High-Performing Legal Teams: Leadership Lessons from Karna Nisewaner

What are the key ingredients for building legal teams that truly perform at high levels? It’s a question every in-house legal leader must eventually face. While legal acumen is critical, technical skills alone don’t build trust, foster collaboration, or encourage long-term growth. According to Karna Nisewaner, General Counsel at Cadence Design Systems, the secret to building high-performing legal teams lies in relationships, empowerment, and authenticity.

Karna Nisewaner brings a wealth of experience to the table. Having grown her career at Cadence through roles spanning patents, employment law, commercial transactions, and litigation, she embodies the values of resilience and leadership. Her career path illustrates how in-house lawyers can become transformational leaders by prioritizing people and long-term development alongside legal outcomes, essential for creating high-performing legal teams.

Watch the full conversation with Karna Nisewaner here:

Karna’s journey at Cadence Design Systems began in a specialized role focused on intellectual property. Over time, her responsibilities expanded to encompass employment matters, litigation, commercial deals, and regulatory compliance. Each new area allowed her to deepen her knowledge of the business and broaden her leadership impact, marking her as a key figure in fostering high-performing teams.

This evolution highlights a key quality: adaptability that is crucial for forming legal teams that perform at high levels. Karna’s example shows that a culture of continuous growth and cross-functional learning can help legal teams stay ahead of the curve while adding strategic value to the organization.

One of the most important leadership lessons Karna shares is learning how to delegate not just tasks, but trust. She recalls how stepping back from direct oversight of the company’s open-source program allowed team members to innovate and excel—surpassing even her own expectations. This is a critical element for the performance of legal teams.

Karna emphasizes that effective delegation doesn’t mean letting go entirely—it means stepping aside to let others lead. This mindset builds confidence and independence across the team, making it more resilient and prepared for scaling challenges, which is crucial for high-performing legal teams.

Trust and connection are the bedrock of Karna’s leadership approach, critical for forming legal teams that perform successfully. She believes that legal teams thrive when people feel safe to ask questions, own their work, and collaborate openly. She fosters this by being approachable, listening deeply, and creating a culture where mistakes are seen as part of learning—not failures.

In Karna’s view, legal leaders who invest in genuine relationships unlock their team’s best work. This philosophy encourages engagement and fuels the kind of collaboration needed to drive business success. Empowering legal teams contributes to their high performance.

Karna views mentorship not as a top-down responsibility, but as a shared journey of growth. She actively learns from her team’s strengths while offering guidance based on her experiences. This reciprocal approach helps everyone grow while reinforcing a sense of shared ownership and mutual respect, pivotal aspects of legal teams that perform optimally.

By recognizing her team’s individual talents and allowing them to lead in their own areas of expertise, Karna fosters a pipeline of capable, confident professionals, contributing to the team’s high performance, ready for the next challenge.

Leadership isn’t sustainable without authenticity and balance, essential in crafting legal teams that perform excellently. Karna stresses the importance of being herself, both at work and at home. She sets clear boundaries to preserve time for family and community—and encourages her team to do the same.

After initially not being selected for the General Counsel role, she maintained a positive outlook and ran for a seat on the Palo Alto School Board. This period taught her that resilience and community engagement can offer fulfillment while keeping you prepared for the next opportunity. Eventually, her persistence paid off, marking her role pivotal in establishing a high-performing legal team environment.

Karna Nisewaner’s story reminds us that building legal teams isn’t just about process and productivity. It’s about people—trusting them, mentoring them, and empowering them to lead. By fostering an environment of growth, balance, and authenticity, in-house legal leaders can build high-performing teams that exceed expectations and drive meaningful business impact.

Watch the full conversation here:  Notes to My (Legal) Self: Season 5, Episode 12 (ft. Karna Nisewaner)

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