Episode 14: Natalie Salunke, GC at Zilch, on making law more human

Inspiring Legal

Meet Natalie, the O-shaped lawyer and General Counsel of UK-based Zilch. O-shaped what? O-shaped lawyer. Meaning Natalie is not only the GC providing legal advice - she's also a modern leader with a human-centric focus on her work and co-workers. Join us today as Stine and Natalie dive into the world of modern in-house legal.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:18] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. My name is Stine and I'm your host, and today I'm joined by Natalie. Welcome, Natalie. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. So you're gonna hear more from Natalie in a second.
[00:18 - 00:33] Natalie is all about putting the human into law. And what that means? Well, that's what we'll be talking about today. But before we do that, Natalie, can you maybe just tell the listeners
[00:33 - 00:50] a little bit about you, your background, and why this area is on your radar, your passion, and something that you are working a lot on? Sure. So I'm a general counsel in-house.
[00:50 - 01:06] I trade as a lawyer in the city at Taylor Wessing, but moved very quickly into an in-house career. So it's quite unusual at the time to do that. That was back in 2009. So quite a lot, it wasn't really the usual way for people to enter the profession.
[01:06 - 01:24] So I think I've always been quite conscious of the fact that perhaps I don't have the traditional training that a lot of lawyers do, that operate in the commercial and corporate world. And equally, I think there's a way of providing legal services in-house that's quite different to being in private practice, which isn't always about just the technical skills
[01:24 - 01:41] and deigning legal advice on others, but more how you win people over and how you get people to care about legal and to care about including you in their decision-making to make better decisions for the overall business. So I think having that unique opportunity
[01:41 - 01:57] so early on in my career to enter the corporate world as a junior lawyer allowed me to play a little bit more with those ideas of, well, why me? Why does somebody want to come to me? Why does somebody want to come to me rather than legal as a concept?
[01:57 - 02:13] And so therefore, I think those human skills have always been a really important part of my career. And I think we do see a bit of a lack of them in the profession sometimes, a lack of empathy. And I think that's taking its toll on the profession. If we don't do more about it as legal leaders,
[02:13 - 02:31] then we're going to lose talent and we're not going to have really great people joining us and lifting the talent pool and the profession further. That's something that I'm really passionate about and would love to talk about a little bit more today. And that's what we're going to be talking about.
[02:31 - 02:49] So putting legal and humans together, well, that's something we've always been doing. So when you talk about making it more approachable, relatable, making it more you,
[02:49 - 03:06] can you tell us a little bit about why that started to be such a center point for you in your career? I think it goes back to, as I said, moving in-house quite early on and being afraid that I didn't have the necessary skill set
[03:06 - 03:23] to add value to my organization. So I think you're trained in private practice to feel as though you aren't allowed to rise in the ranks unless you've done a certain amount of practice or hours or experience. And so I was quite self-conscious about that
[03:23 - 03:38] when I started in-house in terms of, well, I've only had two years of experience. So therefore, what do I know? Why would somebody listen to me? Do I have the credentials? And then I quickly realized that actually it was more about getting people on side
[03:38 - 03:54] and you don't always know the answer, but it doesn't mean you can't find it out. But it's about having those touch points, those conversations, those openings and almost acting as a sales person for the function to get out there, have those confident conversations and not always be reacting
[03:54 - 04:09] to what the business is asking of you, but being proactive in terms of going, well, hey, I noticed this happened the other day. I'd love to see if I can help. And so I think that's what really started me thinking slightly differently from the more traditional private practice approach to law, which was much more about,
[04:09 - 04:26] hey, I'm gonna give some technical legal advice and I'm going to advise you and maybe you'll make a decision on the back of it to collaboratively working with my colleagues to make their lives easier, but also inadvertently making my life easier because if we understood each other better and we had good processes or we had playbooks
[04:26 - 04:43] or we had just smarter ways of working in those open dialogues, then you can almost predict what your colleagues are thinking and they can almost predict what you're likely to advise them. So it just seemed like a smarter way of doing things. But as I said, back then it was a bit more unusual
[04:43 - 04:59] because generally people would be super senior and having done quite a long tenure or a number of different years in private practice moving in to an in-house environment. So I think it was just that blend of, as I said before, trying to show that there was value in me being there as me.
[04:59 - 05:16] And we could talk about that a little bit more as to what that means. And just making sure that I felt like it was a fair relationship to be in. So I was getting something out of that for my learning and development and exposure to different stakeholders and learning.
[05:16 - 05:31] But equally, I was able to add value. And what you realise is that actually a lot of law, there's quite a lot of common sense to it as well as the understanding of what the law says. So it's all very well knowing the law, but if you can't articulate that
[05:31 - 05:47] in a way that somebody is going to understand or it resonates with them, or you can't influence them to do the right thing, then what's the point in knowing the law? It's just something that's in your head. You alluded to it. So what does it mean?
[05:49 - 06:06] So what for you today as the general counsel, so how do you work with making law more human, putting human into the law, and guiding your employees and coaching them on being more approachable,
[06:06 - 06:23] of giving better advice, understanding the business better? So how have you incorporated it into your daily work? I think it's about being available, but also we use the word approachable and not trying to mystify law. I think a lot of lawyers don't realise
[06:23 - 06:40] that we're already put on pedestals for the type of background and training that we've had. So people have a certain expectation as to what we are and what we bring to the table. So we don't need to be insecure about it and try and prove that people should listen to us. I think that comes across as very defensive
[06:40 - 06:56] and also quite haughty and it alienates people ...