Steve Harmon, the vice president of legal and deputy general counsel at Cisco Systems Inc. in San Jose, California, remembers his reluctance when his boss approached him 12 years ago about becoming a legal operations specialist. Harmon knew of no other lawyer in the country in a comparable role.
“My general counsel, Mark Chandler, was outspoken and progressive about it,” Harmon recalls. “It took some persuading on his part to convince me it was a viable career path.” Today Harmon is a co-founder and leader of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, and he notes that Chandler “has been proven right.”
