GC Sidebar: Luis Machado, General Counsel at TopBuild

In this GC Sidebar Season 2 episode, Paragon Legal CEO Trista Engel speaks with Luis Machado, General Counsel at TopBuild, about leadership, legal team strategy, and what it takes to be an effective business partner in-house.

Luis shares why deep business knowledge is one of the most important assets a general counsel can have, and how understanding operations, customers, and revenue drivers leads to better legal advice. He also discusses the importance of exposing legal teams to the business, building strong relationships across functions, and delivering practical, business-friendly solutions.

Luis also reflects on legal technology and AI, explaining why he sees promise in these tools but believes many solutions are still evolving. He shares how he approaches resourcing with a mix of full-time hires, outside counsel, and flexible legal support to deliver efficient, cost-effective value to the business.

Watch the full episode now.

Read the Full Conversation

Prefer reading over watching? Below is the complete transcript from our GC Sidebar interview with Luis Machado, General Counsel at TopBuild.

Trista Engel:

Welcome to GC Sidebar, a short and sharp conversation series with leading general counsel about the decisions, reflections, and people behind the title.

I’m Trista Engel, CEO of Paragon Legal, and today I’m joined by Luis Machado, General Counsel at TopBuild, a leading installer and specialty distributor to the construction industry.

Luis’s career has spanned construction, manufacturing, retail, and food and beverage, experience building teams and businesses that now shapes his approach to the building industry. Luis, thanks so much for joining me.

Luis Machado:

Thank you for having me.

Trista Engel:

Let’s dive in. What’s one issue facing legal teams right now that you think is overrated or premature?

Luis Machado:

Right now, I think legal technology is in an over-promise, under-deliver stage. Technology is great. It’s an enabler, and I use it. Everybody uses it. We tend to adopt technology relatively early, and there’s a lot of experimentation happening right now, especially around AI.

That’s all positive. AI is a great research starter. It helps prompt the thought process, and it can very quickly summarize a huge amount of publicly available information. It’s definitely a time-saver.

But where it still falls short is in very specific use cases or highly tailored needs. It still feels too one-size-fits-all. So while I think the technology is developing quickly, and there are some great companies working on it, I’m cautious about tying into one particular solution too early.

Right now, there’s a lot of pressure to get on board immediately or risk being left behind. I’m not sure that’s true just yet. I think the technology will get there fairly quickly, but today, it’s still not quite ready.

Trista Engel:

I like that point a lot because there is so much pressure on legal teams, and teams across all functions, to implement AI and technology.

You also risk implementation fatigue, because change management is such a big part of this. If the technology isn’t quite there yet and you push it too early, then when it finally is ready, your team may be less willing to keep testing and trying new things.

Luis Machado:

Exactly. There’s also the initial implementation burden, which can be a real distraction for a hardworking, very busy team. I don’t think there’s anyone in-house who would say they have extra time on their hands to manage a big implementation effort.

So it’s something you have to be cautious about. I’m optimistic, but I’m also cautious, because we still have full-time jobs.

Trista Engel:

Yes, absolutely. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a GC?

Luis Machado:

Very simply, you cannot possibly know too much about your business. And I’m not talking about legal. I’m talking about the business you’re in and the business you’re supporting.

My proudest moments are when people in the business refer to me as a great business partner. I don’t really care whether they call me a great lawyer, but I do care if they call me a great business partner.

To me, that means I’m part of the team. I’m very focused on making sure my legal team is exposed to the business as much as possible. Go on sales calls. Visit locations or branches. Go see customers. Visit suppliers. Talk to people about the business, not just the law.

People already know you’re a lawyer, so they’ll naturally tell you what they’re worried about. But what really matters is understanding what they do every day. What takes up their time? What do they wish they had more time to do? How do they think about revenue and expenses?

When you have a deep understanding of the business, you become a much better partner and a much better lawyer. When someone calls with an issue, you’re not scrambling to figure out how it fits into the business. You already know. That allows you to provide custom, focused advice that actually helps them.

Especially coming out of a law firm, where the work is often tied to very discrete projects, it was a major realization for me that being a GC, and being in-house generally, is about understanding the business deeply and delivering pragmatic, business-friendly solutions.

That was a very important lesson for me.

Trista Engel:

And what a great lesson to cascade down to your team. Not a lot of in-house lawyers get the opportunity, or the encouragement from their leader, to really go into the business, go on sales calls, and get in the weeds.

That’s amazing for relationship-building and credibility-building, but also, like you said, for better lawyering because you have that deep understanding of the business.

Luis Machado:

Absolutely. You really can’t beat that hands-on, face-to-face relationship with people at all levels of the business. It makes you much more effective as a lawyer.

Trista Engel:

Absolutely. What’s one career moment that changed your trajectory?

Luis Machado:

This may sound simple, but moving from a law firm to an in-house role really changed everything for me.

I was actually very happy at the law firm. I was a mid-level M&A associate, doing deals, and I loved it. Once you get the deal bug, it never really goes away.

But I was recruited to go in-house, and what really made the difference was who recruited me. The General Counsel at the company became a real mentor.

When I first met with her, I was very skeptical. This was back in the 1990s, and I wondered whether going in-house would be intellectually stimulating enough. I worried I might get bored.

But she walked me through the company’s five-year growth plan, explained what my role in that growth would be, and showed a real interest in my development as a person and as a lawyer.

That was the first time I had worked with someone who was so clearly invested in my growth. She became a real mentor, even after I left that company. I would still call her for advice and to catch up.

That experience changed the way I think about the profession. It made me a much better business partner because she was so focused on ensuring that lawyers on her team were deeply embedded in the business and understood what it meant to truly be part of a business team.

It also reinforced for me that this profession is very people-focused. You build relationships, you work with people, and ideally you don’t just become good business partners, you also make friends.

Trista Engel:

That sounds like such an eye-opening moment for you, moving into a different phase of your career and a different part of the profession, and seeing how it could work in a way you hadn’t seen before.

Luis Machado:

Yes, and I’ve tried in my own way, throughout my career, to make sure that people I’ve hired and worked with understand the importance of that. I hope I’ve done even part as good a job as she did, because I honestly believe this is a profession about people, not abstract concepts.

Trista Engel:

I love that. GCs have a wide range of resourcing options beyond FTEs and outside counsel these days. What’s your approach to resourcing your legal team?

Luis Machado:

To me, there’s no single approach.

Part of what I do, and what I use technology for, is trying to be predictive. We have billing systems, tracking systems, and we try to be data-driven. Of course, the world changes, and you have to be flexible, but we try to think ahead and prepare for what we know is coming.

I don’t like to hire someone for a very specific job unless I know that role will continue to add value over time.

We use outside counsel, which is useful for specific expertise and specialized advice. But we’ve also used temporary hiring. There are excellent paralegals and flexible legal resources who can come in and do a lot of work very quickly, especially now that so much can be done remotely.

You’re not asking someone to spend two weeks sitting in an office far from where they live. That flexibility has made temporary legal support much more practical.

So we try to flex and make sure that whatever we need, we’re providing good, efficient, cost-effective value to the business. And that doesn’t always mean outside counsel.

Trista Engel:

Yes, and the cost-effective piece can be a tough one, but there really are different types and levels of resources for different kinds of work on every legal team. It’s great to hear how thoughtfully you’re approaching that and how many options you’ve explored.

Luis Machado:

There are a lot of options.

Trista Engel:

If you weren’t an attorney, what would you be?

Luis Machado:

Before law school, I didn’t go straight from college, and I was in sales. I was a traveling sales rep, and later worked in commercial real estate and office-related sales.

So I’d probably still be in sales. I like talking to people. I like understanding how different people solve different problems. Sales, at its core, is about solving people’s problems for them.

I’ve always liked that personal approach, and maybe that’s one reason I enjoy being in-house as well. So unless I were independently wealthy, which unfortunately I’m not, I’d probably be in sales.

Trista Engel:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lawyer say their alternate career would be in sales. Your salespeople must love you.

Luis Machado:

I do like to go out on sales calls. They’re fun.

Trista Engel:

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

Luis Machado:

I had to think about that one a little bit. Twenty years ago, around the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006, was actually a memorable time.

My kids were young then, and I changed jobs in early 2006. Between jobs, I had about three weeks of free time, which is one of those rare moments in life when you’re done with one job and haven’t yet started the next.

As a lawyer, there are very few moments when you literally have nothing to do other than spend time with your family.

We were living in Chicago at the time, and we packed up the car, came down to Florida, and spent a couple of weeks on the beach.

What I remember most is spending time in the sand with the kids and just taking some real downtime. When you’re younger, you don’t always appreciate those moments as much as you do later, but I do remember appreciating how peaceful that time was.

Trista Engel:

That sounds lovely, and like you said, such a unique opportunity when there’s nothing hanging over your head and you can really just be present.

Luis Machado:

Exactly.

Trista Engel:

That’s amazing. Well, this was great, Luis. Thank you so much for being with me and for sharing your journey with us today.

Luis Machado:

My pleasure. Thank you for listening.

Trista Engel:

All right, 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.