Meet Rutger van Boxtel, who worked at a top tier firm in the Netherlands in M&A and corporate litigation for 6.5 years before he flew to New York for a secondment of nearly 1.5 years at Kirkland & Ellis and rejoining the same firm upon his return. After working on a funding round for award-winning scale-up Otrium, he joined their Executive Team as General Counsel & Company Secretary in July 2021.
Update: We interviewed him back in April and since then, his role has also changed. Life at a scale-up is exciting and ever changing! ;)
1. What if you could give everyone on this planet the same superpower? What superpower would you choose?
Reasonableness. It won’t feed the world; but then again, if humankind had always been reasonable, chances are we would have been a bit better off as a whole than we are right now.
2. Tell us how your best friend would introduce you?
He’d describe me as caring & attentive. Those are also things that were said about me at my wedding. More was said, but I can’t remember that now. I also can’t remember anyone saying anything particularly negative that day, but that might have been because it was my wedding day!
3. What does a typical week look like? What do you spend your time working on and doing, and with who?
It’s a bit all over the place. I joined the company and immediately became ultimately responsible for Legal & Compliance, but also had to build the teams from the ground up & get to know the business. Recently, I also became responsible for the Sustainability team, which truly hits the core of our business (model).
As a member of the Executive Team, I’m involved in the strategy of the whole company - that involvement is important to me and I love it. On the other hand, I’m also very closely involved with the actual day-to-day operations. There’s so much to do, sometimes you just don’t know where to begin. As M&A lawyer, you work on and finish projects. When you move in-house, your to do list becomes a neverending story. And it just becomes longer if you ask the right questions. You have to decide what to focus on and what to “park” to make sure things keep moving and get done. Then there’s also the international dynamic. Otrium is active in the EU, UK & US. One day I’m working on updating our standard partnership agreement, the next I’m diving into the Americans with Disabilities Act and US Data Protection Laws. “Broad” is definitely part of the definition of this job.
Teamwork is a great part of my job and a large part of my time is spent working with my teams. Our Legal team is made up of 2 senior legal counsels, 2 paralegals & an external consultant. We’re also going to try work on a more cross-functional level, which means someone from my team is more involved with Sustainability, and another team member is also involved with the more commercial side of our business. If that’s something our people want, we try to offer the opportunity to broaden their skill set and scope within the company, combining Legal with work for other teams. I really believe that if you recruit a very experienced corporate lawyer from a top tier firm, you can leverage their skill set in a variety of roles and projects. Corporate lawyers have a specific skill set with lots of transferable skills, from project management to critical thinking (and asking questions!) skills.
On a day-to-day and week level, it’s hard to say and varies per week, but usually my Mondays and Tuesdays are filled with lots of meetings (e.g. Exec meeting, but also regular check-ins with the CFO and our CEOs). Often, as of Wednesdays, I have a bit more time to work on larger projects or agreements. Ahead of board and shareholder meetings, a lot of my time is also spent preparing those.
4. What makes your job great and what makes it a little less great?
The fact that it’s super dynamic makes it great. I’ve always liked that; it’s also why I enjoyed doing M&A. My current role, though, is even more dynamic and broad. Also, I get to see and learn so much - up close - in a company that is growing super fast. I get to experience the headwinds, the tailwinds, things that work well & things that do not work out. And I get a lot of energy from working with a team to fix the things that don’t work (yet).
What makes it a little less great is quite personal, but what comes to mind is the fact that I can’t always go for a 10/10 in my work. At my previous job it was generally expected to go for that 9 or 10, but now “settling for less” is sometimes in the best interest of the company. There’s so much to do and a limited amount of time, you need to spend it wisely. I guess it’s more of a matter of not being able to spend the time on something that I’d like to spend on it.
5. How would you describe the super fast growing scale-up, “disruptor” environment you’re currently working in to someone still in private practice?
Definitely the dynamics. You’re really building & creating. And you don’t know where it’s going to end! It’s so different to working for a corporate powerhouse that’s existed for 50 or 100 years, places where you won’t easily become a driving force or be able to make the impact you can make at a scale-up like Otrium.
6. What motivated you to make your career change?
Adventure. Not knowing what I’d be doing for the next 5 - 20 years. If I’d remained at De Brauw, chances are I’d have stayed on and kept on doing that for a large number of years. Adventure was a big trigger.
7. How were you able to make the transition out of private practice? What do you consider the top 3 best tips or strategies for others looking to make a similar move?
Before working on the funding round for Otrium, I’d worked with Mollie and its founder Adriaan Mol on a number of deals and some other venture capital projects. Adriaan knew Otrium’s founders and recommended they talk to De Brauw. That’s how Max and Milan - Otrium’s CEOs - ended up at De Brauw and I ended up working for Otrium. With a team, we worked on Otrium’s Series C funding round and shortly after that closed, the CFO asked me whether I would consider joining Otrium as General Counsel. I had to really think about it and had a bit of a hard time deciding until one of the former partners at De Brauw (who I had reached out to to discuss) told me he thought that the role was perfect for me and that certain strengths and qualities that I had would come to fruition in this role. Him saying that gave me a sense of peace and it made it easier to go for it.
My #1 tip for others is, just do your work well because that can truly create (unexpected) opportunities. My second piece of advice is to always keep on investing in and believing in your skills and personality and being able to convey how your skills and personality can serve you in another type of role. The fact that you’re a lawyer means you have a super valuable set of transferable skills which are (almost) universally applicable. Don’t think in terms of silos or boxes. Know what you’re good at, be able to explain it to others and be able to link it to what is needed for the role you’re eyeing. I think the transferable skills that corporate lawyers have would be of good use to a lot of start-ups and scale-ups. Start-ups and scale-ups are typically set up by young, super ambitious and smart people. That works very well for the first few years and some early joiners will definitely grow and develop as the company develops. When the company needs to be taken to the next level, however, you also need people with a different type of experience. People who have seen a variety of things (and companies) and are able to leverage their experience in the right way. I’m convinced experienced corporate lawyers from top tier firms can do that.
8. What do you consider the most valuable things that you learned working as a corporate lawyer that you still use in your work today?
Two things come to mind: (1) being able to use a structured approach & how far that gets you; and (2) critical thinking. I believe critical thinking is something that I was able to do before I started working as a lawyer, but my skills have definitely developed and have been sharpened by all those years in private practice. Truly being able to think critically and (daring to) ask critical questions.
Something else which is key is being client oriented. In private practice, it’s your job to be client oriented, figuring out exactly what the client needs. This is no different in-house, with “internal” clients. I don’t want to make things more difficult for other teams, I want to make things easier.
9. What were you trained to do as a corporate lawyer working at a law firm, that did not / does not serve you well in your current job? What did you have to “unlearn”? And what skills did you have to pick up on quickly?
The fact that I’ve been trained to deliver that 10/10, that’s something that doesn’t always serve me well now.
What I had to pick up on quickly when I joined and where I have learned and am still learning the most is the numbers behind our business and business model. How exactly what we do and how we do it impacts the P&L, the consequences of our choices. We’re a VC-backed company and raised our latest round in 2021 which will last us some time, and thinking about how to invest that money & the strategy behind it; I’m learning a lot in that area. Things like burn, opex, marketing spend and what you need to do to stay on your growth trajectory, etc. When you’re in private practice working on a deal, those aren’t things that keep you busy.
9. You spent close to a year and a half in the US, working for Kirkland & Ellis. How do you look back on your secondment?
One word: phenomenal! Absolutely incredible. I experienced what it was like to work as a lawyer in NY, for the largest law firm in the world. I learned so much and got so many opportunities, all of which made it all the more difficult to make the decision to leave private practice. On a personal level, my time there also couldn’t have been better. My son was actually born in New York.
10. As GC, when engaging external law firms, what do you look for? To the extent you can summarize it, what way of working, skills, proposition etc. sets the “crème de la crème” apart from the rest?
On the one hand to absolutely nail it on the substance and at the same time being able to provide specific, pragmatic advice on the basis thereof.
11. If you were prohibited from doing what you currently do (or being a lawyer), what would you be doing for a living instead?
That’s a difficult question. When I was younger I wanted to go into politics, so maybe something in the area of public administration now? Who knows in a couple of years. First want to make the Otrium story a success with the entire team!
12. What would you have liked to have known but didn’t - from a career perspective - 10 years ago?
I’m going to answer a slightly different question. What I didn’t know 10 years ago was that in the Netherlands we think more in terms of boxes. If you’ve studied law, the standard path is to pursue a legal career. In the United States, people pass the bar and become a lawyer, and then switch to - for example - investment banking or consultancy. Obviously not everyone does this, but it’s not uncommon to make a career switch once you’ve reached a certain level of expertise. It’s considered quite logical. In the Netherlands, it seems we think more in terms of limitations. Nevertheless, I am under the impression that in the past few years, this mindset is shifting a little bit towards thinking more in terms of opportunities. This works both ways: for lawyers who want to make a career switch & people with other backgrounds who are looking to pursue a career in law. I encourage that shift!
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the interviewee alone and not their employer.
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