Chris Young, general counsel of Ironclad Inc. Courtesy photo.

In 2018, Chris Young was tasked with creating a legal department from scratch. He had just joined Ironclad Inc., a San Francisco-based digital contracting platform company. Starting with legal operations, he established a foundation for the department and learned about the importance of diversity, within the candidates and their skill sets.

Young spoke with The Recorder affiliate Corporate Counsel to discuss what goes into creating a rewarding legal department, the importance of legal operations, and diversity and inclusion.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Corporate Counsel: What are some steps you've taken to make the legal department a welcoming place to work?

Chris Young: One of the things that I focused on is laying an operational foundation before hiring top-talent lawyers. The first two hires I made in the legal department were not actually lawyers but rather legal operations professionals. I wanted to bring in two folks to focus on how we're going to build and then run a legal department.

We wanted to set our policies and our systems up so that when talent came in they could hit the ground running and focus on the impactful legal work that lawyers really enjoy. We want to be forward-thinking and advance the mission of the legal department and the mission of the entire organization.

It was very important to me to be able to set up an organization where lawyers are able to come in and, much like in a law firm, have the support and the processes in place necessary for them to lift up from this administrative work and focus on the intellectually appealing work.

CC: Is part of that work having in-house counsel become more involved with the different business units?

CY: When I was coming up, in-house lawyers were seen as lawyers who could not make partner so they went in-house. That is no longer the case. We're seeing top talent from top-tier firms coming in-house. You don't typically join a startup or a company, in-house, just to be a lawyer. You join to become a businessperson and to learn about a business. I continue to believe that lawyers have the skill set you develop as a law student. That has a tremendous amount of potential to impact the business that is well beyond what you would expect of an attorney.

It is absolutely critical, in my opinion, that legal is a shared resource and we partner very closely with every single department. So that not only can we establish that relationship but we can foster that relationship and be seen as enablers and strategic business partners.

CC: Ironclad boasts that 75% of its executive team is from a minority group and a 50-50 gender split companywide. What do you do to promote diversity and inclusion in the legal department?

CY: I've spent most of my career caring about diversity. I don't think it's rocket science. I think there are ways to build a diverse organization either intentionally or you attract diverse candidates because of who you are. We are in the latter category.

I'm in the process of making a key hire to our legal team. We've had the great fortune of having over 50 qualified applicants. When you're going through that process, one is inclined to look for candidates who are kind of like them. If you're a legal executive, it's more likely that you come from a fancy law school or some type of background that doesn't lend itself to diversity.

The exercise we're going through is not focusing on an applicant's pedigree, which is an easy thing to do, not only for law firms but for in-house leaders who are building their respective teams. What we're looking for is someone who can come in and contribute beyond their resume and school. What are some of the intangible elements of a strong team member? That's what we look for and that usually means we get some diverse pool of finalists. I'll say that we're not in the business of filling slots.

CC: Is the practice of checking boxes and filling certain slots antithetical to diversity and inclusion?

CY: Right. Diversity at Ironclad is something we care a deal about. We are trying to bring in people who we believe fit well with our culture and the output and the result of that is having an incredibly diverse set of people who are building and running this company.

It really is from the top down. People talk about diversity for all kinds of reasons. I think that you need a diverse workforce to be creative. It's not just creativity and everyone feeling like they have a say. It's also just a more interesting place to work.