Crafty Counsel with Benjamin White - Episode 25

In Episode 25 of the Legal Genie podcast, your host, Lara Quie, is in conversation with Benjamin White. Ben spent six years as a corporate lawyer at Clifford Chance before moving in-house with the Global Fashion Group.

In 2017, he founded Crafty Counsel, a platform that allows legal counsel access to online learning and development via a series of videos recorded by specialists in the area. It is also a community of lawyers eager to socialize, network, mentor, and share experiences

In this episode, Ben discusses his slightly more unconventional career path and experiences living abroad as well as how Crafty Counsel came about. 

Going against the grain, Ben decided to put his training offer with Clifford Chance on hold for a couple of years to pursue his interests, taking up a post-graduate course in Chinese history. He spent six months at Beijing University and returned to China sometime later as a Clifford Chance trainee.

When he returned to the law, he initially intended to go into litigation, but relealised that he would be a better fit for the corporate practice after starting his training there. He advises younger lawyers to keep an open mind and to try something to find out if they actually do enjoy it.

Later, he was given the chance to get seconded to a client, where he got a taste of being an in-house counsel. Finding the experience stimulating, and to delve more into his interests in the start-up and venture capital frontier, he took the chance to move on to the Global Fashion Group as in-house counsel. Ben commented that at that time, venture capital and start-up work was harder to come by at a large firm like Clifford Chance.

Ben goes on to discuss some of the key differences between his experience at a large law firm in contrast to his in-house, highlighting the sense of control that he gained after the move. 

Ben was then at a crossroads between accepting positions at prominent VC funds as their first internal counsel or moving on to Crafty Counsel which he had been working on and mentions why he chose to move forward with Crafty Counsel.

Ben also highlights his experience as the inspiration for Crafty Counsel. In-house counsels usually face a more ambiguous environment with structures and environments varying significantly across companies as opposed to the private practice where career options are relatively more straightforward.

Finding this an underserved community, he decided to put his mind to it to create a community for support and the exchange of information, practices, and situations. The demand for more community-based events happened just as COVID hit, prompting a shift in focus from more technical topics to more practical matters. 

Crafty Counsel has some events planned for the next few months and is looking forward to the possibility of in-person events, whilst at the same time maintaining digital meetups – which have successfully connected people from all over the world.

I hope that you enjoy the conversatio

Lara Q Associates
A boutique business and executive coaching consultancy

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Transcript

The Legal Genie Episode 25 Benjamin White

[00:00:00] Lara Quie: Hello, and thank you for joining me, Lara Quie, for the Legal Genie Podcast. 

[00:00:32] Following my career as a corporate lawyer at Dentons and DLA Piper, I reinvented myself as an entrepreneur. And then as Asia Pacific Head of Business Development at Duane Morris. 

[00:00:44] After a life event introduced me to the world of executive coaching, I set up my own consultancy, where I coach lawyers, leaders, and founders on how to design their best life. 

[00:00:56] I coach on building one's book of business, personal branding, LinkedIn skills, growing self-confidence and how to get to the next level. 

[00:01:06] If you are looking for someone with whom to share your challenges and who can help you move forward, if you are stuck, then reach out to me through my website at www.laraqassociates.com. 

[00:01:18] This podcast is intended to give you an insight into the lives and careers of movers and shakers in the legal industry. 

[00:01:25] I ask my guests to share their best advice with you that I hope you will find helpful in your legal journey. 

[00:01:32] Please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts to help us reach more people who may find it helpful. 

[00:01:39] I hope that you will enjoy the conversation. 

[00:01:42] Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Legal Genie Podcast with me, your host, Lara Quie. In episode 25, I'm delighted to have with me Benjamin White, Founder of Crafty Counsel. After six years in private practice, as a corporate [00:02:00] finance lawyer at Clifford Chance, Ben moved in-house to a global fashion e-commerce retail group called The Global Fashion Group.

[00:02:07] But in 2017, he founded Crafty Counsel, a digital media company for legal professionals. It's a platform through which legal counsel can access online learning and development via a series of videos recorded by specialists in the area. And it's also a community of lawyers eager to socialize, network, mentor, and share experiences. Welcome to the show, Ben. 

[00:02:31] Benjamin White: Thanks, Lara. It's so nice to be here. Thank you very much for having me. 

[00:02:34] Lara Quie: You're very welcome. So, tell me about your background and where you grew up. 

[00:02:39] Benjamin White: Okay. So, I was born in London and have always really lived here, but people are sometimes surprised to know that I'm not English, in the sense that my dad's Australian and my mum is American. My parents sometimes joke that their kids grew up more English than the English or British than the British but that meant that our family grew up always with a bit of a global outlook.

[00:02:59] We spent a little bit of [00:03:00] time living in Japan when I was very small. My brother is seven years older than me. And so, for him, that was quite formative when he was growing up and the first school experience was there. But I was very small when we did that, but he now lives in Tokyo. And so, we always had a bit of an international outlook, lots of holidays visiting grandparents, and so on and so forth. But home has always been the UK. 

[00:03:18] Lara Quie: Right. And I know that you're a fellow Oxford University alumnus. So, tell me about your university experience and why you chose to study history. 

[00:03:26] Benjamin White: It's fairly straightforward. History was my favourite subject at school. It was the thing that I got most excited about in terms of my A Levels and so on. And I suppose a lot of people have in the back of their mind with going to Oxford or similar university and doing history that there is a bit of a path to different sorts of career options. So, lots of people do history and then end up doing law, for example.

[00:03:47] It's quite classic people who sort of like words and don't like numbers. It's often a route for them. When I look at actually my year group, my college at Oxford, I think we're about 12 of us who did history up to now. I think more than half of them did training contracts and [00:04:00] became solicitors. A number changed later, but there were a lot of solicitors in that group. And I think that was fairly common.

[00:04:05] Lara Quie: Yeah. So, the English system is really great in that you don't always have to study law right away at university. You can do the one year conversion course. But it's interesting that actually you stayed at Oxford to do a Master's in modern Chinese studies. I'm wondering whether that early experience in Japan had any influence on that choice?

[00:04:27] Benjamin White: I think it might have indirectly. I probably didn't consciously think about it like that, but I guess our family had always had a bit of an Asian connection round about that time my brother had already gone. I think at that point he had been back and forward working in Japan.

[00:04:42] And I also have an uncle who's an academic whose area of specialism is Taiwan, PRC - United States relations. So, there'd always been I guess, that sort of global outlook, a little bit of a family connection with Asia, but most directly, actually it was different. I would never have expected when I started my undergraduate degree that I would have done that. [00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] It happens that I took a course on Chinese history with a really inspiring professor, who is a true expert in modern Chinese history. And it was just really exciting. I really enjoyed it. And I was not fully certain about the solicitor route. I actually had a training contract offer at that point.

[00:05:19] But I ended up deferring my place at Clifford Chance for a couple of years. I was very fortunate to get sort of government funding to do a I think back then there was a bit more funding around for post grad stuff. So, there was a government grant, which funded a number of us to do this course in Chinese history, alongside learning Mandarin.

[00:05:37] So, it was quite an odd experience. Like half the time you're doing like highfalutin research and thinking you're so smart. And then the same people in our master's group were then going into effectively do "the cat sat on the mat " in Chinese, which was pretty grounding. So, anyway, it was a little bit of a sort of career diversion for a while, but I really enjoyed it.

[00:05:59] [00:06:00] Made some very special friends during that experience with two years and spent six months of that living in Beijing studying at Beijing University. But eventually when I joined Clifford Chance, I did do a trainee seat of six months working out in the Shanghai office, which was a lot of fun. But having that China experience was relevant to my career for a while. And just personally has been a source of great joy and satisfaction for a while as well. 

[00:06:22] Lara Quie: When you actually got your training contract, were they aware that you were going to do that Chinese course? And was that a big factor in them offering you a place do you think? 

[00:06:32] Benjamin White: No, quite the opposite. I did a sort of standard vacation scheme at Clifford Chance back in 2004, so this is like now in the mists of time. Received a training contract offer at the end of that. And then whenever it was, I guess a year later I approached them and said, thinking about doing this course. What would you think about deferred and made a case for it all being relevant Mandarin being useful China growing, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:06:56] I think none of us knew at that time in the UK really [00:07:00] actually quite transformational how quick that was all happening, the ground moving underneath our feet. But also, it was very different time. So, that was 2004, 2005. We were in that sort of heady boom period. It was an employee's market.

[00:07:15] And I think if I'd been asking the same thing in 2010, 2009 in the wake of Lehman Brothers collapse, et cetera, et cetera, I think probably it would been very different, but at the time they basically said, "oh yeah, great, fine. See you a couple of years further on." 

[00:07:30] Lara Quie: I can imagine that it was an unexpected bonus for them actually, because I can see that would have been a real draw. They would love to have someone with an insight into Chinese culture. And as you say, a bit of language as well. So, tell me a bit about the training contract and your time as a trainee at Clifford Chance.

[00:07:49] Benjamin White: Sure. So, I started my training contract in 2009 after all of that. Right? So, this took a long time, it was actually a source of some merriment at our wedding, my brother was my best man. And there was a lot of mocking [00:08:00] of me for staying in higher education for so long, because there was the undergraduate degree, which finished in 2005, it was Chinese studies that finished in 2007.

[00:08:08] And then there was law conversion and the legal practice schools, which we have here in the UK. And that was a further two years. So, 2009, finally, I rock up at Clifford Chance having done the vacation scheme back in 2004. There was actually one point where I think they actually had entirely forgotten about me.

[00:08:23] And there was an exchange of emails where literally I could have disappeared and they, I think I was on some list, a list of one, they said someone had deferred that long. Anyway, I finally arrived in 2009 and then the training contract took a slightly more conventional path. So, I did seats in corporate finance. So, M&A, in banking. So, lots of big loan agreements loan, restructuring, that sort of stuff. And then another corporate focus seat, but that was the one in Shanghai. So, effectively, I did two, two gos around doing corporate work; one in London and one in Shanghai. 

[00:08:57] Lara Quie: So, given that you'd taken that rather [00:09:00] long route. Did you feel more mature than the average trainee in your cohort?

[00:09:05] Benjamin White: I felt certainly a little bit older. And I did worry about that a little bit about to just people think I'm weird because I've done something slightly different. I don't think, I don't think that really was a factor. There were other people who had done a slightly more circuitous route and done different things after university.

[00:09:20] And I think also increasingly that is the case. But did I feel more mature? Not particularly. Trying to try to keep my head above water. 

[00:09:27] Lara Quie: And so, you decided to qualify into corporate finance. What was the draw for that practice area? 

[00:09:34] Benjamin White: I think this is potentially interesting for anyone who is starting along this route. I always tell people now, just keep an open mind about what you want to do. It's trying to like have that mental balance between having a bit of a plan, but being prepared to change it as well. The plan is important. So, you don't just get buffeted along and end up doing what someone else wants you to do.

[00:09:53] But an open mind. So, to explain why I say that, I started and I really thought I want to be a litigator. [00:10:00] I thought that sounded really cool. I liked the idea of fighting court battles or arbitrations, whatever that was. I didn't really understand. And I thought this would be a good background. A bit like writing history essays or something like writing long pleadings. And also, I don't know if this is just me or at least the perception among the trainee cohort was that like the disputes team. I think they'd done some good job on branding of feeling like a little bit special, but there always seemed to be more people applying for places as associates in that team, than there were places available. And I think that generated a little bit of a feeling of they must be great because you want to do that. And yes, great they were great. Perfect. But the thing that I found actually was I thought I'd get corporate out of the way first.

[00:10:44] And I quite enjoyed it. It was really hard work, I got completely beasted, but I was very impressed by the people I met. And then I did the seat in litigation and it was good in lots of ways, but the slow dawning over the six months. I just thought I fit better in the corporate team. And I remember in particular, looking at what some of the senior associates were doing in corporate and being just so impressed by how they were handling clients and how to answer really tricky questions and thinking, "crumbs. I have no idea how I'll do that." And to be totally frank, I also looked at some of the work that junior associates were doing, at least at that time, it may have changed, but at that time in the litigation team, and there were a lot of regulatory investigations a lot of associates weren't doing actual sort of court litigation or arbitrations.

[00:11:31] They were being pulled onto big sort of internal investigations in a wake of the financial crisis. LIBOR, et cetera, et cetera. And I looked at some of that and thought I could easily spend a couple of years. I thought, fairly or unfairly, reading people's emails lots and lots of basically disclosure exercises and that sort of thing.

[00:11:49] And I thought I'd get better experience more quickly in corporate. So, long answer, but yeah, for a different person, it would've come up with a different conclusion. Right? It's just everyone reacts to these situations differently. You don't really know what it's like until you actually do it. So, keep an open mind. 

[00:12:02] Lara Quie: That's a really good point. But also, it's the fact that you were at Clifford Chance, which obviously is a " magic circle" global firm, which will have had huge cases and millions of dollars and pounds all riding on it. So, when it comes to litigation, it will be complex litigation really, big cases that are really important.

[00:12:22] So, the opportunity, I think, for juniors to get involved on an important part of the case is probably quite rare. Whereas, when it comes to perhaps on the corporate side, smaller deals and things that are more manageable, there's more likely to be a high volume and therefore more opportunity.

[00:12:40] So, it probably wasn't about the practice area. It's more about the firm. And I think that's what young people should consider. What does this look like at my firm? And what does this look like in the wider world? Because sometimes if you do think you like a practice area, it is quite important to consider that perhaps if you are interested in smaller cases or in more, let's say, human cases when it comes to litigation, perhaps you just need to move to a different firm or a different area, et cetera. So, yeah, don't be put off by what your firm does because it might actually be something that you could do somewhere else. 

[00:13:18] Benjamin White: Yeah. I think I really agree with that, Lara. I also did something which I think lots and lots of students do, which is you just pick a really big firm. Right? And I did really enjoy my experience at Clifford Chance and have great friends from that time and huge respect for them. I think if you are a young person that you are really interested in some particular niche like media, or even like venture capital or some other niche like that.

[00:13:42] Then a lot of those niches are going to be better, it's going to be easier to pursue that in a slightly different shape of firm who may have more focus in those areas. To some extent, I think that may be true with disputes as well. On your point of moving when I look now at my [00:14:00] cohort,

[00:14:00] I do see some people who came to that conclusion, and they did their training contract. And they got big brands on their CV and good experience. And then they left but stayed in private practice either at qualification or not that long, often now some people do that because they move to a similar-ish firm, but they think that for whatever reason, maybe their partnership prospects are better there.

[00:14:19] But others do that because they are exploring more of a niche. So, I know one guy who left on qualification to go and become a charities lawyer. And he's now a partner specializing in charity a couple of years after me and he left to do more media type of stuff.

[00:14:39] He went to a much smaller firm, but he ended up joining Bird & Bird, I think. And then moved in house. And so, I think you do see this pattern of people realize actually, You can take that experience and that sort of name on your CV. But then maybe if you know that there's something in particular that you want to pursue, then you go and run at that.

[00:15:00] Lara Quie: I think though, it was very fortuitous that you were at Clifford Chance because you mentioned that you went for a seat in Shanghai and obviously not every firm has a Shanghai office. So, that was a really good coincidence in a way, considering you got your training contract before the Chinese degree.

[00:15:16] Benjamin White: This is a good point. 

[00:15:18] Lara Quie: You were at Clifford Chance for a number of years, and you stayed until senior associate, but then you started to think about other things. So, tell me about the transition to your in-house role. 

[00:15:28] Benjamin White: The truth is that even on day one at Clifford Chance, I think I wasn't fully sure that I would want to stay there forever and become a partner.

[00:15:36] I was trying to keep an open mind consistent with what I said earlier, but I thought I wanted to experience a few different things in my career. And as the years went by, that became clearer and clearer. On the other hand, enjoying it and doing interesting work and working with interesting people.

[00:15:51] But I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this experience and with my career. I did an in-house secondment, so quite a long one, actually nine [00:16:00] months, which is unusual to go for that long as the client asks for it. So, I went to work for what was then called the UK Shareholder Executive. And it's now called UK Government Investments, which is a much better name. And that was a part of one of the UK's government departments and they were working on stuff like privatizations. So, I went in 2014 and the political climate was all about cutting government debts and selling off stuff.

[00:16:27] Basically if it, wasn't attached to the floor and you weren't going to massively damage national infrastructure, someone was going to have a look and see if he could sell it. Royal mail was privatized around this time. So, I went to work for that team. And it was very stimulating.

[00:16:39] It was a mix of civil servants. And then lots of secondees from banks. Big four and law firms. So, I did that for nine months. I was working on a particular project of privatizing a particular asset and just quite enjoyed it. And I liked the dynamic of bringing your legal expertise to a problem, but with lots of [00:17:00] other people with different expertise.

[00:17:01] So, I would be in the room as the lawyer. But someone else would be coming as the accountant or the finance specialist or the policy person. And I found that quite fun. There's a little bit of they say in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And I liked that, and I contrasted that with an environment where in a firm, you are an associate among many, associates.

[00:17:24] And yes, you're great and have your individual talent, but fundamentally if you fall under a bus, they are going to slot someone else in on that deal, like lickety-split and then they'll send flowers. So, I liked that I liked being close to the substance of what we were doing. I liked seeing how a problem evolved over a time period or a project.

[00:17:44] So, I had that in mind. So, I did that secondment enjoyed that, went back for a couple of years, I think but always keeping my mind over for other things. And eventually a job opening came at a company called Global Fashion Group, and they are a holding company now [00:18:00] listed in Frankfurt, but for a number of fast fashion e-commerce brands around the world.

[00:18:05] So, in Southeast Asia, they have a business called Zalora, and Australia they have The Iconic, which is, I think still the market leader there. In Russia La Moda and South America, Dafiti. And we had a couple of others as well, but they were sold, and I was in the team doing that.

[00:18:20] So, anyway, this job, opening came up and I thought interesting in-house position, I was becoming very interested in the start-up. And I could see all this stuff happening in tech, venture capital. At the time I couldn't see that it would be that easy to do that sort of thing at Clifford Chance.

[00:18:36] A lot of those deals were a bit smaller. It might be so much money has gone into tech and there's deals got bigger and bigger now that might not be necessarily that true now but at the time, I thought this whole start-up world, it's just passing me by. I quite like to see it. And I thought Global Fashion Group was a way to combine something that was start-up-y but was quite late stage, that raised a lot of money. It was global. And I thought my skills from Clifford Chance of working on big global deals, won't entirely go to waste. Whereas I've seen some opportunities of being like first lawyer in a start-up in London. And I thought maybe that was a little bit small.

[00:19:12] I'm not sure that was correct to think that, but that was my thinking at the time, hence after six years I went off and became an in-house counsel for this e-commerce company. 

[00:19:23] Lara Quie: Right. And once you were there as this in-house counsel, what did you feel were the things that changed in your mindset in terms of when you're in private practice compared to in-house counsel?

[00:19:36] Benjamin White: There are so many. Something people say all the time is that you get really close to the business and to unpick what that means in a practical sense, you really own the decisions. So, when you're in a firm, even when you have a really tight relationship with your clients, and that's really, exciting when you have that.

[00:19:53] And I really admire those partners where you can really see that there's still a degree to which it's their project ultimately. And in house it's yours, like you do the deal and the next day you've got to deal with the ramifications of what's just happened. So, I saw that time and time again. We would sell a company in our group.

[00:20:11] And then the next day we're dealing with the comms around that with the rest of the team. You're dealing with all the relevant stakeholders. Maybe down the line there's warranty claim that you're dealing with that. We did a JV during my time there and that's by definition, you're then in a relationship with a new external partner and that's very stimulating because you're creating the documents and doing the legal structuring around that, but that sets the framework for your relationship going forward.

[00:20:33] And you, end up living that every day. So, I think that was a sort of a bit of a mental shift in terms of how you think about your work you're in it. You're not distant from it. And then another piece I think is that bit around building relationships with lots of different types of people.

[00:20:48] So, you're not just doing the legal thing. You're now within the business with all sorts of other specialists. And part of your effectiveness has got to be to develop that network actually internally in your business, do a bit of advocacy and build up the culture in that way. So, I really enjoyed working alongside people in treasury, finance, people in our business teams around the world.

[00:21:11] So, on one project, I flew out to Dubai and got to know the management team of the business at that time. It's really stimulating, and I think in-house lawyers often say that the chance to really understand the business really deeply and work with all these different types of people, they think in a very different way.

[00:21:27] That's quite fun. 

[00:21:29] Lara Quie: And what about the fact that you are now sitting within the client and that actually the clients are business, people that you mentioned around you. So, the overwhelming demands on your time being stretched and pulled in all these different directions by so many people. How did you manage to juggle all of that? 

[00:21:49] Benjamin White: I think that's true. And yeah, your clients, so to speak might be literally I remember the CFO, his office was very close to where I was sitting, so he would walk past and say, "how are we getting on with that thing? And sometimes you'd go what thing? But it goes back to the relationship building point.

[00:22:04] And if you're developing those relationships and you're building up that trust on both sides and actually you can manage that and people understand your priorities, for example, and you get involved earlier and earlier, so you can influence things as they develop you, try and nip something in the bud, or make sure that the problem never emerges because actually legal has got involved From the specific point around sort of work-life balance and those pressures, I remember not long after I joined it was the Easter weekend which, many of the listeners would appreciate it was this sort of public holiday, long weekends in the UK. And I remember I was doing a call over the weekend. I think we were staying with my in-laws, and someone said, "I thought you were moving in-house.

[00:22:47] You weren't meant to work so hard. Why are you doing this call? Who, made you do this call? And I said, " I organized the call". And that was the mindset shift. And that I think is important because I found often, I was working as hard in the house as I was in private practice.

[00:23:01] But a key difference was about predictability and control. I found him in private practice, particularly in a transactional department like, corporate I remember a partner once saying to me, it's real exciting. You come in on a Monday and you never know what you're going to be doing this week. That is really exciting.

[00:23:16] On the other hand, you come in on Monday and you never know what you're going to do in this week. You never quite know if you've got tickets to that thing on a Thursday or a Friday. Are you really going? There's always a chance that you will not. In house you can, my experience was you can definitely be working as long, but you probably know what's coming down the line.

[00:23:35] There's less chance of someone really randomly saying, "a disaster has befallen. You need to fix this". Of course, it happens from time to time, but you've just got a bit more visibility earlier when the peaks and troughs are going to be, what the big projects are. And it's just less so in an advisory element.

[00:23:53] Law firms make money by the client calling up on the Friday evening and saying, "Should've mentioned earlier in the week, but actually there's a crisis. We need your help". 

[00:24:02] Lara Quie: Yeah, that's a good point about the control. And I think that's one of the biggest causes of mental stress and strain in law firm environments, that feeling that you're constantly subject to somebody else's whim.

[00:24:16] And in cases where you understand that there really are urgent deadlines you can objectively see that case. You can deal with that, and that's fine, but unfortunately in many scenarios, Actually, it's just a completely arbitrary deadline that usually the partner has set because they know that they're not going to stay there till midnight.

[00:24:38] Just you are, they're going to delegate it to you. And they've very unreasonably at 6:00 PM said, "absolutely. We'll have that on your desk tomorrow morning by 9:00 AM". And you think, why was that necessary? Actually, it wasn't. And that's when you become demoralized because you feel goodness this really has just totally messed up my evening, but it's also the [00:25:00] fact that it's not just you as a person. It always has repercussions on everybody else in your life. Whether you're trying to put your children to bed or your partner wants to meet you for dinner or go to the theatre or something.

[00:25:10] So, I think that kind of element of law has a big impact on people's sense of wellbeing and the whole kind of satisfaction with a private practice role. 

[00:25:23] Benjamin White: Yeah. I agree. Just pulling out some of that as it happened, the partners I worked with at Clifford Chance generally led from the front.

[00:25:30] So, they would be there at midnight, one, two in the morning doing it with you. But as for everything else, I think that's completely it. I found I could get on with knowing, okay, this next month is going to be super busy. Don't make any plans. This is going to be a big one. We're working on something really big.

[00:25:47] I found it harder to, even though you might work exactly the same hours, but harder where that was not predictable and you're right. It's because it becomes not just you. By the time I left CC, I was married and had one child. And yeah, you do start to think about impact on other people long-term sustainability and also your marriage is a partnership and who's going to be doing what and how that is all going to work.

[00:26:10] No one wants a truly predictable life. Some people do, but some elements of control. I think personally I found after a while it would be quite welcome. 

[00:26:18] Lara Quie: It sounded like you really enjoyed the role at the Global Fashion Group, but actually you decided to leave. So, tell me what happened there?

[00:26:26] Benjamin White: The short answer is that I started working on Crafty Counsel. But the slightly longer answer is I'd been there for a couple of years. I think it was a great place to learn lots very quickly. And I was trying to figure out what the next step would be. Global Fashion Group was backed by a number of venture capital funds.

[00:26:44] We did a few fundraising rounds. I liked negotiating with the VCs. It was a natural evolution of what I was doing at Clifford Chance. Just a slightly different type of corporate work. That was probably 50% of what I was doing at GFG. So, I liked that and I thought that actually probably the next step would be working in VC.

[00:27:04] And so I started to explore. Whether that could be an opening. And I was talking with a couple of VC funds of going to join them as a lawyer, one in particular a real sliding doors moments, actually, because those very prestigious, great VC funds in the UK who were hiring for their first internal counsel.

[00:27:23] But I'd already started Crafty Counsel and at that point I was doing this as a sort of hobby on the side of my desk. My boss at GFG was very understanding about that, but I thought in a lot of my head space was now being spent on this sort of entrepreneurial side project. I can't really bring that into a new job.

[00:27:38] If I'm going to do the new job, I should really focus on that and make that a big success or maybe having come this far with Crafty Counsel, maybe I should give that a go. 

[00:27:48] Lara Quie: Tell me about the inspiration for Crafty Counsel. You say, oh, this is a sort of a side hobby and obviously something really you became very passionate about, but what was the initial inspiration that got you on that track in the first place?

[00:28:04] Benjamin White: It came from working as an in-house counsel at GFG. I found having moved from a private practice environment where you have such a big network of people in the firm and outside, but just people who you can turn to for help there's an expert everywhere. And your career path is also pretty clear if you're in the firm, you sort of know what the options are.

[00:28:23] Then moving in-house where actually everything is a lot more ambiguous and a lot harder to get a sense of what do people normally do? And that might be on technical work stuff. Getting a big transaction signed, like literally just how do we get all these people around the world to sign this thing?

[00:28:37] What normally happens inside the company? I know what happens when I'm in the law firm. I email the documents to somebody, and they come back signed. That's just one example, but I felt that there were other things like that. And it was hard to see what good looked like and what another company might be doing.

[00:28:53] How they might be addressing the same problem. And there were lots of examples like that, where I thought wouldn't it be nice just to know what others were doing? And also true from a sort of career and personal perspective. How do you develop your career as an in-house lawyer? What do people end up doing?

[00:29:08] What are the skills that they need? And actually just having a bit of a shoulder to cry on, a network, a community. People a bit like you. All these things I started to see, I felt I didn't have much access to that. And I could see that there were some organizations doing bits of this. But I thought there was room for something else that was new, fresh, fun, combining media contents with community.

[00:29:36] If we could get that right. There could be something interesting there with a sort of business hat on in-house was and is growing. Every year, the percentage of lawyers who are practicing in-house in some capacity versus in a firm is just growing, also the growth of people doing this on a freelance basis as well, side point, but also super interesting trend.

[00:29:56] And I thought this is an underserved and growing area. I'm [00:30:00] in it. I've been on both sides of the fence law firm and in-house. I also thought that someone could probably help the firms and maybe some of the other providers like tech companies on really crafting their message for in-house.

[00:30:12] And maybe that's a way that we fund this thing. So, I felt there's a lot of bits, but putting together there's a problem here to solve. And I thought I'm relatively well-placed to solve this. And I started to work on it off the side of my desk. At the time, really just started with some video content that we were publishing primarily on LinkedIn doing little sort of 90 second talking head interviews with people. We had a rule. Your thing has to be 90 seconds and we'd put a timer on screen. So, that was fun. And I teamed up with a friend from university who was a filmmaker, and she helps to make some of the early content. And so, there was about a year there where I was just building the brand and finding actually having more and more conversations with the law firms wanted to talk and see who, were we, what we're doing? In house lawyers, getting interested, more people wanting to have meetings at 11:00 AM during the week, which is tricky when you've got a, like when you’ve got a job.

[00:31:06] So, it started to just grow and grow. And there was never any one single tipping point apart from interviewing for this other job. And that was the moment when I thought, right. I need to make a decision. 

[00:31:22] Lara Quie: So, how did you fund yourself in the early days? Because obviously it probably wasn't bringing in any money itself. So, how did you go about that? Because you were leaving a decent in-house role and you had a family already. 

[00:31:35] Benjamin White: Yup. Savings.

[00:31:36] Lara Quie: So, you had been strategic about saving up to give you that cushion?

[00:31:41] Benjamin White: Yup. So, this is a great question because I think this actually goes to opportunities, what, like different people can do. I was very fortunate. So, over the years I'd developed some savings. And just about actually at this time, I also was very fortunate to receive a small legacy from my grandma, who passed away. So many other people aren't in that position, this is not like life-changing by any means, but it was a certainly a few months’ salary.

[00:32:07] And so it felt almost like fate. Like you should really do this thing. And it's a sort of topic for entrepreneurs. How do you fund yourself? How do you fund your venture? And unfortunately, a lot of people don't have, most people don't have that backup.

[00:32:22] They're not in that fortunate position. They've got to bootstrap for longer, so they've got to get their company. Either generating profits while they're maintaining another job or get it funded earlier. And that is just an unfairness that we have in the system, but I was lucky, so I had some savings. And I had the benefit of this small legacy that really helped.

[00:32:41] I then moved to do this full-time. Early on the roadmap was get some capital in. So, I knew I had a little bit of personal breathing space, but that wasn't going to last for long. So, relatively early in the journey, we did raise some money from some angel investors. When I say angel investors, predominantly lawyers who thought there was an opportunity here and obviously that really helped as well.

[00:33:03] Again, actually it goes into different entrepreneurs have access to different networks and opportunities. If you are an ex-lawyer who knows lots of lawyers who are as a breed, we tend to be time poor, but particularly if you're a partner or an ex-partner, an ex GC perhaps your time poor versus capital rich in terms of raising money for a company. Law is probably a relatively good hunting ground in terms of finding angels to back your company.

[00:33:30] And we continue to benefit from a wave of interest in legal tech. We're not a tech company. We're a media company, but we're alongside that. Basically, lawyers have got much more interested in start-ups and we can ride that wave and say we're, a start-up too.

[00:33:44] We're doing a different thing. Actually, we're shining a light on this whole legal tech world. How is that relevant to clients in house counsel? Et cetera, et cetera. So, that's been part of our pitch along the way, and we've been helped by simply more people are thinking in that entrepreneurial mode and thinking if I'm not going to [00:34:00] be in a startup, perhaps I can invest in one and be part of that journey.

[00:34:04] Lara Quie: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I feel that the last few years, the focus on start-ups and the excitement of that space is totally there. And the idea of legal tech and all of that is definitely buzzing right now. But also, I like the concept that your platform is basically the democratization of, learning and development.

[00:34:26] Because when, it comes to training contracts and trainees, You're totally reliant on what your firm can give you. So at a magic circle firm obviously they had a fantastic training and a lot of investment a large group of people training at the same time as well. But lots of people are in a two-person firm or are a sole trainee, or some people even start in an in-house role.

[00:34:51] Literally they're trained from there. So, there's going to be a huge range of experiences. At the end of the day, although from the legal perspective, as in learning the actual practice of law and learning those kinds of tools, I think most law firms really good at that, but when it comes to the soft skills and all of the other things that are essential to the practice of law, those are often things that are really hit and miss some firms invest heavily in that, and you get fantastic training, but the majority don't actually give you that.

[00:35:21] And when you think of global firms in particular, even the biggest firms will often have a really small office in Singapore. And although nowadays through technology, they can offer a lot of training through online platforms and young people can have access to all of that, but it's still again quite hit and miss as to what you're offered and whether you're on the ground somewhere.

[00:35:44] And there's a lecture theatre and people do things in person, whether that's recorded for your benefit or not, whether things are live and they're actually not in your time zone. I feel that your platform by being able to really get [00:36:00] experts in to share experience, to share training, but also to focus on a lot of the things that are much more practical, because you just talking about what's best practice for this? What's best practice for that?

[00:36:14] And how would you manage this? And I think that in an in-house context, you will only know your own experience and there's thousands of things that can come across your desk when you're in-house you can't possibly know every single thing. And you don't have the support of a big firm, like you mentioned.

[00:36:30] So, this is where a platform like Crafty Counsel is so useful because people can literally do a little search for the key words of the situation And even if they can't find something that's directly applicable, because you've also created a community of other people, at least you will have sort of a forum and people can just ask a question in there.

[00:36:50] So, there's that feeling that you're not alone that you can tap into that community and ask these questions, and somebody can point you in that direction. So, it gives you that comfort, doesn't it? Of almost being part of a larger firm again. 

[00:37:03] Benjamin White: Yeah, I think that's right. And it's interesting because when I first went full time on Crafty Counsel having, started with these short and sweet interviews, which were a bit fun and thought provoking, but not necessarily like that sort of deep and technical, which got people really interested. We went through a short period where I thought right now, we need to really invest in more technical tutorial type content.

[00:37:24] And the interesting thing was that the reaction from our community and actually what we were told they wanted was overwhelmingly this word community. And that was really the beginning of 2020 around about the time that COVID hit. We got this overwhelming feedback from our sort of early supporters that, they didn't see us as a learning and development platform or a source of tutorials. They saw us as a community. And they said, can you please do more community stuff? So, can you do events? Can you bring people together? Can you have the forums? And that actually during 2020 prompted a whole mindset shift about how we thought about the company.

[00:37:56] Can you hear a little bit of crying in the background? 

[00:37:58] Lara Quie: The realities of work from home. 

[00:38:01] Benjamin White: So, content-wise, we've been moving away from more legal technical topics. But we've lent more heavily into things like legal operations. So, running of a legal team. Use of technology on a really practical basis. So, not what if, but more like what the people really do and lots on career skills, diversity, these sorts of topics.

[00:38:20] And we've really coupled that on the content side with what we're doing in community. So, we now have a really active community of in-house counsel around the world. Because we're here in London inevitably lots in the UK, but we're finding now lots and lots around the world as well. 

[00:38:35] So, we've made a sort of shift while keeping like the mission consistent we've dialled down the learning and development tutorial site really dialled up community. And focused our content around those sorts of pain points. But yes, I think you're right about the sort of democratization of knowledge.

[00:38:52] We ran a session earlier this week with some of our " super crafties" who are like, our super fans from the community. People who come most regularly and have contributed in various ways. One really consistent bit of feedback we got from them was how difficult it is to see how the next company down the road is addressing the same problem.

[00:39:12] And we had a sort of breakout room on the changing landscape for lawyers. And what does it mean to be a good in-house counsel in a rapidly changing world? And everyone had a really different answer. And that was really interesting. And people were saying, look we're all similar people in a way similar background but we're addressing this very differently in our companies and what it means to be effective and have an effective legal team in one context is totally different than another context. And being able to see that and draw inspiration from one another is really powerful. So, that's where we're trying to play in giving that visibility of what others are doing and then trying to lift the whole ecosystem by doing that. And we're doing that with the community side and we're trying to do that with the content side as well. 

[00:39:54] Lara Quie: So, what's next for Crafty Counsel? 

[00:39:57] Benjamin White: So, we're recording this in September. There's a lot that's coming up later this year. We're working on a rebrand. We are tightening up our content strategy. So, we've got an awesome head of content called Renee Graham, who's an ex-journalist but who also did a distance law degree recently. So, she's very curious about the legal world and she's helping to just tighten up the plan. Of in the past, I've been very opportunistic. I've gone that's interesting. that's interesting. This person is great. We should do a thing with them. And we're now just trying to like, keep that magic, but also have a bit more of a plan, monthly themes, where are we going? And really key thing is really aligning that with what our community wants.

[00:40:38] And so, we're going to be seeing that hopefully coming through in our content. So, there's a lot of like internal work of just tightening up the ship. But I think will be visible externally. That's going to be happening in the next few months next year, probably two things. One, we're going to be doing more in-person events.

[00:40:55] COVID allowing so, fingers crossed. But our community has mainly [00:41:00] been manifested through very regular zoom calls. We've got a bunch of different groups. We've got a group of people in big, listed companies. We've got a couple of groups for lawyers and start-ups and so on. That's what happened in zoom.

[00:41:11] Zoom has been great for many reasons, including. The internationalization, hence, where people dining and from Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Dubai, what we want to do next year, is we want to preserve that. So, continue like that low friction element of having digital meetups continue being welcoming to people around the world, but we're going to start introducing some in person.

[00:41:32] So, that where people can, you can actually meet that there is something still about in person. And so, we've been playing a little bit there already. We did a barbecue for some of our community a few weeks ago, we're doing something with Legal Geek in October, which either will be in the future of the past, depending on when this happens.

[00:41:49] So, we're doing little bits of in person, and I think next year we'll do more. I expect we'll be doing some dinners and breakfast. So, we want to combine that digital with the real world. So, that's a big thing on our roadmap. [00:42:00] 

[00:42:00] Lara Quie: It sounds like you've got loads of plans and it's very exciting for Crafty Counsel.

[00:42:04] So, I really look forward to seeing your new website and seeing everything that you've got going on. So, how can people get in touch with you?

[00:42:13] Benjamin White: On LinkedIn most days. You can find me that or drop me an email, Ben@craftycounsel.co.uk. Would love to chat to anyone who's found any of this interesting. And particularly, our community of in-house counsel is very welcoming and open. And if you're in house counsel working anywhere in the world, I'm sure we'll find a home for you in our community somewhere. So, please do get in touch. 

[00:42:33] Lara Quie: That's really brilliant. So, thanks so much for being on the show, Ben.

[00:42:37] Benjamin White: Thanks, Lara. Thanks for having me.

[00:42:38] Lara Quie: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Legal Genie Podcast. If you found the content at all valuable, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people in the legal industry find the show. And don't forget to share this with anyone you think would benefit from listening to it as well. Until next time, have a magical week ahead. [00:43:00]