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Learning the business
Spencer’ s path into law grew out of public service, family, and curiosity. His parents were always very engaged in the community and in volunteerism. Beginning at an early age, Spencer regularly volunteered with non-profits and later took on leadership roles in organizations. He developed an interest in the law through these and other experiences. Yet his journey into law was not linear. He reflects,“ I was confident that I would really like law school, but I was not sure exactly what job I wanted going into law school. But I knew that it would open a bunch of different career pathways that would be of interest to me.”
After Emory University School of Law and clerking for the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, he practiced law at a large law firm and then in-house in practice areas such as labor and employment law, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, and ethics and compliance; but his time supporting business operations may have had the biggest impact on how he approaches his role.
While many lawyers focus on regulations and contracts, Spencer wanted to understand the people, processes, and decisions that keep a company running and grow the business.“ It became clear to me early on that understanding the business is important. So, what do people do? Why do they do it? What are they trying to achieve? How do the underlying technologies work? What are our production processes and so forth? I spent a lot of time asking a lot of questions, with the various people throughout the organization to understand their roles and how they keep the business running, and just studying the industry more broadly.”
Rather than treating legal as separate from operations, he immersed himself in the business. The experience reinforced a lesson that still guides him: effective counsel starts with understanding context. That philosophy 118