When Elisa Garcia came on board the Domino’s pizza chain in 2000 as its first general counsel, she was focused on getting the company ready to go public and ridding a backlog of lawsuits having to do with the company’s 30-minute delivery guarantee.  

Despite all that, the CEO asked her to set aside almost a week to attend the training that the company’s franchisees go through. The goal was to help her understand what it takes to run a pizza store. But she declined. 

“I kind of laughed,” Garcia, now chief legal officer at Macy’s, said in a BarkerGilmore webcast. “I’m trying to figure out how to get out of these 30-minute guarantee lawsuits … and how to set up a board portal [before the IPO]. I can’t take four days off.”

Later, the CEO asked her to join him for almost a week working at one of the stores, and she again declined. But when he asked her a second time, she realized he was giving her an opportunity to understand the business so that her contribution to the executive team could be broader than just being the lawyer in the room. 

“A light bulb went off,” she said, “so I got my uniform and hat on and off I went.”

It was a lesson Garcia took with her to later general counsel jobs. 

When she joined Office Depot in 2008, for example, she worked at one of its stores during its busiest time – back-to-school week – and when Garcia joined Macy’s in 2016, she did the same during its two busiest periods, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

“The sales staff love having another pair of hands folding sweaters,” she said.

Dual impact

Making it a priority to learn the business has had a two-fold impact on Garcia’s career: She became a better strategic partner to the executive team because she could attach her legal knowledge to the practical business issues that the company wrestles with – “You’re thinking like a business person who went to law school,” she said. 

And she’s been able to add duties beyond legal to her portfolio of responsibilities. Soon after she joined Domino’s, for example, she added franchise services. 

“It involves the contractual relationship with the franchisees, so it makes sense,” Garcia said, “but it’s also enforcing standards and developing the training program. That was the first step in broadening my responsibilities, and I realized I liked it. It developed something I didn’t know I had. I could manage people and not just tell lawyers what to do.”

At Office Depot, she added investor relations and internal audit, the latter role in part because the company was managing an investigation at the time. 

“The audit committee gave it to me because they were concerned about an investigation that was going on,” she said.  

At Macy’s, in the early months of the pandemic, she took on computer security and other roles held by the CFO, who was leaving. That way, when they hired his replacement, the new CFO could focus on the company’s main concern at the time: liquidity.

“I went from a 45-person legal department to 150 new people,” she said, “and they did things I didn’t understand. There were threat hunters and … and white-hat, black-hat [hackers].”

Even in basic contract work, by knowing the business the general counsel can step in with solutions to problems that might otherwise look like deal killers, she said. 

“You might say no to this clause,” she said. “It [might be] outright illegal. But if you know what their endgame is, you can help structure an answer that will work.”

Early in her career, she said, some executives expected in-house counsel to stick narrowly to legal matters.  

“They’re like, ‘You’re the lawyer. Here’s the contract. Stay within the four corners of this contract,’” she said.

But the reality is, the better solution might be something the contract doesn’t envision, she said. 

“Make sure the [business colleague] knows you can give better legal advice if you understand the underlying business and what their objective is,” Garcia said. “Your value skyrockets when you know how the company makes money.”