On Thursday, some Silicon Valley companies' legal leaders came to the Santa Clara University School of Law for a panel on how to educate and train law students for success in the tech industry. The panel was moderated by SCU law professor, director of the High Tech Law Institute and former general counsel of startup Epinions.com Eric Goldman.

Goldman first asked panelists about tech companies' specific needs when hiring a lawyer.

“They really demand creativity, speed, agility, flexibility; really clarity and brevity, or efficiency, however you want to put it, and communication, not obfuscation. … All of these these things are really important to clients here in the Valley,” said Dorian Daley, the executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Oracle Corp., and a graduate of SCU's law school. “They're important elsewhere, but given the speed at which we run here in the Valley I think these are particularly important here.”

Daley also said it's important to clients that lawyers understand the business' goals, people and priorities.

Bart Volkmer, the general counsel of San Francisco-based Dropbox and another SCU alumnus, echoed Daley's call for lawyers who can partner with the business and bring creative solutions. When hiring internally, he said he looks for lawyers who understand the business' product, their global market strategy and their engineers.

The best way to prepare for a role in-house, Volkmer said, is to get hands-on experience. He said in-house counsel should have strong relationships, be embedded with clients and work with departments throughout the company to produce creative solutions. But he added that these “soft skills” are not necessarily something you can teach in a class.

“When I was in law school I did a lot of practical skills work and it was some of my favorite work,” Volkmer said. “I think the more you can expose students to real-life situations the more prepared they'll be when they go internally at tech companies.”

For Marie Oh Huber, the senior vice president of legal affairs, general counsel and secretary of eBay Inc., in-house hiring decisions factor in more than business and legal knowledge. When hiring for a certain level, she said, those skills become a given.

She said the ability to form and manage relationships is a crucial factor.

“What I'm looking for is somebody who is savvy and who has a high enough EQ [emotional quotient] that they can navigate whatever the org is, whatever the matrix is, to get things done,” Oh Huber said.

Relationship skills and integrity can be hard to suss out in an interview, but panelists said they have strategies to figure out how someone will work on the team and with the organization as a whole.

Daley said she asks interviewees about difficult situations they've been in to get a glimpse of how they navigate critical times. Nicole Shanahan, an SCU law school graduate and the founder and CEO of ClearAccessIP, said she asks candidates what they're most proud of, an opportunity to see what they value.

In addition, Oh Huber added that “Integrity … is incredibly important and it's something that we definitely look for inherently in people. And it's not just, are you making the right decision? But in my mind, too, it's, how do you treat people? How do you interact in the world?”