Lessons I Learned in Law

Francesca Porter on being an airbag, not a seatbelt

Listen on

Episode notes

In this episode of Lessons I Learned in Law, Scott Brown speaks to Francesca Porter, General Counsel and executive team member at Onfido, an AI company who digitally prove people’s real identities using a photo ID and facial biometrics. 

Francesca shares the lessons that she’s learned in law, including:

·      Smart people simplify. The power of lawyers is not only to understand and articulate the legal position, but also to convey a message to key business stakeholders and to drive influence on key risk areas. 

·      To be effective as lawyers we need to be more of an airbag than a seatbelt, helping businesses to grow and scale responsibly in an enduring way.

·      The power of the network is huge - particularly when trying to solve challenging problems at pace, it can save re-inventing the wheel.

Francesca explains what it’s like to work at Onfido, an agile, relatively new tech firm compared to Hewlett Packard where she worked as LegalCounsel. She details how she endeavoured to incorporate best practice from HP at Onfido, without slowing their rapid rate of growth. 

Outside of work Francesca loves to write. She details some of her literary works and the courses she undertook to help write her novels. She also explains how writing outside of work improved her ability as a lawyer, enabling her to be more energised and approach problems in a more creative way. 

Presented by Scott Brown of Heriot Brown Legal Recruitment. 

 

Follow Heriot Brown:

Twitter | LinkedIn |  Facebook | Instagram

This episode of Lessons I Learned in Law is brought to you by Beamery.

Beamery is an AI-powered talent platform, designed to hire candidates faster, develop the skills of your workforce, and increase employee retention.

Find out more at Beamery.com