November 20, 2023 | at UC Law San Francisco

Downloadable pdf of Press Release

SAN FRANCISCO — As UC Law SF’s Fall 2023 semester concludes, LexLab is celebrating the successful completion of its first-ever “In-House Counsel Toolkit: Skills & Strategies” course which was designed to equip aspiring lawyers with the tools needed to succeed as in-house counsel and navigate the unique challenges that in-house counsel face. This unique, first-of-its-kind semester-long course received an overwhelmingly positive response from the students, professors, guest speakers and legal community members.

The class was structured for students to meet twice per week. On Mondays, Professor Drew Amerson and Professor Alice Armitage co-taught the key doctrines of in-house lawyering in preparation for the week’s topic. Wednesday’s classes were taught by a host of powerful legal leaders from top companies including Intuit, ZenDesk, Coinbase, Dolby, Ironclad, Microsoft, Salesforce, Starbucks, Lyft and many more (see below for a full list of GC guest speakers and their companies).

Throughout the semester, students learned a variety of important in-house topics such as DEI & ESG, compliance, implementing effective financial management strategies, navigating cybersecurity & privacy risks, the basics of IP & litigation, contracting & managing strategic partnerships, and extensive business literacy. Students also participated in impactful and realistic simulation exercises, including problem-solving on “tiger teams” and preparing incident management plans.

The students had many positive things to say about the course:

• “I thought it was great that the GCs all were very different. They all had different backgrounds, different career experiences, and different outlooks as to what makes them a successful GC. Being able to see how different they all are was great, since there doesn't really seem to be one path to being a GC--rather everyone sort of has their own independent path. They all were very knowledgeable as to what they taught.”
• “I thought the breadth was great. We started with a more general look at big companies as compared to small companies. . . . I thought the mix of classes that focused on tools and strategies to utilize once in the role was also helpful and I plan to talk about these practical skills in interviews. I loved the practice area specific classes (IP, compliance, and Privacy)."
• “This ended up being my favorite class. I really liked how [the professors] structured this class to be more collaborative than competitive, which is such a breath of fresh air in terms of law school courses.”
  

Given the overwhelming positive feedback, LexLab plans to offer this course again in future semesters—check out UC Law SF’s latest course listings for more information on enrollment.

LexLab would also like to give special thanks to Samantha Villanueva-Meyer (LexLab Advisor and former GC/CLO at Enjoy Technology, Inc.) and Baird Fogel (Partner, Eversheds Sutherland) for their help in curating this course and dedication to making it a huge success and Eversheds Sutherland LLP for helping to sponsor the course, including the final reception!

Villanueva-Meyer said, “[f]or many years, the LexLab team and I have advocated for the incredible impacts an in-house focused course could have on the students. As a former educator and general counsel myself, it was a true joy to see this semester's inaugural course unfold, with substantive programming coupled with real-life lessons taught by some of the best legal leaders in the business. We are on to something big here: preparing young lawyers while integrating our entire legal community into the process.”

LexLab is a center at UC Law SF focused on law, technology, and innovation that prepares business-savvy lawyers to shape the future of the legal profession. It offers classes, talks and other events on cutting-edge topics including artificial intelligence, data privacy, and video game law.

GC GuestSpeakers:

Chris Young (Ironclad)

Jennee DeVore (Simple HealthKit,Inc.)

Shanti Ariker (Zendesk)

Vineet Shahani (Mill)

Akshay Verma (Coinbase)

Baird Fogel (Eversheds Sutherland)

Megan Niedermeyer (Apollo.io)

Katie Bennett (FlexiVan)

Will Campbell (KKR)

Kathy Zhu (Streamline.AI)

Léo Murgel (Salesforce)

Brandon Pace (Lending Club)

Kerry McLean (Intuit)

Elise Houlik (Intuit)

Randall Cook (Blackberry)

Leo Spooner (Dolby Laboratories)

Sai Sriskandarajah (LaunchDarkly)

Holly Grochmal (Pandora)

Jie Wang (Datadog)

Micki Nute (Pure Storage)

Zabrina Jenkins (Starbucks)

Anna Padgett (Microsoft)

Megha Sharma (Uniphore)
Samantha Villanueva-Meyer (LexLab Advisor;Former GC/CLO at Enjoy Technology, Inc.)