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Before becoming general counsel at Cision, Matt Royack gained valuable experience as a business lawyer at small and midsize firms in Maryland. These experiences were instrumental in shaping the leader he is today.
“It was great working for smaller firms because you got to deal with whatever comes in the door,” Royack says. “Starting off, I mostly focused on business transactions for a lot of small businesses, including restaurants and bars. But if a client’s kid got picked up over the weekend, I got the phone call, so I had to head down to the courthouse to sort it out. I was front facing with clients, had personal responsibility for the matters I was given, and got a chance to do a lot of different things for the client and for the business.”
As he honed his business transaction skills and learned to think on his feet, he represented clients from myriad industries, including in software development and coding. Royack, who had dabbled in programming in college, was immediately drawn to the work. It inspired him to move in-house at MICROS Systems Inc., which Oracle acquired in 2014. The in-house environment aligned well with the broad skill set he had gained during his decade as external counsel.
“Your team will become high performing organically if you set the blueprint. You need to act and behave in ways that you want others to emulate. That can be your responsiveness, how you ask questions, or how you come up with solutions. Your team will pay it forward.”
Matt Royack
“Handling the diversity of work at smaller law firms really prepared me. As an in-house lawyer, we deal with HR issues, real estate issues, corporate issues, negotiating with vendors, and litigation,” he says. “There’s a whole host of things that come up, so you need that broad-based skill set to handle those issues or know when you need more expertise.”
After nearly two years at Oracle and one year at Inovalon, Royack joined Cision as associate general counsel in 2016. At that time, he and his boss were a two-person team, handling everything from customer contracting to corporate filings and litigation deadlines. Since then, the legal department has grown to a global team of 20. As general counsel, Royack has become more of a people manager, which is a highlight of his tenure at Cision.
“I’ve overseen nearly every distinct group in the department, and I’ve enjoyed building those relationships,” Royack says. “That’s why I like being in-house—the ability to consistently work with the same people instead of moving from project to project as external counsel. Here, we get to develop that camaraderie and rapport with people.”
Currently, Royack and his colleagues are focused on positioning themselves for the future. With that goal in mind, data protection and privacy are paramount. So is the adoption of AI tools and other technology that will allow Cision to grow faster. He believes AI has “enormous potential for the legal industry,” but that doesn’t mean it will replace people.
“You’re always going to need people involved to check the output because [AI is] only as good as what you put into it. It’s only as good as the people around it. It’s just a machine, and someone’s going to have to punch the keys to tell it what to do,” he says.
“On the front end and back end, there needs to be some level of quality control, some knowledge of what works legally, what’s likely to work with a customer or vendor, and goals for entering into a particular contract,” he elaborates. “We’ll always need a human touch, but I believe AI can help speed things up for us.”
Royack prides himself on being a solutions-oriented servant leader who constantly asks the question: “How can I help you?”
And he doesn’t stop there. He follows up with, “What skills do you want to build? What areas of law do you want exposure to?” He explains, “My style is to talk with my staff through these things and to align on them. I want to hear from everyone, especially the people leaders.”
Leaders trying to get the most out of their teams should start by acknowledging a critical reality.
“It’s not about you. It’s about the team,” Royack says. “Your team will become high performing organically if you set the blueprint. You need to act and behave in ways that you want others to emulate. That can be your responsiveness, how you ask questions, or how you come up with solutions. Your team will pay it forward.”
