Careers in the high growth ecosystem
Victoria Ferguson, General Counsel at C TWO, and Domenica Giorgianni, Legal Counsel at Moneybox, explore the different career paths inside the high growth and venture ecosystem and share the skills and personal attributes needed to succeed in the field.
Victoria, who is at Norwegian technology company C Two, says that imposter syndrome is a very common feeling among GCs, noting that she thinks she has had a “fairly mediocre” career. We’ll let you judge for yourselves: she was an insolvency lawyer for nine years, after which she found the field quite tiring, and she had wanted to go in-house for some time so she went into the venture capital world, slightly by chance -- “I saw the job and went for it” -- and stayed there from 2014, until the backend of 2022. She enjoyed the variety of working with a number of portfolio companies, and the ways she could impact them, but she wanted to go further than influencing and nudging, so she took on the role at GC at C Two, which is one of the companies owned by the former venture capital fund she used to work for, as the first ever in-house lawyer it has ever had. “I'm taking the company on a journey about what lawyers can do and contribute to the wider business,” she says.
Domenica, meanwhile, started as a paralegal at Moneybox straight out of university, and some months into her journey convinced her bosses to support her through the SQE, at a time when the company only had one lawyer for contract management purposes and she opened their eyes as to what more could be done. She did her training contract at the company and qualified shortly before the conference, and now works on all aspects of the business from employment to commercial to IP issues. She thinks her generation of lawyers, who can benefit from the SQE, are particularly fortunate because of the opportunities it brings: “You don't have to fit in the conventional box, or go to private practice, or obtain a training contract from law firms to be a successful lawyer. You can pick what suits you best, tailor your training and make your career what you want”.
What is needed to thrive in the high-growth environment?
“Be happy with the fact that you aren’t going to know stuff” is key to success, Victoria says, together with a sense of curiosity, being happy to figure stuff out (as well as different ways of saying “I don’t know”) and being comfortable with the fact that, as an in-house lawyer, you will have a really wide breadth but very shallow knowledge, and very few deep specialist verticals. She also recommends being willing to say yes to things, even if they feel a bit uncomfortable. “What am I going to learn from this experience? I've been trusted to do this thing. What can I take from it?,” are useful questions to ask oneself during that journey.
“Make sure that you lean on other people's expertise: there is a huge amount of knowledge going around and people are incredibly kind with their time and their knowledge."
Victoria also encourages in-house lawyers to think of themselves as “lawyer-plus”, meaning that they are lawyers, but are also curious about other parts of the business and are willing to step in to fill gaps, in training or in ESG, for example.
“Building relationships both within the business and outside the business,” is also crucial to success, Domenica says. The first aspect can help dispel the view that legal teams are the “business blockers” of a company, and instead become “business enablers”, while the second one can be very beneficial with knowledge building.
What can managers do to help younger lawyers?
Domenica shares that her supervisor was very good in this aspect because he found a great balance in the teacher-student experience.
“Finding a balance between making sure that he was a good teacher and that I learned myself. He supervised and helped me learn both the legal and technical skills, whilst at the same time allowing me to grow, find my style and how to be confident in my own skills”.