Episode 20: Lisa Kathleen Lang
Former General Counsel of Kentucky State University; Current Vice President and General Counsel at Ohio Northern University
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Show Notes
Lisa Lang describes her journey from serving in the military as a paralegal to becoming general counsel at Kentucky State University, a public historically black land-grant university. She also describes how embracing social media, and establishing her network and brand through it, impacted her career.
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Relevant episode links:
Lisa Lang, Kentucky State University, Above the Law - Lisa Lang, LinkedIn - Lisa Lang, Twitter - Lisa Lang
About Lisa Lang:
Lisa Kathleen Lang
It has been said that you are a sum of your experiences and that could not be more true for me. My career path has been anything but traditional though I would not be the lawyer I am today if my journey had been any different.
After spending six years in the United States Army first as a legal specialist and then as a legal non-commissioned officer, I attended law school at night while working full-time during the day as a paralegal for a mid-size law firm in Louisville, Kentucky.
After spending a total of nine years with that law firm, first as a paralegal then as an associate attorney specializing in insurance defense, I left private practice to work for the Commonwealth of Kentucky first with the Office of the Attorney General and then for the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE).
I worked at KDE in various roles including an Assistant General Counsel, an Assistant Director, and then as a General Counsel for the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB). It was because of my work in education that I eventually landed a job as a General Counsel for a regional public university.
If I have learned anything throughout my career, I have learned that no one has all the answers. Through experience, I have learned a great deal of what I needed to propel myself forward. However, I have also learned that it does not matter whether you are new to your career field or if you have practiced in your field for fifty years. In my experience, becoming part of a community is the fastest way to propel you toward achieving their purpose and, ultimately, to success because the people in your community will be uniquely qualified to help, support, and lift others in the community up.
With my website and my WHY THIS NOT THAT™ blog, I hope you will find the resources you need for your legal journey.
The blog is focused on strengthening purpose, fueling passion, and finding creative, collaborative, diverse, and more innovative ways to be effective as a lawyer in the business environment.
When you apply your C-Suite thinking at the intersection of law and business, you will quickly recognize your path to success as an in-house lawyer.
Transcript
I am very pleased to welcome, Lisa Lang.
Thank you. It's very nice to be here.
Let me make sure I get your title correct. Is it officially General Counsel and some other secretary position?
I am the General Counsel though. I will say I am also the Records Custodian for Kentucky State University and within a few months, I have assumed another title, which is Acting Director of Veteran and Student Military Affairs.
That's very fitting with your background. I wanted to talk with you first and go back in terms of what it is that gave you the first spark or idea that you'd like to go to law school or do anything related to the law.
That question has been posed frequently to me and I've tried to think back. My first inclination about the law was when I was in middle school and high school. I am an avid movie goer. I never watched the LA Law or some of the TV shows, but I am a huge John Grisham fan. I remember watching his movies, A Few Good Men and I liked Erin Brockovich about paralegals.
My spark with the law started there, but my journey to become a lawyer, started a little bit later because in high school, what I wanted to do was I wanted to be the best at something. I had problems in high school with the senior debate and public speaking. It did take me a little bit of time to gear up and get into the law because I was concerned that it was not something that I was cut out to do.
Aim to be the best at something.
That was in terms of because you did debate and you didn't seem to excel at that.
I fell flat on my face, and to this day, I cannot remember what happened. It's like PTSD or something. It was my senior year, and for the senior project, you had to work on the research and preparation for a final senior debate. I got up to do it and I froze. I don't even remember it all. It was that traumatic. It was that moment when I was seventeen years old that I was like, "I’m not doing that again."
It took me ten years to get past that incident and to feel like I was ready to go back to that journey because it got to the point where it wasn't so much. I began to learn that I didn't have to speak in that public setting in order to be a lawyer. I tried other things, and I kept coming back to it because that is what I wanted to do.
That's an important point to consider, which is in the law, there are so many different roles you can have and many different things you can do. A lot of litigators enjoyed debate and started that in high school and found their love for being a trial lawyer in that debate setting, but because that isn't your thing doesn't mean you can't contribute to the legal profession in several different ways. How did you then enter back into some aspect of the law after you got your gumption and courage back up?
I went to school to be a teacher and I felt like I was good at it, but I did have a passion to do it. After I graduated, I ended up graduating with an English degree and I dropped my emphasis in teacher education and instead got a Bachelor's degree. I got married and my husband was in the military. When he went and got deployed, I worked during the day.
I volunteered at the Bureau of Consumer Frauds with the attorney general in Buffalo, New York. I started taking classes at night as a paralegal. I enjoyed that. A recruiter came in one night and presented to our night class and talked about the fact that there were some openings in the military for military legal specialists or paralegals. I thought I didn't necessarily know for sure that I could be good at being a lawyer, but I do know how much I loved the law and I enjoyed working in the Bureau of Consumer Frauds. I went and joined the military. I was in the military for six years as a paralegal. I enjoyed the work that I did.
The interesting thing about being a paralegal in the military is you go to what they call AIT, which is Advanced Individual Training. You don't learn one aspect of the law in the military. I learned about processing claims when there are damages when you move property or when the army damages property to civilians. I learned about the powers of attorneys and wills. I learned about military justice in court marshals. I got a chance to try all of these different areas of the law in the military context. It gave me the opportunity to develop skills and to figure out what I enjoyed and excelled at most in those different areas.
When you left the military, was that when you decided to go to law school?
When you said got your gumption, that was when I finally said, "I can do this." It was at that point that I got out of the military and I applied to go to law school. I began to be a paralegal during the day to support my family, but then I went to law school at night.
That's challenging to do both of those things, but you had the experience at that point to know that you wanted to do more with the law. That can keep you going even through your challenging schedules.
The thing is too when I was in the military, I was deployed for eleven months to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The dedication and the hard work that it took to work during the day and take care of a family at night was not foreign to me. There was a time when my husband even said to me, "I don't even know why you bothered getting out of the military. Our life is no different than it was before. You happened to be in the same hemisphere and come home at night." That juggling, I had already learned how to do because that is what our men and women in uniform have to do all the time. They constantly have those demands to juggle work and home. I had already done that.
Were you and your husband deployed at the same time in separate locations?
When he was in the military, I was taking classes. Truth be told, he was a little irritated because the plan was when he got out, I was supposed to have a job as a teacher. He was going to go back to school, but instead of when he got out, he traded his military ID card for a civilian ID card. As soon as he got out, I went in. We were in Germany. My daughter Alexa was about 1.5 years and my son was about 4 months old. I got deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina on Christmas Eve and I didn't come home the next year until Thanksgiving. My husband had to learn what it was like to try and hold down a job and take care of two kids.
In Germany, we couldn't afford to bring a car with us and so we didn't have a car. He was taking care of two kids. We were in a third-story apartment building. He was carrying the kids down in a stroller, getting out of strollers to deliver them to daycare and then running the work. Learning how to do all that as a family was a really good preparation for what life would be like as a lawyer because I had lots of demands and oftentimes he was at home with the kids when I was pursuing this dream of mine.
When you were deployed, did you go into combat or were you doing some paralegal work in association with that?
At the time, I was attached to a Military Police Brigade. Our Military Police Brigade was responsible for securing the routes to Bosnia and Herzegovina. We had one of our battalions there first. We had a plot of unexploded ordnances. Our Military Police had to go down with the bomb squad to ensure that the routes were clear and that nobody had to worry about the ordnances.
They had to secure those routes down there and then secure those areas where the soldiers would then follow. We had two battalions that went down first. We, as the Brigade went down, second. We set up our area. My job there was to support that Military Police Brigade. The kinds of things that I did were I notarized documents for our soldiers. I did help with taxes. If there were problems at home, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act. I would help draft letters for lawyers. We also had a lot of military justice.
I was with military police who were used to carrying weapons, I was also with people who were more operational and were not used to carrying loaded weapons. We had accidental discharges. The UCMJ and military discipline had to occur when we had soldiers who did not take the appropriate steps to ensure that they cleared their weapons at night before put turning them in. We had soldiers that left weapons unsecured.
When we cleared out some of the areas to set up our camp, we cut down trees. When we cut down trees, the civilians came back and wanted to file claims against us because we had transformed their property without their permission. There are questions about the rules of engagement. When you're a pair of Military Paralegal and you're deployed, there is a whole slew of different ways that you can end up finding yourself, assisting, and supporting your command through the legal area.
Being a general counsel helps the business solve problems.
That makes civilian legal work and being in-house counsel seem not as challenging in the same way. It seems like it's downhill after that experience. That's a lot of being nimble in terms of what's going to come up and I suppose those skills are very helpful in an in-house role.
You become the sum of your experiences and I am where I am now because of all those experiences. What I did have to learn, and a lot of the younger generation failed to understand, is that when you go to school, they provide you with the ability to learn how to learn. They give you tools and resources. When you get out there, nobody trained you how to do your job. That is a lot of what I learned being a paralegal in the military because when we were deployed, I was not deployed with the JAG officers.
A lot of the JAG officers were up with the generals up on Tuzla main and they were not at the outpost where we were with our commanders. I led with liaison between my JAG officer and my commander. I did have to learn how to learn. I had to learn how to issue spots. I needed to learn how to be able to gather information and then take it to those people who had a better knowledge or understanding of what needed to be done. Have conversations about what solutions were and to bring those back.
That's a lot of what I do in an in-house counsel role. That piece and the leadership piece are other areas that people don't necessarily get taught. I was fortunate in the military and in order to advance and be promoted, I had to take leadership courses. It was 30 days for us to go to become a sergeant. It was an extended period of time. I learned how to lead people and how to lead soldiers.
I also learned about how to do it because when you're deployed and you're trying to get people to do things that people don't want to naturally do, you will watch good leaders who make people want to do things that they naturally as human beings don't want to do. I learned a lot about what makes a good leader because I watched good leaders get that trust, support and loyalty to lead people to do things that nobody in their right mind would voluntarily want to do.
That's a crash course in so many ways about a lot of different things that would have taken quite a bit longer to learn once you're on the ground or in-house, in that regard. That's a pretty extraordinary experience and it does inform where you are and how you chose to take on your current role with the stunts that you have from your previous roles. You decided to go from paralegal to lawyer and went to law school. What did you decide to do after law school?
I was fortunate and lucky enough to have great mentorship and sponsorship from the attorneys that I work for in the firm as a paralegal. I transitioned from being a paralegal to being an associate at that firm. I learned insurance defense litigation. What's great about insurance defense is that you learn all sorts of different areas of law. That was a good segue into learning how to be able to navigate areas of law that you are not familiar with.
At some point, I decided to leave the firm. Being a litigator is hard. It takes a lot out of you. I had a moment of, “I’m not sure that this is what I want to do.” I had a friend whose husband had started as the deputy attorney general for Kentucky. I applied for a position there as a board counsel and I didn't get that job. What I had to realize when I submitted the application, I did not realize that he was there. The resume came over his desk and I was not selected for a board council position, but he was creating a position within the attorney general's office and asked me if I would like to join him at the office and so I did.
What some people don't understand about an attorney general's office is that it is, in some states, a lot like a private practice where the attorney general is primarily responsible for representing all state agencies. I began representing state agencies and the one-state agency that initially I was drawing the short straw, but I enjoyed working for those agencies that were in the education area. That goes back to when I was in college and I learned about education. That goes towards you are the sum of your experiences and I gravitated to that area because I was familiar with it.
While it wasn't my passion to do at the time, I did like it, I did enjoy it and I knew something about it. I started to take on more and more cases for the Kentucky Department of Education and at some point, they told me that they were not planning on using the attorney general's office and they were going to ask for an exception to bring in their in-house counsel. I said, "I hate that. I love working with you." They said, “You don't understand.”
I did get the job and I took my filing cabinet and took it across town. That was my segue into education. After the Kentucky Department of Education, I found myself at Kentucky State University as their General Counsel, but all of those experiences that I had up to that point prepared me for that. The military, paralegal, leadership and litigation experience. I feel like I have the depth and breadth of experience to do what I do now because of everything I did leading up to it.
You focused on the work in that office that was focused on the education agency, which also gave you some substantive expertise and a way to be known as not just a lawyer who handles a range of things, but you had expertise within that too. That was pretty savvy.
It was an accidental niche, but I did develop the niche and I became known for education law. It's not a huge area. It was fortuitous and that is why I got the job that I did because I became known for the work I did in that area.
Having played that role with the agency, you'd be very valuable to the university.
Part of it is also developing connections. I do think that part of the reason why I ended up landing the position at the university is that they are taking education and they're looking at it from a more global perspective. They're looking at it from pre-K all the way to college. You've got dual enrollment. Colleges
and high schools are trying to work together now in order to help transition students and students are taking classes in high school so they can get college credit.
One of the education agencies that I worked for was the Education Professional Standards Board. What I did there was that agency was responsible for reviewing education programs for teacher preparation in colleges. It was all of those connections that I had formed throughout my work and education that got me to the job that I was in. I used those connections that I built up to that point to help me in the job I have.
That can be helpful for your university now to have that understanding and connections in other parts of government. How does your position as a general counsel for Kentucky State University differ? What are the joys and the challenges of that position compared to your work in the attorney general's office?
It feels like a culmination of all the experiences. At this point, I almost feel like a business person that happens to be a lawyer rather than a lawyer that works for a business because higher education in colleges and universities are businesses like any other business. As a business, you need to know and understand how you operate. Those operations span anything from academics, procurement, purchasing and employment. There's a full range of topics that we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. What I like about the role that I have is that I talk with everybody.
Sometimes I feel almost like a funnel operationally because there are so many flows in my office. I'm able to help make connections between other agencies within different departments within the university. I can connect with people. I'm not always the problem solver, but what I can do is say, "You're dealing with this issue from this perspective, but I've had a conversation with this other person working in this other entity who is having some issues with that thing but from a different perspective." Bringing them together to figure out a way to solve the problem and having all those different perspectives at the table.
I love being a general counsel because I love being able to help the business solve problems. A lot of times the problems aren't legal problems per se, but I can help issue spot and I can help them develop plans and ways to solve problems that are legally defendable and don't run afoul in any law or regulation.
That's a good way of describing the many hats of the general counsel. That's an interesting perspective because you interact with so many aspects of the organization, you can connect people knowing that they're working on different parts of a problem. You can let them know that their colleagues are working on this and you might want to talk and put that together. That's something that people wouldn't think of right away for a general counsel, but if you are embedded within the organization properly, you can facilitate in that way.
I don't know why this is, but when anybody has a problem, not every problem is a legal problem, but they will call me and they'll say, “This isn’t a legal problem and you're not the right person to talk to, but who do I talk to?” A lot of times, I do find myself getting people calling me to ask me, “Who do I talk to? I know it’s not you.”
It's good that they feel comfortable calling you and asking you that. It's important that they feel comfortable with you in that way, but when it is a legal problem, they will feel equally comfortable calling you and getting you involved sooner rather than later for the organization.
Be proud of what you’ve accomplished including everything you did leading up to it.
What you do as a general counsel, especially when you first get there, is you need to build that rapport and that trust because people have stereotypes of what they think the lawyer is. Having said that, you can have the reverse problem, and a lot of times, I'll have to tell people when they come into my office, “Before we get started, I have to remind you that I do represent the organization, not individuals to the greatest extent possible. I try and keep confidential what we're going to discuss. You also need to know and understand that if I get information that is in the best interest of the university to have to share with someone else, I'm going to have to share that.” It's trying to make sure people remember my role in my responsibility so that they don't get too comfortable. I've told them, “I'm not your priest.” Be careful what you're telling me because there are some things I do have to share outside these walls.
That's a good overview of like, “There are limitations.” Who is the client in particular circumstances? That can be hard for executives as well because they're identifying with the organization, but there are limitations there.
Don't just put my name on an email, thinking that the attorney-client privilege. You do have to take a look at that attorney-client privilege when you become a general counsel, especially when you're so immersed in the business or the organization, not every communication you have is attorney-client privilege. You have to be very careful about defining where those boundaries are.
Sometimes what ends up happening is if you get an email chain, what I hate is when there may be something embedded in it that is an arguably attorney-client privilege. I've taken to putting stuff in the subject line, “Attorney-client privilege,” just to highlight. This falls within this scope and if it's not there, then be careful about what you say because if somebody asks for it, we're going to have to provide those emails.
I wanted to turn as well to your work talking about the general counsel role and your own essays and posts on LinkedIn that are quite popular with general advice and insights from the general counsel perspective. Also, generally your foray into social media and your great dexterity with LinkedIn that you got during the pandemic. How you've grown from that and what you've accomplished through that?
What's funny is when I started in insurance defense as a litigator, I was taught to believe that social media is bad for lawyers. It's bad for everybody. It's what you use in lawsuits. I was a little bit hesitant to even go into social media. A big reason why I started getting involved with social media was because I was at a university and we had training. What we have learned is that what touches our students and what appeals to our students is social media. That's how you reach the younger generations. That's how you communicate with them.
What we found initially was that our staff and faculty wanted to do it because they knew it was the way to reach students, but we also needed to make sure that everybody understood the appropriate way to do it. We had a presentation on how staff and faculty could use social media to help support the school students and to brand the university.
One of the exercises was to get on whatever social media account you had and to tweet something or post something about our encampment and something you'd learned. We wanted to see how many people got the most reactions, likes or whatever. LinkedIn was all I had and nothing, crickets. I posted something and it flopped. I thought, "I want to try this." I started on social media in 2019, trying to support our students, staff and faculty, celebrating good news and posting things about the university.
When COVID hit, it was so isolating. The difference that I had in my role as general counsel at a university versus when I was deployed or when I was in a law firm is I no longer felt surrounded by a team. I felt by myself. I did have a team, but they were all working remotely and I was the only one working on campus. I felt alone. I did start to post. I posted looking to other general counsels to see how they were handling the things that were going on with COVID because there was so much.
I found a lot of insight and a lot of valuable information on LinkedIn that helped me to be able to navigate such a changing and uncertain legal environment. I started to do that and I started connecting with other people who are in-house counsels and general counsels. It took off from there. At that point, it started to go away from the posting about what was going on in the university. I started posting more and more about what we were going through.
I was also trying to support students because we had law school students and college students that were losing out on opportunities because of COVID. I did a summer boot camp with law students who didn't get to go and do their clerkships. That was the genesis of my LinkedIn activity. Now, I do it a lot more than I ever did back in 2019. I do blog articles. I am a columnist for Above the Law. I wrote a chapter in a book. It's expanded quite a bit in two years.
There are some good nuggets in there. I would recommend for those who are in-house would like some good tips to check out Lisa's LinkedIn, but also her website blog, which is LawyerLisaLang.com. There is some good stuff there. You've grown in a thought leadership way with regards to the role of general counsel and the nuts and bolts, the good tips about handling challenges that in-house counsel face. You've done a great job of covering that area and adding to the thought leadership in that space, even if that isn't how initially you decided to become engaged in social media.
It is where I am now. A lot of it is about myth-busting. I do think a lot of people have talked about what it's like to be outside counsel versus inside counsel and what the transition between the two is. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. In-house counsel is not the right thing for everybody. Outside counsel is not the right thing for everybody, but it's important for us to talk. I love the Bench, Bar & Beyond.
I'm glad that you're doing this show and I'm glad that other people are highlighting for our next generation the fact that there's a buffet full of choices. There are different things. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to be good at until you give it a try. I feel like I had the opportunity to sample things along the way. I figured out along the way what thing I enjoyed the most and I worked hard to get better at that thing. That's what I write a lot about is I want people to understand what it is I do so they can figure out if that's what they want to do.
You do a good job demystifying that and revealing what's involved in that counseling role for an organization. A lot of people don't talk about that in concrete ways, so it's hard to know what's involved with that as to whether you would enjoy doing it or not, whether you can contribute well to that particular setting. It's a good thing that you do. I'm glad that you started doing it. It caught my attention on LinkedIn. I thought you were very level-headed and gave out good advice about how to handle different issues.
In some of your posts, you've covered this as well, but more in a summary fashion, are there any recommendations you would give to those who think they might be considering or interested in an in-house role or general counsel role at some point? Are there certain things you would say, in order to determine whether this is something you want to do? Your journey is unique to your set of skills and to where you are, but whether there's anything in general that people can or should think about doing.
It depends on where you are in your career but be open to opportunities. For instance, if you work in a firm and you develop a relationship with the general counsel of a client, have conversations with that general counsel. If you represent a client and you are working through a general counsel through the litigation, you can get a sense of what that person does as you are working with them in the context of the litigation. Be curious. Take the opportunity to talk to different people. It's about developing a niche and when you have developed that niche, see if there are companies that do the thing that you are most interested in.
If technology interests you, connect with people in the tech industry. Start forging conversations and relationships and have discussions with them and what it is that they do. That's the main thing to be curious, be open, form relationships, connections and talk to people about what they do. Every general counsel position, every in-house counsel position is different. Even if you enjoyed being an in-house counsel, not every in-house role is going to be a role that you want.
That's a good point to make because sometimes, the distinction is made between being a lawyer in a law firm and an in-house counsel at a company. In either of those roles, there are a vast array of things that can look like both in terms of law firms, the type of law firm and the type of work you would do. A publicly-traded company, not publicly-traded, how large the legal department is, what role the legal department plays with the company or with the agency or with the university. It can vary substantially. What it looks like could be very different from one in-house counsel role to the next.
I do think it doesn't matter what you do as a lawyer or in business. You have to develop those soft skills. You have to learn how to communicate. You have to learn how to listen and empathize. If you're good at those things and you ask questions, if you stay curious, you will find your right place, whether it is in the law firm setting, big law, a boutique, in government law or if you want to go in-house.
I wanted to do a little lightning round set of questions. Which talent would you most like to have, but you don't?
Public speaking.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself and deplore in others?
It's overwork. It's something I have to work on all the time. Turning it off and relaxing is not easy.
Who are your favorite writers?
Fiction, it used to be John Grisham, but the later stuff, I'm not a big fan of. His early stuff, I love and Brené Brown is amazing.
She distills concepts down in a great way. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
My family and friends, on social media and off.
That's something in the last couple of years that caused us to refocus on what's central and important. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?
It's John Grisham.
Who is your hero in real life?
There are so many. I'll say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
I was thinking, "Justice Ginsburg will be in there. I'm pretty sure." Lastly, what is your motto? If you have one.
Slow is sometimes faster. People have to learn to be patient. Sometimes in your hurry to get stuff done, you cause things to take long.
That's excellent pragmatic advice as I would expect nothing less from you, Lisa. That's perfect in keeping with all of your other insights, your blogs, your posts and all of that. Thank you so much for joining me and talking about your experiences and your journey inside and outside of the law. Thank you so much for your service as well.
Thank you.