Women in Tech, Episode 2

My Journey: From Private Practice to In-House Counsel

Denae Erasmus:
Hello and welcome to Ashurst Legal Outlook, and this special mini-series on Women in Tech.

My name is Denae Erasmus, and I'm a Senior Associate in the Ashurst Digital Economy team. In today's episode we talk with Shanice Onike, who I worked with in Digital Economy, and who's now an Associate Commercial Counsel at DeepMind.

In our discussion, Shanice talks about her transition from practice to a new in-house role at DeepMind. Along the way, we talk to her about what has changed since she moved in-house, her journey leading up to the change, and most importantly, the importance of meaningful work. And here's our conversation.

So Shanice, it's great to see you, it has been much too long. Thank you for sitting down with us. I think we last saw each other pre-pandemic. Why don't you tell us a bit about how your career has changed since leaving Ashurst?

Shanice Onike:
Yeah, no worries. It's lovely to be here chatting to you today. So I left Ashurst in March 2021 and so still in the midst of the pandemic. And I took about a month break before starting at IBM. So I was doing contracting there for almost a year. And then just in January, I joined at DeepMind, which is the artificial intelligence company, which I'm sure we'll talk about a bit more later. So it's been about a month now, so that's what's been happening for me.

Denae Erasmus :
And so I mean, how has your career changed since you've made your way in-house?

Shanice Onike:
Yeah. So I think it has changed quite a bit. I think in one way, as much as we do such a great job in private practice at being commercially-focused, and I think unless you're in the business itself, seeing the commercial issues, the operational issues play out firsthand, you're just not as able to have a 360 commercial view also in private practice, as we'll probably talk about a bit later. You are more focused on focusing on the risks and what is a big risk for your client or for your business. And I think it can make it a little harder to see the bigger picture and see the people in the business that are just saying, "I want to do this project. I want to do that."

Shanice Onike:
And I think so for me, actually seeing that firsthand has made me more commercially-focused, I think it's made me more strategic. I've found that I've had a lot of opportunity to think strategically. The business has a number of different goals and I'm thinking about what strategies I can put in place to help the legal team to meet those goals. Also, variety is something that I think we'll talk about a bit later as your role can just be very varied. You are dealing with anything that the business has issues with rather than dealing with the particular practice area in private practice that you are in. And yes, I think when you're in the commercial team at Ashurst or the Digital Economy team, there are loads of tech matters that you are dealing with. There's a lot of variety.

Shanice Onike:
And then I think that variety has increased when you go in-house because it's not just the tech issues in the tech area, it's also the real estate issues. It's also the employment issues. It is also potentially the finance issues in conjunction with the finance team. So there's a lot of variety, I'd say, and that's what struck me as quite different to private practice. And I think also just going back to the commercial point, when you are in-house, you have to be more commercially-minded and strategic because of the wide variety of things. You can't focus a lot of time on one thing, you have to pick what are the big issues, what are the big blockers, and let's deal with those and move on to the next.

Denae Erasmus:
It's interesting that you've had almost a dual experience at both IBM and now at DeepMind. So I mean, why don't you talk us through what your role, I suppose, at IBM and what you were doing on a day-to-day basis before we move on to DeepMind?

Shanice Onike:
Yeah, sure. So for IBM, I was working on a project which was essentially IBM was divesting their managed infrastructure services business, novating a bunch of the agreements over to the new business so the clients that were with IBM were going over to the managed infrastructure business that was turning into a company called Kyndryl.

Denae Erasmus:
Which now leads us on to the actual exciting bit DeepMind. So tell us what you've been up to at DeepMind.

Shanice Onike:
Yeah. So it's been really interesting. So I am an Associate Commercial Counsel. That's what my title is. And as I said, DeepMind is an artificial intelligence company. So it was bought by Google in 2014. And so the mission of DeepMind is to solve intelligence, to advance science and benefit humanity. But then its ultimate goal is to solve artificial general intelligence, ADI. And so when we talk about AI now, when we normally talk about AI, we're always talking about something called artificial narrow intelligence, machines that can perform tasks with human supervision, with human help instructions.

Shanice Onike:
But what ADI is, is machines performing tasks like humans without human help and on par with humans. Yeah. So that's obviously a long-term goal, but it's really amazing to see. So I'm in the commercial IP and legal operations team. And so anything in that remit, I deal with, and I'm still relatively new and ramping up. But in general terms, if you think about the different areas that DeepMind works in, in order to advance the goal that it has, which you can hear from if you check out the DeepMind podcast, it's really cool, and will tell you a bunch of things that we're doing. You'll hear it works in training robots, and collaborates with universities and research. It needs computing power to power the machines they have. So related to that, I'm working on a range of different commercial transactions, data license agreements, hardware agreements, collaboration agreements and advisory work on any data protection matters or regulatory issues.

Shanice Onike:
And obviously when you think about artificial intelligence, that brings up a whole host of ethical issues and queries. So the plan is to get involved in that. There's a whole ethical team at DeepMind as well to ensure that what they're doing is okay. And so yeah, it's really awesome to get involved in that kind of thing. And I guess what makes it really awesome is it actually benefits society. So something I think you had a look at, the WaveNet project, which is a model that can ingest samples of language per second, like thousands of samples, and essentially, incorporate natural sound and speech and things like lip smacking and breathing patterns that you don't generally have in machines that provide robotic help, and it makes it sound more natural. And you can use that for things like the Google Assistant to make it the Google Assistant to make it sound more natural, but you can also help people. So it's being used to help people who have ALS. So yeah, so that's an overview of DeepMind and the kind of things I'm doing.

Denae Erasmus:
And that's absolutely awesome, right? I mean, that was one project as I was just taking a deeper look at DeepMind that I thought was pretty interesting, because I mean, I'm a voracious audio book listener and that's obviously stories narrated by humans. And I often think how awesome it would be to actually use speech recognition just to generally be able to read text while science sounding human. I mean, it's also pretty interesting the amount of scientific research that DeepMind does. And it certainly looks like you guys have an army of highly-qualified researchers and scientists doing the work, which is really exciting. I suppose Shanice what also strikes me about what you said was just the broad range of experience and exposure to tech and tech practice that you're generally getting at DeepMind, which sounds very exciting.

Denae Erasmus:
So I suppose moving on, I want to talk to you a bit about why you decided to make the move to an in-house role, because I think it's something that young female lawyers, junior lawyers generally, I suppose, contemplate at least once in their careers. So do you want to talk us through your experience? What your thought process was at the time I suppose, and why you ultimately decided to move from practice to an in-house role?

Shanice Onike:
Yeah, sure. So I'd say there were a number of reasons. So one being I enjoyed and learned so much from Ashurst and I joined the Digital Economy team, which is the team that you're in at a time when the team was changing from being called the TMT team to being called the Digital Economy team. And this happened as a result of two partners. So Nick Elverston and Amanda Hale coming over from Herbert Smith, who saw how much the need for tech was impacting a wide range of companies. Several companies were looking to digitalize. And the aim was for the Digital Economy team to be at the forefront of those digital transformations for clients.

Shanice Onike:
And so I had an incredible experience working with companies on their digital transformation strategies and really understanding where businesses were moving, but I really had the desire to work for one company where I was really passionate about what they did and their mission, and their tech solution. And I really wanted to be part of a business where I could be part of the projects from start to finish. In private practice, you often help on one part of the transaction or one part of the project. And I really wanted to be part of the strategic side, the business side, why the business is doing what they're doing.

Shanice Onike:
And you do see a lot of that in private practice where you try to be commercially focused, but I wanted to just be embedded in the business. And so that was one of the reasons for me. And I think another reason was that I'd started to think about what I was passionate about. And I knew that I was passionate about education. And so I started taking steps down the route of looking at EdTech companies. And so when I did leave Ashurst to do some legal contracting, and I was trying to work out how to get into the EdTech space. And it was quite difficult to be honest. I wouldn't say there were lots of opportunities. There were opportunities, but none of them felt like the right fit for me. So then I did some more soul-searching, and I always just wanted to be part of a company that helps people, helps the world, but it always felt like a dream or something, that would just be too good to be true. And to DeepMind, who amazingly also do stuff in the education space.

Shanice Onike:
So that was one reason as well because of that passion. And then the last reason I would say is that just that I wanted a different pace of life, and I was thinking about my future with my husband and how I wanted my life to be when I had kids. And I think many people in private practice manage their family life well alongside the different pressures, but it is common knowledge that private practice can be longer hours, a little bit less flexible or a little bit unpredictable, more so than in-house. And it's not to say that in-house doesn't have long hours or doesn't have unpredictability. But for me, I thought that an in-house move would help me to manage the kind of things I wanted for my future and for my family.

Denae Erasmus:
Well, that's great. I think the one thing that really does strike me about what you've just said was really the importance of meaningful work and feeling a level of passion about not only what you do, but who you do it with and who you do it for. Certainly, it sounds like based on what you've told us about DeepMind, that you're off to a very good start in that respect. So I mean, that's fantastic to hear. Moving on to our next question then, and just touching a bit on, I suppose, challenges that you mentioned. I mean, what do you think are the benefits and challenges of moving in-house? But particularly for young female lawyers?

Shanice Onike:
I think that some of the benefits and challenges that I'll mention, I don't think that are necessarily specific to gender just because of how the world has changed and the desires of different people. But I do think that benefits and challenges that are mentioned will be relevant to young female lawyers. So as I said, if it is for you, the different pace of life, and I think also what can be a benefit depending on the type of person you are is that it can be less rigid in structure. So in private practice, and as you know, you qualify, and you're an associate, then you're a senior associate, and then hopefully you go on to be a partner. And I think in in-house, in some instances, there's more room to make the role for yourself or make a role for yourself. And if I think about challenges, some of the benefits can be a challenge depending on who you are. So variety, it's great that you have variety, but it means that you can't stay in your comfort zone. It means that you have to deal with new challenges on almost a daily basis.

Shanice Onike:
And I think it can be quite hard. We can get a bit of whiplash from dealing. I think in-house in different organisations, sometimes the legal team can be seen as a legal blocker or a blocker to the business. And what I really love about DeepMind is that the legal team is seen as a business enabler. We will obviously have a look at the risks, but we really want to be proactive to find ways to meet the business goals. And I think that it can be quite hard to shift from the maybe private practice mindset where sometimes you are essentially looking for risk and it's very risk-focused. And so it can be hard to switch from that to how do we just get this goal done? How do we make sure this company can do this?

Shanice Onike:
And then probably the last thing is structure. Again, I think that can be a benefit because it's not as rigid, but also some people like the structure. They like that they know that in a few years, they'll be senior associate, and then they'll move on to partner track. So I think that could be a challenge depending on the type of person that you are. And when you are a legal counsel in-house, there's no real differentiation between how qualified you are. You could be legal counsel and you could be just qualified or eight years PQE. So if that matters to you and maybe status, and your title matters, that could be a challenge.

Denae Erasmus:
That's very interesting. What strikes me is that the benefits and the challenges that you have mentioned are very similar to what I would consider to be the benefits and challenges of being in practice, but just in a slightly different way, which I mean is very interesting. And I mean, just strikes me really. So I think before we move on to the next or our last question. One more question in this section. So if you knew you couldn't fail, what issue facing young female lawyers today would you tackle and why?

Shanice Onike:
Yeah. This is a hard one. I think personal to me, I would love to work out and tackle the issue of how do I be an ambitious lawyer who loves my job, and also be a family-oriented person that can pick up her children from school most days. No matter where you go, private practice, in-house, it's difficult. And yeah, so if I couldn't fail, if the point is that I couldn't fail and I could tackle that issue, that would be what I would tackle.

Denae Erasmus:
I mean, it's such an interesting question, right? Because I think generally as lawyers, we are ambitious to begin with, right? And-

Shanice Onike:
Yeah. Yeah.

Denae Erasmus:
... we, I suppose to a large extent, to really as females do want it all. And I've often found myself wondering, can you really have it all, right? Probably not. But then how do you get as close to that as you would want to, right? And I mean, I certainly, you don't have the answer, but I mean, that's an excellent one to tackle.

Shanice Onike:
Let's do it.

Denae Erasmus:
All right. So last question then for you, Shanice. Do you think in-house teams approach tech differently to teams in practice, I suppose?

Shanice Onike:
From what I've seen in-house, there is a lot of focus on finding the best tools to increase efficiency. And I think this is also the view in private practice, but I think in private practice it can be really hard to find that one tool, because a myriad of tools, because you're working with so many different clients and those tools have to be compatible for each of them and comfortable for each of them. But what I'd say is, the high volume with the different types of tasks in-house, and the fact that you are less likely to have a secretary, less likely to have someone to help with admin tasks means that we need, really, really need, good tools that create efficiencies and tools that allow you to collaborate with all of the different functions of the business easily. So I think that yeah, there's maybe a bigger push for that because of the lack of help with admin and also because it's just more possible to have a tool that works for this company and this company alone. Whereas as I said, in private practice, it's got to work for all of the stakeholders.

Denae Erasmus:
Well, I mean, that takes us to the end of the questions. So just again, thank you so much for joining us. It's been wonderful to not only see you again but speak to you. It's certainly been a very interesting discussion so thanks again.

Shanice Onike:
No worries. Thank you. It's been great chatting with you.

Denae Erasmus:
Thank you for listening to our special mini-series on Women in Tech. If you enjoyed this episode and don't want to miss the rest of this mini-series, please subscribe to Ashurst's Legal Outlook wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to leave us a rating or review. If you'd like to find out more about Ashurst's Digital Economy practice, please visit www.ashurst.com. In the meantime, thanks very much for listening and goodbye for now.

Speaker 3:
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