Andrew Cooper, who was raised in South Carolina's Lowcountry and today is an associate general counsel at Meta based in Atlanta, says he considers himself an "astute scholar of human behavior," a trait he credits to his grandparents, who were not formally educated.

From his parents, he says he learned to appreciate hard work.

"There's not a day I can remember my parents not working, and that left a lasting impression on me. To this day, if I'm not working on something, I feel rudderless," he says.

Cooper says the safety of his early, family-oriented social structure made him an advocate for those who didn't have the same.

"I've since spent many years as a court-appointed special advocate for children," he says. "My life's goal is to simply be a positive and enduring memory, a shoulder to lift up others and a destroyer of the many obstacles that prevent folks with similar challenges from achieving their dreams."

Cooper serves as associate general counsel of strategic transactions and M&A at Meta, formerly Facebook, a post he started in May.

Prior to that, he spent nearly seven years at UPS, including general counsel of UPS Airlines and VP and global government contracts compliance officer.

He started his career as an attorney at Kansas City, Missouri-based Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

Cooper shared with Corporate Counsel his path to becoming an in-house leader and the value he expects from outside counsel.

He also discussed mentors, including Dinisa Folmar, a Black attorney who held in-house leadership roles at a host of marquee companies, including Hershey, Nike and Coca-Cola, where the two first crossed paths.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what brought you into the legal space?

I made an impression on a former general counsel of a dear friend and mentor, Dinisa Folmar—who is now deceased. 

The GC invited a group of externs, including myself, to a wine-tasting event. He asked us to match 12 bottles of wine—with the labels obscured—to the names scribbled on pieces of paper.

No one could guess the last two brands. I took a stab in the dark and confidently yelled out a name. I guessed correctly. When the GC asked how I knew the answer, I replied, "I have a refined palate."

After the event, Dinisa pulled me aside and asked how I knew the answer. I told her the truth, that I didn't know the answer and that it was a complete guess.

I figured I'd fake it and win big or go down in flames. The sheer chutzpah of it all was enough to convince her to pour into me as a young lawyer. It was the moment that changed my life's course, because she committed to being a sponsor.

You joined Meta in May as associate general counsel of strategic transactions and M&A. What drew you to Meta?

Meta is engaged in the unique work of human connection, albeit in a totally different way from other companies I've worked with.

For an IP lawyer, Meta is the ultimate experience to work at the bleeding edge of technology. I recently published an article on LinkedIn called "Sans Babel: One of the Metaverse's Most Interesting Use Cases," and it talks about how the solutions we're building at Meta may bring us closer together. As a technologist and as a person predisposed to hope, working at Meta is the greatest possible intersection between two important parts of my life. It is rare to work for a company that aligns with a personal core value.

You spent only three years in private practice before going in-house. Talk about your journey to GC and why it happened so quickly. 

After more than a decade of practicing law, I still look back on the days of private practice at Shook Hardy as central to who I am and how I practice today. Shook represented Coca-Cola, and I was lucky to work for my former company as an outside lawyer from the very beginning of my practice. 

The goal from the day I walked into the firm was to develop the skills necessary to be a high-functioning in-house lawyer. So, my diversity of clients also helped me to see what worked best for each, to swiftly develop a winning client service model, and to network with in-house lawyers.

Throughout my career, there is a fairly simple theme: Preparation and ability in combination with opportunity produces magic. I have found that very few people care that I was raised in a single-wide trailer on the wrong side of the train tracks of Walterboro, South Carolina, because results speak for themselves.

What does it mean to you to be a truly inspirational and influential leader?

I think what separates the inspirational leaders from others is simply that the inspirational leaders display a consistent set of behaviors that make their calls to action believable, the overtures credible and their decisions predictable.

The most important consistent behavior is clear communication. Not all clear communicators are inspirational, but all inspirational leaders are clear communicators. They have an ability to define the challenge in ways that maximize understanding from the widest array of stakeholders.

Secondly, inspirational leaders are vulnerable. Their strength is in their willingness to lay bare weakness, because they understand that doing so animates purpose for the rest of the team.

Thirdly, inspirational leaders carry heavy loads. They're not always the smartest people in the room, or the subject matter experts, or have all the answers, or are the most creative—but they add value when they can, even if that value is taking the incoming fire for the team's decisions or results.

Finally, inspirational leaders raise visibility of the team at every opportunity. In Silicon Valley, we call this "signal-boosting." These leaders provide the widest possible audience with as much information as humanly possible. This openness engenders trust.

What has been your biggest leadership lesson?

That's an easy one for me. I led a legal department through the COVID-19 pandemic. My biggest leadership lesson is to always put the safety of your team ahead of everything else. Team safety, which includes the mental and emotional well-being of your team, is more important than virtually every other objective you could be asked to achieve.

Your team's safety also means ensuring that they have the resources necessary to do great work and aren't sacrificing their own resources to accomplish tasks.

It means going to bat for them when they have anxiety-inducing conflicts with internal stakeholders. It means advocating for benefits that address their health and wellness concerns. And it means making sure that they can come to work as they are and are free from persecution when they are here.

What would you want from your outside counsel to help you improve your value to the C-suite?

Thank you for this question, because it's always top of mind.

I want my outside counsel to think with the end in mind. Consider the work product that has to be provided and develop it with a view of the business stakeholders who must consume it with no legal education.

Most in-house lawyers will never tell you this, but we spend an inordinate amount of time clarifying legal advice—both for other in-house lawyers who are not in our subject matter expertise and for executives that are looking for short, plain statements of issues and solutions.

That said, outside counsel can help improve my value to senior leadership by improving the quality of their deliverables, preferably by providing them in a simplified form and an amplified form.