From Academia to Cybersecurity: Axiom Lawyer Balances High-Volume Legal Tasks with Her Love of Books
Data privacy lawyer Anita explores her law firm and legal education background, how her husband helps keep her on track when it comes to work-life balance, and how her journey with Axiom has led to lifelong friendships.
Axiom lawyer Anita is humble and classifies herself as a “generalist,” though it’s much more likely her clients would use words such as, “data privacy,” “cyber security,” and “high quality” in their descriptions of her and the work she does for them. When Anita calls herself that, though, she doesn’t mean she doesn’t focus on specific practice areas; she simply means she doesn’t have a preference for industry when it comes to her engagements in corporate legal departments. That’s because working across industries through Axiom has provided her with numerous opportunities to continue learning and growing in her career, and she enjoys the variety and all it teaches her.
“It’s all been interesting,” she shares. “It's actually part of the fun, having to transition to different types of clients. I enjoy that, the wide experience. It definitely keeps me at Axiom.” What initially brought her to Axiom, though, like so many other lawyers, was the recommendation from a friend, and she has since gained many more friendships with fellow corporate counsels during the past eight years at the alternative legal service provider (ALSP).
Embracing community amid privacy
Prior to joining Axiom, Anita clerked in the D.C. Superior Court and was a public defender in Maryland before joining a small, traditional law firm. In 2016, she was working at a friend’s alma mater in legal education administration and enjoying the work she was doing but looking for something else. She was pleased to learn that her friend had been with the ALSP for some time and loved the flexibility it afforded her. “I wanted to go back to practicing,” she shares. Anita applied, and she’s been at Axiom ever since.
When Anita first joined Axiom, there was a need for data privacy attorneys, leading her to an assignment where she met colleagues who she remains close friends with today. She also appreciates that during her engagement, she had the opportunity to continuously learn, something that once made academia appealing and keeps her in love with the law. “I've just been fortunate that the needs of clients have always extended beyond privacy, so I've gotten opportunities to do more.”
Anita recalls her friend’s mother from her time growing up as being a wise woman, and she applies the advice she used to give to her career and the time she spends in in-house legal departments today. “You have to leave a party while you’re still having fun, right? That’s what she always used to say,” Anita shares. She describes her Axiom engagements almost as if they’re good times one might have at fun get-togethers with friends rather than work assignments.
Like many other corporate counsels conducting their due diligence to determine the next best steps in their careers, the opportunity to network was highly appealing to Anita when she was considering Axiom. “Your time comes to an end, but it doesn't mean you have to leave the people behind,” Anita explains.
“I have friends from my first engagement, and I'm really grateful for that and for keeping the personal relationships and the professional relationships as I move on.” She recalls how she still has a text thread and keeps in touch with old colleagues from an assignment that started right before the pandemic hit. “I was just texting them this morning,” she adds. “I’m a big proponent of building community, and it seems like with each of your engagements, you’re building a wider community for yourself.”
Driving strategic impact in data privacy and cybersecurity
Anita has always enjoyed high-volume legal tasks, and she appreciates she’s able to do high quality data privacy and cybersecurity work for Axiom clients. Axiom’s client base includes 68% of the Fortune 100, as well as major players in all industries, including 10 of the 20 largest banks in the world, nine of the 10 largest technology companies in the world, and 19 of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
In April 2024, Axiom announced the completion of over 250 large legal projects, marking a significant milestone in its expanding range of solutions for in-house legal teams. Axiom's lawyers specialize in high-volume, large-scale projects in data privacy, including reviewing and conducting gap analysis of privacy programs to incorporate new regulations, reviewing privacy provisions in contracts to ensure compliance and drafting necessary amendments, such as negotiations.
“High-volume work is what I’m drawn to, and it’s always been part of the strategy,” Anita explains. She shares the fun she finds in the legal profession and within corporate legal departments stems from the challenge of figuring out how to wrap her arms around complex obstacles for the legal teams she joins and helping to build their organizational strategy. In that sense, Anita isn’t just a partner to the legal teams but also to the broader organizations and businesses.
And her clients appreciate this; a lack of commercial and business acumen is one of the top reasons why general counsels (GCs) regretted hiring traditional law firms last year, according to Axiom’s 2024 GC Survey Report. Other top reasons include administrative management taking too much time, traditional law firms providing conceptual rather than practical legal advice, and a lack of institutional knowledge.
Leveraging flexible legal talent through Axiom alleviates all of these concerns, as Axiom lawyers are truly embedded in the corporate legal departments they work with, allowing them to be partners not just to the teams but to the businesses, too. And Axiom's data privacy and cybersecurity lawyers like Anita offer strategic guidance on privacy policy and compliance and conduct contract analysis with cost effectiveness unmatched by traditional law firms.
Balancing act: Navigating work, life, and self-care in the legal profession
Like many others in the legal profession, Anita struggles with work-life balance and determining when she may have taken on too much, but she also understands the importance of taking a step back and going at a slower pace from time to time. She describes her engagements over the years as mostly continuous apart from some time off last year. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘You know, you took like three clients at a time. Wouldn't you want a break?’ And I thought no, I think I should just keep going,” Anita shares. “And then I slow down and read a book, and I think, this isn't so bad. I think maybe my brain is healing,” she laughs.
When she’s in between engagements, she finds a good book to be particularly therapeutic, and she enjoys cooking for her family in her free time. Anita also belongs to a book club for female lawyers she found through Facebook. “I found a lot of things challenging during the pandemic, and I was scared,” she shares. “I needed to mentally be somewhere else, so I read.”
Anita emphasizes the importance of a strong support system who can help recognize your limits when they aren’t immediately clear or apparent to yourself or others who don’t know you as well. For Anita, it’s her husband who typically calls out when she begins to get a bit frazzled: “It’s usually my spouse who’s like, ‘Whoa, you need to slow down and maybe leave the house for the first time this week.’”
When it comes to Axiom, Anita shares the model has worked really well for her, and she plans to stay with the ALSP indefinitely, as long as the work is there. “I’ve really loved the variety of the work, too, and I don’t know whether there’s another place where the work would be as interesting or as flexible,” she explains. And she reiterates that during peaks and periods with significant workloads, Anita enjoys the challenge: “When there's a peak season, which tends to go with fiscal years, sometimes the challenge is just trying to find time for all the work. And I'm fine with that, too.”
“You get to come in where people need help, and everyone's happier because they're grateful you're there,” she smiles. She wonders why anyone working in the legal industry wouldn’t want to do the same.
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