On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I am delighted to be joined by Jonathan Keen.

Jonathan is the Senior Director of Legal, International at Figma, a leading collaborative design tool for building meaningful products. With over 12 years of experience as an in-house lawyer for high-growth businesses, he provides legal advice on strategic initiatives.

He is also a Member of the Global Legal and International Leadership Teams at Figma. Jonathan has been recognised in the Lawyer Hot 100, Legal Business GC Powerlist and the British Legal Awards.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Jonathan discussing:

– Jonathan Moving from Private Practice to In-House Legal Roles

– Figma’s International Growth and Success

– Legal Team Empowerment and Motivation

– The Importance of Continuous Improvement in Tech Company Culture

– Career Advice and Key Recommendations from Jonathan

Connect with Jonathan here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-keen-6748a9143/

Transcript

Jonathan Keen  0:00  

If you have an international business, get out there. There’s nothing better than meeting people in person. You can get so much more value out of it. I know Zoom’s an amazing thing, but it’s not the same. You don’t have those conversations on the way into work, any kind of software, app, website. Figma is the tool that you use to design that technology and see how it appears on a screen, how the user would interact with that what will come down to is how that looks and how the user interfaces with that technology. So I think that is one of the key truths on

Robert Hanna  0:28  

today’s legally speaking Podcast. I’m delighted to be joined by Jonathan keen. Jonathan is the Senior Director of Legal international at Figma, a leading collaborative design tool for building meaningful products. With over 12 years of experience as an in house lawyer for high growth businesses. He provides legal advice on strategic initiatives. He is also a member of the global legal and international leadership teams at Figma. Jonathan has been recognised in the lawyer hot 100 legal business GC power list and the British legal awards. So a very big, warm welcome to the show. Jonathan, Hi, Rob, great to be here. Oh, it’s a pleasure to have you on. And I know we’ve got a lot of mutual friends in the personal world and indeed, the professional world. So looking forward to today’s discussion. But before we get into all of the good things you’re getting up to in and around the legal world, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the Legal Zoom podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010. Being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law if you’ve seen it?

Jonathan Keen  1:29  

I think a point five, the fact that they wear suits is probably the only thing it has in common with reality.

Robert Hanna  1:36  

Fair enough, a very justified point five. And I think our first point five given over the hundreds and hundreds of episodes we’ve done over the years. So with that, we’ll move swiftly on to talk all about you. So to begin with, would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career

Jonathan Keen  1:50  

journey? Yeah, sure. So I started off doing a non law degree. I did history undergrad at the University of Nottingham, which I believe is where I first met you on one of one of your visits to meet your friends. And then after that, did the kind of world trodden path for history grads, like become a history teacher or become a lawyer. So came down to London and did the law conversion course. And then the second year law school, doing the LPC. Very lucky to get a training contract in my final year at Nottingham with a firm called Watson Farley and Williams. So after law school, went there to complete my training contract. Absolutely. Did you always want to be a lawyer? My father was a lawyer, and he said, Don’t do it. He said, It’s too much hard work and it’s not as interesting as it is on TV. So you never listen to your dad died, D in your late teens. So it was kind of Yeah, despite him that I went down that route. I think I want to keep my options open. And I loved history. It was a kind of a subject I was really passionate about, and I thought might as well do three years or something. I know I really am into rather than law, which would have been a bit of a gamble at that stage. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  3:01  

absolutely, definitely, listen to fathers, but not grandfather to my grandfather ran his own law firm in Leicestershire originally, which was kind of my inspiration getting into law. And he said, definitely, don’t be a lawyer. And I actually took that advice on the other side and be on the recruiting media side and everything else that we do. But, yeah, I mean, you’ve done some, some great stuff, but let’s stick at the sort of early part of the career, because obviously you mentioned you mentioned you trained with Watson Farley. You were the first US law firm. You know, you worked 10 to Milbank, I believe. So how did working at a US law firm differ from perhaps your experience at a London based law firm? 

Jonathan Keen  3:31  

Yeah, so I moved on qualification to Millbank, tweed Hadley and McCloy to give them their full name, and they were a relatively new kind of market entrant in London at the time, big New York presence, big, big US presence. And I went into financial restructuring there. So I guess culturally, it was a lot smaller. They only had maybe two or three nQs at the time I went there. So a lot, lot smaller operation. But the pace was was was relentless in a good way, like you, they were constantly the business was coming through the door at an incredible rate, and you could kind of pick and choose which areas you wanted to to work on, but there was always enough. So I think, yeah, Watson Farley was a great firm, but they were doing more long term kind of project financings and offshore wind farm that kind of stuff, which is a longer there’s a longer player, they’re longer transactions kind of going over, over years, rather than the types of deals I was doing at Millbank were kind of P bat LBOs taking months, weeks to complete. So yeah, pace, and maybe a very different client base as well. So Watson Farley, your big institutional banks, export credit agencies, Milbank, like PE funds, vulture funds, people in the debt restructuring space.

Robert Hanna  4:56  

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess is there a tip you would give? To someone who might be sat in a UK law firm at the moment, that’s maybe sat on an offer with a US law firm, or thinking about moving to a US law firm, something you didn’t know but have sort of subsequently, would advise someone from your experience.

Jonathan Keen  5:14  

Yeah, I think the gap is is shrinking between expectations and then kind of what it feels like to work, at a US law firm versus a UK firm. And obviously it’s massively dependent on the type of firm and the area you you work in. But I would say, think really carefully about what area of law you want to end up in. Very easy to specialise quite early on in your career, and that’s great if you really, really know what you want to do. But as a if you want to keep a more general practice, then a smaller firm is better for that, because you will be kind of everyone’s resource. And there’s a chance for you to kind of take work from different departments and then really feel kind of what you like. Because two years is a relatively short period, I think, still, as a training contract to know what you want to do for you want to do for the rest of your career. So if you can extend that, and not necessarily go into a really niche area, and perhaps that’s where the US firms might still offer that, that freedom of choice, keeping that, those avenues open for as long as you can, yeah, and

Robert Hanna  6:17  

I think being curious, isn’t it, and open to learning, and you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think if you’re prepared to keep that, prepared to keep that sort of broad perspective, you can always, like you say, as you go up the sort of food chain, look at sort of specialising further into a niche and building out from there. Let’s go to a very interesting time when I started out in the City of London, which is 2000 late around the Lehman’s crash. And I remember the first day I walked into a FTSE 250 recruiting business. It was a bit of a boiler room environment, I must admit. And I saw people carrying out PCs saying, Lehman’s crash. Lehman’s has gone down. This is day one in think September, oh, eight. So I want to kind of talk to you, because you had the opportunity to work on super high profile, you know, corporate insolvencies as part of the Lehman Brothers financial restructuring team. So what did you learn during that time?

Jonathan Keen  7:02  

Yeah, it kind of explains why I qualified into financial restructuring. I qualified in 2011 which was when all of the Lehman stuff was kind of being unravelled through the through the courts, and there was a loss of that work around so Milbank advised the creditors Committee to the Lehman estate, or what was the the Lehman estate so incredibly lucky, kind of, within my first few months, I was going down to the Supreme Court regularly to basically take notes and report back on on the progress of these hearings, because there’s a huge amount of new case law, English case law, that was made by the Lehman Brothers, Fallout, because an investment bank of that size and complexity had just never failed so comprehensively. And there were lots of kind of unusual and unique legal situations that needed to be resolved in the courts. And every creditor was kind of fighting for their their their dollar. So yeah, very, very cool introduction to to financial restructuring. It’s, doesn’t sound the most glamorous, but it was, was a very great NQ kind of introduction. 

Robert Hanna  8:10  

Yeah, I think quality of work that you would have been exposed to, and, like you said, sort of, you know, really kind of forward work as well, if you think about all the new laws that were coming as a result of that, you know, really great way, particularly starting out in your career to pick up a lot of lot of skills and be open to learning. 

Jonathan Keen  8:25  

I guess the problem was that they had QCS on both sides. So I go down as an NQ and here one chapter three could be like, yeah, definitely going that way. 100% go and brief like the partner back of the office, and then the next day, it would be the complete reversal. So yeah, never underestimate how persuasive, like yeah, those people can be when they need to be.

Robert Hanna  8:51  

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a reason for the title, I guess. So let’s talk about your journey further than the sort of transitioning, because obviously you work some incredible firms in a private practice capacity, but what kind of led you to move, or what wish to move from private practice to in house, and was there a particular moment you realised that perhaps in house life was going to be the right fit for you?

Jonathan Keen  9:13  

Yeah, it’s great question. I don’t think there is one moment. I think it’s more of a series of moments. It takes a position where you’re like, looking the next five years like, do I want to be doing this? Is this where my strengths are? Can I make myself these? Can I make this my strength? Or do I want to go and do something else that sits more naturally with my my ambitions? And I think fundamentally, I wanted to advise, is why I became a lawyer in the first place, and in private practice, you probably, it’s fair to say, you probably aren’t advising, certainly, clients for the the initial half of your career. There’s a lot of internal feedback you’ll be giving. You’ll be providing stuff for senior associates or giving it to partners, and eventually you will get into that role. And I’ve got friends. You managed to do that very successfully, but I just, I’m not sure I had had like, the patience or the kind of ability to kind of continue doing the kind of work, the transactional work, with an indefinite kind of, yeah, indefinitely. So yeah, I looked at a number of in house opportunities at the time, spoke to a lot of people about that, that move, and yeah, in the end, kind of, despite having to take a pretty chunky financial haircut, may made the move and you haven’t, haven’t looked back. Really, it was, yeah, 100% the right thing for me, but it’s not something you should rush into, for sure, like, Everyone has bad days like this, and it’s a very, very tough environment, being in the city, at these firms, doing lots of transactions and then billing a lot of hours. It’s something you want to make over course of six to 12 months, I think, rather than kind of off the back of a very taxing deal,

Robert Hanna  11:01  

exactly. I think it’s making an informed and, you know, I would say when emotions go up, you know, perhaps some, you know, rational thinking can sometimes go down. I think, like you say, taking a period to review what’s right for you personally and what you’re looking to get out of your journey and where you’re looking to go. And I always say, just generally, regardless of your situation, which I know is not the case. But if you’re having more bad days than good days, than good days, and that’s probably a good signal to think about maybe in the next career move might be for you. Okay, well, in house has definitely worked out. You know, you’re doing some pretty good stuff. So you’re currently Senior Director of Legal at an international firm called Figma, a leading collaborative design tool for building meaningful products for people less familiar with Figma. Can you tell us more

Jonathan Keen  11:40  

about it? Yeah, sure. So Figma is a SaaS company headquartered in San Francisco. I look after all of their international legal operations, which we kind of define as everything outside the Americas. Figma itself, it’s now a multi product company, which is exciting, but we kind of made our name in the design space, the kind of UX and prototyping design space particularly, and kind of taking a step back, that means basically any application that requires a screen to view it or interact, any kind of software, app, website is designed. Figma is the tool that you use to design that technology and see how it appears on the screen, how the user would interact with that technology. So incredibly powerful products and very kind of pretty unique in the way that they’re built out. It’s following, it’s very much a product led growth business. It kind of was built in stealth initially, and then went, Yeah, grew very, very quickly into what it has done today, and now we’re branching out into developer tools. So taking designs which are built by predominantly designers, they then hand off to engineers who actually build the software. So we have a product that will turn design into code. So reaching a new, new market. There. We also have fig jam, which is an online collaboration space whiteboarding tool, which is one I probably use most of my day to day.

Robert Hanna  13:13  

It’s nice. I just love the names as well at Figma,

Jonathan Keen  13:19  

which I love. Oh, I also

Robert Hanna  13:21  

like that as well. That’s good. Okay, so, you know, it’s fair to say, it’s a pretty, pretty broad role, you know, you provide legal advice, you know, key, strategic, nifty business be that data protection, be that compliance, like you mentioned, their product development. You know, what are some of the specific projects? If you can share that you’ve worked on, that you’ve been most proud

Jonathan Keen  13:40  

of? Yeah, it’s, it’s hard because it’s moved so quickly. I’ve been, I’ve been here for nearly four years now. It feels both longer and shorter, because we are doing things at a pace that just other companies aren’t, and that’s, that’s a luxury of growth and being successful. I think, but it, yeah, it’s rare you get the chance to look back and actually see the the highlights from that. I think my role has changed significantly since I first came in. So I was the first non US lawyer based out of London. We had a team of four, I think, in the US at that point. And so my initial scope was kind of everything, the impact that was legal within in the air and JPAC regions, so corporate regulatory, commercial employment, anything that kind of looked like it was from those GEOS that needed legal input. Now, as we’ve grown the team, and we’ve kind of like 2829 lawyers now, we’ve become slightly more focused and specialised, but I would say that it’s still quite a generalist scope. I still have to work with the product legal team, the commercial legal team, and. And the employment litigation team in the US on all of these different matters. So I’m kind of like a link person between the US and the rest of the world on these issues, but I am focusing more on like digital regulation. The EU has just is passing a huge amount of new digital regulation that impacts us in one way or another. So making sure the business is informed on those developments and that are we’ve got a pathway to compliance and triaging and advising on that key achievements. I think, when I first joined Bucha, could only host customer data in the US. So one of my initial projects was looking at customer feedback and regulate the regulation environment and seeing if there would be value to have a European hosting option. It’s something that I’d had a lot of experience with at all zero and Okta, and it’s an area where I kind of felt I had some insights based on my own experience, and then looking at the customer interactions I was having, and kind of knowledge of GDPR, so I think having conversations with product Eng, the go to market teams around that, and then actually having that built, And then seeing the impact that’s had on the the wider Figma business in Europe has been probably the number one kind of achievement, I think, as well as building out a team of wonderful lawyers.

Robert Hanna  16:32  

Yeah, I want to talk about that sort of building out of the team in a moment, but I just want to ask from that experience again, for people that might be hesitant to make a move in house, because there isn’t necessarily a large legal team or established someone, obviously, who’s been a success story of going in and it sort of being, you know, not necessarily a built out team there. And then, what would you say to people, or what have been some of the lessons you’ve learned from going in? Because obviously, it’s worked out for you’ve gone in, then you’ve progressed. You’ve got very senior Yeah, just share some lessons or learnings that’d be helpful for people to pick up. 

Jonathan Keen  17:05  

Yeah, I don’t think you would go in house if you wanted to be a specialist, but don’t kind of go in with a view of, like, I’m only going to do this type of work. Make yourself a key business partner. And by that, I mean, like, do the difficult stuff that people need you to do. Put your hand up, like it might not be purely legal. There might be a commercial element to it. I enjoy that. That’s like helping the business grow is something that I really kind of is a key part of why I enjoy going to work. But it’s not going to be like a line between legal and the business. So kind of throw yourself in there. There are skills that lawyers have that go beyond, like the advisory So project management and just the ability to communicate effectively. So use those skills as much as you can get involved in other elements of the business. So we have, like a social committee in the London office, kind of making the play the office a really great place to work for all of the teams as well. If you have an international business, get out there. There’s nothing better than meeting people in person. You can get so much more value out of it. I know Zoom’s an amazing thing, but it’s not the same. You don’t have those conversations on the way into work or kind of, yeah, in the bar after work, you don’t have that that same bonding experience joining remotely, so do take the time. It’s worth it. It’s like a slow payback, and it will come over months and years rather than immediately. But it’s very, very real.

Robert Hanna  18:37  

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Jonathan Keen  20:09  

it’s yeah, it’s all zero. Sorry, it’s one of the most awkwardly pronounced company names out there. I think so everyone calls it either ortho or Xero. Yeah. Yeah. So they Yeah. So similarities, both incredibly fast growing companies. I joined both after they’ve done their kind of Series C, so in a similar like, the products have been proven. There was demand there, and it was like, fit on the gas. Let’s expand. Let’s Yeah, let’s go out there and build the international business. I think all zero at the time was the fastest SaaS company. 200 million in ARR behind Slack. So it was incredible pace. And that was my first kind of SaaS environment, and being working for a US West Coast tech company and really getting up to speed with the the pace at which they expected you to deliver was really kind of a big, big change, and one that kind of has continued. So it’s basically been seven years to that, to that pace, which actually I love, because that is normally, it’s a it’s a sign of the business of doing well, they’re growing and we are, we are developing and maturing with that. So, yeah, PACE customer demand, very similar, I would say, differences, very different products. So auth zero would do identity management. So basically, powering the login box anywhere you have to sign into something or zero would be behind the code that enabled that to happen. Very deep tech, you didn’t see it there. Wasn’t like this brand was important, but it’s important in an engineering context. Not a lot of people heard of it outside of a very technical space. Figma, very different is one of the most kind of beloved brands in the tech world and the design community feel very strongly about it, so I think that’s that’s the key difference there as well. The underlying data that we host or Process on behalf of customers is very different as well. If you think identity management, like the credentials that we stored or processed for customers, passwords, login, keys, all of that authentication stuff, the consequences of having a security breach kind of very, very bad. And so the risk profile as well was slightly different, whereas Figma IP, people do store data in there that’s very important to their businesses, but it’s not authentication data. So yeah, I think that’s yeah, the key, the key differences between the two. But in terms of working for companies that have got pretty inspirational leadership and who want to do things quickly? Definitely, very similar,

Robert Hanna  23:06  

yeah, and I’m a big advocate for that. And, you know, I’m, you know, myself, sort of involved in a couple of, you know, SaaS based businesses. And you know, I get really excited when the founders are very mission focused as well, and really want to kind of deliver that North Star. And get very obsessed about that, that delivery, when you’re thinking about these tech companies, they’re obsessed with, like the problem and how they can understand and really kind of reduce as much friction connected to that problem. So obviously the value of that, that piece of tech, or whatever it might be, is going to be actually high. And okay, let’s talk about sales now, something that I think is not a dirty word, and I think you’ve done well, is fantastically brilliant. And in your interview with openly, you shared my approach is that I always want the sales team to be able to self serve as much as possible in terms of their legal and privacy resources, because resourcing is one of the biggest challenges of a hyper growth company. I can agree with that. So can you tell us more about your approach and how you make sure you strike that right balance between empowering sales teams and ensuring legal compliance.

Jonathan Keen  24:07  

Yeah, sure. Firstly, loving that. I’m being quoted from previous podcasts. I will

Robert Hanna  24:12  

give a shout out to our research.

Jonathan Keen  24:16  

Yeah, that’s great, as you know, like it’s a thin you’re a thin team when you start off for these for a company that’s kind of moving as quickly as most successful SaaS companies do, and the sales team are one of our biggest and most important internal internal clients. My philosophy has always been like, give them as many tools as you can so that they can address customer, legal queries, asks without me having to get involved. It takes a lot of kind of you have to front load your effort, so you put in a lot of time initially getting the processes right and understanding what you can and can’t give and what you feel comfortable as a business, allowing kind of non legal folks to be able to. To grant customers, but once you do that, it’s it’s incredible, it’s just you will then focus. Allows you to free up your time to focus on the higher value kind of more complex workflows that come through, and it empowers sales, right? Like they feel invested in the process. You have to both give them resources, self serve resources. Give them agency. So agency comes in the ability of Figma, we have pre approved, gives that the sales team will be able to grant the customer for we have a risk tolerance. It’ll be calibrated on how much the customer is spending, what sector they’re in, but yeah, basically make mini lawyers of the sales team. But to do that, you need to have a good training programme as well and continually engage with sales, make sure they know what these provisions are doing and the consequences and when to give and when not to give. So yeah, you’ve got to, you’ve got to invest in it continually, but more of those highly repeatable, low risk asks that you can, you can push out, I think the better. And we’re continually looking at how we can do

Robert Hanna  26:05  

that, yeah, and I think it’s a great way to delight clients as well. I think, yeah. And where everyone’s looking for that, particularly the, you know, fast growth organisations. And I love that you continually reference continuous improvement. And again, if you look at some of the most successful, largest companies in the world, Amazon is just basically a continuous improvement continuous improvement company. But I just want to kind of share a thought and get your thoughts on this generally, because I heard an interview which I thought was super thought provoking by Jeff Bezos, obviously from Amazon. And he said, in a world of where people are continuously thinking about change, and we’re going to talk about AI, at least have to mention that in an out podcast. Now, you can’t move away from it. You know, he says everyone is focusing on looking forwards and what’s going to change and what’s the future. And he says, Well, I actually think you should think the complete opposite at times, and think about what’s not going to change. So he said, he can’t imagine a world where people would wake up one day and think, I want to pay more for my items from Amazon. He can’t imagine a world a day where he would wake up and people want to get slower delivery of their products. He can’t wake up one day and think they wouldn’t want quality. So he’s thinking about like they obviously going to want faster, cheaper, quality products. That’s never going to change in terms of that customer, customer persona is there? Does that spark any thoughts from your side, from a Figma or personal perspective generally, when everyone’s talking about change, but actually, what isn’t necessarily going to change from your avatar? 

Jonathan Keen  27:19  

Yeah, no, this. It’s question, unusual one as well, and then, but also something we’ve been thinking about as a business as we look at AI and kind of how everything is changing. I think people are always going to want a better user experience when they’re using software that’s always that’s a universal truth that will stay pretty, yeah, there’s always going to be there you want to use the tool that is more intuitive, that you can navigate more easily, you can sign up more easily for there are a lot of apps out there who do similar things, and what will come down to is how that looks and how the user into interfaces with that technology. So I think that is one of the key truths. Yeah, for us at the moment,

Robert Hanna  28:08  

you want fusion, rather than confusion. I think, you know, I’ve seen this many times with startups and techs and businesses. You know, not taking Figma as an example, but others that I’ve seen. And you know, if you really confuse people, you lose them, you know, you don’t get that adoption if you’ve got a sticky, you know, and it’s friction. If you try and remove as much friction to make it a seamless experience, like you said, as possible, your levels of adoption is going to surge, but also your levels of sort of promotion and sharing that out, because it’s such a great experience, is going to be exponentially better.

Jonathan Keen  28:38  

Airbnb and Uber, and they’re just like, beautifully designed products that are, yeah, literally my kids, yeah,

Robert Hanna  28:45  

yeah, exactly. And they just obsessed about the problem. And that sticks to that point, and really kind of double down on making it a really user friendly experience. Let’s talk about your your other sort of responsibilities, because you’re a member of the global legal and international leadership teams at Figma. I understand. So what initiatives have you been a part of? Can you tell us any

Jonathan Keen  29:07  

more? Yeah, I think the big one I’d probably be known for within the business is, is the legal Beagle awards and yeah, and building on that, the annual Bucha la dinner, which we do celebrate the award winners. So this started off as a bit of a fun initiative to try and incentivize sales, because they love an incentive. Bit of a spiff to like those sales members who work best with legal so they use their self serve resources. They went away and they read the advice we were giving them, and they followed the process, kind of to the letter, but knew when to escalate things to us. Just had a sixth sense of kind of legal didn’t go off and do anything rogue. So every quarter, we would award the legal, legal awards to those sales reps who’d kind of been the best cross functional partners to legal and then have a dinner. Together every year, and that became a bit of a thing. Amazon has a lot of Beagle themed T shirts and other weird and random things that you I’ve been exhausting basically over the last few years as gifts for these. So it’s now become a bit of a thing. And we’ve got it in Japan, we had our first in person legal Beagle awards ceremony in Japan last year, which went down well. And yeah, as not just like a best practice thing, but also now, like, I really want to go to that dinner, like it’s Yeah, encouraging, like best practice and also breaking down that barrier between legal and sales. We spend a lot of time together. The success of one team is fundamental success of the other. So it’s just yeah, deepening that relationship, yeah.

Robert Hanna  30:48  

And it’s a great example of culture, and I think great example of enhancing stakeholder management. And I always say collaboration is domination. If you can collaborate with your industry departments, and, you know, for good, and get everyone on the same page as much as possible, of course you’ll probably have healthy debates. And I think that is I think that is good. I think you’re not, you’re not pushing from either side enough if you’re not, but I think equally, like you say, if you can really create that fun and that sense of good culture, and this is all for the greater good, then obviously it’s going to be a net positive. You talked about Japan. So let’s talk about offices, because I believe currently offices London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and, of course, us. So any more on the list, or have any of I missed? Tell us more. Yeah,

Jonathan Keen  31:26  

we’ve recently opened in Sydney, so that’s yeah, and harder, harder to go to market scene over there. So that’s been, been exciting. There’s a, there’s a thriving kind of design community in Australia that already use Figma, but we can deepen that and work with Atlassian out there to kind of build our build our presence, which is huge. I’ve not actually been out there yet, so I was gonna

Robert Hanna  31:51  

say, Have you managed to find an excuse?

Jonathan Keen  31:55  

He’s a bit far for a week, but I’ll try, maybe off the back of Singapore, yeah, maybe in the colder months, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Australia, that’s our latest and obviously always looking at other places where we can, we can open, and that’s a that’s a very that’s a part of the job I really enjoy is like that new market entry analysis, so working really closely with marketing business development teams, like, Okay, this is the this is the TAM what we’ve got in this country. But like, how high is the legal and regulatory barrier for us to to enter? Because you might have all the potential in the world, but if you need to make fundamental changes to your business to sell there, then that obviously impacts cost benefit analysis and all of that good stuff. So yeah, that’s, that’s something I’m involved with quite heavily, and is a really enjoyable part of the role. So yeah, I’m sure there’ll be these a few more GEOS as well by the end of the year.

Robert Hanna  32:52  

Yeah, I’m sure there will. It’s only going in one direction before we let’s close. You’ve also completed a leadership in Corporate Council law course at that little place called Harvard Law School as well. So what was your most valuable lesson from, from, from your time that?

Jonathan Keen  33:07  

Yeah, that was a few years back. But incredible, incredible experience. I was massively, initially felt massively out my depth, because I was going there as kind of a four year, five year pQe, and there were General Counsels from Saudi Aramco, Grosvenor, Pepsi there. So it took a while for me to kind of find the confidence to speak up. It’s very intimate seminar led sessions where you’re working through actual business cases, case studies with with the tutors. I think what I learned from that is like, by day two, you can kind of shut me up and I was contributing and kind of interacting, and it felt very natural. So I don’t think there is a right level of kind of experience for you to be able to offer value as a lawyer, if you can think things through, and you can form hearing arguments and talk based on facts and rationale, and I think do it especially in house. That’s why in house is so exciting. You have the chance to kind of speak up probably earlier on in your career and make that impact faster than private practice. So yeah, other bits of advice as well. I say, like, risk is different in house, like there’s risk, especially when you’re working for a SaaS company or in tech generally, there’s risk in not doing things. So the private practice for you is there’s risk in doing things in house for you, I think you I think you’ve turned on its head and say, if we’re not going to do this now, someone else might do it, and then we are losing market share. And yeah, it’s, it’s a very different way of looking at things. 

Robert Hanna  34:53  

But yeah, it’s my language. And anyone who’s probably sick of my watching me on a Keynote or talk about I always. Say there’s too much obsession over ROI from companies, and not enough on COI, which is the cost of inaction. You know. You know, everyone’s like, what if. But what is, you know, what is if we take that here, and what if that actually works out? And, you know, what if we take that, you know, that blue ocean opportunity? And, you know, think a little bit differently. So no, I’m here for all of that. And Jonathan, this has been brilliant. Is there one sort of final piece of advice you know, maybe for people starting out their legal journeys, that you know now that you’d wish you’d known before, just generally, or anything else you’d like to share as a final piece of wisdom before we let you go

Jonathan Keen  35:32  

today, have a conscious approach to how you think about your career. It’s surprising how quickly time goes and you can find yourself in an area or a niche that you didn’t necessarily have in mind when you started out. So every year, it’s worth checking in see if this is what you want to do, and then looking two years ahead, and if it’s not like, where do I want to be like, what action do I need to take now? And don’t be afraid of taking what looks like a sideways or perhaps even a downward step if it’s in the right direction to the career that you want to do. It’s rare that you’re just going to jump from one perfect job to another. So look at the career journey as a bit of a slalom sometimes, but do it consciously. Don’t leave it too late and yeah, take control of your own career journey as far as you can.

Robert Hanna  36:22  

I love that, and it’s so true and honest. And I say self accountability is so important. And a mentor said to me very early on, you know, if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me, and you have to have that self accountability. And I think that’s so true. Look, Jonathan, if our listeners want to learn more about your career, or indeed, find out more about Figma, where can they go to find out more. Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also include them this episode for you too.

Jonathan Keen  36:45  

My online space is relatively limited, so if me, I think LinkedIn, for Figma, we have a tonne of great material out there. So just visit the website and you’ll be posted to many, many different resources. If you’re into design, it’s the place to go,

Robert Hanna  37:02  

absolutely. Well, listen. Thanks so much once again for uh, for joining us today on the league has been podcast sponsored by Clio. It’s been a lot of fun. Wishing you lots of continued success with your career and indeed, future pursuits. But for now, from all of us over and out, thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and Collaboration Hub, the legally speaking club, over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com which has a link to join our community there, over and out.