What Is the "Yes, If" Framework for In-House Legal Teams?

The "yes, if" framework replaces legal's default no with a conditional yes. When the business brings a new initiative, the legal team's first move is to identify what the business wants to accomplish, then name the specific conditions under which it can proceed safely: "yes, you can do this if you structure it this way, or if we get this approval first." The conversation keeps moving forward, and legal stays in the room where decisions get made.

Sharon Johnson, SVP and Chief Legal Officer at Mode Global, describes it as a mindset shift:

"When the business comes to you with something, you're not just defaulting and trying to find all the reasons that it's not going to work. Our default on our team is really trying to figure out, what are you trying to accomplish? How can we get there safely?"

The alternative trains the business to stop asking. In the episode's lightning round, Johnson names the myth she'd most like to dispel about lawyers. The safest legal advice, she argues, is not always the best legal advice.

"The safest answer might be, there's no risk, don't do it. But that's not going to necessarily move the business forward. ... Really what you're doing is just training people to work around you and stop asking."

How "Yes, If" Won Mode Global a Deal in Mexico

A major Mode Global customer wanted the company to run operations in Mexico. The risk was significant and winning the bid was uncertain. Johnson's team structured the commitments in advance: a pre-built company ready to activate, compliance groundwork laid early, and escape hatches negotiated into every commitment so that if the deal did not close, the obligations, like a lease, fell away with it.

"We could have just looked at it and said, no, we can't do it, it's too risky. There's a big chance that we're not gonna get it, but then we would have missed out on a really great award. And so we really worked as a team and put our heads together and figured out a way to get to yes."

Mode Global won the deal because the structure was already in place. Legal made the deal possible.

Why Johnson Says Lawyers Should Work in the Business First

Johnson's advice to young lawyers who want to become general counsel is to work in the business before law school, in a seat where you feel commercial pressure yourself. She spent her early career in marketing, sales, account management, and project management, so by the time she sat in a room full of lawyers as a contract manager at Verizon, she saw both the legal risk and the margin pressure behind every agreement.

That path started with a walk-in. Verizon had no open contract manager role, so Johnson created one.

"I walked into the office, kind of declared my wanting to work there and that I had been going to law school, and they found a place for me. ... Marketing really helped me learn how to read an audience. And that's something you can take really through your whole career, whether you're in a boardroom or you're lobbying in Washington."

Law school then became a translation layer for fluency she already had:

"When I finally got to law school, I wasn't really learning how to think about business problems. I was learning the technical language for things I already knew. Now when I sit across from a business leader, I'm not translating from legal to business. We're basically speaking the same language."

Of all her pre-law roles, one stands out. "Project management, I still say that was the job that prepared me better than any other job for being a general counsel, because you have to learn how to push goals forward and how you can handle complex cross-functional work," Johnson says.

How a Six-Lawyer Team Supports a \$3 Billion Logistics Company

Johnson's team supports a \$3 billion business with six lawyers by being disciplined about where they spend time and what they automate. They create playbooks and escalation paths, and they build contract positions before they need them, the same pre-built-optionality thinking behind the Mexico deal. If your team wants to codify its own standards the same way, the AI Contract Playbook guide walks through how.

The other half of the ratio is AI. Mode Global's legal team is a GC AI customer, and every lawyer on it uses AI daily:

"We have a hundred percent adoption of AI across our team, whether it's things like contract review or regulatory monitoring or risk assessments or research, compliance workflows. Everything we look at and say, how can we make this more efficient? If we're not using AI, why aren't we? There should be a good reason. There are weeks that I have saved over two head counts for our team just using the tools, and I have KPIs to back that up."

One example involved a large vendor that quoted Mode Global a steep price for standard compliance risk assessment work. Johnson, a certified compliance and ethics professional, built the assessment questions with AI, kept the right security and confidentiality protocols in place, and ran the process internally. Over the last few years, she estimates the company has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on work it used to outsource, and her team now owns a function it used to rent.

The enthusiasm has spread beyond legal. "I leaned hard into AI immediately. ... I'm always an evangelist when it comes to that," Johnson says. "I even have a business person on our finance team that has been signed up for GC AI and has been using that. I was so excited about this that I wanted to tell other departments as well."

The results are on the record. In 2026, Mode Global's legal team was named a finalist for best use of AI in corporate legal at Legalweek, alongside Meta, Uber, and DHL. The first person Johnson emailed after telling her team was Cecilia Ziniti, co-founder and CEO of GC AI:

"I sent you an email and I just thanked you and said, look, we couldn't have gotten here without your support and without GC AI."

How AI Changes Legal Hiring

AI changes who legal leaders look for, because when everyone can produce a fast answer, judgment becomes the differentiator. Johnson hires for adaptability, comfort with new tools, and the ability to apply judgment on top of a quick answer, and AI has widened the pool of candidates she'll consider.

"I think you need people that are adaptive and that are comfortable and willing to use new tools that can get to the answer quickly, but who aren't afraid to use the tools and then apply judgment on top of that."

The tools have even changed how she thinks about experience. Johnson may now hire lawyers straight out of law school because teaching them is easier, and her recent interns produced work product far above what previous intern classes delivered. But the human layer stays load-bearing:

"With AI, you can get a pretty good answer, but it's not going to tell you if a particular deal is worth the risk given your company's strategic position. ... You got to be able to read the room and read the facts and then apply them. I think judgment is really going to become more valuable, not less."

Why Cold Calling Is a Career Hack for Lawyers

Johnson treats rejection as information, and the ask as free. If you never ask, the answer is already no. While in evening law school classes, she dug up the direct number for Verizon's general counsel, Bill Barr, who went on to serve as United States Attorney General under two presidents. She called him on a regular morning. He picked up.

"I told him I was in law school and I was going during the evenings. He actually mentioned, I think, that he did that as well. And so that was a nice connection point. And that I wanted an internship because I wanted to be a GC one day. And I just asked for his advice."

Barr's advice was to work at a law firm for a couple of years before going in-house, because you will work with outside counsel your entire career and should understand how they operate. Johnson followed it, and calls the perspective extremely valuable.

The full-circle moment came later. CompuCom had once rejected her for a contract manager role. Years after law school, she applied there again, this time as general counsel, and got the job.

"It doesn't mean that a closed door is gonna be a permanently closed door. It just wasn't the right time for me. ... If someone gives you a no today, it doesn't mean that's a no forever. It just means not yet."

Johnson's six-lawyer team supports a \$3 billion business by building playbooks and contract positions before the business needs them, then running the work through GC AI. Ready to try it with your own team?

Recommended Reading

• Why Judgment Is the New Superpower for In-House Lawyers in the Age of AI: picks up Johnson's point that AI raises the value of judgment rather than lowering it.

• In-House Lawyers Are Already Winning the AI Transition: mirrors her 100% adoption story and her role as an internal AI evangelist.

• Not Admin Anymore: How Marvell's Two-Person Legal Team Cut Contract Time by 73%: the closest parallel to a lean team supporting a large business with AI.