Molly Campbell: Mastering complexity

Reed Smith alum Molly Campbell shares how her passion for learning novel and complex subjects and her powerful interactions with mentors enabled her to excel as a litigation associate and then partner at Reed Smith. She details how careful reflection and strong professional and personal relationships paved her path from trial lawyer to in-house counsel at Astellas Pharma advising on cutting-edge regulatory issues.

Transcript:

Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guests, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals' careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that. 

Lauren: Welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints podcast. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today, I'm really excited to be speaking with Reed Smith alum Molly Campbell. Molly is currently the Legal Regulatory Lead for Gene Therapy at Astellas Pharma. She joined Astellas from Reed Smith’s Washington, D.C. office, where she most recently was a partner in the Global Commercial Disputes Group. Molly, welcome. How are you today? 

Molly: Hi, thank you so much. So nice to be here. I'm doing quite well. 

Lauren: Awesome. So let's dive right in. We've got a lot to cover. So I'd love to start by asking you about your current role. What are your main areas of responsibility at Astellas? 

Molly: Well, you touched on one. So I am the legal lead for the Astellas Gene Therapy Division, but I actually have quite a diverse role here at Astellas. I also support our government pricing and state transparency teams, and I'm the global social media subject matter expert and serve as the legal representative for the U.S. Specific committee dealing with sort of any novel social media initiative. And finally, I've most recently taken on the role of providing any legal guidance and support necessary for any independent medical education grants. 

Lauren: That sounds like a very wide area of responsibility. I'm curious, what do you like best about the role? 

Molly: Well, like you mentioned, I love the variability. I'm never, ever bored. Sometimes I do feel a little bit like whack-a-mole. I'll be thinking in one area of the law and then have to pivot to something completely different. But I think my favorite part is really the relationships I've been able to build since coming to Astellas. It's interesting, of course, I had good relationships with clients when I was at the firm. But as a litigator, you also have some fairly adversarial relationships. And as professional as those may be, you certainly don't want the same thing as your opposing counsel. But in-house, the business partners that I work with every day know that I want the things that they want. And it's really our process together, finding the best solution to balance risks and getting to the great answer and the good outcome that they want. That's been my favorite part of being in-house. I set sort of a goal for myself originally that I would be an attorney that people want to include on the calls and I think based on some of the feedback that I've received to date I've made some very good inroads into developing that reputation because I know it can be so difficult everybody knows right the lawyers are the people that they love to hate and that was something that I just didn't want to have happen in-house. And it's been wonderful to try to make sure that people value what it is I can contribute to the conversation and know that it's my goal to do everything I can to support their, you know, all of the opportunities and all of the desires that they have as a business. 

Lauren: That's so cool how intentional you were about, I want to be a lawyer that people want to have on calls. Such an important part of building those relationships, I can imagine, especially when you're going from being a litigator to being like a counselor. 

Molly: Exactly. Totally different. I absolutely did a 180 here. 

Lauren: Like a big transition. Okay. So I want to now rewind to the very beginning of your career. When we spoke, you shared with me that after law school, you clerked in federal court for two years. And I'd love to hear more about that experience. 

Molly: What an invaluable experience, I have to say. Anyone who would have the opportunity to clerk, I certainly recommend it. I was very fortunate that my judge was a teacher through and through. In fact, he was a teacher before he came to be a judge and an attorney. And to hear his thoughts about... The case law that we were working with, the facts of the cases that were before us, how we would structure a holding, for instance, whether that be very narrow or whether we try to say more in an opinion and why, was it provided such an incredible value add, particularly at such an early stage in my career that I carry through to today. You know, understanding how to advocate for a particular issue, understanding what kind of arguments to make that will be the most successful in light of the facts of the situation and not dealing necessarily with cases any longer, but always the facts of any situation. And I actually did and I get this question quite often give up a full time position that I was offered after my second year summer to do that the firm that I summered with did not hold offers open and in the moment that created a small amount of panic and in hindsight honestly it it was not something that I ever needed to be concerned about. And so I would absolutely say to anyone in that same position to go for that clerkship because that experience was truly invaluable. 

Lauren: Sounds amazing. And very glad to hear that that we at that other firm lost the opportunity to hire you because the next thing you did after that that second year of a clerkship is you joined Reed Smith. And it sounds like you had some pretty broad and pretty good experience compared to someone who was going straight from law school into the law firm. So given that you had two years of cooking for an amazing teacher, could you tell us a little bit about how, what was your experience of the first few years of practice? 

Molly: Absolutely. And I have to say, I did interview at a number of firms before landing on Reed Smith. And one of the reasons I did so was, well, firstly, because the people were so incredible. I felt very enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with every single person who interviewed me. And I know they didn't just give me the good ones because when I came back again for a more sort of substantial second round with additional people, it just seemed like everyone truly had a similar mindset and it was mine, right? It was what I wanted to do. And one of the things that I gathered from that interview process and what proved to be true later was how much real experience I was able to have immediately. And I did work on such a diverse caseload when I first arrived, actually really probably for about five years. Everything from financial services work, the global regulatory work, labor, appeals, commercial litigation. I sort of had my hands in everything. And I was fortunate that because I came in from a clerkship, you know, people really valued my perspective as a writer and an advocate. So I did a lot of writing motions. And then I was very interested in arguing those motions and immediately was encouraged to do so. And of course, with pretty good success, at least initially, I was able to continue doing so. And people really encouraged that. So one of the things that I, again, really value about Reed Smith is that they allowed me to be so adventurous and curious about what I ultimately wanted to do. And really, I pretty much touched every practice group that we had, it's safe for the corporate M&A, which I still have no idea what they do or how they do it. 

Lauren: So that’s, well, that’s, it's so funny. I feel like I say this in conversation with each of our alumni because so many have said what you just said about the fact that you were able to jump in and, you know, given that you were enthusiastic about the work and you built trust with people, you were permitted to get a lot of substantive real experience straight off the bat. 

Molly: I think I even did my first deposition that first year that I was at Reed Smith. So just came in and said, oh, I'm interested in doing a deposition and got handed a deposition to you. It was a it was they nobody threw me in the deep end. It was a very reasonable deposition of a very friendly witness. But it what a fantastic opportunity again, straight away. 

Lauren: That's incredible. OK, so you said that for the first five years, really, you have this opportunity. You took cases in a variety of subject matters. At some point, you got promoted. So can you talk a little bit about how you thought about positioning yourself for promotion and maybe narrowing down and picking a specialty? That's something that associates ask about a lot. So it'd be great to hear how you thought about that as you got more senior. 

Molly: They're right to be thinking about it. So good for them. I think perhaps I thought I started thinking about that a little bit too late. It still worked out, but I recommend considering all of your options perhaps a bit sooner than I. And so I'll talk about this in two stages. First, I was in the Philadelphia office of Reed Smith for the first two and a half years of my practice and then moved to Washington, D.C. And that was a result of my husband getting a job in Washington, D.C. And this was before the times of remote work and comfort with the technology of doing so. And I recall requesting to move offices and having it be a considerable request. People were hesitant to have me do so because they were a little concerned about my workload, how I would maintain the work that I was doing and keep my hours up. In actuality, I ended up being about 100% utilized as a Philadelphia associate and 100% utilized as a Washington, D.C. associate. This did not help me narrow my practice, but it did help me continue to build relationships with incredible people and still learn so many new areas of the law. So I continued my bank work, the financial services, some of the appeals, even the labor from the Philadelphia office, a few of the commercial litigation cases that I was on, and then coming down to D.C. Started doing a lot of LSHI work, a lot of the health care, a lot of the MDLs that the firm had. I also started working with the government contracts team. They were in the global regulatory group. And I loved all of it. And I started to then, be asked, you are a mid-level now. Do you really want to be in commercial litigation? Because now also keep in mind, there were very, very few commercial litigators in the Washington, D.C. office. In fact, I may have been one of two, perhaps. At one point, I was one of one. And this, so I was having this big, like, crisis of, like, what am I doing? You know, should I be a LSHI associate? Should I be a global regulatory enforcement associate? And I cornered Peter Ellis, who was my practice group leader at the time, the commercial litigation practice group leader at the time, at a firm event. And I walked up to him and I was like, I need things from you. And he backed that so many times, you know, in the course of us working together years later, just like, I remember you like accosted me. Yes, the associate who accosted you. But I said, I think I really want to be in the commercial litigation group, but I'm not getting enough commercial litigation work. It's litigation, what I'm doing, right? But it's not from that group. And that's not going to help me here. And I need your help to make that happen. And he did, right? He connected me with a number of groups across the firm doing commercial litigation work. And one of those groups, my heart, Bryan Webster and Marty Bishop out in Chicago doing the managed care work some of the most amazing work that I did at the firm, learned so much from them, and actually the firm had me do, I don't I’m not certain that they still do this I hope they do but the internal secondments where they send those seats out to other offices to work more closely with the teams that they likely were working with remotely. 

Lauren: Yeah, we do. We actually do offer that. So it's great to hear that that was part of your success. 

Molly: So, so much part of my success. I was out in Chicago for a week, and I know that we have a lot of good flexibility now being able to work from various places. But I would just put my statement out there for working in person. The ability to, I mean, and I was in the office at the time. I was just in a different office. the ability to go out to that Chicago office and see those partners in person and have lunch with them and work on the cases in conference rooms with them, meet the other associates that were on the team was incredible. It was one of the best weeks that I had at the firm for building those relationships. And I will absolutely never forget it. So at any rate, so Peter connected me with a lot of good commercial litigators. I started working on a lot more commercial litigation work. And that was sort of part one in my step to promotion, making sure that I was doing the work that I wanted to do in the group that I wanted to be in. Step two was I still had a fairly diverse practice with respect to the commercial litigation that I was doing and what I needed to figure out and what was basically who I needed to be as a partner, as a specialist, and how I wanted to tell my story, how I wanted to show that I was bringing value to the firm and to clients. And that took a lot more refinement and what I did there was a lot of reflection on some of the work that I was doing that made me the most happy the most fulfilled where I felt like I had a good level of expertise already sort of just baseline understanding which of course makes everything much easier when you're prepping for really in-depth things like deposition and strategy to understand just broadly the universe that you're operating in. And for me, I decided that that was healthcare. Again, I just, I loved the managed care work that I was doing with the Chicago team. And at that point, I had done a considerable amount of the MDL work for Bard for the Hernia Mesh litigation with Eric Alexander. And I was working on the opioid team with Bob Nicholas, Shannon McClure, Joe Mahady, Kim Watterson was also on that team for the appellate group. And I really felt like that space was the space I wanted to focus on. And further to that, and this came from, you know, a result of many incredibly deep and thoughtful conversations with leadership, including Melissa Geist, who wasn't in my group, but still was able to help me figure out how to be a commercial litigator. No, she's amazing. And again, Peter Ellis and Janet Kwon and Marty Bishop all really had a lot of meaningful conversations with me about how to strategize my elevator speech as a partner. Who are you? What do you do? And why do you do it in a paragraph? And that's where I sort of honed in on. I do very well in big litigations, managing smaller teams, particularly the expert team on these big litigations, because I'm able to learn complex areas very quickly and manage attorneys and non-attorneys because people sometimes forget experts, they're very smart, but they're not attorneys. And being able to work with non-attorneys in the context of a litigation can be very challenging, especially when you're still dealing with things like attorney deadlines. And so that's where I that's ultimately where I came down as I'm a commercial litigator. I specialize in these large scale health care matters and I excel in the smaller teams, thinking both broadly in the context of the case itself, but also incredibly detailed and narrowly so in the various expert realms as well. 

Lauren: Thank you so much for sharing that process you went through. It really strikes me how you started, you were thinking about who you were going to be as a partner and you started looking very internally at what you liked and what you already knew about. But then you went and checked that with all of these amazing mentors and got their view and then finally came to a pretty clear elevator pitch, right? A short statement of who you are as a lawyer. 

Molly: Yeah. And it was it was really essential to make sure that when I was saying who I was and what I wanted to do, that people, number one, understood and number two, identified. I remember the first time I went to talk to Peter Ellis and I was like, here's my thoughts. Here's what I'm thinking. And he's like, yeah, I don't buy it. And, you know, oh, my God, you know, how devastating. But really and truly, I was like, OK, so next Tuesday, I'll schedule something. We'll try again. And it was very valuable because ultimately, I really did come to a deeper understanding of what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I wasn't he they weren't going to let me be fluffy about it. That's and that's the case. And you don't want to be right. That's not what you want to ultimately do. So it was essential to make sure you workshop that with people who have gone before you, with people who know and who know you and who know the firm. 

Lauren: That's really great advice. So I could ask you a lot more about your time at the firm, but I want to move on to your move in-house. So you were obviously very successful at Reed Smith, and you were promoted to partner. So after kind of grabbing that major brass ring and experiencing so much success, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about why you decided to move in-house. 

Molly: I think I always had an interest in moving in-house. I had done the clerkship. I had been at the firm. This was always something that was at least of interest to me, and many that might not be the case. But for me, it certainly was. Although at some point, I sort of thought perhaps it was not going to happen. I was very senior. I was really happy at the firm. I was doing a lot of what I wanted to do with a lot of wonderfully cool people. But I actually ended up having a medical procedure that resulted in a genetic test and found that I was a carrier for a genetic mutation that created a very, very high risk of cancer for me. And after a lot of reflection, I thought, boy, it's going to be very hard to be a trial attorney going through an awful lot of surgeries over the next few years. And I know a lot about myself. And I know that first as a mother of two young children and second as a partner in a firm and third as a wife, all of those things would take precedent over fourth me as an individual working through a medical diagnosis. And I was concerned that no matter how much grace I would be given, and to be honest, I knew I would be given a lot of grace. I just recently mentioned my two young children, they were the product of IVF. And I let my teams know when I was going through that process. And again, shout out to Bryan Webster and Marty Bishop, who, you know, were at an arbitration when I called to let them know that we had like positive pregnancy test and right. And we all did like a dance together. So yeah. And and so I knew I knew that that team would be supportive. I knew that I could make it happen. But as I also mentioned, I knew that all of the things that I needed to do for myself still would come last on a very long list of responsibilities. And I just happened to mention this crisis to a friend who was at Reed Smith for a very long time, Julia Haywood, and left as an associate to move over to a company. And, you know, Again, I was just simply just talking through a lot of what was going on for me at that time. And a few weeks later, she came back and said, Molly, we have this job opening up and totally different than what you do now. But I think that you would really like it. And, you know, you should apply. And I said, Julia, I do not have time to apply for this job. I am getting ready for a trial. I am getting ready for expert reports in another case. I don't have a resume that is updated. I have no idea how I would even do that. And she said, send me your resume. I'll look at it. So Julia fixed my resume for me. And I'm, I believe my husband uploaded it to the platform. And a few days later, I got a call asking if I'd be interested in interviewing. And, you know, it was fascinating. I felt like this was one of the moments where the stars really aligned for me. Much like, you know, the interview with Reed Smith. I had calls with a number of people from the Astellas team. And each one of them felt so enthusiastic about their job, what they were doing, the patients that they were helping. And it just felt like a group of people that I truly wanted to be able to work with. Everyone also was extremely kind, extremely intelligent. You know, and the description of the things that I would be doing felt really unique and interesting to me, specifically the gene therapy. I mean, talk about cutting edge technology and where health care is headed. And so that felt like something I really couldn't pass up. And the government pricing is a really unique, really challenging area of the law, and also something that I felt like could be a really cool thing to add sort of to my overall skill set as an attorney. So I thought the interviews went great. I thought there are a lot of people that interview for in-house positions. I did everything that I could. And about two days later, I got called and offered the position. It was amazing. I actually learned later that I was one of the only people that they interviewed. And Astellas was the only interview that I also did. So I think that somewhere out in the universe, this position was the right call for everybody. It was something I just couldn't say no to. So to hearken back to your question of why, why would I have left the big law firm after making partner, after doing, you know, the thing? And as you've heard, I think obviously it was a culmination of a lot of reasons, including those personal ones where I felt like being a trial attorney at the level that I wanted to be, where I was traveling to the, you know, the far off trials, doing all of the depositions and witness prep and, you know, anywhere the client would be. I would be on top of the additional business development that I wanted to do to be the kind of partner and participant in the business that I wanted to do. I felt like that was going to be really, really challenging. And then this opportunity just fell into my lap. And let me be clear, there are some serious challenges here. The subject matter, as I've mentioned, is so challenging. The global nature of the business that I'm working in, it's certainly not a nine to five. I've got people on every coast and in Europe. So, you know, I'm pretty much always on call. And not to mention the fact that I don't have this team of associates and paralegals and all of these wonderful helpers that I did when I was a partner. But the challenges that I face in this role are really the ones that I feel like are the right ones for me to tackle now and where I am in my life. And I'm so privileged to be able to do so. 

Lauren: Thank you so much for sharing, you know, sort of your personal story that led to making that decision. And it sounds like, again, you were just very, very intentional about thinking through, you know, first yourself, right, your needs and the team's needs, and then this happened. But I am curious about your interview process. Like, as you've said, the area of law that you practice in is, right, like gene therapy so rapidly developing, brand new. And you also mentioned that it was very different from what you did at Reed Smith. So kind of looking back, what do you think you better did that, you know, really clinched it and made them say this was the person for this role? 

Molly: Yeah, so actually, I really think I might even know one of the precise comments that I made because the final interview with one of the most important legal leaders in Astellas, she stopped me and said, well, that's a good answer. And so it was immediately burned into my memory, that answer. And the question was, what on earth makes you think that you're capable, essentially, of getting up to speed in an area like you said, Lauren, that is so incredibly challenging and new and, And my answer was directly related to the work that I did with experts. And I said, I got to tell you, I'm an English major. I worked on and wrote and defended and analyzed a healthcare economics expert report about 20 days ago. You know, and so my work with the experts and the expert teams allowed me to learn incredibly complex areas. Again, English major, healthcare economics, like these two things aren't friends. And I know that about myself because of that work. I know I am capable of understanding extremely complex and challenging areas. I know I can understand them to the point where I can help strategize legal, you know, take those expert reports and turn them into legal strategy, you know, to advance our legal strategies across many, many areas. And healthcare economics is always the one that I use because it's the scariest. But there's plenty, you know, that are far and away outside what we would consider to be a legal issue. And so I said, you know, my plan would be to do the same for gene therapies. And by the way, government pricing, which is also legal, but incredibly difficult and complex area. So anytime you are working on very difficult subject matter, which happens quite frequently in litigation, you become a mini expert, right? You have to become a mini expert in the area. And so I would say to anyone that. Is, you know, in a position like mine, where you're trying to explain to someone why you are capable, why you are smart, this is a really good way to say, I am not just a legal thinker. You know, I think about facts. I think about strategy. And I think about all of those things in and outside the context of the law. And being able to know that about yourself and be confident in your skills. Don't shy away from hard questions. Don't shy away from someone challenging you. Because the ability to learn and understand things, it's always in your back pocket. 

Lauren: Well, on behalf of English majors everywhere, I thank you for saying that. But no, in all seriousness, that is, you said earlier that your ability to learn complex things is one of your strengths. And I love how that is tied to your confidence, even if you are attacking a new subject matter and you are a liberal arts major. That willingness to dig in and not be intimidated and learn a new thing and become the expert, I think is a really powerful sort of message to our early career lawyers who might be really suffering from imposter syndrome. Well, okay. I want to ask you one final question before we have to let you go, Molly. So throughout this conversation, it's been super clear how much you love your work. You said you kind of knew that from day one of your clerkship and you loved it enough to make partner and to transition to a really complex role. And you also shared, like on a personal note, that you're a parent and you're someone who had to make some consequential health decisions. So I'm wondering, from that perspective, what would you say to a young lawyer who also, like you, loves the work, but is a little bit reticent about going for it, going for partnership, because they also want to have other things in their lives, or they have significant other responsibilities? 

Molly: Yeah, well, firstly, it's hard, right? There's no one that's ever going to say that trying to have everything isn't hard. It is, and it should be. But I don't think that means that it's not worth doing. so I would say decide that it you know what you really want because ultimately challenging yourself and extending yourself for things that you love and want is rewarding and is something that is worthwhile if you are very unhappy and miserable do not do that that is not helpful that will not make you feel good. But when you know what you want, you can do a lot. And I think, I did put in a lot of work early on before I had, you know, as many responsibilities as I do. I often joke that my, you know, my skin, I preserved my youthful skin because it just never saw the sun for like a decade. I was just working. But as I established my reputation, as I got a good foundation in the law and in my practice and in my skills from doing so. The more complex my life became, because I had children, because I had some medical issues, because life gets in the way oftentimes, I had all of these phenomenal foundational relationships, skill sets, confidence in myself, others having confidence in me that enabled me to to take the time. But one of the things that I think I did well, and sometimes it was really hard, was to be vocal about what it was that I needed. Because if you don't tell people, they aren't going to know. And occasionally you'll have someone who is paying enough attention or has the time to pay attention that you might get a question. And I did. I did get a couple questions along the way. And that was lovely and wonderful of them. But it's not someone's responsibility to guess at what you need. It's your responsibility to let people know. And when you do, and when they value you as a person, as an associate, as a team member, whatever the case may be, they make space for you. But you have to give them the chance. And I was fortunate enough to be working on teams and working with people who absolutely did and would have gone to the ends of the earth to make space for me. And then at the end of the day, I had to know, even with everything that everyone else could do for me, was it going to be enough? And that's the time when you have to ask yourself, what do you need to do for yourself? And that's when I made some pretty hard decisions, some decisions I never contemplated that I would ever make. And so far, I've been really, really happy with all of my results. And I feel like I did everything the right way. But even when mistakes are made, you know, there's always coming back from them when you've when you've communicated, when you've honored how you are feeling and what you need to do for yourself and for your family. And people really respect that. 

Lauren: Thank you so much. That's really powerful advice, particularly about, you know, when you know you want something, pursuing it and asking for the help you need from people with whom you felt trust. Well, Molly, thank you so much for sharing so much about your career story and how your personal life contributed to it and your success. And thank you all for being with us this episode of Reed Smith's Career Footprints podcast. We hope to see you in a future episode. Thanks, everyone. 

Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's Alumni Network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz, at alumni@reedsmith.com. 

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. 

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