What is the mandate for your current role?

You could say my job is to inspire “Excellence, Everybody, Every Day.” This tagline encompasses the idea that, in providing legal services to the entirety of Hewlett-Packard, we are always striving for excellence by providing more and better legal services for less cost. With some 1,200 attorneys and other professionals on our team, the Office of General Counsel (“OGC”) is the equivalent of a Morgan Lewis—serving a $110 billion hardware, software and services company with 275,000 employees doing business in more than 150 countries.

What is the scope of your responsibility as head of legal for Hewlett-Packard?

My role is in many ways very similar to being the managing partner of a law firm. Our staff of 1,200, about half of whom are attorneys, is spread out across the world. We’ve got a practice area broader than the average law firm. This includes inbound supply chain procurement, outside customers, global trade and compliance, corporate transactions, and patent litigation.

I manage the team’s work and ensure we have the very best people in the organization providing the highest quality legal services. We do it with our internal lawyers and by partnering with great outside counsel around the globe.

One interesting aspect of my role is that the OGC is responsible for generating revenue and profit through the licensing and sales of intellectual property and from legal recoveries. In FY 2014, our revenue and profit exceeded our total cost by several hundred million dollars and therefore the OGC was a profit center for HP.

Could you describe the organization and culture of your in-house team?

Much like Hewlett-Packard is moving from old-style IT to a new style of IT, we’re also moving from an old style of corporate legal departments to a new style.

Today, our team members are the owners and problem solvers in approaching issues the company may face. This represents a real cultural shift. In the past, the temptation for lawyers in legal departments was to turn to resources outside the company any time they were at all uncomfortable with what was confronting them.

While it is prudent, at times, to seek external advice, our attorneys are the owners and final decision makers, especially when it comes to core legal services. Outside lawyers may have more experience understanding certain nuances of a problem, but our in-house team members have the benefit of knowing the company’s goals, culture and complexities.  

In law firms, by virtue of the way business develops, you have a collection of small businesses and practices that feel very empowered. Our team of attorneys and other professionals ought to feel empowered and responsible for delivering truly excellent results. Fortunately, thanks to tremendous effort across the entire department, we’re seeing that sense of energy and feeling of empowerment show up in our interactions with colleagues, clients and customers.  

In addition to valuing substantive legal expertise, ours is a culture that holds certain general management and leadership skills in high regard. To that end, we are looking for team players with a passion for innovation both in technology and the practice of law.

What do you find most interesting in your industry or organization right now?

It’s hard to imagine that there’s ever been a more interesting time in the law. Technology is having a tremendous impact on the way we consume and deliver legal services as compared to how people interacted 10 years ago. 

Operating in Silicon Valley, in the heart of the technology world, you can’t help but think about how to leverage these technologies in the legal department. Increasingly, there is a growing array of tools we can use to capture data and gain insight to inform both the business and our support model. Our team has even developed new tools, in collaboration with HP Labs, which is the real innovation engine at HP. In the past year, we’ve also created a corporate deal flow program that’s being looked at by a number of law firms. It’s completely transforming and streamlining the way we do deals, the way we look at and manage them, and how we can represent them to stakeholders—our leadership team or business team or vendors. Next is examining how to monetize this opportunity.

I do believe, by using technology and data, we can see around corners and provide even better service.  Certainly technology is never a substitute for judgment, but it can enhance, inform, and support that judgment.

Being inside of a company, I’ve learned not just how to deliver legal services but how to deliver a service to your internal clients that they need and want. Doing so requires us to innovate and proactively anticipate our clients’ needs. I want everyone on our team to ask themselves: “How can I innovate in the job I’m in to improve the legal services I deliver?” We recently launched an innovation award program within the legal department focused on encouraging people to innovate in their day-to-day work.

What innovations are changing how Hewlett-Packard does business?

How we deliver services is changing. It’s much more about the power of big data and analytics. The trend around clouds and big data will intensify across our industry and every industry, in business models and products as well. Hardware also remains a critical component, and sometimes people overlook how transformative hardware is.

It’s fascinating to see the incredible disruption in companies, and it’s very rewarding to be supporting this transformation in our daily lives.

How did Morgan Lewis help prepare you for your current role at Hewlett-Packard?

What impressed me about Morgan Lewis is that quality meant the expectation of excellence. Morgan Lewis provides quality client service. There is a collegiality and team spirit in its offices. It brought home to me that you could have a real team culture while going out and being aggressive and competitive in providing services. I’m working to instill that in HP’s legal department. Kudos to Morgan Lewis and its leadership team.

Can you describe any notable mentors in your career? Do you feel mentoring is important? Are you a mentor to others?

I encountered a lot of really good people at Morgan Lewis. There are too many to name them all, but I have to single out Jim Pagliaro. He’s a tremendous lawyer and a great person to have as a mentor. He represents all the best in the professional side of being a lawyer and forward-thinking about business. Getting his life counsel was invaluable. I look forward to our periodic lunches.

Both mentoring and sponsorship are critical and I try to be both a mentor and a sponsor. Acting as a mentor is the duty of senior lawyers and makes us a profession. We are absolutely responsible for providing training and guidance to those more junior than us. Sponsorship, or identifying a junior person to nurture their career and sponsor them for bigger and better opportunities, is also vital. I continue to look for talented junior lawyers who can be the future of HP’s legal department or go into private practice.

Are there any pro bono or philanthropic causes you support? Are you serving as a board member or advisor?

I’m on the board of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, CPR: International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution, Inc. and Haiti Outreach. I chair the National League Aid and Defender Association Corporate Advisory Committee. and I am also a trustee of my alma mater, Albright College.

Are there any personal and/or family-related achievements you’d like to share with the Morgan Lewis alumni community?

I’m one of those people who can’t sit still. I enjoy skiing, surfing, fishing, golfing and travelling. We have three children, two in college and our eldest started law school this fall. I enjoy keeping up with their lives and staying connected with visits to their college campuses when I can. 

Our family is bicoastal. I love California and still love the East Coast. We have a house on the Delaware shore. The pace is different on the East Coast. There is an intensity and diversity in New York, Philadelphia, and DC that you don’t experience in California.

In Silicon Valley, everything is technology for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.