Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Being a Business-Minded Lawyer: Kathy Zhu, Co-founder, CEO & GC @Streamline AI
103 Plays1 year ago
Scuba diving and entrepreneurship have a lot more in common than you may think.
From staying calm in high-pressure situations to overcoming challenges and facing your fears head on, it is no coincidence that Kathy Zhu, Co-founder and CEO of Streamline AI, finds solace in both the deep waters of the ocean and the unpredictable start-up world.
Join Kathy and SpotDraft’s Tyler Finn as they dive into the pivotal moments that led her to take a leap of faith and co-found Streamline AI, and how her upbringing fueled her drive to overcome and adapt to changing circumstances.
They talk about Kathy’s transition from AGC at DoorDash to CEO and co-founder of Streamline AI, how she identified the right co-founder, lessons learned throughout her career, how her passion for scuba diving influences her leadership philosophy, and more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-14
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Becoming an in-house counsel: 1:30
Persevering during life pivots: 3:45
Taking a leap of faith and building a start-up: 5:24
Identifying the right co-founder: 8:05
Transitioning to CEO of Streamline AI: 10:16
Learning about leadership from scuba diving: 18:01
Leveraging law experience in product development: 22:53
Advice for legal tech buyers on where to start: 26:55
Embracing new technology in law: 30:14
Breaking the mindset of resisting change: 33:49
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Legal Intake and Workflow Software Buyer’s Guide: https://hubs.li/Q027tCb00
Connect with us:
Kathy Zhu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathymzhu88/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
Streamline AI - https://www.streamline.ai/
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
Recommended
Transcript
Legal Inefficiencies and Solutions
00:00:03
Speaker
He actually sets me healthy. I am so frustrated with my lawyers. I don't even know what they do all day. They're blocking my launches. I send something through to them and it's like a black box. And like, do they even work?
00:00:21
Speaker
From classes on criminal law to torts, there's a lot that you learn in law school. What this education often misses out on, though, is a key life skill, something that every lawyer needs to have in their toolkit.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm talking about the ability to change and adapt.
Adapting in Law and Beyond
00:00:36
Speaker
And in today's episode, we're going to look at this through the lens of in-house law, legal tech, and even scuba diving at one point. I'm Tyler Finn, head of community and growth at Spotdraft. And today we have Kathy Zu with us, who was previously the senior director and AGC at DoorDash, and is now the co-founder, CEO, and the GC2 at Streamline AI.
00:01:01
Speaker
a modern intake triage and automation system that helps bring visibility and efficiency to both legal and non-legal teams.
Kathy Zu's Journey from Law to Entrepreneurship
00:01:10
Speaker
Besides that, she is a certified rescue scuba diver, and we've connected over our shared interest in diving. Mine's pretty recent, but she's been doing this for a while, so we're going to talk about that and what scuba diving has taught us a little bit later in the episode.
00:01:27
Speaker
Kathy, thanks so much for joining us and I'm excited to dive into our conversation today. Me too. Thanks so much for having me, Tyler. Our team wrote that joke for me. I'm not that funny myself. To start off, can you give us a little bit of background on how you got into law and in your early days as a lawyer? Did you always know that you wanted to go in-house or is that something you figured out along the way?
00:01:55
Speaker
I didn't even know in-house existed, honestly, for a vast period of time. So I'm actually the first lawyer in my extended family. We've got, you know, scientists, doctors, engineers, but no lawyers until me. And the running joke in my family is that when I was growing up and, you know, every kid asks, oh, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up?
00:02:17
Speaker
My dad said, well, you have two options. You can be either a doctor or a lawyer. And I was like, dad, don't I get choices? And he said, what are you talking about? Those are your choices. That's the choice. You don't want to be a doctor. You can be a lawyer. If you don't want to be a lawyer, you can be a doctor.
Transitioning from Law Firm to In-House
00:02:34
Speaker
So, so jokes aside, you know, throughout my childhood, I actually really was dead set on becoming a doctor. I really, really, really wanted to be able to help people.
00:02:45
Speaker
And I started undergrad, actually, with a double major in both biology and English. But somewhere through the middle of sophomore year, I had this massive epiphany. And what the epiphany showed me was, actually, I was making a wrong decision, and I was really meant to go into law. I could probably spend 30 minutes unpacking exactly what happened, but TLDR, long story short, you could really say that was my first pivot. I dropped my bio degree, finished my English degree, and then went on to law school.
00:03:15
Speaker
And when I was a junior associate at a law firm, that's when I first encountered all these businesses. I was incorporating them, helping them go through funding. And I was thinking, that's where all the excitement is. That's where all the fun is. Once I was done with a transaction, they took it forward. And all this magic happened, and I wanted to get into that.
Immigrant Experience and Adaptability
00:03:37
Speaker
So that's how I joined in-house.
00:03:40
Speaker
Very cool. You use the word pivot and we talked as we were preparing for this episode. One of the themes that we wanted to get across, something that you found really important throughout your career and your life is persevering or having some grit during those moments of pivot or moments of transition. Tell us a little bit about that. When did you first start to realize that you needed to have that grit during transitions?
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, Tyler, you know, my family immigrated from China when I was six. We moved to Australia first, and then we moved to England, and then finally we moved to the US. That's a lot of continents, right, before the age of 15.
00:04:23
Speaker
And I learned very quickly that you need a lot of grit, a lot of adaptability if you were moving like me from a 200 person, all girls grammar school in England to a 4,000 person public school in Chicago.
Founding Streamline AI to Solve Legal Challenges
00:04:36
Speaker
It's a massive, massive change. But the toughest move was actually way before that when I left China at the age of six. And in Australia, I was placed in a language school overnight. You know, I've lost my extended family.
00:04:50
Speaker
who I'd seen every single day. I couldn't understand a word of English. I was so stressed out that I was actually making myself sick every morning so I could stay home and be like, Mom, I can't go. I can't go to school today. It was so, so tough on me as a six-year-old. Finally, my mom took two weeks off work so she could sit in the back of the classroom with me to help me get over this period, this really difficult period.
00:05:16
Speaker
But then what happened after that was every move we did became a little bit easier. And it's really taught me how to navigate new environments, new cultures. And in retrospect, I am just so incredibly grateful for that initial very, very difficult experience because it's never been as scary since then to take on a new job or to move to a new company.
00:05:40
Speaker
And you've even created some of those transitions for yourself. And I think one of the ones that is most interesting to me and I expect will be to all of our listeners is that we're at DoorDash, really hot company. You sort of climbed through the ranks there after working at a firm to lead the commercial legal team.
00:06:02
Speaker
you were having a lot of success in a very successful business and you decided that your calling was to jump and be a co-founder of Streamline. Tell us about that transition. Was it as scary as moving schools or had you steeled yourself over the course of the career to be able to make that leap?
00:06:24
Speaker
Totally. So, you know, what happened around then was I really identified a problem, right, that I experienced that every single company I worked at as in-house counsel. One was just the chaos of managing everything pouring in from all sides.
00:06:38
Speaker
from Slack, from email, and not having a centralized place to stay on top of it. Then two was just this tremendous lack of visibility. How much work was I completing every quarter? What was happening? Which business teams are sending me the most work? Obviously, that visibility problem got much worse when I started to manage a team.
00:06:59
Speaker
Right. And so I Jerry Rick my own system first using just generic free tools. And that's when I had my aha moment and eventually led to, you know, streamline. But the aha moment is that, Hey, the solution could really only exist if an in-house lawyer designed the system because legal is so particular in how we work that unless you walk the many, many miles in our shoes, they're just nuances you don't understand. Right.
00:07:27
Speaker
So I taught myself how to use Figma, which is a design tool. That was really fun. And then together with some of my design friends who specialize in UX, I came up with the initial blueprint. I teamed up with my incredible co-founder. So he was really the other missing piece. Once I found this expert who was a product lead, engineering expert, and also had this deep background in AI,
00:07:55
Speaker
That's when I realized, oh yes, we have something here. We can inform them together.
Finding the Right Co-Founder
00:07:59
Speaker
And Julian actually left his job first to go full time to build a product.
00:08:04
Speaker
I'd be curious to hear about how you found a co-founder just for, for a second. If we, if we divert a little bit away from like a legal conversation, uh, cause I think that's something that so many startup founders have, have trouble with is they've got a great idea. They may even have a little bit down on paper, but finding other people to join them in that journey can be tough. So yeah. How did you, how did you find Julian and, and did that make it a little less scary to leave the day-to-day practice of law and, and join early stage company as the CEO?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, oh my gosh, I don't think I could have done it, you know, if I hadn't found my technical co founder, right? Yeah. So this is the funny part of the streamline journey funny in that it really, really was so incredibly synchronistic.
00:08:50
Speaker
I knew Julian at this time, we were friends, and I over these long dinner conversations would obviously just be griping about all of the challenges that I was dealing with at work and saying that I have just this mountain of work that was growing and all of this pain. And you know, he actually said to me, Kathy, I am so frustrated with my lawyers. I don't even know what they do all day. They're blocking my launches. I send something through to them and it's like a black box.
00:09:18
Speaker
And like, do they even work? And I got so mad at him. I was like, don't even get me started. Do you have any idea how much work we're doing? Like, we're drowning. So that's really when we realized, oh, there's a massive visibility problem. I don't think I could ever have sold him into this, right? Because starting a company with massive undertaking, it's a pain that he already experienced, personally identified with and really, really wanted to solve.
00:09:44
Speaker
for his counterparts out there. So that's why there's just this really amazing meeting of the minds.
Leveraging Legal Background in Startups
00:09:51
Speaker
When someone writes the book on Streamline someday, that is a pretty incredible origin story. Tell us about the very early days. You had a product and we're starting to launch it. How exciting was that to get going? Oh, it was incredible. Just really couldn't wait to get started because
00:10:14
Speaker
when I came on board.
00:10:16
Speaker
we already had five paying customers and they were all saying the same thing, which is, hey, Streamline is solving this problem that we've all been dealing with, with chaos and this lack of visibility and not being on the same page with our business teams. And that was a huge validation that yes, you're making the right decision, Kathy. And Tyler, I also knew at the same time, there's just so much more I had to learn to be a successful CEO. But the fortunate thing is that
00:10:46
Speaker
Working all these years as an in-house lawyer gave me great preparation for it. As many of our listeners will know and identify with, we've done work as in-house counsel with sales, customer success, finance, marketing, basically all of the business teams. That preparation gives you so much of a head start and advantage because as CEO of an early stage company, you wear all of those hats.
00:11:12
Speaker
But luckily, you've already walked a little bit of the distance doing the work. So that's why I'm a really firm believer that business-minded lawyers can actually make fantastic entrepreneurs. That's really interesting. I never quite thought about
00:11:27
Speaker
And I mean, you see it in GCs being prepared for and rising up into COO roles these days, into CEO roles within the companies that they might already be in or getting hired to do that. That cross-functional preparation actually makes a lot of sense as a sort of journey towards being a founder as well.
Personal Tragedy and Career Commitment
00:11:45
Speaker
Plus you have probably good contacts in outside counsel for the incorporation. Or maybe I did it myself. Yes, exactly.
00:11:58
Speaker
One last question for you on the decision making process to go all in on streamline. Was there an inflection point where you decided to commit? Did you consult a lot of people? What did that process of deciding to do it? What did that look like?
00:12:18
Speaker
have not told this story publicly many times. So you have the exclusive here, but it's a little bit of a sad part in the story where I actually experienced this really huge personal tragedy. So I lost a family member during this time and someone who's really, really close to me to a terminal illness. And I was actually on leave to care for her before she passed away. And that's what gave me a break, you know, from work.
00:12:48
Speaker
Sometimes when you're just logging into work day in and day out, it's kind of hard to step back and just see the bigger picture. That's what I got, the perspective, the bigger picture on life. It's such a cliché. We hear this constantly, I think. Life doesn't last forever. You have to really make the most of every moment.
00:13:12
Speaker
We don't really pay attention to that, right? It's a very, very different reality when you literally see it happening before your eyes. So I actually didn't even consult anyone about this massive decision. I just knew after I got this perspective, this break, that this is what I was meant to do. And I knew that a massive challenge was before me, but I look back at all the other challenges, just like the theme of what we're talking about today, right?
00:13:42
Speaker
looked back at all the challenges that I had already weathered, including helping this family member through this incredibly difficult thing for her and for myself.
Scuba Diving's Influence on Leadership
00:13:52
Speaker
And I saw that if I could make it through all that, I could take on this new challenge as well.
00:13:57
Speaker
That's amazing. Let's turn to a slightly lighter topic. That's a really incredible sort of origin story. Thank you for sharing it with us. As we were preparing for the episode, one of the things that we bonded a little bit over and that I think informs your mindset, the mindset that you bring to work every day is your love of scuba diving. Let's leave the law for a minute.
00:14:25
Speaker
Tell us about how you found Skuba. So I'd always known about it because I loved to snorkel. And I actually actively would look for vacation spots where I could engage in snorkeling. And I mercilessly mocked the Skuba divers whenever I saw them.
00:14:44
Speaker
They're funny flippers. Yeah, they look ridiculous, right? They're way down by all this gear. They're sweating and suffocated under their really thick wetsuits. It's like, Hawaii? Why are you even putting yourself through this?
00:15:02
Speaker
But I have since learned not to laugh at something that I don't know anything about because it totally came back. So when friends of mine who are very, very experienced divers or actually master divers, they finally convinced me just to give it a shot. When I was on a trip one time, I finally understood why people really, really get addicted to it. Because when you are 70 feet deep in the ocean, you just feel like you're in a completely different world.
00:15:30
Speaker
your life, like all of your worries, all of the stories, right? That we're so engaged in, like the drama of our lives. Like that just seems like a million miles away and you're in the middle of this just vast expansive blue that goes on forever and all the fish that are just like swimming around you. It's entirely, entirely magical. And what was it like for you, Tyler? I mean, you told me that you just, you know, recently, right? Got into all of this.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I probably I don't have all the gear like you. I've only done it a few different times, but I'm very lucky. I was going to Southeast Asia first for some work and was going to do some personal travel there. And I thought, well, I can't go to these places and miss out on the opportunity to try this.
00:16:19
Speaker
I've always heard about it. Seems kind of cool. And so I went and I did my very sort of basic certification on Catalina Island in California. I think that sort of diving is actually very cool because I like being in the kelp forest. I think that's really kind of beautiful and peaceful. And the diving that I did in Southeast Asia absolutely blew me away. And I think now like you,
00:16:44
Speaker
I want to travel to places where I can have that experience of being in an aquarium, basically. And the number of fish and the color of the coral and all that is going to drive some of the places that I go in addition to the beauty of the beach or the culture. It's a whole new way to see the world. It's very cool. Absolutely.
00:17:12
Speaker
This is also something that you brought up to me, that you feel like it shaped you as a leader, as a lawyer, the way that you conduct yourself and run your business, and you've gone all the way to be a rescue diver. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that journey too. How do you think that it's shaped you as a leader?
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, a requirement before you can even go on your first dive, which you'll remember from your experience right on Catalina Island. You had to attend a class beforehand because diving is very, very technical and they need to teach you so you survive. And for example, not to scare anyone out there. One of the most important things that they keep repeating over and over is do not, whatever you do, do not hold your breath.
00:17:59
Speaker
because your lung is like a balloon, right? It expands and it reacts to pressure. And as you get deeper, the pressure intensifies and you know what happens to a balloon if you keep adding more and more air, if it doesn't equalize, it's a problem. I won't get too graphic with this. It's a little intense. But let's just say when I learned about all this, I wasn't very excited at all about what I was about to do because it seemed like my life was in danger.
00:18:28
Speaker
But that's when I had another really big realization, right? I realized that, hey, in order to stay calm when you're dealing with that life or death, kind of literally like that kind of pressure, while you're managing very complicated equipment, it builds incredible mental strength and equanimity. And if you think about in a business context, right, when something is really stressful, and you've got the situation on your hands, and as lawyers, we deal with that all the time,
00:18:56
Speaker
The people that you want to be in that room with are actually really calm, right? They're collected. And because of that, they're able to actually identify the crux of the issue. They're able to come up with a solution. And then you look around the room and all these other people are flying off the handle or being overly emotional. And you're like, oh, I know who I want to follow. Not them, right? So these are actually the skills that you develop in scuba diving.
User-Centric Design in Legal Tech
00:19:25
Speaker
And the other really important thing I learned is the enormous benefit of actually facing your fears because it, believe it or not, becomes easier and easier the more you do it. And if you run away from your fear, it basically always keeps following you. You can't actually run away from it, right? But if you can overcome it, that's when you can experience amazing things like scuba diving. And that's totally been my experience.
00:19:55
Speaker
I totally agree with that and I'll tell you just a very short story about how remaining calm is so important. You have an instructor and one of the things the instructor often wants you to be able to do is to continue to breathe and to change scuba masks with them underwater. So of course for a period of time
00:20:14
Speaker
You can't really see them, right? They may not be able to see you. You're going to be close enough to do this sort of exchange. But, you know, just for a minute, under 15 feet, 25 feet down underwater, right, you're going to lose one of your primary senses. And I can tell you that the first time that I did that, I was very stressed about it, of course, right? And I noticed that like my heart rate went through the roof and I started breathing. And I was like, and I actually for a period of time,
00:20:41
Speaker
held my breath, which is what you're not supposed to do. Then you're reminding yourself, start breathing again. By the second time that you do that, you're like, oh, wait, this is going to be easy. I'm just going to close my eyes. All I have to do is focus on my breathing. The whole exchange, the second time around, went much more smoothly.
00:20:59
Speaker
I'm right there with you in one of the lessons being under pressure or sort of in a stressful situation. I think it teaches you a new way to focus on the essentials and kind of block out other distractions and bring yourself down and remain calm.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Something for you to look forward to in your rescue diver training is you'll actually be doing that underwater trying to save somebody at the same time. So anyhow, you don't have to think about that yet.
00:21:30
Speaker
It could always be harder, right? The challenge is that, yeah, if you're gonna turn it, you could always be harder. Well, clearly, you know, Scuba has taught you quite a few things about tackling really hard challenges. We both work for companies that I think are tasked with tackling really complex, implementation-heavy challenges. And, you know, this is complicated stuff. Talk for a minute about, you know,
00:21:59
Speaker
how your background as a lawyer informs the product development process at Streamline. How you think about things like user centricity as you iterate on the solutions that Streamline offers.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I think when it comes to enterprise tooling, a really challenging thing for product designers is to be able to see the world through the user's eyes, right? If they've actually never done work in the user's role before. So what they need to do is to conduct a lot of user interviews and try to incorporate the feedback, but there's always an element of it that's secondhand. I think for a lot of us who've used legacy
00:22:43
Speaker
Clunky software, not designed by lawyers. We know how that feels, right? So the neat thing that we've really been able to do at Streamline is to leverage my experience from both doing work on the front lines as well as leading a team and really baking that perspective into the functionality.
00:23:01
Speaker
And you can't always conduct a fully fledged user interview every time you build a new feature. But my CTO can come over to me and be like, hey, Kathy, what do you think about this new thing we're about to build? So it makes things a lot easier.
00:23:17
Speaker
I think a big part of being CEO of a company like this is helping set product direction. And you have the benefit of bringing your own experience to bear, but have there been things that you've had to learn about the product development process now that ultimately you're really responsible for the output and for making sure that it's headed in the right direction? Yeah, absolutely. I'm just so incredibly lucky, honestly, to have
00:23:44
Speaker
in my co-founder, someone who's had 15 years of experience in both product and engineering. And now also learning everything I've learned and talking to all these other founders, I understand it's very rare for both of those things to live inside the same body. I never knew that before. They're usually two separate people who actually have some conflict. Let's just put it that way. They don't always see eye to eye. So it's very helpful that it's in one person for us.
00:24:10
Speaker
Um, and he also just never shies away from asking the hard questions. Um, I think it is very, very helpful because he has no qualms about challenging me on something and really probing, you know, Hey, Kathy, is that
00:24:27
Speaker
Actually, you know something that applies across the board to all of our customers or did you come up with that perspective based on the very kind of unique and particular ways that your team was set up right or that you interacted with your business teams and those have been eye-opening experiences really like, you know, aha moments for me and also
00:24:50
Speaker
Quite frankly, our customers have done a tremendous amount in helping us shape our product. That's one of the huge advantages to working with an early stage company as a customer is we don't know everything, right? So we need to rely on our customers. I'm sure you've experienced that spot draft as well to tell you, like, this is actually how I prefer to use it. You're missing this. I'd love it if you could build that. And the first, you know, at five to 10 customers really, really helped us to shape Streamline.
00:25:21
Speaker
I'm also curious about the sales side of this as well. You're thinking about product development. You're wearing that.
00:25:30
Speaker
you're bringing to bear all the experiences that you've had. Frankly, in the legal tech market, there can be a bit of noise as you're evaluating these offerings. I'd love to give our listeners a little bit of a lens or your view on how they should be evaluating this market and the different solutions that are out there.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So timely. It's like you read our minds. So we actually just yesterday released our intake and workflow software buyer's guide, where it goes into a ton of detail, actually lays out exactly what it is that you should be thinking about, how you should be approaching this. So for all the listeners out there, if you'd like a copy of this, please reach out to me. We'll put it in the show notes too, if we can, or a link. Yes. Yeah, that would be great. We would love that. Thank you. So what we're really trying to do, as you can see, is shine a light on the problem.
00:26:24
Speaker
educate the market on how to solve that problem so that they can do their own evaluation. I think this has probably been said many times. If you do your homework as a buyer and you do your research, you are so much of a better buyer. You'll be able to ask the right questions and run a very streamlined and efficient evaluation process because
00:26:46
Speaker
Frankly, no one really wants to be sold to, especially lawyers. Our knee-jerk reaction is, oh, you think you're being sold to? Just shut that down. I do not want to hear this. I do want to just say this for the listeners, though. There can be something sometimes in an outreach email that catches your eye. And it actually speaks to a very deep pain you have. And that is actually worth following up on. And I'll bring a personal story very, very quickly into there.
00:27:15
Speaker
I actually bought technology while I was at DoorDash that ended up rolling out, not just to the legal team, but to the entire sales organization, literally thousands of people across the world, based on a cold email that I received.
00:27:31
Speaker
That cold email became famous with that software company because it totally, it worked, right? They spoke to the exact pain. I was literally up at night worrying about this issue and they said they could solve it and look what happened. It ended up being this fantastic partnership between the two companies. It's not always evil.
00:27:53
Speaker
And I do think part of that is also trust that the person is going to resonate with that sort of real sort of idea or substance that's being brought to bear. In a past life, I have bought a couple of different types of privacy and data governance software before, right? And the folks who came and really tried to talk about, okay, what are your problems? How might we address them, as opposed to those who came to me and said,
00:28:22
Speaker
The CCPA is going into effect. If you don't use our software, you're not going to be compliant. If you don't have a solution, you're not going to be compliant. I almost wanted to say, well, I'm paying someone $1,500 an hour to give me legal advice that says that I will be okay after this, even without your software.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah. Approach people who you're selling to or trying to sell to or build relationships with. They're smart people. They know what they're doing. Kind of segues into my next question here for you, actually, which is, I'm sure there are some folks out there who are thinking, why do I need to bother with a tech solution here? I've jerry-rigged
00:29:06
Speaker
something myself between jira or excel spreadsheets that feed are fed by google forms or what have you you know tell us a little bit about how you respond to that and also i think there's there's a. Is that the name in there which is which is around you know.
00:29:23
Speaker
change, right? And if you're in a business and maybe you haven't procured a tech solution before, how do you maybe change your mindset a little bit to think about what else could be possible and what else might be out there? Yeah, absolutely. So this might be a bit involved. So just bear with me because first, I think it's very easy for me to say the thing that I'm sure the audience has heard many times. It's like a broken tape, right?
00:29:52
Speaker
If legal teams don't figure out technology, they're going to get left behind. Their jobs might get replaced. If not by AI, it'll be by the lawyer who figures out how to use AI. The scaremongering we've all heard, I think that what I would like to do is offer a slightly different perspective.
00:30:12
Speaker
There's a very, very often quoted book about building tech companies called Crossing the Chasm. It's written by Jeffrey Moore. In that book, he discusses the tech adoption lifecycle, which is just as applicable to legal tech as it is to general software. In that lifecycle, you've got the innovators and early adopters. Those are the people who will jump on the spot drafts and the streamlines
00:30:35
Speaker
Very early, they get great benefits as a result. They get white glove service. They get great prices. They get their suggestions actually incorporated into the product, right? Then you've got the pragmatists. Those are the people who are going to watch and wait until the majority of the industry comes on board, right? Um, it's vetted the wrist. And then finally you've got the laggards who will resist for as long as possible. Finally come kicking and screaming. And most of the markets probably moved on by then. So.
00:31:05
Speaker
I think my opinion on this, my recommendation for the audience is you look at that life cycle and decide what part you wanna be part of and understand why, right? Actually like make sure it's a conscious decision rather than just wanting to ignore the whole thing because it's happening regardless, right? Like all of this change and you at least like at the very least should be,
00:31:31
Speaker
making a conscious decision, even if it is adopting it later and understanding why maybe it's your industry, maybe it's actually your business teams. And I do on that note want to also point out that sometimes this resistance to change isn't just because it's legal and the legal mindset, right? You probably know this, Tyler. It's the business teams who are like, legal doesn't get new technology. We're not going to give you the budget to buy new technology, right?
00:31:59
Speaker
And I think in that case, they're just losing such a huge opportunity to really leverage legal as a business partner. So the mindset here that needs to shift isn't just legal. It needs to actually start at the very, very top with the CEO on how to resource legal adequately.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, as we start to wrap up, I wanted to give you opportunity to share a piece of advice around this theme of breaking the mindset of resisting change, or I think maybe put even more positively, right? Like, how can you position yourself best to embrace change that might be inevitable all around you?
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Well, first of all, I think just identifying what your internal dialogue is telling you so that it's not just an unconscious thing that's happening, right? I think it's very natural in the face of uncertainty to try to grasp onto what's familiar, what's safe, and that's usually the saddest quote. But what we often don't realize is that change is happening. Just like I said, right? It's already happening. And it's much better to be able to direct the flow of change
00:33:12
Speaker
be the CEO of your own life rather than having the change forced upon us. So I think that's it. That's the first step is identifying
00:33:21
Speaker
the root cause of the resistance, what is going on with your inner narrative, and then you can actually work on shifting it if you realize that it's holding you back. Kathy, thank you so much for coming here and sharing some really candid and reflective stories and insights with our audience. I've really enjoyed this. I hope someday we might be able to go scuba diving together. I think that would be a lot of fun.
00:33:49
Speaker
And I would know that you'd be able to keep me safe as a rescue diver. Exactly. It won't come to that. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on today, Tyler. It's been a pleasure. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for listening to this episode with Kathy. And we hope to see you next time on the next episode of The Abstract.
00:34:15
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in today. Don't forget to subscribe so you can get notified as soon as we post a new episode. And if you liked this one, I'd really love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a rating or a comment. If you'd like to reach out to me or our guest, our LinkedIn profiles are in the description. See you all next week.