Patton
When talking about his outside interests, Robert Patton, vice president, general counsel and secretary for Lexmark International, protested that they just aren’t interesting.
“I’m pale and pasty,” he said, joking that his non-work biggest passions — his family and his work with his faith community and the Boy Scouts of America — might not necessarily pique the interest of others.
His enthusiasm for his work, however, is both interesting and infectious. Patton has clearly found his calling.
“I love my career. I love what I do today, so we’ll start off that I’m very biased,” he said.
After graduating from Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State University College of Law) in 1987, he joined Xerox as in-house counsel.
“I didn’t want to go the traditional route, so I have always worked as in-house counsel to a corporation,” said Patton.
That role was tailor-made for Patton.
“What I love about being in-house counsel is that I’m absolutely intimate with the business,” said Patton. “The value in-house counsel brings is that they know the business intimately, so when they’re providing help — legal help, business help — they’re trying to really help the business move forward, knock over whatever obstacles are there, but helping the business succeed. You do that not just by having great legal knowledge, but you have a combination of great legal knowledge and great business knowledge… and then being aligned with [the business] so you understand what their goals are and you help them reach those.
“When you’re sitting around with business folks solving an issue, you have a unique skill set that you bring to the table to help solve problems, solve issues, drive the business forward. You have to have a passion for the business — it’s not an 8-to-5 job, not that big law firms are, they’re certainly not — but you’re going to work just as hard, if not harder, than you would at a big law firm.”
Understanding his industry’s goals is of particular importance in the current business climate at Lexmark. In the past four years, Lexmark has completed 11 acquisitions at breakneck speed.
“And more to come,” Patton promised. “They’re going to keep me busy.”
Keeping Patton busy is the company’s move away from what the public may best know Lexmark for — printing.
“Since 2010, we’ve been very much on a path to diversify from our imaging base,” Patton said. “Printing is … a great business, but we wanted to go a little bit beyond that. You’ll hear in business worlds of ‘being adjacent.’ So the software companies we acquire all generally have to do with documents of some sort. You hear us talk about unstructured information. ... You have your core IT systems, like SAP or Oracle, but then you have emails. Email is sometimes how a lot of businesses operate. Well, how do you align all those things together so that information is at where people need it to be? So we’ve invested in a lot of companies since June of 2010 to do exactly like that.”
Patton couldn’t hide his enthusiasm as he talked about the future of Lexmark and his role in forging that path, one that he preaches with the conviction of a true-believer.
“What gets me up and gets me excited is these mergers and acquisitions,” he said. “The amount of work that the people are putting in the business operations — late nights — to truly transform the company and to make it wonderful, so for our shareholders, they’re being rewarded, but our employees are being rewarded.”
In addition to mergers and acquisitions, Patton and his team deal with a whole host of issues across a wide swath of legal areas. Sales issues, procurement and licensing issues, employment issues, antitrust issues, regulatory issues, environmental issues, product liability issues and intellectual property issues are all fertile legal ground for Lexmark’s in-house counsel. In addition, as a publicly traded company, Lexmark’s legal team is responsible for compliance with
securities laws.
“That’s a very important responsibility we have — to make sure that what we tell our investors and potential investors is accurate and very truthful. The law has become quite complex with Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, so you have to be very mindful of what you put out in these materials,” Patton said.
There are some times, however, when the in-house team needs to farm out the work. Lexmark is a global company, so when issues arise that require local expertise, Patton hires local firms to help with the work. Litigation is another area where the in-house team looks for outside help, although Patton and his team manage the process.
“We select the attorneys who will handle the case and then the strategy for the case,” said Patton. “Around the world, where the company is involved in litigation, whether we’re defending or bringing litigation, they’re responsible for that management of that piece of litigation. That’s a big part of their job — they’re to manage, making sure we’re successful with whatever outcome we want to achieve, making sure we’re in budget. It’s all project management.”
Patton and his team worked closely with outside counsel to prepare for a recent argument before the Supreme Court. Steven Loy, an attorney with Stoll Keenon Ogden, argued the case before the justices, but Patton oversaw the process, beginning with attorney selection.
“There was a lot of time spent in conference rooms, a lot of practice time. We had a professor from University of Kentucky prepare and practice who clerked at the Supreme Court, so it took a lot of preparation time,” he said.
For Patton, the effort and dedication are all part and parcel of a career experience in a company he loves in a role he was born to play. Not a word came out of his mouth on the subject without almost missionary zeal.
“It’s really the transformation of Lexmark and being part of it — I’m totally in love with this and making this happen,” Patton said. “It’s employing wonderful people; it’s expanding and giving them wonderful opportunities and making differences in their lives; and that’s kind of the fun of being part of the business.”