Tricia Kinney has spent over two decades leading legal teams at some of the most complex companies in the world, including Kimberly-Clark, ServiceMaster, and BlueLinx Corporation.
Those years have given her a unique perspective as an attorney. She spent that time building an encyclopedia of knowledge about what it takes to be a great General Counsel (GC), including how to structure a team, how to present risk without paralyzing leadership, and why the greatest threat to the business is simply doing nothing.
"What if we don't take this action? What's the risk of standing still here? What's the risk to the business? And oftentimes, in my view, I think that can be the greater risk," Tricia said.
This lens colors through everything Tricia does, from how she approaches her first 90 days in a new role to how she runs a cybersecurity tabletop. She started her career as a litigator, which shaped her perspective and risk analysis in ways that most GCs who came up through transactions or advisory work simply don't have.
Rethinking Risk: Navigating Litigation In-House
Tricia’s litigation background gave her a strong framework for risk. And the most important thing it taught her is that litigation is just one risk among many, and often not even the most important one for GCs to worry about.
The problem she sees repeatedly with in-house lawyers is what she calls the "torts exam answer,” or overwhelming your leadership with a list of all of the ways the company is at risk.
"If you give them the parade of horribles, you're going to lose them," Tricia warns.
The best way to approach in-house risk with leadership is to do your homework ahead of time. Utilize legal AI (like GC AI!) to do an analysis, identify the couple of worst-case scenarios that are actually likely to happen, and come in with a mitigation plan already prepared. This approach builds confidence with your leadership team, rather than panic.
Note from CZ: There's a version of this principle that’s well-known in the security world: the most secure software does nothing. I heard some version of this during my time at Cruise, and it stuck, because it's exactly right. Total risk elimination is not the goal. The goal is knowing which risks are worth taking and being prepared when they materialize.
Focusing on Ruthless Team Efficiency
Most new GCs approach a new role by looking at budget or headcount. When Tricia joins a new legal team, the first question she asks is always, ‘Is this team working on the right things?’
"You have more work than you have people to do it,” Tricia notes. “So you've got to be super efficient on how you are deploying those resources."
That starts with getting ruthless about low-value work, which includes contracts that don’t need a full review, proofreading that crept onto legal's plate, and other busywork your associates are likely bogged down with. Every hour spent there is an hour not spent on the strategic work that actually moves the needle forward.
Here’s Tricia’s go-to framework for freeing up team capacity:
Templatize as much as possible. Give business teams pre-approved contract templates with negotiation parameters. If they're within the guardrails, legal doesn't need to see it, or AI can review it.
Use outside counsel strategically. Are you paying external partners for work that should stay in-house, or keeping in-house work that should be outsourced?
Maintain team boundaries. If another department has started relying on legal for everything, work collaboratively to help them build a structure to act independently.
When it comes to staffing her team, Tricia doesn't chase the perfect resume (which doesn’t actually exist). Instead, she looks for someone smart, hungry, and adaptable enough to learn on the job. The rest, she says, she can teach.
The Wisdom of Preparing for a Crisis Before it Happens
Tricia is very practical when it comes to cybersecurity risk in business. It’s a matter of when, not if, it happens. The bad actors are prolific, hacking methods are only becoming more sophisticated, and the only real variable is how prepared your team is when it happens.
"The last thing you want to be doing when a crisis happens is to be figuring it out in the moment,” Tricia said. That means planning for the worst well before a crisis lands.
Tricia’s Crisis Preparedness Checklist:
Have your vendor roster sorted in advance. Pre-approve critical vendors with your carriers before you need them, including outside counsel, your insurance broker, and your threat negotiator. Credentialing vendors mid-crisis costs time you won’t have.
Store cell numbers several layers deep. Your normal communication systems will likely be down, so have a backup way to reach techs, IT personnel, and anyone else who will be critical to getting systems up and running.
Have board escalation triggers defined in writing. At what point does IT's routine flagging become a crisis? Know the threshold before you're staring at one.
Implement cross-functional tabletops run by a third party. Include everyone who might be affected, and hire an outside facilitator to surface gaps your internal team won't.
Tricia’s last checklist item is where Tricia's most instructive story lives. During a tabletop exercise, a third-party facilitator introduced a scenario none of her team had anticipated: the possibility of an employee tweeting about a system outage before the comms team had a chance to make a formal statement.
One X post, picked up and shared, and suddenly the external narrative is running ahead of the internal response. It’s a nightmare scenario for any GC or Head of PR. Tricia’s team, of course, immediately tightened their employee communications protocol.
Thinking of Legal AI Like a New Hire Instead of a Search Engine
Tricia's take on legal AI is characteristically unsentimental. Not using it, she says, is the equivalent of refusing the internet in 2000. Savvy in-house lawyers who embrace legal AI tools to make their teams more productive and accurate will rise to the top.
The math alone makes the case: a recent Thompson Reuters Institute study found that AI gives lawyers back an average of four hours per week. On a 40-hour week, that's a 10% FTE gain, all without adding headcount.
The lawyers who are getting the most value out of AI tools are the ones who follow Tricia’s advice: treat AI like a new hire. Give it context, background, and feedback when the output misses.
"If it's not giving you the answers that you want, you've got to speak to it like a human being," she says.
That’s great advice for working with AI tools … and business leaders. The best legal leaders are the ones who know how to ask the right questions to get to the heart of what truly matters to the business.
Interested in hearing more of Tricia’s insights? Listen to the full episode where she shares how a formidable competitor changed her entire approach to litigation risk, why Tricia hires based on hunger rather than resume, and how M&A offers teams the opportunity to rewrite the narrative.
After you've listened, try GC AI for free to see how legal AI can speed up your team’s workflow without adding headcount.
