An Interview with Adam Lichstein, General Counsel, SeatGeek
We talked to Adam Lichstein, General Counsel of SeatGeek, about how he uses Priori's Talent Marketplace to strategically scale his team's resources. As a strategic partner, Priori provides flexibility for both common flexible talent use cases like commercial contracts overflow support or leave coverage, but also for work that may traditionally go to law firms (in his case, privacy counsel). Having attorneys you can rely on when they're needed and scale down when they're not is a huge asset for an agile legal department, and Adam explains how he uses Priori to achieve that.
How did you first start working with Priori?
Adam Lichstein: I had several people on my team who were out at the same time for parental leaves and, while I’m very happy that we’re able to offer those benefits to employees, it does present challenges when you have a small legal team. I had gotten to know the Priori team and I reached out and very quickly they put a few resumes in front of me of candidates who were great fits to help us in this kind of situation.
How does Priori fit into your legal department’s resourcing strategy?
Adam Lichstein: I think about Priori more and more as a bigger factor in terms of how we think about allocating our resources. There are two reasons: I’ve been very impressed by the caliber of people we’ve seen through the platform and it gives us a lot of flexibility.
When I think about Priori as a strategic partner, I think about flexibility. It gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility when you have constraints on resources—like we all do. It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen over the course of the year. There are always things that arise, whether it’s additional big partnerships, disputes or litigation.
When something comes up that requires more resourcing than you have at hand, the first place to turn is often outside counsel, which can be incredibly expensive. Having a relationship with Priori and a number of lawyers across the platform with different expertise gives me an amazing amount of cost-effective flexibility and it allows us to add people to the team in a seamless way.
My goal is to have a number of people that are familiar enough with our company that as we see ups and downs and new matters come in, we can quickly dial people up and have them contribute in a seamless way. Based on the success we’ve had, I think Priori will be an even bigger part of our planning moving forward.
How have you used Priori for flexible talent?
Adam Lichstein: We’ve used Priori for full-time engagements when someone is out on leave and the Priori attorney is in that role five days a week. We’ve had other people who have been partial for an agreed-upon amount of time, like three days a week, and if the need changes we have the ability to dial them up or down.
And some resources we use on an overflow basis. So after we’ve worked with someone and they get to know the company, if we have a need again, we can get them on a call and—subject to their availability—they can jump in and help with the work.
It’s given us the flexibility to allocate funds to different parts of the business as needs changed, as opposed to being locked in with a full-time employee with a particular skill set.
How have you used Priori for more traditional outside counsel support?
Adam Lichstein: We’ve often relied on Priori when we have people out on extended leaves, but recently there was a case with our privacy function where we had some turnover in the position. We’re always eager to get the right person, so it is often a long process and might take months before we’re able to identify someone to come in on a full-time basis.
We turned to Priori and they were able to provide us with a privacy counsel who stepped in and has been a really strong candidate. This allowed us to have continuity in the position and make sure we’re doing all that we need to on the privacy front. It also gave us the flexibility to be patient in searching for the first person. Even if we don’t find the right person anytime soon, we have a great resource who can support the function and when we do find the new person, we now have a bench and someone who knows the company and can help support us.
We have had success in a range of work including privacy, dispute resolution and general corporate matters and corporate governance. With Priori, I was very pleasantly surprised at how quickly someone is able to get familiar with the company and contribute within the first week or two. It is a pretty seamless process where people can jump in and contribute because they’ve been doing similar functions elsewhere.
Can you describe your experience with Priori network attorneys?
Adam Lichstein: The quality of the attorneys has been one of the things that has made using Priori a real success for me. I’m probably guilty of not being aware of the caliber of attorneys that are out there working through platforms like Priori. So that was a bit of a question for me when I first engaged with the platform.
But from the very first person we worked with, I was very impressed. She happened to be in between full-time jobs and was an extremely talented person with the kind of expertise we were looking for. It worked out well because as our engagement was ending she found something full-time. It all lined up and I was happy to be a reference for her for her new job.
How do Priori attorneys fit into your organization and why is that important?
Adam Lichstein: One of the things that’s hardest about bringing people into a company is they need to navigate the organization. There is the element of substantive expertise but they also need to know how to partner with people to get things done. The people that we’ve brought in through Priori are very quick to do that and be proactive in a way that’s been refreshing and makes my life much easier. A big part of it is they know exactly what’s involved in being successful in-house—all of the people we’ve worked with have been in-house previously.
I’ve also found people through Priori who are extremely talented with great experience and backgrounds but decided that they don’t want to be working full-time anymore. They enjoy working with different companies or a few days a week—having that flexibility, whatever their reason is. We have the ability to keep working with them on an ongoing basis. And I’m just incredibly impressed by the caliber of candidates that we can work with through Priori.
What feedback have you received from your team about working with Priori network members?
Adam Lichstein: The feedback that I’ve gotten from our team about Priori lawyers is that they’re just members of our team. That’s been one of the nice things about these relationships. You’re working with someone who is not just great, but who we also enjoy as people. We have tried to make sure that we’re working with people that we want to have as teammates as if they were a full-time employee. It makes the team richer and brings more experiences to our team.
What impact has Priori had on your legal team?
Adam Lichstein: When I think about the impact Priori has, the first thing I’ll say is it has helped me sleep much better over the past year. We have a relatively small team and people with different areas of expertise and when someone goes out on leave for three or four months, that has a big impact on the team. Being able to dial someone up on pretty short notice and have them step in in a quality way has talent down the stress level across the team and prevented burnout.
It has also been a more efficient solution than going to outside counsel for a lot of this work that we have done through Priori. And lastly, I think there’s a real benefit in having people feel like they’re part of the team. The community that it has built with our legal team and across the company has made for a richer experience.
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