Sam Hill: Confidence in the face of novel issues

Transcript: 

Lauren: Greetings and welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints podcast. On Career Footprints, we explore stories and lessons from the careers of some of our most successful alumni with the goal of helping you find career success, however you define that. I'm your host, Lauren Hakala Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. And today I'm happy to be speaking with London office alum, Sam Hill. Sam currently serves as legal counsel at Acast. Headquartered in Stockholm, Acast operates the world's largest independent podcast marketplace, providing podcast hosting, advertising, and monetization solutions for creators. Sam qualified as a solicitor at Reed Smith in 2024 and practiced in our global corporate group for about a year before moving to his current role at Acast. Sam, thanks for being here today. How's it going?

Sam: Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I know it's going really well. Thank you. Yeah, how are you?

Lauren: Good, good. So in addition to the fact that you work at a company focused on podcasting, which is really cool, I think you are also my first guest on Career Footprints, who I had the opportunity to meet when you were an associate, attending the Associate Advantage programs at the firm. So that's really cool for me.

Sam: Nice, yeah. Yeah, it's great to be back.

Lauren: Awesome, so let's jump in, lots to cover. So can we start out by you telling us just about your role at Acast? What's a typical day like and what aspects of the business are you most often advising on?

Sam: Yeah, no one day really looks much like another, which is really nice. I'm the only UK council at the whole company. So I'm kind of the main focal point for anything that crops up from our UK. And I guess you could say it's broadly split into our ad sales team and our content. So the content team, they work tirelessly to make sure that all of our podcasters have everything they need to create brilliant content. They kind of make sure that everything's running smoothly, they're on hand to answer any questions. And then our ad sales team, they're working with our advertisers. And we essentially, we host the platform, we distribute our podcasters' content onto all of the third party available third party listening apps, and then we assist the podcasters with monetizing their content. On both sides, the ad agreements, and then more on the content side, there might be bespoke negotiations where there might be a renewal for one of our big podcasters, or we might be trying to get someone new in. But it's very wide ranging, really, I'd say, on a day-to-day basis.

Lauren: That sounds really cool. You mentioned one thing that we know that you qualified in 2024, so you're still in the early part of your career. And you said that you are the only UK council at the company. So can you talk about what that's like?

Sam: Yeah, I mean, at first, I'm not gonna lie, it was quite daunting. Yeah, in my second week, I remember the GC saying to me, like, we've got one of the biggest deals we've ever. Would you mind taking care of it? And I was just kind of dropped in the deep end. At first, yeah, it took me a second to just take a breath and think, okay, I'm actually in charge of this now. The GC and head of our team, he's really, really, really great. If you have any questions, he's really amazing at kind of explaining things in really simple terms even when they're very complicated and he is very, very knowledgeable. So there was no point where I didn't feel like I was supported and I also got the opportunity from a very early stage to kind of start bedding in and working really closely with the different experts in the different teams. So I have chats with our content team about how does it work in practice with our podcasters? If we were getting pushback on particular clauses in our podcast agreements, then I'll sit down with them and I'll say, listen, they're looking to push back on X, Y or Z. Do you think that's feasible? And is that practical? It's more about practical outcomes and solutions and how we can navigate that rather than the black letter law side of things, which I really enjoy. It's like the mixture of what the contracts mean in practice in a given media landscape. I think I've learned a lot from a very early stage. And I've worked on those big deals on week two, as I said, and that has kind of allowed me to grow a lot in confidence. If I compare myself now, I'm 18 months in since I first started, I have a ton more confidence. I'm able to reach out to people across the business if there's anything I'm unsure on. But I think it's really allowed me to develop a lot more quickly than I thought I would. Just that level of trust that was put on me from day one literally.

Lauren: Yeah, it sounds like a really collaborative culture, which makes sense because you're doing something that's kind of cutting edge, right? Like no one's really had a business necessarily like this in the past. So you mentioned about your GC who you report to. You had mentioned earlier that he's based in Stockholm, which is head office for you guys. You mentioned that he's really good at explaining complicated concepts really simply, which sounds like such a core, you know, such a core competency of a GC. Can you talk more about what you learned from working with, you know, working directly with a GC at an international company, just in terms of like mindset as a lawyer?

Sam: Yeah, well, he actually spends his time quite a lot between the London and Stockholm office. So I get a lot of face-to-face time with him, which is great. And it's been great to have a mentor, somebody who you can bounce ideas off and somebody who really values your thoughts. Because I didn't think that at this kind of stage in my career that I was going to be actually adding strategic input to actual decisions that would shape the business. But on the other hand of the coin, it's really nice for me because of that level of trust. He takes a hands-off approach where I don't need and if I have various matters that I'm working on and things are going well, then he'll just be there if I need him, but he'll let me fully kind of take charge of projects and move things forward. So it's a really nice balance because you can work things out for yourself, which is ultimately sometimes how you need to learn and progress. But then if you have a question, then he's great at breaking things down in a real risk and reward kind of sense in terms of what are we looking to accomplish here? What barriers are in the way of that? How can we actually change things? What does this actually mean? Taking a step back and not getting so caught up in the weeds, which is a skill that I've really, really learned from him, learning to kind of take a step back and look at the actual top line of the situation and being able to make more of a kind of calm judgment call.

Lauren: I love that. I think especially working with UK lawyers and European lawyers, I hear this concept of being commercial. Lawyers need to be trained to be commercial. And I've never really understood exactly what they meant by that. But I think what you just said is such a good definition of that. That's really cool. Sounds like good advice for all managers. So, okay, let's go back to the beginning of your career and how you got to this great spot. So before you studied law, you worked as a paralegal at a film investment group. And I'm curious what drew you to that role and how that job contributed to your decision to go on to study law.

Sam: Yeah, so if we go all the way back to my university days, I studied law in. I really enjoyed my media law module. That was something which I found fascinating. Journalism background. So kind of current affairs media has always been in the household from a young age for me, all those kind of discussions about what does this mean, what is the implications for wider world events. And I think that the media sphere is so intertwined with so many other areas of life and popular culture. And I find it really fascinating how it all comes together. So I think media was always going to be the thing that I wanted to kind of go down that kind of route. And I just started kind of as I was approaching the end of my degree, just reaching out kind of on LinkedIn, mainly to as many different paralegal positions as possible. Fortunately, I was able to get a position at this media investment group based in London. And that was really great experience from the off because I was actually drafting kind of basic agreements, actually involved in quite practical work. So I'm really glad that I was able to get in-house experience, like in an early stage. And yeah, I then went on to paralegal in private practice for a little while, which was also great because I think it allowed me to see the difference between the two, to kind of learn both styles of working even before I'd kind of started being a trainee.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, it sounds like you were right sort of on the front lines of like commercial issues starting from that first job, which is great. You then, after studying law, you trained at Reed Smith. And you rotated through our financial industry group, or what we call FIG, our entertainment and media group that we call EMIG, and our global corporate group, which is one of our practice groups at the firm. So I'm curious, what did you like about your time at Reed Smith, and how is it different being in an industry-focused group versus a type of work-focused group?

Sam: Yeah, I think the thing that drew me to Reed Smith initially was the fact that you can dive into media at quite an early stage as it's quite a specialist area and it's not always you're not always able to access that as a trainee. But that was the main focus for me was trying to get a well rounded experience, but vaguely geared towards the media entertainment. I started off in, as you mentioned, in FIG, in the FIG industry group, and I was in the financial regulation team. The time I joined, I think it was only three of us in the team actually. So I was working really closely with the two partners and I was researching and assisting with the drafting for memorandums for large financial institutions. So I think this allowed me to get a really kind of strong base level knowledge of like this particular area of financial services and work with the FCA on various kind of applications. And I think working so closely with two partners in my first seat did develop my confidence quite a lot on early stage. And then I went straight into, my second seat was second at Channel 4 and that was great. I felt a lot like I was put in the driving seat there as I was dropped into the position of a kind of sort of essentially a contracts manager role. And I spent my time between the program kind of program commissioning teams and the program acquisitions teams. So there was a lot of breadth of experience there. And then coming back into my third seat, I spent six months in the media and entertainment team. And I think this further developed on my kind of breadth of knowledge. So in the industry group that was in FIG there was a lot of depth that you gain. But then when I started working in the media group, the work spanned so many kind of sub-sectors. There was a lot of research tasks for me as a trainee. It could have been distribution of different types of radio delivery methods. It could have been on AI. There's a lot of stuff on AI. There was absolutely anything could be kind of thrown at you on any given day, which was really nice because it developed my research skills at what is still a relatively early stage of your career. So that was also a brilliant six months. And then my final seat was in the corporate group. And this was, again, you're working on kind of mergers and acquisitions and various deals, but they could be a sports team, it could be a record label, like a music cataloging transaction, it could be to do with even kind of like financial services. It could be any company kind of looking to acquire another company in any industry at all. So you have to move quickly. You have to learn quickly. You have to quickly become an expert in whatever matter you're working on and whatever client you're working with. So, I think that was really key experience for me and just being able to familiarize yourself quickly with any kind of situation you come across. And that's something that really I find useful in my current role at Acast. As I'll get a message about a new deal that is with a new client. It's a completely novel set of circumstances, and there'll be something that we've never come across before as a company even. And then I'll kind of be expected to, yeah, to take a judgment call on, is this the right way forward? Are there any alternatives? How can we negotiate this? How will this work in practice? Are there any hidden risks? So that's, yeah, my time as a trainee, I think really helps me become quite adaptable and be able to kind of see behind the initial problem and know what's going on and like, what are the actual questions that we should ask?

Lauren: Yeah, I love what you said. Two things that you just said that really resonated. The first was that you got confident researching things you didn't know. And I feel like a lot of times junior lawyers really want to get, they feel confidence comes from knowing a subject matter inside and out, but it seems like you got confident with the skill of learning something you didn't know about. Then I also love the point you made about researching things like the AI law, which no one is an expert at. So you can really advise senior people because you've got the time to dive into it.

Sam: Exactly. And yeah, with AI, there's court cases going on all the time at the moment. It's rapidly developing. It's something that we're looking into a lot as a company and we're implementing. As a legal team, we're developing best practice guidelines in conjunction with our kind of information security teams for all of our personnel on how are we going to use this going forwards? What's acceptable? How are we going to best kind of harness the power of AI? So that's a huge area. And that's something that I see becoming kind of something that you have to deal with as a lawyer going forward. There's no way around it. As realistically the counterparty you're dealing with is probably using AI to some degree. So you should probably have already figured out the extent to which you're going to be relying on it and what your procedures are there.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know that's something we think about every day at the firm. So I can see from what you just said why you were very well suited for your current role, but how did you go about finding it? Did you know that the role was open and how did you kind of position yourself to be hired?

Sam: Yeah, so I actually found it on LinkedIn, kind of similarly to how I did with my paralegal roles. So I found it a really useful platform over the years. And yeah, to any other junior lawyers out there, I'd say it's super useful to keep your profile up to stay relatively active on there. And just if you meet people, it's really easy to just, you used to have to hand out cards, but these days, can just search them up on LinkedIn and just give them an add and then you'll manage to stay in touch. So I think that's really useful. And I think, I kind of position myself to Acast as somebody who had a blend of the skills that I'd learned from my corporate days. I had a lot of company kind of company secretarial experience. I've learned a lot about also, as I was mentioning before, about all different types of companies that I've worked with on various acquisitions, many of which were in the media sphere. And then my more pure media experience in the media team. And then also working in-house at Channel 4, I was able to talk about the fact that I'd previously worked in that position in-house where you're the legal expert and everyone else you're working with at your company will essentially be your clients and they're experts in their given field, but they often need a bit of guidance. They need someone to often explain how clauses might operate in practice and to just know how to work with people in a business as a business person first and foremost and then with your kind of law cap on.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, having that paralegaling experience and that secondment seems to be a great way that you were able to communicate that you could function in a business on the front lines.

Sam: Definitely, definitely.

Lauren: So how did you, what about the interview process? Like how did you know this was something you wanted to say yes to?

Sam: I found from the very early stages Acast were very responsive. They always came back to me very quickly. They were very transparent. Everybody they spoke to was very encouraging, very open, very passionate as well, very passionate about podcasting, about what they do, and quite excited about the potential for the industry that we're operating in because it is rapidly developing. There's new kind of technologies associated with how podcasts are being delivered, how the ads are being kind of stitched in, whether that's dynamically or whether it's going to be baked in as we say. And then there's video podcasting, which is increasing month on month at the moment, with more podcasters looking to go into that. It's a huge opportunity. A lot of people are starting to watch their podcasts as well as listening to them. So that's something that we've had to kind of, as a legal team, our kind of best practices with that and all of our negotiations, they now have that video element as well. Whereas 18 months ago when I first joined, that was something that sometimes would not even come up in the negotiations. Now it's always on the table and it's how are we going to go about this, essentially. So yeah, it's rapidly developing. Everyone at the company is very excited about where things are going. And I just got a really good, a kind of good feel from the off really in quite an open-minded kind of dynamic team.

Lauren: That's great. And when you arrived, were you surprised by anything? Did anything feel harder than you thought in your first in-house role?

Sam: I think I was surprised at being asked for how I thought we should strategically place ourselves in any given situation. Because I think sometimes you think if you're a junior lawyer, you think, what's my opinion? I don't know as much as this partner or this GC or whoever you're working with. But I think being asked if you have a fresh take on things, it takes a while to get used to. But once you know that you're involved in those kind of discussions, you kind of push yourself into a real active listening role where you're trying to come up with your own ideas more often than not. And you do find that a lot of the time you do actually have a fresh take on things, given that I'm currently the only lawyer at the company. So there might be a specific UK legislative point that hasn't been thought of by someone else. And yeah, it took a while to get used to, but it's got to the point now where I think it's really helped me to kind of have a lot more self-confidence and know where to go next where previously I would kind of be more like waiting for instructions if that makes sense.

Lauren: Yeah, well that sounds like a nice surprise, like being asked for your opinion and given the opportunity to develop confidence in giving it. All right, so we have to let you go, but as a final question, I'm sure so many people listening to this are like, how do I get a role like this? So if you had to give two pieces of advice to people who are currently trainees or who are gonna qualify in the next year or two about, you know, how they can land in a similar situation to yours. What would you say to them?

Sam: I would say think strategically about your seat choices. Try not to just go through the motions, but really sit down, think about where do I see things going in the next couple of years or even like five, 10 years down the line. Think about what doors are opening up with the choices you're making and don't be afraid to try and be a little bit proactive about that rather than letting things happen to you. I always found that developing really close relationships with everyone that's working with you is really useful. And the closer your relationships you have, the more little nuggets of information you can get from people about their own journeys. And that will allow you to shape your own journey, essentially.

Lauren: Yeah, no, I love that point. Getting to know people and spending time with them, you learn so much about their careers. Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing so much about your career and your journey. Congratulations on your role. And thank you, as always, to our listeners for listening to this episode of Career Footprints. Please join us again. Thanks so much, Sam. It was great talking to you.

Sam: Thanks so much for having me.

Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith Production. Our producer is Shannon Ryan. You can find our podcast on podcast streaming platforms, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP. To learn more about Reed Smith's alumni network, or if you are an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact Laura Karmatz, Reed Smith's global senior director of alumni relations at [email protected]. 

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. 

All rights reserved.

Transcript is auto-generated.