GC Sidebar: Claudia Regen, General Counsel at Spotless Brands

One of the hardest parts of the GC role isn’t the legal analysis. It’s getting people aligned enough to actually make decisions.

In the next episode of GC Sidebar, Claudia Regen, General Counsel at Spotless Brands, shares why so much of the role today is about helping different teams speak the same language so the business can move forward with clarity and confidence.

In fast-moving organizations, having the right answer isn’t always enough. It’s how you show up, communicate, and create alignment matters just as much.

In her conversation with our CEO, Trista Engel, Claudia also discusses AI governance, leadership growth, and how flexible legal talent can help teams stay focused on the most strategic work.

Full episode now available.

Read the Full Conversation

Prefer reading over watching? Below is the complete transcript from our GC Sidebar interview with Claudia Regen, General Counsel at Spotless Brands.

Trista Engel: Welcome to GC Sidebar, a short and sharp conversation series with leading general counsels about the decisions, the reflections, and the people behind the title. I’m Trista Engel, CEO of Paragon Legal, and today I’m joined by Claudia Regen, General Counsel at Spotless Brands.

Claudia is a nine-year GC, and she has led legal teams in telecom, food service distribution, software, and now car wash. Claudia, you’ve been such a great supporter of this series. It was lovely to meet you a few months ago in person, and I’m so excited to have you. Thanks for being here.

Claudia Regen: Thanks so much!

Trista Engel: Alright, let’s jump in. What’s one issue facing legal teams right now that’s not getting enough attention?

Claudia Regen: I think we’re all working really hard to adopt AI and new technology and tools, and often the governance and integration work needed to make these tools drive the business outcomes we want doesn’t get enough attention. From my vantage point, we need to look at our systems holistically and ask, what did we build? Does it drive the outcomes we’re looking for? Because if we don’t design them with the end in mind, we could inherit some defaults. I think the real shift, as we’re all moving so fast, is to move from adopting the tools to operational transformation, where governance isn’t separate from the work — it’s part of the work.

Trista Engel: I love that point. There’s so much pressure on legal teams and businesses in general to adopt AI that sometimes the adoption of the tool comes before figuring out the problem we’re really solving and how we’re going to implement it. You can’t have success with AI if you don’t really know what you’re doing and have a framework for what success looks like.

Claudia Regen: Totally agree with you.

Trista Engel: What’s something that surprised you about the GC role?

Claudia Regen: Everybody talks about the role as a problem-solving role, and it is. But what’s really surprised me is how much of the role is actually facilitation — enabling the business to move with confidence. In this role, we’re not just solving the legal problem; as GCs, we’re embedded in the conversations between finance, product, and sales, so they can solve the business problem together. The legal analysis, in my experience, is often the easier part. The harder part is getting people to speak the same language and creating the conditions for decisions to be made. How you show up in the moment matters just as much as having the right answer.

Trista Engel: Yeah, I’ve heard the GC role described as the “dot connector.”

Claudia Regen: I like that!

Trista Engel: Yeah, I loved that too. Legal really has a vantage point that no other function has — it’s very cross-functional, and you see all the pieces of the puzzle along the way. It’s a really unique perspective.

What’s the best career advice you’ve received or given?

Claudia Regen: Someone once told me, as I was trying to figure out a next step, to become comfortable being uncomfortable. As a former litigator, I’m used to preparing — maybe over-preparing — for everything. What they said was that preparation and experience are foundational, but the places where you have an opportunity to move or change your trajectory are places where you might not be 100% ready, but you have the background and grounding to step into anyway. In my experience, and in the experience of many of my peers, growth really happens in the stretch.

Trista Engel: My kids are learning how to ski, and we’ve been telling them: if you’re not falling, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. That reminds me of the advice you’re talking about — you’ve got to get uncomfortable to grow.

Claudia Regen: I wish I knew that when I was a kid, Trista.

Trista Engel: How have you leveraged flexible legal talent as a way to augment your in-house team?

Claudia Regen: I’ll use an example from a past company where we were navigating a major product launch while also undergoing significant organizational change. I brought in flexible legal talent to handle high-volume, repeatable work — a couple of examples that come to mind are NDAs, vendor contracts, and some regulatory filings.

It turned out to be great. I hadn’t used flexible legal talent prior to that, but it freed the core team to focus on business-critical matters and support the business through its transition. The key was being really disciplined about deciding what we, as the in-house team, needed to hold onto, and what we could delegate to skilled attorneys with some oversight. We stayed on budget, the in-house team didn’t feel overly burdened, and it was a real learning experience for my whole team — myself included — in how to think about delegation and build our team differently.

Trista Engel: That’s a fantastic example. The thing I loved most about what you said was the ability to keep your in-house team focused on the business-critical, strategic matters — which I think gets overlooked sometimes. Yes, you’re managing budget, yes, you’re managing workload and burnout for your existing team, but you’re also developing them in a new way and giving them opportunities by freeing them from the day-to-day, especially during a big project.

Claudia Regen: If you don’t mind one last piece — one other way it helped in a development sense was that it gave team members the opportunity to manage, which not everyone had had the chance to do before.

Trista Engel: That’s a great point, because that’s something you can’t always give with your existing team, but this is a way to create that opportunity. Thanks for sharing.

When you’re not lawyering, where are you most likely to be found?

Claudia Regen: I’m a pretty curious person, and I like to explore through different avenues — could be something as easy as reading or traveling. I’ve also gotten into what I’ll call hiking, though the rest of the world would probably consider my hikes to be really long walks. There are some great trails near me, and hiking has become a favorite way to explore, especially when I’m traveling. This past year I managed to get to the Finger Lakes, Italy, and Napa Valley. And sometimes my best thinking happens on a walk.

Trista Engel: There are studies that say when your vantage point is literally sky-high — what your eyes actually see — it opens up your mind and your thinking. There’s some scientific backing to what you just said about thinking differently and coming up with your best ideas.

Claudia Regen: Love that.

Trista Engel: And the bonus question — Paragon turns 20 this year. What’s one memory from 20 years ago that still stands out to you?

Claudia Regen: Well, congratulations on 20 years, that’s a pretty great anniversary. On the personal front, in 2006 I met my husband, and it’s a pretty fun story. I’d lived in the DC area for a long time and was looking to expand my social circle, so I heard about a local food group and decided to give it a try.

It turned out to be a great experience — I made a ton of friends who are still friends today. The story of how I met my husband: we went to a big group dinner, about 12 of us, at a Chinese restaurant in the area — for anyone local, it’s a Peter Chang restaurant. As the food made its way around the lazy Susan, we’d each take our share, and one of the dishes was a special the chef had prepared — these special ribs.

When the lazy Susan got to me and my now-husband, Scott, there was only one rib left for the two of us, and he shared it with me — in what I still like to call a heroic act.

Trista Engel: I love that. That is an amazing story, and way to go, Scott — best decision he ever made, sharing his rib with you. Thanks for sharing.

Alright, Claudia, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and your stories.

Claudia Regen: Thank you so much.

Trista Engel: Okay, that’s a wrap on today’s episode of GC Sidebar. Catch more great conversations on our website at paragonlegal.com. Thanks for tuning in.