Feb. 15, 2014

Sedgwick and Filipino bar host general counsel panel

Sedgwick LLP's Asian Pacific Islander Lawyers Forum and the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California hosted their fourth annual general counsel panel on Feb. 7 at Sedgwick's San Francisco office. This year's panel featured four UC Berkeley graduates, John W. Kuo, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary at Varian Medical Systems Inc.; Bryan S. Ko, general counsel, vice president of strategic relations and corporate secretary at Electronics For Imaging Inc.; Jose A. Tabuena, compliance officer, attorney and principal consultant at PrincipledEdge; and Dominic G. Flamiano, general counsel at Global Hawk Insurance Company and principal at Norcal Logistics Lawyers Group PC. Ko told an audience full of young attorneys that the biggest challenge in becoming a general counsel is learning to live with risk, something that most lawyers are somewhat averse to but that is a necessity in running an efficient business. "You can have a risk-free environment, but your company is going to be bankrupt at the end of the day." Kuo agreed, adding that becoming the head of a major legal department means moving even farther away from normal legal practice, estimating that about 25 percent of his time at this point is spent actually practicing law. Tabuena said one of the biggest hurdles for his transition to in-house life was learning how to operate in a corporate structure, explaining that developing a reputation as the guy who just says no to everybody is a good way to get ignored in the long run. "It doesn't matter if you're right if nobody is listening to you," he said. Flamiano encouraged young lawyers to get trial experience by working for nonprofits and other groups, explaining that it's much harder to get that initial experience from inside the big firm environment. He added that he met two of his fellow panelists at Berkeley and felt that the school served him well, but he was concerned that it wasn't maintaining the level of diversity that he experienced as a student. "It's not as diverse as it used to be," he said. "I don't know why." — Joshua Sebold