And so there was a um, it's a potential conflict, right? And so so conceptually in the healthcare business, I am very comfortable with compliance being its own department, because I do think it should be relative to a lot of the healthcare-based businesses, at least. I think when you're sometimes you can't always do that because it's a smaller business. Typically, I would get thrown into the role because it's it's a necessity, right? So you get, we got to run lean, we need to have a function, we got to have policy sets, they have to be enforced, you're the guy, Chuck, okay, right? And then it was the board's job to kind of counterbalance. You know, is is what you make of it. You know, I I kind of boil it down to risk, and I have always advocated a view where you have to evaluate risk magnitude and risk likelihood separately, right? Because that's been the kind of Achilles heel of a lot of businesses, right? They kind of gloss over high magnitude risk because the likelihood is low. So that's the one probably area where I'm a little bit different than my counterparts and my compliance colleagues, is and all that to say it doesn't mean that that therefore means the answer is no, right? Or it should be no. It means that we're trying to change the risk trade-off decision dynamic with the board, right? I just want to make sure all these decisions are eyes wide open. And when you kind of focus on magnitudes separately, I think it just helps illustrate how damaging a risk could be, right? No.
Cecilia Ziniti:Yeah, I mean, I've seen the two by two matrix of that. Um I think it was it was uh Kristen at Lyft um talks about that. Others, it's definitely been been a topic of in-house. And it and it's it's a challenge, right? Because I I I think that like there is a tendency when you've got these really high magnitude ones of like, oh my God, you know, at least when I was a more junior lawyer of more like freaking out a little bit. Um, but then you know, flip side, you can't ignore it either. I mean, I guess the question that's coming to me is, you know, you said there people want policies, they want procedures, there's you know the culture aspects. How do you make sure compliance doesn't slow things down? And you know, you mentioned compliance has a sales aspect to it, getting people to do things they don't want to do. Any any tips and tricks or any, I mean, obviously there's no silver bullet, but what's your what's your thought on that that speed trade-off or making sure that you're able to keep pace?
Chuck Kable:Yeah, I mean, I think that um you have to align around organizational risk tolerance, right? So, and all that, all that means is be intentional about understanding like relative to growth needs, you know, where you sit in the market, are you trying to gain market share? Are you a startup, like trying to just drive growth? You know, sometimes bet the business risks are worth taking, but it's it's contextual. And so you have to have that dialogue with your senior executive team, which PS is a really great opportunity to build trust, credibility, judgment, all those things, right? So um, you're just changing the the narrative a little bit, right? When you kind of sit down and say, look, we need to we need to talk about just generally what what our kind of guardrails are in terms of our risk tolerance, right? So it's like risk tolerance, risk appetite. Sometimes they're different. Sometimes tolerance can be high, but appetite is low. Sometimes they're aligned. Sometimes the appetite for risk is higher than your tolerance is because you're in that startup. So I think just recognizing the need to have a dialogue goes a long way. And then I think it's it's a group decision. I mean, I think we we always have to, you know, it's it's the power of influence, right? It's not because we must, but because this makes a lot of sense. You know, Chuck is saying some stuff that resonates. This is probably the right decision, right? It's that kind of you know, exercising influence as opposed to mandating. Now, I think there's a time and place for mandating, especially on the compliance side. Um, I can tell you by and large, most of the executives and people you work with, they don't, they're not bad actors, right? They don't want to break the law.
Cecilia Ziniti:Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. I I I've definitely seen that where it's like people want to do the right thing. And there's a thing in security where it's like you want to make it easy to do the right thing, right? Like the using of you know, the the discussion around using, you know, WhatsApp groups or whatever in the presidency, like okay, give them a secure, easy way to communicate so they don't have to do that, you know. So it it it's you you see that come up a lot. I guess other question, switching to to maybe Axiom, you also you were CLO and CHRO. It's an interesting combination. I think it is on the rise. How did you did you literally like wear two hats and be like, no, I'm CHRO? No, I'm Clo. And if not, or if you did, like put us in your shoes, you're in a board meeting or an exec meeting. How are you navigating that?
Chuck Kable:Yeah, I mean, um, I always felt like it was a blending of the two. But what I would say was my kind of love of data analytics and informed decision making arose when I actually ran HR and talent acquisition at Carton Healthcare as well, Cardin Outreach. And so I've had a lot of HR kind of management experience. And so I really enjoyed digging into like turnover numbers, trends, you know, 90-day turnover relative to kind of perform we tried Wonderlick tests to see if we could pre-spring people, like we went through a bunch of cool stuff. And it was always that side of the business really excited me because for some reason I just loved being able to have those those discussions at the board level because private equity cares about HR. They care about those statistics and people and how we're, you know, what our hiring timelines are and all that kind of stuff. And so that was a great education for me because it then informed how we began to think about okay, legal can do better. It's not just about managing litigation, you know, reporting out on, well, we got sued five times in the past quarter and we resolved three. Yeah, I mean, that's not that's not impactful. And so it's it's finding the right way to drive impact in the organization, which comes down to workflow, labor arbitrage, cost management, those kinds of concepts that you typically see in other departments, like legal can do that, you know.
Cecilia Ziniti:Wow, I love that. Legal can do that. So, so so how? So, I mean, obviously, so we talked a little bit about AI. Um, yeah, full disclosure. I guess Chuck is not using GC AI, although I know he regrets it from our our 15 minutes here that we're talking. But in general, like so this is something we do have a lot of folks, um, you know, we work with with Paragon and others of these kind of ALSPs. And, you know, I think it is a stat that I pay a lot of attention to because GC AI, of course, is geared as in-house. It's a little bit what you said of spend on in-house councils continue to go up. Most of the teams we work with are north of 50%. I've seen teams, some of our software company customers are at 80, 90%. Um, talked to the GC of Netflix. He gave a presentation at Tech GC and said they have a very kind of clear rubric for like you spend X on a matter, it becomes an in-house lawyer almost immediately. And they they've gotten there, you know, including globally, because of course Netflix operates in every country. And they they had to tweak risk. I guess the question for you is like, so legal can do better. So what are the things like give us some some some like concrete tactics? So assume I'm a GC listening, I'm like, all right, I can do better. I'm not a, you know, wasn't traditionally kind of like a budgets and workflows person. What what am I doing to here?
Chuck Kable:Here's here's one. Let me give you a specific example first, and that'll lead to a more kind of general dialogue. So when I've started at IRC, uh, you know, within my first week, I think the CFO, um, who I've worked with for a long time in different businesses, right? So he he sends a note out, hey, I need an NDA for XYZ company, right? Okay. He sends it to, I'm copied on it because it's it's sent to one of the attorneys on the team. It took three attorneys, two days, maybe three, I think now, to generate our template NDA for him to then send to XYZ corporate. Oh my gosh.
Cecilia Ziniti:You can't, yeah. If you're listening, uh, you know, if what I would do on Zoom is I would find the little scary emoji and it would be like flying up through Zoom. But yeah, okay. So so that is uh so that's a good story. What did you do?
Chuck Kable:So job one, job one and two really was identifying opportunities for automation, self service, automation in the business. Okay. NDAs are a perfect example. We have a stock form, we had technology. We could use that people could log in, put in information, it would automatically generate the PDF and house a copy in word format for the lawyers if they needed it in the future, if it got redlined, ready to rock and roll within minutes. And so what that does is okay, so that's a tactical example. The way you think about turning that into strategic value is when you are tracking your workflow. So you have a way to categorize the kinds of work that's coming in, right? You can begin to put it in this kind of you know quadrant-based analysis, right? Of you know, high value, low risk, low risk, low value, high value, high risk, right? You've got this kind of box layout by identifying low risk, low value matters first. That's where you automate, delegate, or get rid of that stuff, right? So that's step one. And then you understand that on average, you may have, you know, 20% of your matters fall within that quadrant analysis. So it's rational to think that you can automate, delegate, or eliminate that from your workload, right? For example. What does that do? Frees up capacity. It brings down the per matter cost, right? And it gives it's like low-hanging fruit that you can immediately demonstrate back to the business, right? Here is the value and the benefit of taking this approach. Quick win. It's a quick win, right? Um, but you can become more sophisticated by utilizing that same approach, right? And you start to categorize further, maybe there are certain aspects of the workload that could be planned out and become more routine, right? So maybe we just need an annual plan that gets executed on by lower-level support staff that doesn't clog up the attorney's bandwidth, right? Lease renewals, you know, mundane stuff, termination letters on vendor agreements like janitorial, stuff like that. You can even automate that stuff too, depending on the circumstance. But so by beginning to you have to understand your workflow, understand the volumes, categorize, and then you can begin to kind of tackle those bit by bit. We haven't touched legal spent, by the way, at IRC. That's next year. Not touch that.
Cecilia Ziniti:Okay. So you had a trade-off to make, you're like, so you came in and you had a choice to make of like, am I gonna tackle efficiency or spend first? And it sounds like you went for efficiency and team, or like like what was that? You said you said next year. And then how did you did you have that conversation with the CEO and or with the with the PE backers in advance of like, hey, you're not gonna see legal spend go down year one, you're gonna see XYZ?
Chuck Kable:It's it's one of those wacky instances where they really don't care right now about legal spend because um there's there's it's not enough of an impact for it to become a higher level attention getter because a lot of our litigation is joint venture based and there's insurance coverage. And so if we're getting dinged, we're getting dinged on deductibles, right? Our kind of self-insured retention numbers, which are meaningful, but they're not enough of a mover to make it job one. Now, now, from uh from an outside looking in perspective. I know that there's a ton of value you can bring to the business by managing outside spend, but I'm also very aware of how much change I put on my people in a very short amount of time. And I cannot continue to throw stuff at them. I just can't. We need to get to a steady state, and then we'll begin to plan out some of these broader strategic things, right? Because I need them to come along with me. And it's very easy for folks to get off track if they, you know, I talked about behavior matching words. Sometimes, like I'll say something, the behavior is delayed for whatever reason, and then my folks will be like, Chuck, what's going on? We're not comfortable. Here's what we're seeing, and I'll have to like, it's a reset opportunity every single time, right? So I'm very aware of the burden, even though in the end, right, it's gonna work, even though in the end it's gonna work, cannot continue to throw stuff on them. New process, new process, new system, new system. Like it's gonna become too much for my folks. I mean, they're having a hard time. I mean, talking about like agentic workflows now, which is kind of the next big thing, right? It's like people are freaking out about that, you know? Freaking out. Yeah, so I have to do that.
Cecilia Ziniti:Well, it's it's it's it's I think I think so. I think there's a couple points here. There's like the words have to match the music always. And then I'm hearing for me, what's resonating in what you said is like as CEO now, we're in a moment in legal AI, right? Like literally, this is the year, next year, this year, next year. I got 95% of people in my webinars saying that you know they're they have a legal AI goal in 25. And so for me, it's like, how hard can I push everyone and the industry to do it? Do I have to pick? And that that that decision is really like a real nugget of leadership. And and I love how you how you got to that. I think the other point that you made around like um, you know, bringing people on the journey and kind of like being selective about that and leading from the front, like anything there, like I guess um is there any way to be a successful GC without doing that? Like, not really, right? Like is that is that the nugget of your success? I guess maybe that that's a that's a good a good way to ask it.
Chuck Kable:I mean, I kind of think it is. I I mean, I've been I've had a unique career path, I think. And um, unlike a lot of my my peers, my mentors have been operators. So aside from, you know, when I was cutting my teeth as a litigation attorney, where you know, I learned a law firm environment, I had mentors, you know, in that context. Once I moved, I knew I wanted something different. I moved into kind of a business-facing role. I feel like it's keeping an open mind and understanding I don't know anything. Like I got to educate myself on everything. And then I got really lucky with there's a mentor of mine, the guy that's that was the CEO of Cardin Outreach when Petey Bottom, the guy that's the CEO of Axiom Medical to this day, you know, Mark Robinson had an outsize influence on my development. He was just a really great thought partner. He actively involved me in discussions and supported me. So I think that um that's the other lesson for not legal executives out of this, I think, is that you can make a difference and have an influence. Like some execs are very wary and hesitant to engage with legal, you know, they they just don't, you know, don't understand it, don't want to understand it, don't want to deal with it because we're a bottleneck, all the reasons we hear all the time. Um, if you can find someone that's willing to develop that kind of relationship just to bounce ideas off of, which really is what, you know, other than a lot of support I got when I first took over human resources, you know, having that sounding board is so valuable, so valuable.
Cecilia Ziniti:It's so interesting. Cause I think when people ask me this similar question of like, what does it take to be a great JC? And I think it's what you said, where the legal knowledge, the legal side is just absolutely table stakes. And it's like you're not gonna distinguish yourself, get promoted, get sought after by people doing only that. And so same for me. My mentors and and people I've looked up to very early on were obviously great lawyers, but once I got to a certain level, I definitely looked to folks outside of legal. And I do think like the experience of running HR, I ran HR briefly at one of my roles. It definitely was like how to be great at that. There are a lot of similar elements, but it's not the same. And I love the story you told of okay, running HR actually made me a new really focused on numbers. And then I brought that back to legal. So I think that's a great takeaway for our listeners too, is like these kind of core skills and then change management. Like, I mean, I just I love it. So so what do you what are you doing? Tell tell us about your current role at IRC and then what's what what's what's the goal? Or maybe it maybe it's public, maybe it's not. But is there is there something that like what were you what were you brought in to do? And then and then we'll head to our our lightning round.
Chuck Kable:Yeah, so my my predecessor was was leaving IRC to pursue a different opportunity. This is the company I work for now is a dialysis business. I've been healthcare essentially my entire career, um, but not dialysis. And so as I said, I'm the CFO as a friend of mine. He reached out to me and asked me if I was interested in interviewing for the role. And it worked out. You know, I met the the executive team, um, you know, and and this was a bigger opportunity for me, and then it had an existing legal team with no technology to speak of. Right. And so that was that excited me a ton. Was okay, now I can come in, you know, have them, you know, kind of understand my my view on this, implement. We implemented a legal matter management tool immediately. I started in May of last year. By July, they were, you know, trying to figure it out. God bless them. And we're still, we're still in that, in that transitionary phase. We really are. And so now the the next step is I have to be very crystal clear on my vision, but then I also need my my internal clients to utilize our front door, right? The portal to ask for stuff. And that'll help capture more of those matters and give us more visibility so we can continue to do that categorization exercise and then identify self-help, automation, et cetera. But I think what I'm really excited about is how AI tools can impact. So here's my here's my take. Please. I think I think there is a these the AI tools like GC AI are a force multiplier for my support level folks for my paralegal team. And so I think that if you leverage the intake process, the triage process, and allow the the tools to help you kind of process information as it's coming in, you know, red lines based on playbooks, you know, this stuff, red lines based on playbooks, you know, answers to questions on existing leases, for example, whatever, right? We can use AI tools to get to a discussion draft at the very least that can then be immediately presented to attorneys for feedback, comments, and then off to counsel or off to uh the other side or the business, internal business partner. There's just it's very fundamental, right? There's just a way we can become a lot faster and free up bandwidth of the attorneys. So eventually, right, the goal would be after kind of this pilot phase, we're still moving in this direction, we're not there yet. Okay. After the pilot phase is then to begin to hand off certain aspects of the business to that support level, right, over time. And then they're just kind of sending it, you know, where they need to send it with attorney co-pilot oversight, like we hear that term a lot.
Cecilia Ziniti:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a little bit like um, you know, they said, you know, I can't remember if it's like Henry Ford or one of the kind of uh industrial era thinkers to the effect of like a well-run factory, Drucker, I think a well-run factory is kind of boring. Like you walk in and it's like humming along, and there's not like crazy crisis. And like, oh, what do you think of the you know, the widget coming off the line? Like the widget comes off the line perfectly, right? And so I think bringing that um you know mentality and ability to legal AI is doing it like nothing I've ever seen. Like I do think, you know, your your CLMs of the world, workflow tools, you know, the companies that we work with that have had deep legal operations, like respect, and they've done it. You know, when you think about an entity like Google and you get an NDA done in five minutes with Google, uh, you're just it's like automatic when you sign up, you go visit the campus and you're doing it on an iPad. So these kinds of operations, like I'm excited for you. Um, thank thanks for the wisdom.
Chuck Kable:I mean, it'll be fun. I think the I'd like one last point that's important I want to make, and I want to get to lightning round, but it's this. I think that as we continue to focus on these ways to make lawyers more effective and efficient and faster in certain regards, what potentially gets lost is the opportunity for our folks to engage with their clients, you know, kind of more consistently, right? So you're kind of putting your more self-help, more automation, more support-level work. Lawyers are like, wait a minute, I need, I need that relationship. That has to be a focus, right? And so I think that as you look to the future, the focus is going to be on creating intentional interaction, finding the right things to go and talk to the business leaders about. Not just, oh, we got an NDA, let's chat about XYZ. No, we need to design interactions, our team does, to continue to enforce the strategic importance that we bring to the table, right? So that's going to be the next big work in progress in my mind is designing that kind of interaction schedule and then figuring out if it works or not.
Cecilia Ziniti:Yeah. And I mean, I think this is where the fast moving aspect comes in, right? So I didn't put an example on my LinkedIn the other day of so early Uber, they needed an agreement with their drivers. And you can imagine that a non-strategic legal team would have been like, all right, here you go, driver agreement. But no, what they actually had, they called it an IP license. They called it a platform access agreement. And that kind of brilliance of like, where is this business going? We got to preserve, you know, employment lawyer, we got to preserve the contract or relationship. If we have something called a driver agreement, that's not that. So they had this kind of like that when people ask me, like, what does it mean in a post-AI world to practice strategically? It's what you said. It's like, what are the conversations you need to have? What are you prompting the tool to do? But like, okay, we need an NDA, you know, fine snooze. But like, what is that partner going to bring to the table? Is it gonna be a joint venture? Is it gonna be this? Is it gonna be that? You know, and then what are the trends that you're seeing, right? So, you know, we didn't get into it because you're in healthcare or, you know, because because we had other topics to talk about. But when you think about like healthcare and like, you know, you guided a healthcare company through COVID, right? And like that was changing all of the time. I was a fractional at the time, and the rules were like we were looking at the orders coming out basically every two weeks on this stuff. So it was a very much like that ability to real-time make those judgments is like I want GC AI to get there, and I think it will, but right now it's it's it's folks like you. Awesome. Good stuff. All right, so um, let's let's get to lightning rounds. So um, a book, article, or resource you recommend or that's had an influence on you.
Chuck Kable:Two. Okay. And I have them right here, so I'm gonna show you on the screen. So the first is Building an Outstanding Legal Team. Um, and this is by Bjorn Talent. Um, it's a really great resource to kind of think about. Like if you're a first-time GC, even if you've been in the role for years, there's a lot of great structures and and thought that he placed into this book that are really it's it's really great. It's really great. And then now you add your own kind of experience to it, and then it's it's even better. And then this is my this is such a quick read. Michael Hyatt, it's no fail meetings.
Cecilia Ziniti:No fail meetings. I love that.
Chuck Kable:Done. You can read this in like an hour on a plane.
Cecilia Ziniti:I mean, it's that I'm literally downloading it now. I got a flight to Austin this afternoon.
Chuck Kable:It is like I have to read it again because I, you know, I'm 50 years old, so I forget a lot of stuff, but it is so refreshing because the the approach is is so my team, there's a we found a box of these in one of the rooms at the headquarters building today. And so I'm like, take one and give them to each of my team members because this it's that it's that important because we get stuck at meetings all day long. And and it is not that is not your job. And so finding a way to navigate that problem. This book is great. It's great.
Cecilia Ziniti:Done. All right. I'm literally like, I got a flight this afternoon. I can't wait to dive in. All right, give us a bold prediction. What's the GC role gonna look like in a decade?
Chuck Kable:I think it's gonna be less lawyers, you know, more technology, more support. Love that. All right. Any other parting wisdom?
Cecilia Ziniti:It's not bold. I mean, I mean, bold is like, you know, but the thing is, it's like, what is it? They say, you know, people underestimate the change in a year, or I'm sorry, overestimate the change in a year, underestimate it in 10. So I I think that that that's in line.
Chuck Kable:Yeah. Um, you know, it's it's it can be a lonely job. And, you know, surrounding yourself with the right support network and people that having, you know, having a life outside of work um really, really matters because that's what you lean on when times are tough. Because it's not it's one thing I miss about the law firm environment was having colleagues and being able to commiserate on challenges and issues, and you don't really get that as much in this role. And so I think it's just finding the right way to express yourself and you know, unplug. Probably the most important advice I would give you is always schedule block time for yourself for thinking time at least once a week. At least. Because that's where you're gonna you'll discover so much about yourself and you'll find a lot of cool stuff that you can do in your business.
Cecilia Ziniti:I love that. So good. Anything else to leave your leave our listeners with, Chuck? I don't think so.
Chuck Kable:Thanks so much. It's been a lot of fun. I love talking about this stuff. So it's it's just a lot of fun. So I appreciate it.
Cecilia Ziniti:Chuck, thank you. And thank you so much for sharing your insights today. Thanks again. That was my conversation with Chuck Kable, a seasoned executive who's proven that legal leadership can be a catalyst for transformation. Chuck had so many insights about in-house, about leadership, about taking time to think about, and about showing your team the way. I'm so excited to read his book recommendations and to get in and practice his leadership. If you're thinking about how to elevate your role beyond legal functions, I hope this conversation gave you both practical guidance and inspiration for what's possible. Follow CZ & Friends wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to our newsletter at gc.ai slash newsletter for behind the scenes insights and actionable tips. We'll also put in the show notes Chuck's books, and you can find him on LinkedIn as well. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.