Todd Smithline, CEO of Bonterms, describes the importance of developing skills that go beyond your legal expertise. Salesmanship, project management, and information synthesis all lend themselves to adaptability in both legal and non-legal roles.
Todd Smithline, CEO of Bonterms, describes the importance of developing skills that go beyond your legal expertise. Salesmanship, project management, and information synthesis all lend themselves to adaptability in both legal and non-legal roles. He describes the value of feedback, how to offer value to your clients, and how to stay positive.
Bonterms is the two-sided negotiation platform built on Standard Agreements. We solve contracts for Procurement and Sales, while keeping Legal happy. Average negotiation times on the Bonterms Platform are measured in minutes. Bonterms is lawyer-led and funded by XYZ Capital and Wilson Sonsini.
“ So I learned how to create a brand, how to create a product. Because even as lawyers, we are selling a product. I learned how to price a product, how to market a product, how to get a customer. How do you get a recurring customer? … I made the full step, the crazy step, the completely off the pier and into the bay step of stopping being a lawyer altogether. But even after that last leap, I took all my friends with me. I created this committee of 100 lawyers. I had a relationship with my prior firm. I was able to leverage the next step.”
“The one piece of advice I think I'd give lawyers who are interested in doing this: Sometimes I see this thing on LinkedIn where people say "Recovering lawyer" or "Former lawyer" or something like that. And I think I read that differently maybe than it's intended because I read it as them distancing themselves from that expertise and that experience. Whereas I think one of the easiest ways to make this move as a lawyer is to build on it, right? I think that all three of us did that, right? We didn't desert our former expertise, our relationships. We used them to spring to the next thing.”
“ I think the highest prized skill right now, across companies, is the people who can synthesize disparate information. And communicate it well, but at the same time deal with complex situations and nuance. This is something a lot of lawyers are trained to do. One of the skills that we really develop with lawyers is concentration. Paying attention to the details, pulling together disparate facts, and synthesizing information. So I think that is really going to be the coin of the realm going forward.”
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01:12 - Meet David Wang
03:27 - Meet Todd Smithline
10:25 - Taking the leap away from legal
18:02 - Ensuring success in any role
27:47 - Non-legal roles to pursue
34:29 - How to approach law school
54:32 - Defining your value
55:52 - Keep or redline
57:45 - Where to find Todd
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Find Todd Smithline on LinkedIn
Find Jessica Nguyen on LinkedIn
More about Docusign
[00:00:00] Jessica: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of in house, the podcast for in house legal by in house legal. I'm your host, Jessica Nguyen, Deputy General Counsel at DocuSign. This is a very special episode, folks. Not your normal In House episode where we talk about how to be a better in house attorney. We're going a little different path here. We are going to answer the question that most legal professionals encounter at some point in their career, which is, do I really want to do this for the rest of my life? The rest of my life? For most folks, the answer is no. And, and that's okay. There are careers and paths are alternative to a traditional legal career.
[00:00:51] I'm not alone in this conversation. I actually have a fantastic co host who I've known for years. And we met years ago, back when I was at a legal tech startup and he was on the board, folks. Please meet David Wang, Chief Innovation Officer at Cooley. David, how are you doing?
[00:01:13] David: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:01:15] Jessica: So David, you have a Chief Innovation Officer at a very established law firm. That wasn't a job. That existed back when we were in law school, honestly, I didn't even know it existed even four or five years ago. David, can you tell the audience about what you do as a Chief Innovation Officer and and how you got there?
[00:01:36] David: it is definitely an evolving role. So I am Chief Innovation Officer of Cooley. I'm in charge of the technology strategy of the firm product development.
[00:01:48] Across the ecosystem now, law firms are going to become more like, you know, big boy, big girl companies and that have real technology function. And the Chief Innovation Officer is essentially a stand in for CTO in most cases. Um, I actually was the, uh, first Chief Innovation Officer here at Cooley and also was the first chief innovation officer at my prior firm, Wilson Sassini, and that's where I made the transition from a practicing lawyer to the technology person. Um, and I'm delighted to have this career conversation because I'm also kind of a career delton. So before going to law school, I was an entrepreneur myself, and then I've held a range of jobs from an English teacher, to tour guide, to caterer, to bartender, to working at a rodeo. So, I'm happy to chat about alternative career choices.
[00:02:40] Jessica: I'm sorry, I heard bartender, english teacher and rodeo. Do you actually ride the animals? And what,
[00:02:47] David: no, no, no. I was selling Coca Cola in the stands, but that was definitely my first job, and it was a sales job. Um.
[00:02:54] Jessica: Hey. Those are fundamental life skills, sales jobs. Honestly, I love that.
[00:03:00] David: So, David, uh, get your grilling hat on because, uh, we are not alone in this very interesting discussion. We have a special guest that we've both known for years now, as we have both been in the legal technology ecosystem for many years. And so please, folks, please welcome Todd Smithline, founder and CEO of Bonterms to the podcast. Todd, how are you doing?
[00:03:28] Todd: I'm great, and it's great to be here with both of you.
[00:03:32] Jessica: Great. So Todd, tell us a bit about Bonterms and about your background.
[00:03:37] Todd: Great. So, yeah, I am the founder and CEO of Bonterms. Bonterms solves contracts for procurement and sales while keeping legal happy. So we have a solution which helps procurement departments and sales departments negotiate and come to agreement on their contracts. So we help a fortune 500 customer on one side and an enterprise software SAS or professional services vendor on the other enter into that MSA, the Professional Services Agreement, the DPA, that stack of contracts that must be negotiated.
[00:04:14] And entered into every time a purchase is made, you know, David mentioned that one way to think of his role as chief technology officer, and he mentioned that they both build tech and they acquire tech right now. And every single time they acquire tech, they're entering into these contracts as is every other customer.
[00:04:30] So we've solved that problem through a solution, which is a set of standard agreements, which are drafted and validated by 100 lawyer committee and a two sided platform that makes it very easy for that negotiation to happen.
[00:04:42] Jessica: Hmm. And what is it about that technology? Do you think really streamlines and ease of negotiations between the parties? Is it the terms? Is it the tech? What do you, what did you learn, Todd?
[00:04:53] Todd: So it's a great question and it really comes from the fact that I've been a practicing lawyer for 30 years. So, you know, Jessica, you mentioned that, you know, we've known each other for a long time from the legal tech community. David, we've known each, we've all known each other. One of the nice things about this community is that it is an actual community.
[00:05:09] People are interested in what others are doing. We help each other out. I think we, you know, generally support each other very well. So my, my approach has been a little bit different. Then the, you know, the builders that came before me into the space in the sense that I came to it from inside the contract as it were, right. So I have been doing this work for 30 years, really focusing on this work. And I understand the process a little bit differently, I think. So I think Jessica more than anything magical about the standards themselves, although that is a huge part of what makes this work or the way we design the platform.
[00:05:44] What I would say is it's actually the insight. To understand exactly how that process works, what the customer really cares about, what the vendor really cares about, what is important in that agreement to each party the nuances, that are involved. Uh, the social signaling that's involved. So not just the law and the language of the contract, but actually how parties negotiate. So if you've been in, you know, if you're me, thousands of these conversations, right? You just simply have a slightly different perspective on that process. And so being a lawyer and having, you know, really you learn the craft, learn the trade and taking that seriously and really perfected my skills in this regard over a very long period of time.
[00:06:28] I honestly think is the reason this platform works is because we built it to, to create the solution I always would have wanted when I wasn't, you know, when I was in the house, when I was a GC. Or when I was even at a law firm negotiating these deals, right? How do I focus the parties together? And it doesn't mean that I can't build a conversation that's just as important with less animosity, allow them to have the very important conversation they need to have while at the same time, not being taxed with going through a bunch of routine provisions that don't need to be relitigated in every single contract. So that.
[00:06:59] Jessica: It always, it's always the same provisions, right? Todd, that get negotiated and discussed over and over. Yeah.
[00:07:06] Todd: So Jessica,, you know your WCGD docusign, before that you were general counsel and at Lexion. And what I would say is, I'm sure, that if you were in an event and you happen to meet one of your customers and somebody, or a potential customer, right, and, and somebody ran up and said, I'm gonna give you a pad of paper and go sit with this person. I'm gonna give you a cup of coffee. We're gonna give you 20 minutes. Can you guys sort out everything you need to sort out for this customer to be a customer of Lexion or DocuSign, right? And Jessica, you'd be like, of course, just give me 10 minutes. I'll get it done with that, right? We'll just get it done because we know the eight things we need to discuss.
[00:07:39] We know everybody's starting and ending points. And also we're going to do this in a collaborative way. So that's sort of the inside of Bonterms. Let's just leave everybody to that conversation. Right? And that's what we've done.
[00:07:51] Jessica: I love that. So Todd, your introduction actually segues smoothly to our discussion about the topic of the day. And my 1st question about what inspired all of that. Well, what more you and David to really take a non traditional legal career path. Todd, just like you, before DocuSign, I was employee 12 at an unknown legal technology startup called Lexion with maybe three clients and not much revenue.
[00:08:22] I think you hit the nail on the head, Todd, where folks like the three of us is, we know the problem so well, we've lived it firsthand, and that is one of our drivers, what fills our cup each day, what inspires us. So, David, tell us, uh, what inspired you to transition from just being a high performing, I'm sure, You, you build a lot of hours for a law firm and a law firm attorney to a chief innovation officer.
[00:08:52] You
[00:08:53] David: When I hear, um, Todd talk, it's, you know, this is one path. Right. In terms of the different career, which is that, um, there's a gap that you see. Right. And then you are kind of inspired to try to fill that gap, you know, you are maybe unsatisfied with the answers that, um, come because, you know, people come to you to ask for that answer.
[00:09:18] so I like when I was a mid level associate seeing so much repetitive things that just were kind of revving and, you know, thinking that none of us really went to law school to do that.
[00:09:29] And then seeing kind of how unhappy people were with the solutions that were available in the market and that nobody's really trying to solve the problem. My question for Todd, I'm really interested, I actually don't, I think we've talked about this before, like, how do you go from being frustrated by a problem to, like, I'm gonna solve that problem, and I'm gonna leave my highly paid legal career behind. Bet on myself, right, that I'm gonna solve this problem, because I mean, we both I think did a version of that. I think I did a more risk averse version, which was I was still at a giant law firm, but like, you know, but having been a startup founder myself, like that, I think that is a real quantum leap mentally.
[00:10:14] So I'm curious about, like, when that light bulb came on for you and how you felt about it.
[00:10:20] Todd: it's a great question. So first of all, I took a half step first, which was running my own law firm. So, you know, very briefly, I started at a very large law firm doing M& A, uh, which was a wonderful way to learn what is a contract and what's important and how is it negotiated. So I started at Latham Watkins, went down to the Valley to Guntershed, Detmer, and then was really fortunate to get training from, from Tom Villeneuve and the tech trans department. Very quickly in house. It was the first Gunderson Detmer attorney hired in house by a client, believe it or not. And, uh,
[00:10:50] David: that's a,
[00:10:51] Todd: hired into a
[00:10:51] David: there's
[00:10:51] Todd: client.
[00:10:51] David: Not a lot of those people, so
[00:10:53] Todd: Yeah, no, no. I, I was a pioneer and, uh, uh, hired into a company called Marimba and was fortunate enough to be their first lawyer. Then their general counsel, then their public company, general counsel at 29 years of age. So it was, it was really fast. I was 29. Yeah. And, uh,
[00:11:09] Jessica: You're ageless. I can't tell. I can't, I don't see any gray hair.
[00:11:11] Todd: I I like to say,
[00:11:12] David: I was 2 years old.
[00:11:14] Todd: Yeah, I like, I like to say 20 years ago, I like to say, um, uh, back then when you had an IPO, you made enough money to buy a house and a car, not an entire island, you know, but it was, but it was still very nice. Um, and then, and then Jessica and David, I ran my own law firm for 20 years and that was a crazy experience because, um.
[00:11:35] We really wanted to represent the very best companies and we believed that we could, um, and the way and we did, we got to, you know, 20 of the very best companies in tech and the way we got there is we innovated in our model, which was that we were fixed fee and we were able to therefore dig in and build materials, playbook, you know, playbook, you know, Jessica, this will resonate with you.
[00:11:59] It's like the hottest thing in the world right now. You know, playbooks. Everybody wants playbooks. Well, you know, we build, okay, one of the core products we built at Smithline in my law firm was this playbook, 50 page playbook in Google Docs that was used across all of our clients to negotiate master subscription agreements, right?
[00:12:14] And so we were able to focus quite a bit and in much more than the average law firm, because we really at the end there were just providing expert guidance, playbooks, forms, tools, office hours and and doing some contract negotiation. But that was the smallest part of what we did. Okay, so I learned how do you create a brand? How do you create a product? Because even as lawyers, we are selling a product. I learned how do you price a product? How do you market a product? How do you get a customer? How do you get a recurring customer? We had, when we closed that firm, three companies who had been doing this continuously for 13 years.
[00:12:51] 13 years! By the way, one at that point was Meta. You know, that's every single month they had been engaged with us, right? Another was a company called Tableau, which was then Salesforce. So, David, to answer your question, I went from, you know, being a real, you know, being a true lawyer in house, general counsel, law firm lawyer to running a law firm, which did require me to flex some of those sort of business muscles.
[00:13:15] Then I made the full step, the crazy step, the completely off the pier and into the bay step of, you know, stopping being a lawyer altogether. But even when that last leap, I took all my friends with me. Right. I created this committee of 100 lawyers. I had a relationship, David, you know, as you know, with your prior firm, I, I was able to leverage the next step.
[00:13:36] And the one piece of advice I think I'd give lawyers who are interested in doing this, sometimes I see this thing on LinkedIn where people say recovering lawyer or former lawyer or something like that. And I think I read that differently maybe than it's intended because I read it as them distancing themselves right from that expertise and that experience. Whereas I think one of the easiest ways to make this move as a lawyer is to build on it, right? And David, I think that all three of us did that, right? We all, we didn't desert our former expertise, our relationships. We stepped, we used them to spring to the next thing. And I think that's basically what I was able to do.
[00:14:16] Jessica: Amazing story, thank you for sharing Todd, but one of the points that I found really interesting was when you had your own law firm, of course, you were a business owner, you learn that to do more than just legal work, build a client base, market, etc. But I heard fixed fee. Magic to my, my in house ears and our listeners ears, because what that did was align the interest of your firm to your in house clients.
[00:14:43] We have a thing called a fixed budget. And so I can see how you, uh, learned to be more innovative, um, to find ways to scale and offer more value to your clients. Cause you're at your financial interests were aligned for folks who work at law firms. You know, I think law firms are trending in that direction, which is why Cooley hired David as their innovation officer.
[00:15:08] What are you all seeing in the market right now in terms of that direction? Is it, is that how law firms are moving toward that direction? Like fixed fee and using tech? Dave, you sound like, like Cooley is like a mini tech company from what you just described.
[00:15:20] David: Yeah, I mean, Cooley is massive. I think people, Cooley you know, at least before I came in, is relatively low key. I mean, I'm considered kind of like a extrovert as far as lawyers are concerned. I think it's fair.
[00:15:33] Jessica: Wait, you're, you're the extrovert?
[00:15:34] Todd: Dave is the extrovert.
[00:15:36] David: Yeah, well, I mean, this is right. I mean, I think we have this conversation. It's funny because I think, you know, I did your audience probably wouldn't have this conception, but, you know, out there people are thinking like, oh, like suits or, you know, like, how do you feel?
[00:15:51] Right? I mean, that's when I went to law school. I was like, oh, like, I'm going to go and, you know, say objection a lot, you know, and of course, I And most lawyers were just like toiling away in a room, you know, reading documents all day. And so it's actually a really very, I think the stat is like 70 plus percent of lawyers are introverts.
[00:16:11] Chief innovation officer and, you know, technology enabled, you know, and dare I say fixed fee, you know, that's gone from when I started to being something that you only talked about at cocktail parties to Not being openly discussed because of the role of technology and the, um, the value delivery, right?
[00:16:32] And being like, really more open about like, what is the true value of what we do? And, you know, as lawyers for our customers, whether that is like an external client or an internal client. You know, I Todd's business model that appealed to me, and, you know, collaborating with him previously was always just like, oh, this is like a, very honest, um, view of like, Hey, what is it that we do for you? And what do you really need to do? And not, you know, a version of like, let's pretend like, this thing is this. But like, at the end of the day, You're always arriving commercially at the value of like, Okay, I paid this much and then, you know, you give me this. But then we're doing it in a kind of a torturous way, in my opinion, in much of the legal industry, right?
[00:17:17] And, but that also creates opportunity, right? I have one thing that I always encourage lawyers when people come to me for advice, is like, Oh, I'm thinking about this, or I'm looking, like, are you willing to do what others are not doing? Right? Because there is this convention. And, you know, lawyers are especially creatures of convention and habit and precedence and, you know, it's almost inherent that you need to do something different if you want a different result, which, you know, when you say it that way, of course, but like people don't, they're like, Oh, I'm going to do exactly the same thing or mentally be the same. And then I'm expecting a different result. And I'm like, that's not a realistic expectation.
[00:17:57] Jessica: So what's an example of something that's different that, you know, David and Todd, let's start with you, David, that you had to learn or do to succeed in your role? Ah! I know!
[00:18:10] David: Sales.
[00:18:11] Jessica: The sales! Ah! Uh.
[00:18:14] David: Yeah. People don't think about it as sales, people think sales is a dirty word, I'm very much a proponent of like, I need, I think lawyers need to think about, um, argumentation and like the kind of lawyerly, uh, persuasion on a spectrum of like, with salesmanship and that kind of a persuasion because it is all the art of persuasion.
[00:18:38] You know, I always frame it to lawyers as like, you think you're good at persuading someone until you've met like a VP of sales at like a big company and you're like, wow, like, right? Like, I have no idea what I'm doing, right? Um, whether that person's, you know, way of persuasion is tethered to the truth or anything.
[00:18:55] That's a completely different story, right? But like the you know, I think there's this unwillingness for lawyers to like sell either themselves or the thing that they're doing or their passion and therefore it's very hard to create a new thing because It's part of that that you have to convince a bunch of people to believe in whatever thing you're doing You no matter what whether it's to hire you for a job that you don't have the qualifications for or if you start a company For customers to sign on to this new company that you know haven't really proven themselves.
[00:19:28] Jessica: Yes, yes, David, David. Preach, um, one of my most humbling experiences is learning how to do a tech demo to a prospect. I was horrible. I was horrible. I did all the wrong things. I moved the mouse too much. I went too deep on a feature, confused the audience. But, uh, but I, whether you're working as a salesperson, traditionally, I think sales is a fundamental skill.
[00:19:53] Because you're always selling yourself. You're selling your brand. You're selling your, your employer. Todd, what is your, what is a tip for, you know, what is a non traditional skill that you think folks need to be comfortable doing?
[00:20:06] Todd: I want, I want to first pick up on something David said. So, you know, we're lawyers and we know the rules. You know, and I've been teaching law school for the last 15 years, so I'm, I'm still more immersed in that culture, you know, as well. And, so there's a path, it's three years, you follow a path, you get your internship, you, you graduate, and But then you get out into life, right? And, and that's not how anything works anymore. Right? So go, I like this phrase, David said, are you willing to do something other, right? Are you willing to actually do something new or different? Right? And that is a struggle for a lot of lawyers. You know, I used to, we, we were very, very successful at fixed fee.
[00:20:45] And I used to talk to, Uh, lawyers about it and you know, I, I, I kind of gave up to be honest with you after a while because I realized they didn't really, they wanted the result, but they didn't want to do the work to get there and they didn't really want to listen. So, so to come back to what David said, the first answer was they didn't want to change. Maybe they were constitutionally incapable of change, but they weren't willing to do the change. So what's the change? The first thing I always like to point out to people, it's not compromising being a great lawyer. It's not compromising your ethics. It's not compromising your expertise. And sometimes we have this conversation, there's this slightly uncomfortable notion which comes up, which is you need to please the business, you know.
[00:21:28] And so people want to be the lawyer who the business loves. Well, you want to be the lawyer who the business loves by being the best lawyer, okay? And you can do both things. So, you know, coming back to sales, when I came up At Marimba, obviously if you're general counsel of a small enterprise software company, the most important task besides making sure nothing is going horribly wrong with your IP and with your HR and everything else is sales.
[00:21:52] You gotta get the deals done. And, you know, I, at that point in my life, believe it or not, was even more serious than I am now. And I had a very, very rigid sense. Of what we needed to do in these contracts and the challenge to me and my team always was I used to say to my team, look, the indemnity, the limitation of liability, the IP.
[00:22:12] This is for us. No one else is going to care. You're going to go get that right for you. And then you go get the rest of it. Right? And you still have to get it done. But if you don't, Have an internal clock that says these things are important and I'm going to take care of them and I'm going to make, figure out how to take care of them without even anyone noticing I'm taking care of them, right?
[00:22:30] Because no one's ever going to stand up and applaud and say, fantastic work on the, the negligence, you know, disclaimers. You know, no one cared, but,
[00:22:37] Jessica: No one cares.
[00:22:38] Todd: but you have to care because that's why you're there. You're, you're the expert to know to care. The trick, of course, is quietly taking care of those things while still getting the deals done at the velocity they need to get done.
[00:22:49] But if you can pull that off, boy, oh boy, you become very valuable within an organization, within a law firm, within a company. Because if the, if you can get the business, now come back to something you said, Jessica, if you can get the business people to come to you, maybe you said this before we started, but if you can get the, the business, you know, the dream of the lawyer is I want. Sales or BD to come to me before they've sent anything out, before they've created the new relationship, right? So I can get them on the right track, the right term sheet, the right approach. We can learn from all the past deals. The way you make that happen, of course, is by, uh, being predictable, by being very good at what you do and by delivering for them.
[00:23:31] And so I think the skill, you know, those skills are all really important. And if you can, Focus on those skills and master those skills, whether you're in house or law firm or solo or Paragon or whatever you're doing, that then enables you to start to have other conversations within the company about other, other things you might want to do.
[00:23:49] But I, but I always tell people be really good at what you're doing first, right? Like that. There's no skipping that because you need to be able to leverage your, your lawyer role to get to that next role,
[00:24:00] David: Yeah, I think the thing that, you know, you said there, like, really resonates with me is this, like, caring about it. I see two kind of very common patterns. One is like, I don't like my job and I want something else. Right. And then, you know, another one is like, Oh, these, it would be cool, like, conceptually to do this, and how do I do X, right? A lot of times people are like, Oh, I want to do like tech stuff. These days it's like, Oh, I want to do AI stuff, right? Like, I want to do AI stuff, how do I do AI stuff? And the thing that I, I, I think about a lot is, and you mentioned it too, is like, what do you care about? Because I think, for example, like, I think Todd and I care about very different things. Right, I think, like, No, I mean, what he mentioned, right, like, there's like, oh, this is for us, like, these costs, like, you know, and you can see in his business, like, in his own firm, and in the kind of tech company that he's created, he's really about that substance of that contract, and those commercial contracts, he cares about that, and he's trying to, like, improve that, right?
[00:25:07] And so for me, it was always about kind of the, the overall business model and process of like delivering service. And you know, now I think about it like when I was back, when I was an associate. I was the person that was like running the deal, right? I'm like, yeah, I negotiated the specific stuff too. But when you think about it, now I reflect.
[00:25:30] I'm like, there were all these people that just cared about that specific words and that provision and those legal, like so much more. And in a competitive environment that we're all going to be in, you can't out compete those people, ultimately, if that's not what your heart is all about. Because they will care way more, they will put in twice as much effort into that thing, and they will be better at it than you.
[00:25:56] But there's usually, for most people, something that you really do care about, and you really kind of Find that voice inside and, you know, listen to your heart, written, like, and, you know, like, even back, like, I, I was on journal when I was in law school, but I was the administrative editor, you know, like, right.
[00:26:12] And even now, I think, like, oh, there seems to be this, like, pattern of, like, optimizing and right, like doing something better and this overarching, like how you do something in a framework using technology, right. That I just. That, and that's the thing that I'm, you know, compared to grinding away at the late night at the printers or something, you know, I'm still grinding away, but like, do you like, because no one's like standing behind you, right?
[00:26:39] Like, do you just like, Oh, I really care about this. I want to get this right. And that, like, if you find that and you follow that, that's kind of the most important thing to driving towards a career.
[00:26:49] Jessica: Okay. Okay. You got me, David. I think I was defining care very differently in terms of, because I do think of you and Todd as innovators and builders versus someone who's like, I'm just going to be a really good practitioner, good at process management or, redlining and editing and negotiating and indemnification clause, I think also when you think about care folks, I think a lot of folks listening about, well, what are the, what are the things I care about?
[00:27:19] What are my skills? What are my passions? What are my interest? What are the roles that really fit, fit? Non legal roles that fit all those things for me, uh, and that also can benefit from my legal background. Uh, I think a lot of people don't know. So actually Todd, you had quite the career journey, law firm, law firm owner in house.
[00:27:42] What are some of the non legal roles that you think our listeners should think about pursuing once they've had some self reflection about their passions and what they care about?
[00:27:54] Todd: Yeah, I think it's a great question. So I, I, you know, look, I've been asked over the last 30 years, a continuous stream of questions. Should I go to law school, you know, for, from all the kids come in my life. And my answer on this
[00:28:05] Jessica: Hopefully not by your law students.
[00:28:07] Todd: Yeah. Oh, you know, they ask you the most, uh, that they, they ask you a different question. What am I doing here? Um, so I shouldn't say that. I love my students. So, so listen, should I go to law school? Right. So My answer on that's actually evolved over the years. I'm actually more pro law school now than I think I've ever been. Now, why is that? Well, let me, let me answer the question. I think we're in an age of synthesis.
[00:28:31] I think, I think the highest prized skill right now, across companies, is the people who can, uh, synthesize disparate information. And communicate it well, and, but at the same time deal with complex situations and nuance. Okay, so this is something a lot of lawyers are trained to do. Uh, concentration. So, you know, one of the skills that we really develop with lawyers is concentration. Paying attention to the details, pulling together disparate facts, and synthesizing information. So I think that is really going to be the coin of the realm going forward. Um, and yes, you need technical capabilities, and you need curiosity, and boy oh boy, sales. 100%. You're always selling. You're selling all day long.
[00:29:14] You know, Bonterms is a bunch of standards. Some software and, and, uh, and, and, and getting people comfortable with the new idea, right? That's all sales, right? Whether it's literally sales with a prospect or with a lawyer or with, uh, uh, any type of community that's interested in engaging with what you're doing.
[00:29:31] The skills that are going to be most in demand are the people who can manage a complex situation. Uh, understand the nuance and the detail. So one of the reasons that the Amlon 100 firms are able to maintain, I believe, their billing rates and firms like David's. If you are a large corporation having some sort of event or crisis, you need a lot of very smart people who are capable of paying attention to something carefully for you over an extended period of time.
[00:30:02] I'm just, to just simplify this out, there are only so many places on earth you can go anymore to find those people. Okay. I mean, literally, and I say, I need. 50 really bright people who can pay attention to a very complex problem with a lot of different angles to it and get me through this, right? And so I think, I think that's going to increasingly become an in demand skill.
[00:30:23] Um, the flip side of that I think is that if you are operating as a lawyer who was really doing nothing more or not a lot more than being an interface between a body of knowledge. And a client that's I think that's now going to be more difficult, right? Because the body of knowledge is getting made accessible to everybody on and to the extent we haven't perfected that yet. It will be perfected to where you can get very good answers to complex questions through AI and through these other tools. So I think, uh, I don't mean to contradict myself, but I think being able to write reason, explain and reduced complicated situations into Bites that business people can decide is gonna be, is it will always be and is a very prized skill. And I think that's something lawyers are naturally set up to do. Um, and so roles that require that, strategic roles, analytical roles, uh, communications roles, those sorts of things, I think, I think make good sense for lawyers, um, as, as next steps.
[00:31:28] David: The joke I always make is like, um, uh, my attention to detail is probably average as far as like a big law lawyer is concerned, but my attention to detail compared to your average business executive is exceptional.
[00:31:40] Todd: It's extraordinary. Yeah, absolutely extraordinary. And, and actually, David, I don't mean to hop in, but something else, and Jessica, I wonder how you feel about this. You know, when, in the last kind of five years or so of running our law firm, uh, my associates have come into me with these projects that we work on for clients. And I'd say that you're project managing this. Go back and tell them they need to project manage it. Come back to us when it needs to be drafted or when there's an actual legal question. But, and I'm wondering if you guys saw this, but more and more, what we kept seeing is we were the only people left who had the ability to focus the ability to run a deal through a series of steps, keep it all together and get it done. And so that's another skill, I think, that lawyers really have, and that's incredibly valuable within companies. And
[00:32:27] David: Lawyers jump into the biz dev, you know, MA, right? Like that kind of role. That's a very common next step for lawyers and to move into the business world because it's really like you're already doing that part of it. Anyway, it's just you know Now it's officially your job and then you can pawn it on to the lawyers that you hire We take.
[00:32:52] Jessica: PM or project manager translates what I'm hearing really well into being a corporate development, business development, partnerships, that sort of role for a lot of folks. What about someone with a litigation background? What are some non traditional legal roles someone. Because, you know, I think law school is candidly Todd, I love what you just said, don't really prepare students very well. I know you're pro law school, so I'm going to challenge you a bit. For a life that is non litigation, career. And also the, the skills that you actually just said about being able to communicate in a way that's tailored to your audience is how I would synthesize it and use your words synthesize.
[00:33:40] Sure, it actually think AI can do a lot of this. I'm going to challenge you. There is AI can expediently summarize a new regulation or law for me. And what I have to do is on my part of my day-to-day job, is take that information and translate it to why, uh, it makes sense for the business, and provide actionable advice and provide inputs from the law, inputs from the industry, the trends, what I've seen with other competitors. And then take that and give actionable advice, which I think is hard for just tech to do, right? And then do it in ways persuasive to sales or do it to an engineer or a marketer, which has a very different. They're not detail oriented, but they care about different things. You guys speak their language. What do you think Todd, about law schools.
[00:34:26] Todd: Okay, well, first of all, in law school, look, I. It's sort of a favorite sport for people to kind of, you know, but look, we're only there for three years. I think the objective from my perspective for law school is that the students should learn. How to engage deeply with the doctrine. How to engage deeply and understand cases and how our common law system works. How to write. How to be persuasive in their writing. How to analyze and organize information. And I know that all sounds very general. But, but I think Jessica, especially with the rise of AI, what we, what you're going to see is, is We look at AI a certain way because we learned what a statute is, what a case is, how to interpret those things. We learned how to draw conclusions. We learned all that stuff. Okay. If you're coming up right now and you're asking a question about the CCPA, you're just getting an answer back and it feels very complete and it's bulleted in a nice way that, you know, makes you think you've learned everything you need to learn.
[00:35:24] And you've missed that step of like, this is a take, okay, this is not the thing, it's not the statute, it's a take. And how do I know if this is the right take or a complete take or maybe, you know, yes, I would agree we're, we're getting beyond the point where like there's four bullets in the third bullets, like totally wrong, but that there's there, maybe there's a fifth or sixth bullet that's missing, okay. Or something else. Right. And so, I think for me with law school, that's what you want to see the students do. Now, that said, the courses I teach, video game law, technology transactions, we flip it around and have the students actively participate in presenting and doing mock negotiations and doing and working in groups.
[00:36:04] By the way, here's a crazy innovation in law school. I have them work in groups. Here's two hours. Go solve this problem together and then stand up and tell everyone the problem you just solved. Okay? There's a ton of room for innovation.
[00:36:16] By the way, there's a ton of innovation going on at the law schools, too. But it's such a short period of time. So what I hope they will get out of it is how to take this seriously, how to have judgment. How to have discernment, like these kind of boring skills that turn out to be really important for lawyers and I think for business people in general as they go forward.
[00:36:36] But the rest of it is you've gotta get, put yourself out there. I mean, this is the other thing. Let's just say this. We all know each other. How do we know each other? Because we've met in various different guises at various different conferences. We bothered to get to know each other. We bothered to care about each other to stay up with each other.
[00:36:53] So this is this other skill, I think if you want to move into business, you need to get, I'm in my house because I had the morning shift. And it's 8 a. m. But I'm downtown to Embarcadero Monday through Friday. You need to get out of your house. You need to, because we meet with people every day I mean, you know, I was up at David's office a couple weeks ago I, but we probably have an in person meeting at Bonterms Every single day, if not multiple times a day, right?
[00:37:15] And so, come back to something David said earlier, you know, go where you're not comfortable going or where others aren't going. You need to start exercising a bunch of You know, a bunch of gears are, you know, for lack of a better word, right? And, and, and muscles and pushing yourself out there because if you want to move out of the legal role, which is that they come to us role and we have a very defined role and what we do when they come to us and what our, what we give them back, right? And in business, which is way more amorphous in terms of what's expected of you, and way, it's way more important in most business roles that you define the role and execute the role and move forward every day, right? It's not passive, it's active. I think one of the things you need to do is just get yourself out there. Just get yourself out there.
[00:38:05] Jessica: Yes. Networking and relationship building. And Todd, you talked about I love your class format about collaboration and working as a group. And if you're in terms of innovating that class format, I would challenge you to even have the team members have different primary interest. Like, have someone pretend to have a sales hat, if you're not already doing that, who just wants to get the deal done, so they can hit their numbers, versus a lawyer who wants, like, to have a perfect and well written indemnification
[00:38:36] Todd: we when we do these negotiation exercises, I would give the students a little situation card. As they walked into the negotiation that they weren't prepared for. So along the lines of what you just said, Jessica, you just heard from the CEO, we absolutely have to get this deal. Or you just heard from the CEO, we made our number, so this is lesson.
[00:38:55] Whatever that is, and then you, it's really un, I mean, the things you, you do which can be, you know, kind of totally unfair to students. Or you give them ones that are totally incompatible, you know, just to see what's gonna happen for the next hour, you know. And then they go in this room and then it's like, oh my God.
[00:39:11] So, um, yeah, they're,
[00:39:13] Jessica: I love that. I love, you know, I'm a troublemaker by
[00:39:16] Todd: Yeah, well, you know, the, the big mistake of showing any enthusiasm towards what I do at law school is I'm now going to invite you into class. Okay, so, so be careful, be careful.
[00:39:29] Jessica: Uh oh, uh oh. Watch out. You're going to be invited to Todd's class. I think we talked a lot about the benefits of, uh, of lawyers and having a legal background. You know, we are, we have strong worth ethics. We have higher attention to detail more than the average human business person. But what do you think are the downsides of having a law degree and a legal background as someone who's thinking about transitioning to a non traditional legal role? There are some cons. David, you want to jump in?
[00:40:01] David: We take ourselves way too seriously. think
[00:40:04] Jessica: Have you met me, David? Have you met me?
[00:40:07] David: No, I mean the, that's the number one thing if I can, right? That's just, you're so used to the, even as a junior lawyer, right? Like, you know, someone will come to you and be like, oh, hey, I need to know a thing that you know that I don't know. And then any role outside of your professional vertical, that's not the case. I mean, most of the time, especially when you're starting, you're, in fact, you're doing the opposite thing. And, uh, Pride, you know, can get in the way of so many things, right? The sales thing I talked about, right? I mean, it is, that's literally the act of like swallowing your pride. And then this is, you know, like something that I constantly tell myself because now I'm in the buyer chair so often, right?
[00:40:53] It, there's just kind of this nonstop barrage of messages on LinkedIn. Every day I show up to the office, someone sent me something. I don't even know who it's from. Right, because someone's trying to sell me something. Right, and then, uh, but then when you're on the sales side, right, when you're like, when you start up or just starting out or internally, when I was just starting out in a role, you're constantly like, you're the person that has to like knock on the door and people ignore your email and then you like do that again and by the way, I'm still doing that, you know, new firm, new folks are like, who is this guy?
[00:41:27] Who cares? Right? You know, you have to do that. And just be like 8, 25 times. And not like you have to lower your ego. And if I, there's one piece of advice I want to give to learners out there is We're not that special. Sorry. We're just one profession of many. We are not like the end all and be all of all professionals.
[00:41:51] Yeah.
[00:41:51] Jessica: David. I, I like to think I'm special though. Okay, I'm not. No, we are not. So that, but there's something special. I mean, you're right though, David. Like a lot of folks who are non lawyers really, really do commoditized service. So, you know, how, how do we differentiate? So I'm hearing being a strong sales person, that's a recurring theme that I'm hearing throughout our conversation.
[00:42:18] Todd, what, what, what has been a downside of a legal background or a law degree that you've observed over your long career?
[00:42:23] Todd: To pick up a little you know, learning to accept feedback, asking for it, seeking it out, um, understanding, especially as you move into these new roles that you're gonna look, I, you know, and getting yourself in a position where people will give you the feedback. I mean, one of the weird things that happens is you become more senior.
[00:42:40] It's like you lose this very direct communication, right? And you have to create permission structures where you tell people, like, all I really need for you to do is be honest with me right now, because to David's point, I already feel pretty good about myself, but I'm not very good at this thing or I'm not succeeding at this thing.
[00:42:55] I now need to go do right. And so just, just sit with me and just be straight, right? Give me the feedback. Um, and so learning to do that, learning that you're on a journey, learning that this is not the be all and end all, whatever that situation is where you're getting assessed. But the single greatest thing you can get out of any, any situation, a customer situation, investor situation, a job interview is to learn something from it if you can and to be open to that signal and try and adjust.
[00:43:26] I wouldn't be ashamed of having been a lawyer or, you know, uh, but at the same time, it's, it's, it's, it's just what it is. It's, it's your skill that you learn and other people have different skills. And, you know, especially if you're going to step into a non legal role, you're going to need to show them that you have both the capabilities to do what you were doing before and the capabilities to do the new thing.
[00:43:47] I mean, just in all candor as a founder CEO, it's taken me a long time to get away from people thinking of me as being a lawyer, you know, and it's taken me actually readjusting the conversation to tell people, guys, I built and exited a very successful law firm. I've already sold 20 of the best companies in the world under my own brand, for a thing I created. So this is my second time through with this, right? But it doesn't read that way, right? Because people think lawyer. So, you know, you have to think deliberately about that. How am I going to talk about my experience? Um, and then I'll just say one last thing, you know, you need to be positive and you need to, uh, speak about, uh, move, move forward towards the next thing.
[00:44:28] David said people come up to him and say, I'm not happy with what I'm doing, but boy, I can't think of a bigger waste of a time with David Wang than to walk up to him and complain about something, you know, if I'm going to go up to a David Wang, what I want to do is say. Uh, I'm really great at this. I'm really interested in that.
[00:44:45] There's this intersection with something you're doing and how can I help you? Right? Those are the four things I would say, right? Which are, which are show enthusiasm, show that you're gonna be, uh, a successful person, that you are a successful purpose person, show interest, and then offer to help. And that last one is critical and, I'll just say one last thing. One twist for us with sales, one thing I brought to sales. So when you, when you learn how to do sales, the, the rule of the road is never end the call without setting up the next meeting, which by the way is like a great rule and something I needed to learn and I still need to learn and I have like a note to remind myself.
[00:45:19] But we have a slightly different move, which is we never leave a call without offering to help. So it's not uncommon for us that a very large company will be interested in Bonterms as small as we are. And I'm talking like the biggest energy companies, retailers. Banks in the world will come in and want to have a conversation with us.
[00:45:35] And one thing I always do at the end of the call is say, look, we have our standards and we have our platform. I'm here to help you with either. And if you just want to use the standards, let me help you with the standards. Okay. And I'm open to that. And I will do that. And I do that every day, all day long.
[00:45:47] Right? So that's like our little move is to offer to help. But I think it's useful to everybody. You know, so if you're approaching you, Jessica, you, David, or me or anyone in the world, and you're a law student or you're a professional, whoever you are, and you want. Okay, offer, what, how can you help that person?
[00:46:04] Can you, can you, you know, and what can you give them that you've created or, or, or an angle on, on, on a take on something or an offer to research, whatever it is, end with an offer not an ask, and that's, that's the one piece of advice I would give on that.
[00:46:20] Jessica: Offer not ask. Todd, that is really powerful because I think so much mistakes happen in the business, whether it be in marketing and sales is because they're, they're focused on asking something from you, your time, your advice versus giving you value, giving you folks like you, me, David, we're busy. We can't just give an hour and not get, but how can you add value for us?
[00:46:46] And I think that is a very powerful selling and marketing mechanism. Do you have anything you'd like to add?
[00:46:52] David: I'm curious, Todd, what do you think about this? Jumping into your own business, jumping into legal tech, like essentially this path that both of us took in one way now because I think it's very timely, right? A conversation because now with the, what's going on with I think this year just feels a little bit more restrained than last year. I think last year I talked to the year I left, uh, what was it?
[00:47:18] I think I counted, I think it talked like 300 different founders and investors that are trying to get into legal tech. And then it just feels like for every single application out there, there's like four companies that are doing like Gen AI for X. Right? And so I think a lot of people are thinking in that direction, like what would you kind of tell those folks and, you know, what do you think about that?
[00:47:40] Todd: I would say it's harder than it looks. Uh, I would say that it's, it's just a lot harder than it looks. And especially if you are planning to do it yourself or with a small team. The only reason we were able to get Bonterms at the velocity, going at the velocity we did is I understood from running my law firm, all the back office stuff. So we wasted absolutely no time on that. Right. And I also understood distraction and the price you pay with distraction. And I also understood do one thing and do it extremely well. That's the only way you're going to attract a world class customer. You better be able to offer them something that is way better than what everybody else is offering.
[00:48:16] And the only way to do that is to have a deep expertise and insane focus. So, you know, David, when we built Bonterms, The classic route is you bring in a product manager and they go do 30 or 300 customer interviews and they come back and we kind of, in a sense, went through that process with somebody and they came back and they just told us to build CLM, you know, and I was like, okay, well, that's not what we're building.
[00:48:37] You know, CLM is one sided infrastructure. We're building a two sided agreement platform and we had to go crazy on this very narrow vision that I had. But that vision was backed up by a lot of experience and success and expertise. So I would be careful with that. That said, Let's assume you're the world's best export control lawyer, or you're the world's, you're really good at HR law, or you've spent the last 30, you know, 10 years really understanding CCPA and GDPR, and you want to get out of the legal practice role.
[00:49:07] There is right now, to your point David, there are a number of startups chasing just that. Okay, and what I've noticed about most of these startups, is they tend to still go pretty light on the legal expertise for whatever reason, okay? Always there's a machine learning kind of person, like some sort of deep tech expert, you know, and there's a, a business person or something, you know, and then a couple more engineers and maybe a lawyer's in there somewhere, or the lawyer's also the general counsel or something You can go in there right now and say, look, I really understand export control in a way that's not going to be obvious to you. I really understand this process. Let me help you design that part of the product, right? Let me really make, take this product from something that's going to be pretty good to something that's going to be poetry, right? And I think so there is a role there, but just running out on your own and building your ally, you know, building your front end and attaching it to Claude or whatever in the background and then saying. I'm one more kind of legal AI company. I don't, I don't want to discourage anyone. I would just say it's going to be harder than you think.
[00:50:09] David: And Jessica, I want to kind of, because you did that that thing, other thing that he mentioned in there, right? You were the first lawyer and General counsel because I think at the time where I was just like gosh I don't really want to pay for a whole lawyer But maybe I can save money on outside legal cause at the same time so let me get like a I think I don't I don't remember if you started as chief legal officer or you know, the time, can you talk a little bit about that journey and like your decision?
[00:50:35] Jessica: So my journey ties to a lot of what we just talked about. So a lot of folks listening here are going to be like, shoot, I don't know how I'm going to take my traditional legal background at a law firm and then convince a business person to hire me for not the exact job that I've been doing for 15, 10 years. And I was an expert in that export law, contracts, et cetera. So David, uh, candidly, I did outreach to the chief technology officer and co founder of Lexion, who we worked together when I was counsel at Microsoft. And I was always impressed by his reputation. His name is Imad. He's amazing, his reputation, his skills amongst the engineering org.
[00:51:20] And he heard positive things about me and my approach to counseling. And I was not like the other Microsoft lawyers that they interacted with. That was very business forward and passionate about helping them move forward. So I pitched myself, Todd, you'll love this, right? As, and here is a different, I know you don't need a full time GC.
[00:51:41] I will take care of all that for you, GC and operations type of work, but here is my other value add for you. Does this something that you sound like you need? And I went to a sub go to market, go to market and product expertise, you know, product strategy, product roadmap. I have negotiated thousands of contracts over my career.
[00:52:05] I understand the workflow, the pain points at a much deeper level than the average lawyer and even person. And it would take um, our engineering product team countless customer interviews. So I really accelerated product development and taking my product knowledge and background as well as go to market, because like you, Todd.
[00:52:30] I had a certain reputation in the community known for being good at X, like, uh, building legal departments, accelerating contract reviews, and that I can go into a meeting and demonstrate that credibility, which is really hard for the average founder who generally just has a tech background. They can be very talented at machine learning and AI, but going to that meeting with a very established lawyer, you know, they don't have that credibility. So David, go to market as well as just the back office operations and really accelerating the product strategy and roadmap really helped me sell myself to the founders of Lexion. And I found that very exciting because like you and Todd, I love building.
[00:53:14] Todd: And
[00:53:15] David: I think that that's a really nice like pulling it together right cuz he's like we heard You gotta be good at what you're doing now, right, because you have that reputation, right, and then it's like, you have to do the outreach, right, and then it's like, you have to go out there, put yourself out there, right, and find the thing, and then you go and you have to offer some value, right, to that person, be like, hey, we gotta offer the value, and then you make the transition, right, and so that's, you know, like, there's so much of that, it's just, I really like that Anna Karenina quote, it's just like, you know, all happy families are the same, all unhappy families are unhappy for different reasons. I mean there's, you read all these books, you talk, you listen to these podcasts, at the end of the day it's honestly not that complicated, but it's like, it's simple but not easy. You know?
[00:54:03] Todd: And Jessica, I just, I just want to add to what David said here, Ask yourself, where did you give the most value, right? I, I'm just going to answer for you, you know, it's the insight you gave into the product, right? It's the way you were able to help lawyers embrace and understand, you know, what Lexion and now DocuSign is doing, right?
[00:54:22] In addition to, to the legal role, but I, but when you answer for yourself, I don't want to answer for you, but where, where, where do you think you made that contributed the most value in terms of that dual role you were in?
[00:54:32] Jessica: The path to actually like building the technology is easier and easier now. So, but it's too, but it also means the space is too crowded. You just heard David, Todd, about how often he's approached by founders and vendors for his time and pitching him. So how do I differ? How do we differentiate? And what really would Lexion valued from for me is getting the accelerating brand awareness. Credibility and differentiating in the market where that was already quite crowded. And, uh, apparently that's a superpower of mine. I didn't know when I was a traditional lawyer, but that's a superpower.
[00:55:11] Uh, so folks here, like, think about, you know, whether you join as a startup, a first lawyer, or be a founder like Todd or chief innovation officer, like David is what is your differentiator? Like, and it has to be something beyond doing good. legal work that is foundational and table stakes. But what is that?
[00:55:29] Folks. Our next segment is a fun one. We like to ask our guests and our co host a quick, silly question about what they would they keep or what would they redline out. So a lot of folks here who follow me know that I'm a big nerd when it comes to agreements and contracts, just like Todd and David.
[00:55:47] Todd, are you ready to answer? I want you to go to your gut. And answer a question about what would you keep a red line? Are you ready?
[00:55:53] Todd: Yes,
[00:55:54] Jessica: All right. First one's a softie. Pineapple on pizza. Keep or red line.
[00:56:00] Todd: Red line.
[00:56:01] Jessica: Oh,
[00:56:03] Todd: I like that. Yeah. Margarita. Yeah,
[00:56:05] Jessica: Pizza. Oh, you're a simple,
[00:56:06] Todd: I am. I am. Yeah,
[00:56:08] David: Keep.
[00:56:10] Jessica: What? Keep?
[00:56:11] David: Yeah.
[00:56:12] Jessica: Oh, man. We have to talk offline. I don't know if we can be friends anymore. I'm from Hawaii and I'll let you know, Hawaiians don't eat pineapple on pizza. That is not a Hawaiian thing, even though it's called a Hawaiian pizza. All right. Last question before we move on is, um, Todd, you're going to be the first to answer.
[00:56:29] Okay, go check out law students who graduate. I know you're a teacher. So I was this question is really for you. Who just skip the practice of law and go straight from law school to a non legal role.
[00:56:41] Todd: I would definitely practice law for a couple years if you can. Uh, and if you have an incredible opportunity, then go take it. But I wouldn't miss it on the chance to actually, you know, learn the professional a little bit if that's an opportunity for you.
[00:56:55] Jessica: Okay. Okay, David. I mean, you work at Cooley. I feel like, you know, you might have a biased answer, but what are your thoughts?
[00:57:01] David: Yeah. Uh, I was, I would redline that except I will say that the, um, the whole hard redline with prejudice on the going to law school explicitly with that intent or the whole like, you know, the, um, I'm a liberal arts major and I need to do kind of some sort of professional degree thing. That's just, it was always a hard pass, but now it's like, just don't do it. Don't do it.
[00:57:30] Jessica: All right. Well, hopefully that was fun, folks. I really want to thank Todd for joining David and I today on this episode of In House. Thank you, Todd, so much for your time. If folks want to reach out to you, what is the best way to find you.
[00:57:46] Todd: So they can find me either, either way, bondterms. com or just look me up on LinkedIn. We
[00:57:50] Jessica: Okay. LinkedIn or Bonterms. com. Well, thank you, Todd, for joining us. Have a great, have a great day.
[00:57:56] Todd: Really enjoyed this guys. Thank you both.
[00:57:58] Jessica: David, it was so fun to catch up with you and Todd and have this very interesting career discussion and hear about your backgrounds. There's so much to unpack for our listeners here today. What are some of, what is a key takeaway that you walk away from this conversation.
[00:58:24] David: Yeah, I think the thing that struck me the most is that, um, we had very different experiences
[00:58:30] Jessica: Mm hmm.
[00:58:31] David: us, but at its core, there are the elements that are the same. And I think that resonates with me, you know, with all the conversations I've had on this topic, right, of this notion that you have to be good at what you're doing now, you have to find what you really care about and pursue it, right, that you have to put yourself out there.
[00:58:51] You have to reach out and you have to do the selling, right? And that you shouldn't take yourself too seriously. All of these things come up again and again. It's so hard to separate the core things from like all these different stories that you hear. But when you talk about this enough and you hear about it enough from different folks that have been successful, I think you can find that element in literally everybody's story.
[00:59:13] Jessica: Yes. Yes. I had the exact same takeaways. I heard the recurring themes of it's table stakes to be good at what you do and learn the fundamental skills of law. And then also the two hardest aspects of the, I'm going to call it framework that you just said, David, is one, taking that, taking that risk, taking that leap into putting yourself out there and being okay and comfortable with rejection.
[00:59:42] And then the second risk is, or the challenge that I often see, is a lot of lawyers are not very good at connecting the dots for who they're making a pitch to. And what I mean by connecting the dots is, hey, I know that my background is non traditional. I'm, I do a lot of legal work. I'm good at MNA or whatever it is, litigation, But explaining to the recruiter or the executive, why that background is an advantage.
[01:00:11] So that was my key takeaway. David, it was so great to have you.
[01:00:15] David: Yeah. Thank you.