Pola Karolczyk, General Counsel and Chief People Officer at Cowboy, joins Scott to share her dynamic legal journey: from competition law in Poland and US law firms, to regulatory work at Apple, and now building the legal and people functions at a fast-moving e-bike scaleup.

Pola reflects on three powerful lessons, beginning with the need to ditch legal jargon and speak human. She learned early on that most people, especially in business, aren’t interested in the mechanics of the law, just the outcome. This mindset has shaped her ability to communicate clearly, deliver pragmatic advice, and influence senior stakeholders across borders.

She also highlights the importance of developing leadership and commercial skills outside the comfort zone of technical legal work, drawing on her experiences in Big Law, Apple, and now Cowboy. Pola’s final lesson is one for ambitious lawyers: if you want to lead, don’t wait for calm conditions. Join a scaleup, stretch yourself, and learn on the edge.

Now wearing dual hats in legal and HR, Pola offers rare insight into what it means to shape culture and governance in parallel, and why reporting directly to the CEO matters.

Guest Recommendation:
• Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu - Practical strategies for personal and professional growth

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, or share it with someone navigating the leap into leadership.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, or share it with someone navigating the leap into leadership.

Tara Haig, General Counsel at Multiverse, joins Scott to reflect on a legal career driven by curiosity, courage, and instinct. From saying yes to opening a New York office two years post-qualification to leading legal, privacy, and governance for one of the UK’s most prominent edtech scale-ups, Tara’s story is all about leaning into discomfort, and figuring it out along the way.

Now part of the exec team at Multiverse, a $1.7B AI-powered apprenticeship platform, Tara shares her take on three big lessons: embracing stretch opportunities (even when terrifying), understanding the commercial engine behind your business, and showing up with authenticity. Whether it’s tackling GDPR in lockdown, raising a SPAC, or managing legal complexity across Series A to D growth, she’s built a legal career that’s anything but linear.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating scale-up chaos, growing their team, or trying to stay grounded while building something big. Tara also shares candid reflections on working from Kenya, raising twins, and why perspective, and permission to say no, is as important as saying yes.

Guest Recommendations:
• Book: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• Podcast: Pivot with Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway
• Podcast: The Rest is Politics

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave us a review, or share it with a lawyer navigating the scale-up world.

Shelley McKinley, Chief Legal Officer at GitHub and Vice President at Microsoft, joins Scott to share career-defining lessons from two decades at the sharp edge of tech, innovation, and regulation.

Now leading GitHub’s global legal, policy, and trust teams, Shelley offers a behind-the-scenes look at the early days of GitHub Copilot, launched before ChatGPT put generative AI on the map, and shares what it really means to advise on emerging technology when the law hasn’t caught up yet. She talks candidly about navigating ambiguity, making smart bets in fast-moving industries, and how the best legal advice can’t be given in a vacuum.

Shelley’s lessons cover how to lead in-house teams with the right mix of legal and non-legal expertise, how to focus on high-impact work in a sea of meetings, and why building strong internal networks is a non-negotiable skill for modern legal leaders. Her reflections are sharp, grounded, and refreshingly honest, touching on everything from grunge music to paralegal strategy, Microsoft’s legal transformation, and the FUD-to-FOMO evolution of AI.

Guest Recommendations:
• Podcast: Acquired — Particularly the Spotify and Microsoft episodes
• Book: The Meditating Mother by Laura Kopchick — A quirky short story collection written by Shelley’s college friend (https://www.amazon.com/Meditating-Mother-Laura-Kopchick/dp/1962148157)

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, or share it with someone curious about leading in tech, AI, or global legal teams.

Sam Plant, Chief Legal Officer at Müller UK & Ireland, brings a refreshing mix of humility, insight and honesty to this episode of Lessons I Learned in Law. From risk-taking in legal advice to speaking up about gender inequality, Sam shares three candid lessons that challenge the status quo.

Leading the legal and compliance function across one of the UK’s best-known consumer brands—yoghurts, milk, desserts, and a vast B2B logistics network—Sam reflects on a career shaped as much by mistakes as by milestones. He explains why embracing the right kind of mistake can sharpen commercial judgement, and why lawyers who never get it wrong may be playing it too safe.

Sam also offers a counterpoint to the classic “say yes to everything” career advice. In his view, learning to say no—to roles, responsibilities, and scope creep—is essential for long-term success and team wellbeing.

In a standout third lesson, Sam shares how he became more aware of his own privilege and began advocating for gender equity in law and beyond. His honest reflections on male allyship, everyday bias, and building trust with women in the profession are as powerful as they are practical.

Guest Recommendations:
• Book: Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• Podcast: Origin Story by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, or share it with a colleague—especially those who want to lead with empathy, courage, and clarity.

David Flavell, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at PepsiCo, shares practical, hard-earned insights from a legal career that has spanned the globe—from Melbourne to Shanghai, Dubai to New York—culminating in one of the most senior legal roles in the Fortune 50.

Now leading a global legal function of 500+ professionals, David speaks candidly about how in-house lawyers can step into a more strategic mindset. He explains why legal leaders must go beyond technical skill and embrace being seen as commercial operators—riding potato trucks (literally), working side-by-side with business teams, and asking the questions no one expects lawyers to ask: “How’s the business doing?”

David unpacks what it really means to be a strategic partner, how to balance legal risk with business ambition, and why “being liquid and filling the gaps” is one of the most valuable habits a legal leader can develop. From navigating cultural differences to crisis management and AI readiness, this episode is packed with practical guidance for lawyers who want to lead, not just advise.

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave us a review, or share it with someone navigating global legal leadership.

Jorrit de Haan, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Mollie, joins Scott to share the honest highs and hidden challenges of building an in-house legal function from the ground up.

Jorrit stepped into his first GC role at Mollie in 2021, tasked with transforming a handful of lawyers working reactively into a fully-fledged legal team. In this conversation, he shares the leadership lessons he’s learned along the way—starting with the golden rule that you can’t spend too much time on hiring. From trusting your gut when bringing people in, to protecting team culture and avoiding the “department of no” trap, Jorrit lays out what it really takes to build a trusted, high-performing legal function in a fast-paced fintech.

He also opens up about his own career path—from private practice to interim roles—and why it took trying a few things before landing in the GC seat, the role that fits him best. Along the way, you’ll hear why Harlan’s Razor (“never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence”) has become one of his guiding leadership principles.

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, or share it with a colleague navigating their own in-house leadership journey.

Roel Staes, until recently General Counsel International at FedEx, joins Scott to reflect on a 22-year in-house legal career that scaled from Benelux counsel to overseeing a 500-strong international legal, regulatory, security, and government affairs team.

In this wide-ranging episode, Roel shares candid lessons from the top—on everything from managing complexity in global organisations to learning how to communicate with clarity, brevity, and precision. A strong believer in over-communication and having your “memory card” ready, Roel explains why lawyers need to proactively articulate their value, insert themselves into business conversations, and take ownership beyond the job description.

He also makes a compelling case for win-win lawyering, drawing from hard-earned lessons negotiating contracts and managing sensitive relationships. Plus, Roel introduces us to the concept of healthy laziness—why challenging processes, improving systems, and questioning the status quo is a key trait of high-performing in-house lawyers.

Whether you're aiming for GC, growing a legal team, or just trying to become a sharper operator in-house, this episode is packed with sharp, actionable takeaways from someone who’s walked the walk across global legal leadership.

Guest Recommendations:

• Emotional Intelligence Habits by Dr. Travis Bradberry
• What Every BODY Is Saying by Joe Navarro (FBI body language specialist)
• La Voix du RAID by Laurent Combalbert (on hostage negotiation and business decision-making)

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave us a review, or share it with someone thinking about long-term growth in-house.

Emma Moloney, experienced General Counsel and in-house leader across media and tech, joins Scott to reflect on a career that has spanned continents, contracts, and crises. From early GC roles at National Geographic Channel and News UK, to launching crisis management workshops and mentoring lawyers, Emma’s journey blends legal leadership with creative problem-solving.

In this episode, Emma unpacks the lessons that have shaped her approach. She shares why mastering difficult conversations is a non-negotiable skill for leadership, why least-worst decisions are sometimes the hallmark of senior roles, and how embracing no jobs for life can foster resilience and career longevity. Along the way, she discusses the value of contracting roles to build diverse experiences, her work in crisis preparedness (with a few juicy anecdotes), and why getting comfortable in the grey areas is key to thriving in-house.

This one’s packed with practical advice and candid reflections for any lawyer navigating leadership, transitions, or the uncertainties of modern work.

Guest Recommendations:

• Brené Brown on leadership and vulnerability (particularly her work on clear communication)
• The Rest is History podcast — for a fresh, engaging take on historical narratives

About Heriot Brown:
At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.

🎧 Found this episode valuable? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave us a review, or share it with a colleague who’s plotting their next career move.