Lessons with Leaders: Lori Baggett in Conversation
Chief Legal Office Lori Baggett shares her journey from small‑town Florida to Big Law litigator to CLO at PODS, a national moving and storage company. In this 11th Episode of Compliance Chronicles, she talks with host Liisa Thomas about what really changes when you move from law firm partner to in‑house counsel and ultimately into the chief legal officer role.
Lori describes her path from Division I basketball player to clerk on the Eleventh Circuit, to 18 years at a prestigious firm where she built a practice in employment law, construction, and OSHA workplace safety—while also taking on leadership roles like hiring partner and office managing shareholder.
A central theme is the identity shift that comes with going in‑house. She contrasts the law firm environment, where everything is organized around selling your legal services, with the in‑house world, where the focus is on being a business person with a law degree, not “the lawyer” in the corner office.
Lori and Liisa dig into how to avoid being seen as “the department of no” and instead become a trusted partner who helps the business get to yes. Lori shares how she learned to make sure she’s invited to the right meetings, build credibility with business colleagues, and communicate that her job is to help them achieve their goals in a safe, compliant way. She talks about mentors who modeled calm, unflappable leadership and taught her when to push, when to listen, and how to stay steady in chaos.
The conversation tackles people leadership and feedback as ongoing challenges, no matter the setting. Lori discusses learning to give and receive constructive feedback, advocate for yourself, and live out her personal mantra: “Do no harm, but take no stuff.” She emphasizes the importance of standing up for your needs—whether that’s feedback, mentorship, or opportunities—while still being a supportive leader for your team and partners.
Operationally, Lori shares how she thinks about building systems that set people up to do the right thing. She talks about looking at leadership workloads, time and motion studies, and the realistic number of hours in a workday when designing compliance and safety expectations. Instead of endlessly adding to the plate of field leaders, she emphasizes prioritization, clarity, and creating structures that make compliance achievable rather than overwhelming.
Lori also offers a powerful mindset shift around blame and mistakes. She explains why she reminds herself that people don’t wake up wanting to do a terrible job at work; most are trying their best within the systems and information they have. That perspective leads her to “link arms” with colleagues, use “we” language, and focus on understanding why something happened before Monday‑morning quarterbacking. She shares her belief that each of us is “one of one,” and that careers get better when we own who we are instead of trying to fit someone else’s mold. For those earlier in their journey, she encourages patience: you will find your “sea legs,” and staying true to yourself will help you find the spaces that are truly the right fit.
If you’re a law firm partner thinking about moving in‑house, an aspiring general counsel or chief legal officer, or a compliance and risk leader looking for inspiration on how to be a better business partner, this episode offers candid insight and practical takeaways.
If you enjoy this conversation, make sure to subscribe to Compliance Chronicles in your favorite podcast app and follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes on privacy, AI, internal audit, and real‑world compliance leadership.
speaker-0: Welcome to Compliance Chronicles, where we learn from professionals shaping the world of compliance. I'm your host, Liisa Thomas, outside Privacy and Compliance counsel adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, and a lifelong learner of organizational change. â personal journeys to hard-earned lessons, â are the Chronicles that inspire and guide. â dive in. â We have Lori Baggett joining us. And Lori, tell us a little bit about your current role.
speaker-1: I am the Chief Legal Officer for PODS. We're a containerized moving and storage company based in Clearwater, Florida. We have three in-house lawyers and also over our safety department and our risk and insurance department. Corporate governance is all under my leadership. I was born and raised in the Panhandle of Florida, small town called Crestview. â Went to college, played Division I basketball, so that was fun. â and then came back home to Florida to go to law school down at Stetson in St. Pete. I liked the legal community quite a bit. And I got a clerkship on the 11th circuit court of appeals. My judge was based right in Tampa. So I've been in the Tampa area since 1999. And I landed at a very prestigious firm there, Carlton Fields, and stayed for 18 years. I worked my way up. I'm a litigator, but I did lots of different things. Employment law, â did some appellate work, did some construction defect litigation. â and then the nice intersection between employment law and construction was OSHA work. So workplace safety was what I spent like the last 10 years of my time at Carlton fields doing. I was doing a lot of the leadership administrative stuff as well. So had hiring partner for the Tampa office and then finished up being the office managing shareholder. And then a client gave me a call and said, Hey, want to do something different? And I said, tell me more. And so May of 21, I went in house with PODS as the associate general counsel. And then when my former boss retired, they offered me the job. And so I've been the chief legal officer since January of 2025.
speaker-0: Let's talk about some of the challenges that you've faced over your career, whether it's the law firm challenges or in-house or the transition from law firm to in-house.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's interesting. So in the first three months that I was at pods, people would ask me, â what's it like for the very reasons that you just articulated. And I finally landed on about three or four months in, and I said, you know, the best thing about my new job is I am no longer the product. Worst thing about my new job is I'm no longer the product. I went from my entire professional career. The law firm was focused on doing whatever it could to help me sell my legal services, my ability to thrive. I used to tell people like, if I wanted Diet Dr. Pepper in the break room, they would get a Diet Dr. Pepper. At PODS if I say I like Diet Dr. Pepper, no one even listens. does this have anything to do with a container or movement? Or worse, they say, who are you? And I'm like, don't worry about it. I just work here.
speaker-0: I did.
speaker-1: So that was challenging and it was humbling and it was also great, right? Because it just let me focus on doing the work, you know, learning how to be a business person with a law degree, right? Like not their lawyer, but a business person who happens to have a law degree. â And it's been the traditional things of how do you make sure they invite you to the meetings, that they want to have you there, that they want to partner with you, they don't. view you as, you you chill the conversation, you chill the innovation, you just, your guardrails are just the department of no. â You know, how do you overcome that? How do you really â let them know that you're there to help them get to yes, which is the way I try to let them know is my job. And so that was a little bit challenging. My former boss was very helpful. He had been in house for quite some time â and he was just steady Eddie, right? He was calm. in the chaos. just nothing, he was unflappable is what we used to say. It helped me learn patience in a different kind of way and really just learning how to push and when to push and understanding challenges.
speaker-0: challenges that have been like very much on your shoulders since you have had this role or
speaker-1: And that was hard when you're new, trying to understand like, are we doing here? Like, why do we do it this way? And people were like, whoa, you just gotta hurry up and do it. So â that was hard to be learning the business that way. But as things kind of slowed down and allowed me to spend more time â studying and learning about how we do, what we do, what the propositions are for how we make money, that was... â a welcome respite, if you will. But I people leadership at the end of the day is still the same struggles of people leadership, whether you're at whatever place where you are. You learning how to give and receive constructive feedback can be hard. â And then just also finding the space to speak up for yourself. Like, you know, one of the things I always like to say is do no harm, but take no stuff. You know, still finding the ability to stand up for yourself. and get the feedback that you need, the mentorship that you need, the breaks that you need, â all of that.
speaker-0: Let's move to talking about things that you've learned as you face those challenges, the lessons that you've taken away that you have imparted on others â as you are guiding them through their careers.
speaker-1: think when I am the most frustrated, what grounds me when I try to find the moment of like, take a deep breath, Lori, like calm down, is the trying to always understand why the thing has happened, right? Because most of the time people come to us, try as we might to get them to be proactive. know, many times it is the reactive, like something has happened and they're seeking us out for help. And so I'll trying to remind myself that, you know, people don't wake up in the morning. shower, get dressed, go to work and say, I really want to do a terrible job at work today. Like, let's just, let's just go in there and mess it up. Right? Like, so they're trying, right? They're trying. And so I try to remind myself, are we giving them the best tools? Are we breaking it down so that they understand what's expected of them? Cause many times we're not. Many times it's process. And you know, just understanding that really linking arms, getting in the boat with them is usually how I try to visualize it in my head. You know, always speaking in terms of we. and us and, you know, why did we do that? The royal way, why did we do that? What were we thinking? â And really understanding the situation and then trying to find the path outward as opposed to just being the lawyer coming in after the fact and Monday morning quarterbacking. I find that that has helped people be more open to bringing things to me sooner.
speaker-0: think there's a big lesson there of creating systems that allow people to do the right thing.
speaker-1: And even sometimes we've been looking at it from an operational standpoint of how much we may be asking our leaders in the field to do and still, you know, having to look at time and motion studies to say like, this is the, they only have this many hours in the, in the work day. Right. So, so make some decisions about how important these things are that you're asking them to do and prioritize, right? Set them up for success. Don't just keep adding to their plate without considering all the other things they're supposed to be doing.
speaker-0: hurting advice, either for people who are just starting out in their career or for folks that are same level that we are. I'm not saying age, but the same level that we are and looking for a little bit of inspiration.
speaker-1: You know, I think probably one of the other, after I progressed through the, everybody's saying, â what's it like? How are you doing? I think one of the main things I tell people is that it's still about relationships. And so it doesn't matter what level of your career that you're at, relationships matter. And so genuinely and authentically showing up and building those relationships, people that understand me and how I want to show up in this world. I think just â that, right? That there's â else that's going to know how to be Liisa with two eyes, but you. â you are, you are one one, right? I am one of one. Like that is, â try to just remind myself every day just to be the best at that. And I find that it has served me well. It doesn't mean that every space is for me, but then I'm happier in the spaces that are for me. And I think at our stage in our careers, â I try to remind people that are younger to just hang in there. You're gonna find your sea legs, you're gonna get there, but just reminding yourself that you are one of one. And so just stay true to yourself and you're gonna find your place.
speaker-0: Thank you so much, Lori, for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Compliance Chronicles, where we look for guidance and inspiration from the personal journeys of compliance professionals.