Reed Smith alum Stuart Kuntz shares his path from senior M&A associate to associate general counsel of a public company, including what drew him to in-house practice and the mindset and approach to client service that contributed to his success. He shares his insights from two decades of dealmaking on how outside counsel – from partners to junior associates – can make a strong impression, and how junior associates can prepare for a career path that leads to success like his.
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Transcript:
Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, 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 the careers of these inspiring professionals that will help you find professional success, however you define that.
Lauren: Welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's Alumni Career Footprints Podcast. I am your host, Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. And today, I'm excited to be speaking with Reed Smith alumni, Stuart Kuntz. Stuart is Associate General Counsel, M&A, and Ventures at a company that many of our listeners will be very familiar with, and that's Foot Locker. He joined Footlocker two and a half years ago after spending about 17 years in legal roles of increasing responsibility at Verizon. Earlier in his career, Stuart practiced as a transactional associate here at Reed Smith. Stuart, how are you today?
Stuart: Hi, Lauren. I'm doing great. Thanks.
Lauren: So I'd like to start by asking you just about your current role at Foot Locker. How do you spend most of your time and who do you mainly interact with during your work days there?
Stuart: You know, I spend most of my time, I'm a transactional lawyer, spend most of my time on M&A transactions. I spend some amount of time on international franchising transactions. as well. I also, as part of my role, I support our treasury group. So I do spend some time, not as much, but some time supporting treasury, either with regard to our credit facility or other agreements or questions they have. So that's, you know, that's the bulk of my practice at Foot Locker. There's an occasional, you know, occasional commercial contract I need to help out with, you know, a little this, a little that. But I would say the bulk of it is disposition work, international franchising, and some treasury support.
Lauren: So it sounds like you are a real deal lawyer. And I'm curious, how would you describe your style or your approach to helping your clients get transactions done and closed?
Stuart: You know, it's a lot of, you know, we talk about style and approach, you somewhat want to mirror your client's style and approach. And it can change from deal to deal. There are transactions that, you know, we got, you know, we have to take one for the team. Essentially, this is something We got to get done and, you know, we're going to have to bite our lip and do it because it's, it's critical and, you know, generally, you know, disposition of business that just isn't strategic, for example, you know, you're going to have to get done. There are others that are more nice to have where you can take stronger negotiation positions. It also depends on the counterparty. There are people who are very easy to deal with commercially reasonable professional people. There are people who, you know, are, it can be very difficult and, you know, everything's a fight and there can be people who, you know, maybe they're not difficult, but they They're not particularly sophisticated, and there's a lot of almost educating the other side when you're doing a deal. So it varies from transaction to transaction, but you try to get a feel for the deal. I try to be collaborative. I try to generally be fairly reasonable. I don't start from where I think I'm going to end up
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