Brittara Blaine, Senior Counsel at Liquid Death, Sophia Contreras Schwartz, Chief Legal Officer at Nextdoor, and Cameron “Cam” Clark, Head of Legal at Arc’teryx, discussed how their legal teams make fast decisions, like producing an ad in under 3 hours, while managing brand risk.
Cam framed legal’s role at Arc’teryx in direct, business-oriented terms. “We help sustainable growth. Or more bluntly, we help you keep the money once you get it, because you’re not going to have to give it away to regulators or lawsuits.”
Legal is not positioned as a constraint on growth. It exists to preserve value after growth has already occurred.
At Liquid Death, Brittara operates in a brand where legal decisions are inseparable from creative decisions. Marketing is the product, and legal is embedded directly in that process. That reality shows up most clearly in moments where speed matters and information is incomplete.
Brittara described receiving a Slack message from the creative team about an opportunity to run free television ads during a major golf tournament, with only three hours to submit materials. The team had never run TV ads before and planned to repurpose existing social videos.
Legal work happened in real time alongside creative review. Which videos would pass network standards? Did usage rights extend to television? What could realistically be negotiated in the time available? Legal judgment was grounded in context.
“Everything we’re doing is edgy and provocative, but we’re just trying to create humor. If everything is ridiculous and everyone knows it’s a joke, then you can kind of blur those lines and play in that legal gray area.” - Brittara Blaine
Her role is not to neutralize the brand voice. It is to help the team lean into it in a way that remains safe for consumers and defensible under scrutiny.
At Nextdoor, Sophia operates in a different risk environment shaped by regulation, trust, and scale. The platform spans 11 countries and 100M+ verified neighbors. Legal decisions often involve public company obligations, content moderation, and privacy. Speed in that environment comes from preparation rather than improvisation.
Sophia pointed to age verification laws as an example. Court decisions move quickly and unpredictably. Compliance can require significant product and operational changes. The legal team prepares for multiple outcomes at once so the company is not forced into reactive decisions. That preparation depends on deep integration with product.
“A big thing that helps us move quickly is that we’re very integrated with the product team. When the conversation starts, we can make really fast decisions and not feel nervous about them because we know the full story.” - Sophia Contreras Schwartz
Integration also changes how risk surfaces inside the company. In one instance, product raised concerns about potential liability tied to user-generated content. Rather than treating the concern as an immediate escalation, legal analyzed actual platform behavior, existing UGC protections, and the legal standards for liability. The conclusion was that existing community guidelines and moderation systems already addressed the concern.
Across all three leaders, legal posture mattered more than formal authority. None described themselves as the department of no. The starting point was enabling the business and shaping ideas until they worked.
For Sophia, the first question is always “what’s the business objective and how can we help you achieve it?”
For Brittara, it's “what can we do?” rather than an outright rejection.
Cam emphasized that saying no is reserved for narrow situations where the issue is uniquely legal and squarely within legal expertise.
AI came up as both an accelerator and a source of new complexity. Cam described GC AI as his single biggest productivity improvement. It allowed him to move faster through dense material and focus attention where judgment mattered most. Sophia shared a similar experience, using GC AI to locate specific provisions in corporate documents and prepare sharper questions for outside counsel, saving time on both sides.
At the same time, AI introduces friction. Tool proliferation creates privacy and compliance work that often arrives late in the sales cycle. Meeting transcription creates information overload rather than clarity. Sophia noted that searching across multiple tools for the “perfect” answer can slow decision-making instead of speeding it up.
There was broad agreement that legal teams cannot sit out AI adoption.
As Sophia put it, “If we don’t use AI on the legal team, the product team is going to use it. And they’re going to just go without you and do what they want to do, and you’re not going to have an opportunity to actually be in the decision.”
Legal teams that adopt AI thoughtfully retain influence over how it is used across the business.
The conclusion across the discussion was that legal team speed is built through context and early involvement. Legal teams that understand their business deeply can move faster, take smarter risks, and protect long-term value without positioning themselves as obstacles to growth.
