Combating this required a culture change, something that Harris said she tackled directly with increased transparency. Using updated dashboards and combining the department’s data in one place, she encouraged the company’s attorneys to think about what story they would tell the business side when it comes to litigation and other decision-making.

Harris also impressed the new culture of transparency on outside counsel. She relayed that Walmart previously had 70,000 different engagement letters, and she sought to standardize them in a way similar to what the business side used.

“That process was as if I was asking the outside law firms to climb Mount Everest,” she said. “About 20 percent said, ‘We’re not doing that.’ It was this pride and ego.”

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