Look Past Big Law to Build an In-House Team to Weather the Worst

Recently I returned to my “mothership” Starbucks Corp. where I served as Chief Legal Officer for a decade. I left 13 years ago and hadn’t entered its renovated turn of 20th century headquarters building in over 10 years. I was asked to speak on what organizers hoped would inspire this newer generation to think creatively as they navigate a vexing array of 2025 issues.

During the 10 years I was there, 2002–2012, I saw three CEOs, three CFOs, five chief marketing officers, and five heads of the international business. Starbucks tripled in size during that decade but also weathered a recession. In the 2007–2009 timeframe it closed over 600 stores, laid off over 10,000 employees, and saw its storied stock plummet to single digits. The financial press predicted McDonald’s Corp. or someone else would buy Starbucks and conventional wisdom outside the company basically wrote us off.

Against this backdrop, Law and Corporate Affairs, the department I led, continued its focus on operational excellence; first-rate client service; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Because of our adherence to these pillars, even during the company’s darkest hours, L&CA laid off fewer employees than any other support function and was able to maintain a culture that in some respects remains intact 13 years and four general counsel later. So how did we do it?

As with my audience, let me start by acknowledging 2025 isn’t 2012. Social media in 2025 is far more pervasive than in 2012. Instagram was only two years old in 2012, TikTok launched in 2016, and X Corp. was still Twitter Inc. Though artificial intelligence was founded as a scientific discipline in 1956, it was only after 2012 funding and interest in it increased exponentially. And, unlike today where some companies dodge making a public commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as they navigate a perilous national landscape, when I was general counsel there was widespread company and societal support for inclusive and diverse workforces.

Even so, many strategies we employed between 2002 and 2012 still hold great currency for today’s in-house departments. Though Starbucks tripled in size, our in-house department grew five times larger. How? We hired and retained the best and brightest. Where is talent found and what makes your workplace attractive to them? Over the course of a decade we diversified our sourcing of lawyers and paralegals.

I inherited a team of lawyers and paralegals mostly from Big Law. They were book-smart but many had never worked for a company other than Starbucks. Over time we attracted lawyers and paralegals from other blue-chip companies and government. We even hired from within Starbucks—employees who started in departments such as real estate, tax, or human resources learned about our department and chose to work there. We also recruited baristas and trained them to become paralegals, compliance investigators, and records management professionals.

Diversifying our talent redounded to L&CA’s benefit in multiple ways. We grew a pool of professionals who had worked for other organizations and they brought those past learnings to their new tasks. Sometimes, because of that experience, they were more savvy in understanding client needs, earning their trust, and advocating for what L&CA needed to best support our clients’ businesses and functions.

Honing these skills became critical as Starbucks went through significant employee layoffs and store closures. I’ll never forget a conversation the lead lawyer for our international business and I had with its president during the 2008 recession. We assured him we were team players and were ready to undergo pain necessary to help the company. But we also illustrated, unemotionally and with data, how cutting L&CA staff would hamper his business’s ability to achieve its goals of store closings, personnel reductions, and doing deals called for in his operating plan.

When our CEO and senior executive leadership team met to finalize who would be cut and by how much, our clients advocated for largely maintaining L&CA’s staff. We had done the spade work to demonstrate our value to the business—they came to believe we were necessary fuel for the business engine.

Making the credible case and playing the long game to weather the inevitable business crises is mission critical for any in-house department whether in 2008 or 2025. And as we diversified who we brought in, our department became more generationally and racially diverse, we increased our number of military veterans, and evolved into an organization where most employees came to believe they could be their most authentic self in the workplace and thus do their best work.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

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US Army Airborne veteran Paula Boggs is now a musician, speaker, and writer after serving a decade as Starbucks Corporation’s chief legal officer.

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