Clifford Chance
From our London Capital Markets practice to an in-house role that takes Mia right to the heart of online content regulation.
After training and working in the US, Mia joined Clifford Chance’s London Capital Markets practice as a senior associate in 2014. An interest in further developing her international capabilities was one reason behind the move, along with a desire to diversify her practice, which to date, had primarily been advising on debt offerings and acquisition financings.
The switch quickly paid off, with Mia not only soon feeling at home in London but also broadening her skills with a series of firsts; within months, she was leading on a complex IPO and successfully participating in the pitch to a Scandinavian energy company that she later advised, both experiences feeding her interest in working with clients beyond transactions. “I’d always been interested in what happens after the deal and now I was able to be seen as a trusted advisor in other contexts, someone that a client could come to for creative solutions or see me as a partner in solving hard problems not solely tied to the law, which really resonated with me,” she explains.
While enjoying her time in private practice, having broadened her repertoire, and gotten much closer to client businesses, Mia was becoming increasingly well placed to take an in-house counsel role.
“ If anyone had said to me back then that I was about to enter the tech sector and work on content issues, I would not have believed them and I wouldn’t even have known what that meant. ”
The opportunity to join Amazon as it rolled out its Prime Video offering across the world was too good to pass up and she joined the tech giant as Corporate Counsel in 2016. When she left as Senior Corporate Counsel in 2021, Mia was the lead global lawyer on content policy issues for the streaming service and responsible for a team that negotiated content licensing deals and strategic partnerships across Europe. Looking back, she’s still surprised by the growth of the experience, noting that.
“ You realise pretty quickly how transferable many of your skills are and for everything else, you just lean into being really, really uncomfortable. ”
She joined Meta, formerly known as Facebook, in late 2021, because “the content regulatory framework is changing very quickly and very significantly, and I wanted to work on those issues much more directly.” Her primary responsibility is content regulation for the EMEA region. That means looking at emerging content laws to advise on compliance strategy and risk management across Meta’s growing suite of apps as well as working closely with internal policy teams on various regulatory matters and content decisions. Mia adds:
“ It’s amazing to be shaping a career advising on products and services I use myself every day, that my friends and family use, in spaces where the rules are still being written. ”
If that sounds a long way from the relatively straightforward world of arranging financings while at Clifford Chance, she is clearly relishing the challenge. “One of my favourite things to tell people is that literally every day since being in-house someone has asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to,” she explains.
She regards her time with the firm as formative, crediting the level of trust and support she was given as a key reason for her confidence to take on such tricky legal issues, and describing the lifelong friendships and professional relationships that have resulted. Mia has also relied on the firm occasionally as trusted external advisers in her in-house roles, “because I know the quality of not only the work that they can deliver but also of the people that are working there”.
Given her career path so far, it may come as no surprise to hear her advice to lawyers starting out: “don’t think of your career as a linear journey, and don’t be afraid to try something completely different”. She continues:
“ Instead of looking at opportunities based on the experiences you’ve already had, focus on what interests you and what you want to do next. ”
Her final piece of advice is particularly telling: “Something that I constantly ask myself in every role, even in new roles at the same company, is: am I learning and is this fun? Those two things are always top of mind”. Given her career so far and the global discussions taking place around the regulation of online content, it’s clear Mia is following her own advice to the letter.
*Mia was Associate General Counsel at Meta at the time of this interview.
