Counsel

Emma Kadri Bergström is General Counsel at Legora, and she joined me from Stockholm to talk about leading a legal team inside one of the fastest growing legal tech companies in the world. We covered what in house legal looks like in hyper growth, how AI is changing the way her team works, and what all of this means for the next generation of lawyers. Emma shares how ChatGPT launching during her pa...

This episode is a little different, because I am introducing you to Lily, the newest member of the Counsel Media team and the first person I have hired since turning the podcast into a business. We talk about how a daily coffee order turned into a job offer and why I deliberately looked outside the legal industry for this role. Lily shares the decision she made to walk away from a place studying m...

My guest this week is Courtenay, General Counsel and Company Secretary for Nando's Australia and New Zealand, and she has done something most lawyers are told never to do. She built her entire legal career in-house, starting as legal admin and working her way up, without a single day spent in private practice. We get into what it actually took to build a career that way, including the general coun...

Jessica Carroll spent eight years as a litigator before a stint inside her husband's business changed how she saw the profession entirely. In this episode she talks with Mel about the winding path from courtroom advocacy to building The Brisbane Lawyer brand, moving in-house, and eventually running her own fractional legal practice. Jess gets specific about what it actually takes to build a fracti...

WELCOME TO THE BIG SIS TOUR ONLINE! This one's just me, sitting in my kitchen talking to over a hundred law students who logged on from Bond to Deakin and everywhere in between. I wanted to bring the tour to the people who couldn't get to a campus stop in person, and hand you the version of legal careers nobody puts in front of you in first year. I get into printing a hundred and eighty resumes an...

This week I'm joined by Helen Fan, a California attorney and chief AI officer at a boutique Silicon Valley law firm, who has spent the last few years at the exact intersection of legal practice and the AI shift most of us are still trying to understand. Helen's path took her from Fangda Partners in Beijing through Columbia Law School, a legal tech hackathon, and into a Silicon Valley firm built to...

Sarah Irwin is a former SaaS General Counsel based in Ireland who built a legal function from scratch inside a rapid scale tech company, and went on to build ITGC, one of the most recognized in-house legal communities in Europe. She joins Mel on the Counsel Podcast to talk about how a business built almost by accident, starting as a cure for loneliness in a first legal hire role, became a full tim...

This is a solo episode, which means it's just Mel, a microphone, and a year worth of things she's been wanting to say out loud. Coming up on twelve months since she walked away from a 15-year legal career to run Council Media full-time, Mel uses this episode to take stock of what that year has actually looked like, including the parts that don't make it into the highlight reel. She covers the Next...

Nick Brown is the General Counsel of Airtree Ventures, one of Australia's most prominent venture capital firms, and the first lawyer to set up a legal function inside two separate businesses. He spent 15 years as an M&A lawyer before making the move in-house, and this conversation covers the full arc of how that shift actually happened and what it taught him. We get into the psychology of leaving...

Eric Ries changed how a generation of founders think about building companies. Now, with his new book Incorruptible, he is making the case that teaching people how to build something great was only half the job, and the other half, how to protect what they built from the governance structures designed around it, is the part almost everyone skips. This conversation covers why good companies go bad...

Laura Frederick spent her entire career doing one thing: commercial contracts. From propane agreements to uranium trading to deals at Tesla, she said no to every GC role that would have taken her away from the work she loved, and built one of the most recognisable voices in the global contracts community along the way. This conversation covers the moment she called her boss and asked to be include...

Mollie Tregillis spent years building a senior consulting practice inside one of Australia's largest law firms. She had the team, the mandate, the support of leadership, and work she had essentially designed herself. She was also burning out, quietly, while performing at the top of her game. This conversation covers the year Mollie spent doing the internal work before she left, the nervous system...

Nine months out of a 15-year corporate legal career, Mel Storey sits down for an honest solo episode covering what the transition has actually been like, what she has been building, and what she is watching happen across the in-house legal profession right now. She talks about the physiological reality of leaving high-intensity corporate work, what it took to rebuild her sense of productive identi...

Brett Colvin, CEO & Cofounder of Goodlawyer, joined me for a conversation about legal careers, in-house work and what it would actually take to make law a more desirable profession to practise in. We got into the gap between how legal success looks from the outside and how it can feel when you are living it day to day. We talked about the early structures that push lawyers toward narrow definition...

Nada Alnajafi joins Mel for a conversation about contracts, in house judgment and the kind of legal work that actually moves a business forward. This is a grounded conversation about what commercial lawyering looks like when you care about relationships, process and doing the work properly. They get into collaborative negotiation, AI redlining, legal ops and the reality of buying legal tech in a m...

Jen Luther is an experienced Product Counsel, sits on the boards of the Future of Privacy Forum and AI 2030 and advises early-stage founders on governance and strategy. This conversation starts with the work she does at the intersection of AI, privacy and product development, and quickly moves into the bigger question most in-house lawyers do not hear asked enough: what are you beyond the legal ri...

In this conversation, legal operations professional Patty Corey breaks down what legal ops actually is, why so many CLM implementations fail, and what the role needs to look like in an AI-driven world. She challenges the tendency to buy tools before mapping processes, shares a firsthand account of a global CLM rollout that hit the iceberg in slow motion, and makes the case for why legal ops profes...

In this conversation, trademark attorney Josh Gerben discusses the intricacies of trademark law, emphasising the importance of proactive trademark management and the evolving landscape influenced by AI. He highlights common mistakes companies make in managing their trademarks, the need for effective communication between legal and marketing teams, and the significance of understanding both defensi...

In this engaging conversation, Irene Kuo shares her unique journey from law school to becoming a successful in-house lawyer. She discusses her early influences, the challenges faced in the legal profession, and her transition to in-house practice. Irene emphasises the importance of community involvement, networking and self-expression in her career. She also reflects on the future of in-house prac...

In this episode, your host, Mel Storey, reflects on her transition from corporate life to building a new career as a content creator and media company. She shares her experiences, the challenges faced and the lessons learned during this journey so far. Mel discusses the importance of leadership, personal growth, and the need for better support within the legal profession. She also highlights her f...

In this episode, Mel connects with Boston-based lawyer and creator Heather Stevenson for a candid conversation about career reinvention, online visibility, and modern in-house leadership. Heather shares her journey from Big Law litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell to juice-bar founder to General Counsel at Red Cell Partners, a venture firm building companies in healthcare, cybersecurity and national s...

In this episode, Chloe Giamadakis shares her journey in the legal field, discussing her ambition, the importance of a supportive network and how she overcomes "imposter syndrome". She emphasises the value of continuous learning and the significance of working in a meaningful industry to you. Chloe also provides insights into regulatory work and offers advice for aspiring lawyers, highlighting the...

In this episode, Mel sits down with Brisbane-based in-house lawyer and all round good human Simon Playford to explore what it means to bring purpose, agility and humanity to legal work. Simon’s career has spanned private practice, commercial and IP law and now the not-for-profit sector with the Heart Foundation, an organisation that means a great deal to him personally. Together, they talk about m...

In this episode of the Counsel Podcast, Mel reunites with long-time friend and former colleague Anna Tichborne for a candid conversation about career evolution, leadership and the courage to step outside the traditional lawyer path. Anna’s career has spanned more than two decades across New Zealand, Australia and the US. From General Counsel to Chief Operations Officer and now building her own con...

The Counsel Podcast is back for Season 5! In this opening episode, Mel Storey shares a deeply personal update: leaving her role as Head of Legal (APAC) at Pax8 to step into self-employment for the very first time. Mel reflects on: Why she chose to resign after 15 years in the law The breadcrumb trail of signs that told her it was time for a reset What it feels like to de-institutionalise from corp...