Career Secrets of a Legal Chief of Staff

It can be daunting to make a name for yourself when the workplace is full of colleagues who are just as ambitious as you. If someone has landed a job with a title similar to yours, they're likely just as hard-working and diligent, and they may even have more diversified experience than you. Emerging as someone special to the C-suite is a tough endeavor, and many never get there.

So, more than ambition, it takes creativity – and dedicated facetime – to truly rise.

For ? Alisa De Dominicis, MBA/JD , the Global Chief of Staff and Vice President of Legal and E&C Operations at Rimini Street—an enterprise software support service provider—making a name for herself meant taking the job she was given and pivoting it toward a direction that none of her peers were going.

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The position of Legal Chief of Staff will be one of the biggest highlights of the SOLID Summit on September 22, 2022 in New York City. Alisa, along with three other Legal Chiefs of Staff, will discuss what the position is, why it's emerged as one of the most coveted jobs in the legal field, and what it takes to become Chief in a SOLID panel.?Register here: www.SOLID.Legal

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Several years ago, Alisa had just arrived at a law firm, where she was hired as a business relationship manager. She wasn't at the director level, but she knew she wanted?to be.

"First thing I did is I set up one-on-ones with all the directors, finance, HR, all the directors," Alisa said. "I did not meet with a single person who was at my level. I surrounded myself with directors, and I acted like a director."?

From there, Alisa established herself as a leader – as a business relationship manager who would become indispensable. And she did this by making her presence a regular and valuable occurrence.?

"Anytime I went to a meeting, I also set up meetings with the CIO and the CFO, and also the Chief Admin Officer – those are my three,?kind of, dotted line internal stakeholders. And I set those up for once a month," said Alisa. "And what I did at those meetings –?I prepared a PowerPoint presentation that consisted of all of the initiatives that were going on in the department and the impact that they had on my organization. So we talked about the resources they needed from me, and I'll tell you, nobody else was sharing all that project list."

With the initiative list, Alisa?became?the single source of information for?major projects for her department. The C-suite's trust in her grew, and her rise at the law firm prepped her for her next job -- that of Legal Chief of Staff at Rimini Street. It's a position she holds today in which she leads the legal operations team in big-picture, technologically forward thinking. It required a shift in approach, from specialist thinking to large strategy visionary.

"It's a people role," Alisa said, referring to the legal chief of staff role. "It is 100% a people role so you have to know when to back off. Either within legal or within the business."

That situational finesse and ability to read people are crucial skills in being a successful legal chief of staff, as is the ability to liaise and oversee strategy and KPIs. Looking back, Alisa noted that her diplomacy and willingness to work beyond her job description helped set her up for a bigger position down the line.?

"I don't think I would be in this role if I wasn't so successful working with the other senior leaders in the company," Alisa said. "So never look at anything below you in terms of work. Look for every opportunity to just help out in anything. I don't even entertain the idea that it's not in my job description ... that it's too beneath me or too above me."?

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Alisa and her Legal Chief of Staff peers will be joined at SOLID by a dozen other speakers at the top of their game in the legal industry. Hear their stories and get your career questions answered at the all-day hyper-intensive networking SOLID summit. Attendees will join other legal innovators at sit-down table talks to workshop out goals and flesh out new ideas shared during the speaker sessions.?

Don't miss out on the ultimate networking opportunity and the chance to learn about the disruptive changes happening at the forefront of the legal world.?