Steve Harmon, Pt. I

In this week’s episode, we speak with Steve Harmon, chief operating officer and general counsel at Elevate, a company that provides software and services for the intersection of business and law. Like many of our guests, Steve has had an unconventional—but truly fascinating—career path. While attending undergrad at BYU, he and some of his classmates founded a company, prompting him to earn a business degree and attend law school so that he could serve as the patent lawyer on the team. He would go on to leverage his combined legal and business knowledge throughout his career. Before joining Elevate, he worked at Cisco Systems for almost 20 years in various functions, where he and his team built one of the most innovative legal departments in the world. Steve was also a co-founder and board member of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). Although he is no longer on the board, he remains committed to its mission to promote collaboration among legal ops professionals. We had so much to discuss with Steve that we split the conversation into two parts. In the first half of our chat, he talks about how he learned to be an in-house lawyer, the question every lawyer should ask their clients, his proudest accomplishment at Cisco, and his initial skepticism of having a legal ops role. We will be taking a break next week, but we will return on June 26 for part two of the conversation, where we explore Steve’s work at Elevate, the impact of legal technology, and other fascinating topics.