Episode 20: Scaling Legal in a fast-growing SaaS company with Eva Mobacker

Inspiring Legal

"Get to know the product and understand our unique selling points" - Today we're joined in the studio by Eva Mobacker, VP of Legal at Planhat. Listen in as she and Openli CEO Stine Tornmark discuss the ins and outs of scaling the legal clockwork at a (fast) growing company.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:16] Welcome to Inspiring Legal, the podcast for in-house legal. Get insights, learn from peers, life lessons from some of the most influential GCs.
[00:16 - 00:35] If it's related to in-house legal, we cover it. For more inspiration, go to Openli.com slash community. Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal.
[00:35 - 00:54] My name is Stine and I'm your host. Today, I'm joined by Eva Mobacker. She's going to introduce herself in a second. But Eva has a really strong background, having worked both at a law firm, then moved in-house,
[00:54 - 01:11] now scaling a team and being a part of a company that is growing not just fast, they're going super fast. So today, we're going to have a conversation about working in-house at a fast-growing company,
[01:11 - 01:32] scaling your team and how you do that. So, Eva, welcome. Thank you, Stine. Thank you for having me. Sleep-deprived, new mother on maternity leave. Well, Eva, I'm impressed by the kind of energy that you're having.
[01:32 - 01:48] And people will know exactly why that is in a second. Maybe, Eva, you can introduce yourself. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so like Stine said, I've been a lawyer for a long time. I think it's coming up on 18, 19 years now, which is just crazy.
[01:48 - 02:06] And I've worked primarily in-house, but a bit in private practice as well. And in companies of all sizes, like everything from small startups to the huge international multimillion companies. So I've seen a lot throughout the years. Definitely.
[02:06 - 02:24] I've been primarily in the gambling industry, which has been very interesting from a legal perspective. Albeit a bit controversial, of course, but I worked a lot with compliance matters in the gambling industry. But currently, a fast-growing SaaS company.
[02:24 - 02:48] Yeah, so that's where I'm at now. So for those who don't know you and from what I know about you, you've been working at a law firm where you let their privacy group sink. There you won secondment for AWS, then moved in-house to Hero Gaming and furthering on now to Planette, where you are VP of Legal.
[02:48 - 03:04] Eva, could you maybe just take people through that journey of like having gone from working at the law firm to then going on secondment? Very similar to my own journey, which was why when I met you first time, I was kind of like, wow, I love your background.
[03:04 - 03:24] But I think it could be super interesting to people like to maybe hear a little bit about what your journey has been, what it has been about, but also maybe some of the things that you've picked up along the way. Yeah, of course. I think, Stine, that was just like the last five years or so.
[03:24 - 03:46] So you have like another 13 years to come for before that, where I've done a bit of everything. But definitely like most other lawyers, I think I started in private practice back in 2006, 2007. I actually started working in London as a paralegal, which was a very interesting start of my career.
[03:46 - 04:04] And through that, I got a job at White & Casey in Stockholm. So that's where I started like my actual career as a lawyer, working a lot with M&A during very intense times. But I always felt like super interested in the actual business and being in private practice.
[04:04 - 04:19] You feel a bit like, you know, you become an expert at things, but you have to jump in and out very quickly from different companies. You never kind of, well, you can have a client over a long time, of course, but you never really see the day to day and,
[04:19 - 04:36] you know, take the strategic decisions, which is what I enjoy. So quite early on, I identified that I would probably be better suited to work in-house. So that's what I've done most of my career, even though I've had like smaller stints back at law firms as well throughout.
[04:36 - 04:55] And yeah, as I said before, I've worked in companies from, you know, now when I joined PlanPass a year and a half ago, we were 40 people. And as you mentioned, I've been at AWS with, you know, I don't know how many employees, but it's very interesting to see, you know, the different ways of working as well.
[04:55 - 05:12] At AWS, like you had very limited freedom as a lawyer. I mean, I was also like an external lawyer, so probably even less freedom, but there were fallback clauses for everything. And it was very kind of like almost mathematical, you know, this deal is worth this much.
[05:12 - 05:34] And maybe use this fallback clause so you can't even change a word without having, you know, approval from Boston or what have you. And some people thrive in that environment. I didn't. I'm more, you know, I want to have the bird's eye perspective. I want to think about strategic things. I don't want to go too deep on details that perhaps don't matter from, you know,
[05:34 - 05:50] a larger risk based perspective. So it's very interesting. I think I needed to do all these different things to identify, you know, who I was as a lawyer, what I wanted to do. Some people are probably lucky and maybe, you know, their first job, they think this is it.
[05:50 - 06:08] You know, I love this. This is exactly what I need to do. And I think for me, it's been I didn't get that, but it was also, you know, throughout life, different things were interesting to me. And, you know, different workloads perhaps suited my that season of life, so to say.
[06:08 - 06:24] So. So, yeah, I'm very happy with with all my experiences, but I really feel like now I'm in my element. Building the legal team at PlanHappen and working with all those brilliant minds in kind of a smaller setting, but with a lot of freedom for the team.
[06:24 - 06:43] So when you joined PlanHappen, you said that there were 40 people and you were their first legal hire. And I know from a lot of our listeners out there, they're sitting with that exact, let's say, opportunity right now, coming in as the first legal hire, but also then having to not only build the legal foundation,
[06:43 - 07:03] but also to get the organization to understand the value of what it is that you as a legal person can bring to the table. How have you gone about that? Could you maybe share some of your experiences and maybe also some of your wins so that if the listeners out there are sitting with that, they could maybe get a few ideas?
[07:03 - 07:24] Yeah, definitely. I think for me, it was it was a big relief coming from the gambling industry with where, you know, the work of the legal team, legal and compliance team is very much focused on regulatory matters. And, you know, being unfortunately quite often a blocker for the business, like where, you know,
[07:24 - 07:45] they have to jump through the hoops or standing in the way for what the business wants to do. So going from that to like, you know, a B2B platform where, you know, obviously we do have some compliance matters, but primarily it's about like facilitating the sales process and making sure that, you know,
[07:45 - 08:04] our customers are happy and that we don't spend too much time negotiating our standard terms and so on. That was quite a relief for me because it's always easier to be on the same side as the res...