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EP 05: From Google to Startup: A Lawyer’s Unconventional Path
7 Plays4 days ago
What does a successful legal career look like in the age of AI, and does it still follow the traditional Big Law path?
In this episode of Beacon Voices, Akshay Verma speaks with Wei Wang, Associate General Counsel for GTM and Strategic Partnerships at TRM Labs, about her unconventional journey into in-house law. Wei shares how starting at Google during law school shaped her career across companies like Stanford, Accenture, Uber, and TRM Labs.
They discuss what it takes to succeed as an in-house lawyer today, from thinking like a business partner to adapting to the rapid rise of AI in legal work. The conversation also offers practical advice for law students and lawyers navigating the evolving legal profession.
Read a detailed summary: www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-5-10
Topics
Introduction: 00:00
Wei Wang’s background and move from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe: 03:11
Discovering law through speech and debate and early career motivations: 05:19
Law school expectations and the pressure to pursue Big Law: 05:40
Getting an in-house start at Google and entering the tech legal world: 07:17
Trusting your instincts vs following traditional legal career paths: 09:37
Career growth through Google, Stanford, Accenture, Uber, and TRM Labs: 12:03
What makes a successful in-house lawyer today: 19:14
How large companies differ from startups in legal roles and culture: 26:22
Developing operational thinking and legal ops skills in-house: 30:57
Choosing legal tech tools and why process should come before technology: 35:31
How AI is being used in legal teams today: 41:22
AI’s future in law and advice for lawyers navigating the AI era: 44:38
Experimenting with AI responsibly and building AI literacy: 52:08
Advice for law students and the future of legal careers: 55:17
Connect with us:
Wei Wang - https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiwang1/
Akshay Verma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-verma-esq/
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Challenges for Law Graduates and AI Opportunities
00:00:00
Speaker
First of all, you know fear is normal. And having invested all of this money and time into law school to have this be something that you're facing when you're graduating is very challenging.
00:00:11
Speaker
But it also opens up a lot of opportunity, like the same thing with me when I didn't go down the traditional path of going to a law firm out of law school. I would say a lot of the 10 percenters of the the class were looking at me going, well, like, zi for you like because you didn't make it.
00:00:32
Speaker
And and that's that's such a limiting belief, right? That there is only one way to to succeed in in the legal career. There are jobs that have not been made possible yet. Like there are jobs that haven't been created yet because of this AI revolution.
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:54
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Beacon Voices. I'm Akshay Verma, the COO at Spot Draft and your host for our podcast. I am really excited to have a conversation today with Wei Wang, who is the AGC in charge of GTM and strategic partnerships at TRM Labs.
00:01:14
Speaker
Wei, welcome to the podcast. Why don't we start with just telling us a little bit about yourself and where that beautiful sunshine is coming from? Sure. Thank you so much, Akshay.
00:01:25
Speaker
and way I've been in the legal commercial space for all of my career. So I grew up in the Bay Area in San Francisco, went to law school in the area, and then just started working high tech for the past 12 to almost 13 years of legal practice.
Wei Wang's Legal Career Path
00:01:41
Speaker
I've been supporting in-house legal teams, and mostly go to market ah specializing in commercial contracting and strategic partnerships, really working my way up from from, you know, contract administrator all the way up to where I am today.
00:01:57
Speaker
And in terms of the sunshine that you were mentioning, yeah um you know, sunny California is a great place to be, but so is sunny Lake Tahoe. And Fortunately, six years ago during COVID, I was able to make the shift from you know working and living in the Bay Area to now working full time from the
Mindset Shifts During COVID and AI Era
00:02:18
Speaker
mountains.
00:02:18
Speaker
I want to talk a little bit later about, you know, changing your mindset as we are getting into this age of AI, especially for lawyers. And you and I talked about this when we were preparing for the podcast, which is that so many people made a change in their mindset of where they were going to live, how they were going to work, where they were going to work from. and it's really opened up lives for people in a way that maybe we had not ever imagined. and i think it's been an an amazing thing. We are also very fortunate to live in California where in late February we can have days like this. It's going to be 75 degrees here in the Bay Area today, which is great. I would like for it to cool down for a little bit longer, get a little bit more water and some more so snow up in the mountains. But i will I will take this little reprieve from the cold and rain that we had a couple weeks ago.
Journey to Law School and Intellectual Challenges
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, All right. I want to talk a little bit before we kind of get into your in-house career, and especially with lawyers who come on this podcast. I have a very specific story about why I went to law school, but I'd love to hear yours. so You went to undergrad at UC Santa Barbara.
00:03:26
Speaker
Was there anything there that was telling you or is there anything before undergrad that was telling you, hey, Wei, you got to go become a lawyer and here's why? You know, i would love to say that it's because I'm a really good Asian. You know, and I decided Made my parents happy. Yeah. um But but but in in truth, and all all at the end of it all, it was actually they were very fortunate that I just really enjoyed the intellectual part of of what lawyers do.
00:03:55
Speaker
And when I was in high school, I was really highly involved in speech and debate. That was really fun for me to do you know research and then argue both sides of a case.
00:04:05
Speaker
I thought I wanted to be a litigator. I really enjoy public speaking. i wanted to get out in front of people. And then I talked to the first litigator I met, you know, well, one of those during one of those networking events. And they said, well, hate to break it to you, but you're not litigating in a courthouse. 99% of the time. Not at all. As someone who litigated for six and a half years, I can very much validate that that piece of advice. So good for whoever told you that.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, they were. I mean, yeah, so exactly that. And I think just the fact that it was a very, you know, it was a very it was a very um intellectually fulfilling, but also challenging a discipline that really got me into law school.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. And you and I both went to Santa Clara. And one of the things that I figured out, you know, later in my very much post-grad while I was working was in the Bay Area especially, the in-house world, which is as many lawyers as there are here in the Bay Area on the in-house side, it's a very small community. Everyone kind of knows each other.
00:05:12
Speaker
um Santa Clara Law has a huge chunk of the percentage of people who work in-house. Did you know that going into law school? Is that something that drew you to Santa Clara? Or is that something you just kind of figured out along the way?
00:05:25
Speaker
Not at all. Yeah, I had no idea. I actually didn't know that I wanted to go in-house directly from law school when I entered law school. It was just something that ended up becoming what happened yeah and a very unusual path.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah. And we'll we'll get into that in just a minute. Was there anything in law school that was telling you, you got to go in-house or this is what I want to do? i know you went straight into the commercial side of things, but was there anything about law school itself that kind of gave you an idea of what to do next or did you just kind of stumble upon it?
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, law school had a very prescriptive path of success. I don't know if you recall, but we had our on-campus interviews and yes then we get invited to all the big law firms. So if you really weren't in that OCI circuit with the law, you know, summer associateships, you were not considered to be quote unquote successful. back in when I was in law school. So when I was there, it was really hard to to not fall into that that same you know line of thought. yeah And I did not think that you know in-house was actually the path that I should pursue or that it would be rightfully what I wanted to do. and ended up really enjoying doing in my career. But at the time, it was very much, you know this is the one path.
00:06:40
Speaker
You either are on it or you're not. Yeah, I actually just, I wrote ah a LinkedIn post about this just a couple of days ago about how rigid the opportunities were coming out of law school.
00:06:53
Speaker
You know, certainly when I came out in 2006, there almost was no thought of anything but going to a law firm. I think ah maybe seven, eight years later, post- um well, post kind of the explosion of the in-house department in general, but also legal operations and legal technology. And we'll get into that in a minute. But the financial crisis had a lot to do with that. You know, the 2008 financial crisis had a lot to do with how legal departments were thinking about talent and growth and efficiency. And I think that started opening up the doors for very junior lawyers to break into the in-house
Starting In-House at Google
00:07:31
Speaker
world. um
00:07:33
Speaker
So you you you're in law school, you go through the motions just like we all did. um Hopefully you enjoyed it. did you and Did you enjoy your law school experience? I did. it so like Santa Clara is a great school. like My wife and I met at Santa Clara.
00:07:46
Speaker
I was in my first year, so it's got a special place in our hearts. But we do a ton of stuff with the school still, and it's it's an incredible community. Not that this was supposed to be like a big name drop for Santa Clara Law, but it's a fantastic school. It's got an incredible alumni network.
00:08:00
Speaker
all up and down the West Coast, but especially here in the Bay Area. And I also I loved my time in law school, but I ended up going to a law firm. You did not. You didn't go to a law firm. You went straight in house. Tell us about how that happened.
00:08:16
Speaker
Right. I think it was my second year of law school. So I was looking, staring down the barrel of the gun of, you know, summer approaching. I think it was April or May, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And it was already too late for a summer associate. You know, if you're really applying through the OCI process,
00:08:38
Speaker
you're definitely already too late. And and i was sitting, i remember this so clearly, but I was sitting in antitrust with a friend and she was working at Google at the time. She was doing kind of like a part-time program.
00:08:52
Speaker
And she said, hey, we're looking for, you know, a contract administrator for the summer. I'm not sure if you're interested, but, you know, if you want to, this is a really cool gig to get, you know, you still get to work intellectually with contracts, but it's not so, so hard to to get into. And I said, I mean, yes, of course, everybody would love, you know, who doesn't want to go work for Google for the summer? yeah So it just worked out that I got, you know, my foot through the door on that job And then they kept me on after the summer and they said, hey, if you're interested in staying part time with us, you know, you're doing great work, like we'd love to keep you. So I ended up staying with them and then working part time while I was in law school for the last year that I was there.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah. And then you went and joined them after after law school. did that did you Would you say that that really opened up the door to the in-house world for you? Because it's not something that most law students, at least back when I was coming out, granted, it's been 20 years. I keep saying back when I was coming out. It was a long time ago. 20 years is a long time ago. Yeah.
00:09:57
Speaker
But it's not something that I would have thought of back then because it was like, well, that's not lawyering. And so therefore, I'm not going to go do that because I just spent three years working my ass off, spending a lot of money. I'm staring down a lot of debt coming out of law school.
00:10:14
Speaker
And so I really need to go there. But you made a different choice. And it's very obvious now with the benefit of hindsight, looking at your career, that it really
Law Firm vs. In-house Career Decisions
00:10:24
Speaker
did open up doors. But were you thinking about it that way back then?
00:10:27
Speaker
Honestly, so many people and you you spoke about the mentorship and the alumni network of SU and and how it's a really robust network. And so all ah I had a lot of mentors. I took a lot of advantage of that program and met with lawyers that were seasoned and in you know in their career. um And they all told me the same thing. They said, look, Google's great. Enjoy the benefits. you know This is also the heyday of the tech, you know, the boom. Right. yeah so everything was really fun. But if you really want to learn legal acumen and get really trained in legal legal discipline, you need to go to a law firm.
00:11:03
Speaker
Just go there for three to five years. It's going to suck. But once you get out, that's how you get, you know, really get your footing back in house. Yeah. So I had that advice left and right. And then I met with law partners and I let with I had a lot of friends in law firms at the time. So I met with their partners to see if if that was really something that I wanted to get into. And Honestly, like it was like one path was saying this is what you should do. And then the other path was like, I really don't want to. yeah um
00:11:36
Speaker
what why yeah what what What part of you was like, I really don't want to do this law firm thing. And did you ever figure out why it was telling you that? it's It's kind of funny. It's like watching people smile, but then you know their eyes are crying for help. Oh, no.
00:11:51
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah. Tell me how you really feel. Yeah. yeah Yeah, edit this part out. No, not at all. it's It's so true. I think it... I don't think we talk about this enough, to be honest, in our profession. you know I teach a class at Santa Clara. I've been teaching it since 2017 or 18 now. It's a mandatory course now for one else. It's called Critical Lawyering Skills.
00:12:18
Speaker
And it's all about what it's like to practice law and not the substance of things. And one of the things, um one of the pieces of data that I share with the students in the first class is around ah the mental health aspect of our profession.
00:12:38
Speaker
It's awful. And out of the survey that I share is um I think it looked at like a hundred and some odd professions across the country. And in terms of kind of ah the happiness score, and i' I'm summarizing that that as ah as ah just as a ah gateway to the conversation.
00:12:56
Speaker
we're bottom two. And I can't remember what the bottom one was, but we're second to last. And there are real reasons for that. And I think a lot of it has to do with this, ah the point of the conversation that we're just having right now, which is people kind of put these fake smiles on, grin and bear it, grit their teeth and get through it. But it is for me, I'm not going speak for everybody. It
Career Satisfaction and Intuition
00:13:20
Speaker
was a soul sucking experience, which is why I left it.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I'm not saying it's going to be like that for everybody, but is like that. I believe it's like that for the vast majority of law firm lawyers. And, you know, we can talk about all the different reasons why that might be, but it's a reality. And and I do think it's important to talk about it. So kudos to your inner voice for picking up on that and kudos to your inner voice for having enough sway with you to be like, yeah, I'm not going to do this. I think there's another path. So so how did that decision go?
00:13:53
Speaker
Well, wonderfully, it turns out because I've been in-house my whole career. So from Google, I went to Stanford, worked in the actually the university central contracting office for a number of years before I went over then to Accenture.
00:14:10
Speaker
worked in that environment, very different. These are all very different paces and cultures. And then from there, went to Uber and now I'm at TRM Labs. And I feel like every single experience has brought me the experience and the and the kind of know-how that I needed for the next step. And every time I've jumped, I've gotten happier and more fulfilled in what I'm doing and what I get to do. So i would say, yeah in hindsight, and of course hindsight is always twenty twenty It is it is You know, it's there's something to be said about listening to your your gut versus listening to what everybody else says is the right thing. And I know for lawyers, that's really hard because we like, school hard you know, paths. We like certainty. We don't like risk. So to do the thing.
00:15:00
Speaker
That is, you know, kind of the the road less traveled by is very unconventional and risky. But I kind of looked at it as like, if there is no path, then there's no end to the opportunities and possibilities.
00:15:12
Speaker
So you get to make that whatever you want it to be. That's beautifully stated. And also ah culturally speaking from our backgrounds, I come from an Indian background, you come from an Asian background. Like that's another layer of complexity to add into the into the equation.
00:15:28
Speaker
Our cultures, certainly my parents, I mean, my dad, I would say, you know, he left India in 84 with us. I was eight years old. My brother was five. We had no money, no friends here in the U.S. We had nothing.
00:15:41
Speaker
but so that's a big risk so i i don't know that i could say that he wasn't a risk taker but generally speaking our cultures tend to be very risk averse and we look for stability and we look for the path and we look for like well in five years you should be here and in 15 and 20 years you're going to be great because you walk this path that we know and is familiar to us and so that's taking you towards that stability it's very much a legal kind of legal profession type of mentality I walked it and then I thankfully was very unconventional by nature myself. So i was like, no, fuck this, I'm out. I'm gonna i'm gonna have to go do something different.
00:16:17
Speaker
um and And I love what you just talked about, which is that you found the stepping stone. And I'm goingnna ask you a very poignant question around this in in just a minute. But you found the stepping stone at each path and at each stop.
00:16:33
Speaker
And now you can look back on and say, I learned this in the last stepping stone to get me to my next one. So here's the question. Was any of that intentional? Was it planned?
00:16:43
Speaker
Or did you just luck out? Or is there something else at play? Yeah, it's a it's it's not a single bullet answer, right? Like if you're driving towards a mountain, I love this analogy because I self soothe with this image. yeah But you imagine you're driving towards a mountain, right? And the mountain is really large and it's really high and you're on on the road to it, but you can't see where the road goes. You're just told that you could get over the mountain.
00:17:10
Speaker
And it really is only when you're at the foot of the mountain or when you're going through the bends that you know where the road is going. yeah And then thereby how to navigate your driving to get over it.
Navigating Complex Legal Deals
00:17:22
Speaker
And so I kind of think about like if you have an objective, right, like I want to go in-house, then that's your mountain.
00:17:28
Speaker
But how you get there really doesn't appear for you. The path doesn't really appear until you start walking it. Yeah, you can start driving it and then you start to use and trust and develop and nurture your soft skills.
00:17:41
Speaker
The the adaptiveness, the the curiosity, the discipline and learning the work ethic, right? All those things that you are that make up who you are as a professional and as a person that comes into those are like your engines. Those are like your tires, your your, you know, your horsepower that get you over the mountain.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah. Fantastic analogy. All right. Let's get a little metaphysical and keep it with that analogy. You're a deal lawyer. You work on crazy complex deals, strategic partnerships. Do you take that same approach when you're working on kind of big complex deals?
00:18:15
Speaker
Would you say it's the same thing in a microcosm? In a sense, you know it's not dissimilar. i love that. I love that you you you made that kind of analogy. i i think with deals, what's different about that is you have you have an end goal, right? So that let's say that is your mountain. yeah but You also kind of know where the curves are going to be. Like usually from deal to deal, there are five to eight provisions that you're going to spend some time on. yeah And i think once you start to navigate those, maybe the first few times you navigate them, you're like, oh, wow, that was a really doozy negotiating that. But after a while, you start to know where the fallback positions are, where your business lands.
00:19:01
Speaker
what you're going to say no to. And then they become kind of fun. You know, you're just, it's it's more of like a chess game because then you're like, if I move this this piece, then I can loosen this one. So it becomes a little bit of a puzzle. Yeah. And obviously the benefit of a decade plus of seeing different deals and doing different deals. So maybe you've walked several mountains and walked that path. And so you know what similar mountains look like and and you're able to navigate that. ah You touched on this a little bit, but I'd love to hear it ah from you directly. is What do you think makes for a really successful in-house lawyer? And we can focus on commercial lawyers if it's helpful, but but generally speaking, so much of our audience is on the in-house side. What advice would you give them when I ask you that question? What really makes for success on the in-house side?
00:19:50
Speaker
I mean, just from my experience, and and I'm sure there's plenty plenty of people that have more experience and and better things to say, but I think from just where I sit today, what I've seen from people that succeeded in-house are, one, you're not just thinking like a lawyer, you're thinking like your business stakeholder.
00:20:08
Speaker
So you're a co-partner versus a I'm a gay teenie to get through somehow. like that old school legal is the gatekeeper stopper, you know, yellers of no, those those days are over, right? Now you're kind of like, you're on the the forefront of almost shaping the deal and helping them strategize about how to come together with a partner so that things could be sustainable, you know, in the longterm. So if you're thinking like a business person and you can combine that with explaining legalese in layman's terms, then I think you're like 80% there, right?
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think most law firm lawyers, because I'm sure you've worked with them in terms of retention and you do now, I'm sure you use outside counsel for a variety different things. And most legal departments, especially two of the ones that you've been in there are incredibly large, actually three, Accenture as well. They're filled with lawyers who started their careers in law firms and then moved in-house. Do you think there's a disconnect between how outside counsel really kind of thinks about the law and servicing the business and its it's clients versus how in-house lawyers have to think about their work and how they work with their direct business clients?
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That transition and gap is is pretty big. um I think from a law firm perspective, they're trying to give you all of the facts, right? They're not making the decision for you. And to be fair, like from a liability perspective, they don't understand exactly all the nuances and the corners of risk in your business. So they're not going to be able to say, well, more likely than not, I think you should vote. way they they're really really allergic to that you know when they when they come to you um but in-house you know you i think the value of a lawyer is that you are are able to kind of right size the risk with the business reality and if you're at a startup you're operating more like a pirate ship versus a navy right yeah i love that pirate ship i love it
00:22:17
Speaker
Tighten down. But over time, you know you kind of transition from a little pirate ship to you know more of a bigger ship and then things get more organized, more tidy. But you know so having a law firm sit anywhere along that path is going to be a challenge for the law firm and also for the in-house.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, you have worked at some incredibly large legal departments. And in fact, ah during my time at Axiom where I did business development, Google and Uber were were two departments that I worked with directly. I learned a lot about the ins and outs of large legal departments. I worked with smaller legal departments, too, along the way. and then I ended up going in house to head up legal ops at Facebook and at Coinbase, also two very large legal departments. um And you talked a little bit just now about in-house lawyers really needing to be able to connect to the business in some fashion, to be able to advise the business appropriately.
Building Trust with Stakeholders
00:23:12
Speaker
um
00:23:13
Speaker
Did you have a sense that you were connected to the business goals while you were at at Google and at Uber? And if so, like how did they succeed in giving you that visibility?
00:23:24
Speaker
Hmm, that's a really great question. so at Google, I was no, I was ah too too low on the totem pole and too too young in my career for them to even trust me with that liability. But as I've grown and built that trust with the business over time, I think, you know, at Uber, especially that's, you know, the times where I was in with the business where they pulled me in early were the projects that were really successful.
00:23:55
Speaker
And I would say, you know, it takes a lot of trust. It takes a lot of them believing that you're there. not to pick at the flaws, but you're you're there to identify the roadblockers proactively so that you can go around them or so that you can preempt them so that they're not gonna be roadblockers. That's when they realize, okay, you're on my side. And if you're on my side, then we're working together. Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
yeah and And obviously Uber, you're in a very different kind of role. So here's here's another question. You have a law degree. You have a license to practice law. You're in a contract administrator role early in your early in your career. Did you feel like you really needed someone to take a chance on you to take that first commercial counsel
Impact of Google's Resume on Career
00:24:40
Speaker
role? Like, what was that like?
00:24:42
Speaker
Absolutely. um yeah I mean, it I don't remember how many resumes I tossed into the ether, I would say. you know i think i think that the statistic is like when you when i applied for uber um and they they hired me, you get to see in Greenhouse how many times you've applied previously. yeah forgotten But apparently i had applied seventeen ah to 17 different roles but throughout my time when I was at Accenture, yeah um you know, to get there. And so, yeah, I think absolutely it was it was a chance for, you know, Accenture and and Uber and, you know, to take me on. And, you know,
00:25:23
Speaker
And even Google, I think they you know they knew what they were you know looking for. So if you had what they needed from a skillset perspective, then then it was that's kind of how you open the door. But having Google on the resume as a first stop was a game changer. i think just in Silicon Valley, if you wanted to stay in high tech yeah at the time, you know the FAANG companies you know today, like that's kind of what it was. yeah So I just got extremely fortunate.
00:25:52
Speaker
like What are they called now? Is it mango or something like that? it's not I know I'm not dating myself. in the First of all, it's not that long ago. It can't be that dated. i feel like I just, sometimes I feel like I just started working. It's crazy. I've been in this profession for 26 years, but there are times when I feel like that was just yesterday. And my wife is like, no, dude, that was like 20 years ago.
00:26:16
Speaker
the All right. Maybe I just feel young, which which is which is good enough in itself. That's great. Yeah. um So you are currently at TRM Labs, much smaller company, much smaller legal department, but you came from these three behemoth companies and these three behemoth legal departments.
Large Legal Departments vs. Startups
00:26:35
Speaker
What would you say are some of the biggest differences in those in those experiences?
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah, the first is structure, right? Like the the bigger companies have playbooks, they have templates, they have escalation paths for when when something is out of the standard.
00:26:50
Speaker
yeah And when I was at, you know, when I started at TRM, it was just, I was the commercial lead. So there were only three lawyers at the time, including the CLO. And we we would escalate to to the CLO. But really, I'm escalating to myself. you know yeah like There's really nobody else up there. So I think just a lack of structure is is one thing.
00:27:14
Speaker
And then the autonomy is the other big thing, is that you have an idea, you can i you know you can just execute on it, and you're your own person that holds that accountable. Like you own that project. Whereas in any of the larger companies, you have an idea, you brainstorm on the idea, you think about bringing it up at a weekly sync, weekly sync goes by, know, oh, I didn't bring it up next week. Yeah.
00:27:41
Speaker
And then, you know, a whole quarter goes by and then finally get sign off and then the committee votes on it. um I mean, it's just it's dead in the water, right Like before it even starts. a water Is there a higher level of intensity ah in your current role than what you've seen in the past? yeah And I say this a lot to people. I've worked at like two very intense companies from outside perception and Facebook and Coinbase.
00:28:07
Speaker
But this is and I'm at a company now we are roughly north of 300 people. This is hands down the most intense job I've ever had in my life. Like, would would you do you share that experience being at a smaller company? And why do you think that is? Yes, absolutely. um Why? Well, I think because you're you're doing probably five people's jobs, right? any Every day um And i think because there's that expectation of execution, it's not just, um you know, we're brainstorming. It's like we're shipping. We're shipping in a week. So the speed, the velocity, the volume, the high level of performance, um It's a really invigorating atmosphere. Like I will have to say this ruined me because it's like, well, I don't I cannot ever imagine going back to a bigger company because I'll just be bored.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. Like I'm used to this. But but also there are some days like after a really tough week, you're like, I don't know how anybody can sustain this level of performance.
00:29:11
Speaker
Sometimes i I wonder if I'm aging myself out of this kind of work. like I'll be 50 this year and like there I'm physically tired sometimes, especially on Fridays. like It's just you know is one of those universal things where like Friday is the end of the work week and it's just been a crazy work week. was like, okay, I probably don't have to work a ton this weekend, so I'm going to just like exhale for a minute and I just realized how exhausted I am.
00:29:32
Speaker
um so only I got to eat my Wheaties is probably more of the better advice I need to give myself. um Well, you're not alone. Yeah. you know What about in terms of resources? Like, is that a big, obviously, ah you know, bigger companies tend to have more resources, ah not just in terms of people, but like you said, guidance, playbooks, like, you know, yeah we're a contracting tool. That's something that we work on with our customers all the time is, hey, do you have playbooks for this? And oftentimes the people we sell into don't have playbooks for that. So we help them create them. But but what are that what is that resourcing difference like for you?
00:30:06
Speaker
I mean, it's night and day, right? Like um the resource at a large company is that if you need something and you can throw some money at the problem, you can probably throw money at the problem or there's already a tool that does all of that. yeah Whereas at a smaller company and, you know, at a startup, if you don't have the tool, the next question is, can we build it? yeah Can you become the person that builds it? and And that's been really actually pretty cool, you know, especially now with AI. I think that has made a lot of things, a lot of work streams that used to take...
00:30:41
Speaker
hundreds of thousands of dollars in law firm costs if you were to outsource it to an outside firm, or if you're building it in-house months of your time, like now you can really shrink that into just a week and a really, and you know, a fraction of the cost.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about operations.
Operational Mindset in AI Age
00:31:00
Speaker
You know, I'd say for the last, what year are we in? We're in 2026. Let's say for the last, um,
00:31:07
Speaker
13 to 14 years, in-house lawyers, GCs, CLOs, um they have needed to become far more operationally minded than ever before.
00:31:19
Speaker
And I'd say now in the age of AI, it is becoming table stakes for them to be operationally minded and technologically savvy. That doesn't mean they're out there coding and things like that. but But these are not things that we learn in law school.
00:31:33
Speaker
Did you take a technology class in law school? I certainly did not. We didn't learn about things like spreadsheets and data and all of those kinds of things that are required to run a business.
00:31:45
Speaker
Um, but at some point along the way, if you're in house, you have to get on the operational train. When did that start for you and how has that evolved over the last decade of your career?
00:31:59
Speaker
yeah i would say for the larger companies you know we did have pretty good teams that did operations especially at a larger company you know there's legal ops that's a whole org it's a function it's a career 100 yeah and the professionals who are really good at it are extremely valuable they are worth their weight in gold yeah um So when i came to the startup about four years ago, that was the first time I was confronted with, you have a lot of volume, but you need to figure out how to operationally solve for that.
00:32:32
Speaker
on your own. and um And that's been a challenge, you know, because I didn't go to law school. Yeah, exactly what you were saying. Like if we wanted to do Excel spreadsheets, we probably got an MBA. But like I did not go to law school excelling in that. And no um and that's been the biggest learning curve really is like, OK, you know, carving out time to to really focus on putting on a different hat and saying, OK, how do I minimize the things that are low risk, high friction, high volume,
00:33:01
Speaker
How do I automate it How do i take it off just completely legal's radar? Yeah. But I mean, that's kind of what switches you from an execution, you know, like a contributor to a leader. It's really you're shaping then how things are flowing.
00:33:17
Speaker
So it challenged a new part of my brain, which I actually appreciate because I feel like I've not really had to. And humans are, you know, if we don't have to do it, we're not going to do it. so true. So true. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:29
Speaker
yeah Well, in that way, I mean, if you look at all the variety of different work streams that go on in an in-house department, you know, you've got you've got product work and privacy work and corporate work and all all the litigation.
00:33:47
Speaker
Contracting, commercial contracting is probably one of the more operationally tinted um or operationally leaning work streams that there are. So, and as a contract administrator early in your career, you are literally sitting at one part and overseeing a component of the chronology where a contract is first generated the business is like hey here's a deal that we need to do all the way through signature of that agreement and there's tons of stuff in between but then obviously that agreement needs to sit somewhere and hopefully you're able to get at the insights that are in that agreement um But did you did you really kind of start digging into the operational side of things early on there? And did that shape how you thought about lawyering once you got to Uber?
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because they had such a sophisticated process already running so smoothly at Google, right? It was um it was very much a, you know, if it's not if it's on our standard paper and there's no edits, legal doesn't look at it. So I was, I can ah i can probably, i would say with,
00:34:57
Speaker
99% certainty that whatever role i was doing at Google about 13 years ago is probably no longer a role. I'm sure they have figured out a way to automate that. And and even yeah even then, it was it was very much a, this is what you're looking for you're checking for these things, and then off you go. But I was really impressed by the the flow that they designed, which is like, you know, you have the standard and then you have the non standards. And then where are the exceptions? And like, how do you get to get to yes? And it was very expedient.
00:35:29
Speaker
All of it was very fast. At what point do you start understanding the importance of legal technology for lawyers in the in-house world? Like when did that kind of light bulb go on for you?
00:35:41
Speaker
When we were at Uber, we had a search for the best contracts management tool, um which if you were if you worked in-house, you feel you know there is there is no perfect tool. There's there's there's good and then there's better and and then there's like bad um And that's when I realized, wow, like a tool can really make a difference in one. We had a fullon full on full full time paralegal. And this person's entire job was just to train people on how to use the tool.
00:36:12
Speaker
yeah That's how complicated it was. yeah but um But now we we, you know, at the startup, we have a different tool and it's been great. So I feel like, you know, you feel the pain of the wrong tools more than, you know, you appreciate sometimes the the fluidity of a good one. yeah um But over time, you know, it really could be expensive for for your company to have the wrong one.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah. and And you now have experience working at these companies where there is a, um but we won't pass any judgment on whether it's a good process or not from getting things from point A to point B, but there is an established process for getting things from point A to point B. And you either introduce a tool into that or you have an existing tool that kind of helps you get from point A to point B. And then you also came to a company where I'm guessing processes were not yet quite set. Right. And you're in your current company, although I'm sure you've done that. We'll talk a little bit about that in a minute.
00:37:09
Speaker
But so you have these kind of diametric opposites of the state of things from an operational perspective and how tooling plays a role. What has been your experience about the importance of having good process before thinking about a tool? And the reason I ask that is that, you know, in my legal operations experience, and one of the things that I espouse and really is is kind of gospel to me is that people in process before technology, because if you don't have the first two in a good space and everything's messy, then all you end up doing is you start proliferating that mess with technology.
Importance of Solid Processes Before Tech Implementation
00:37:45
Speaker
What are your thoughts on that concept? I could not agree with that more. And I wish more people thought about it that way instead of just going after the hottest new tool that they heard about or they saw a really flashy demo and they thought, oh, this is it. But, you know, if you don't have a good process down, then you don't actually understand what you need.
00:38:03
Speaker
Right. Like your process should, if it's a good process, well-designed one should should be a like a very well-tailored suit. There shouldn't be any, you know, extra fabric anywhere it doesn't have to be, but it should tailor to your needs and and make you, you know, move, like think athleisure, right, whatever. yeah um and i and I think, you know, people um that have that or teams that are very articulate about what their process is can then really scope the right tool to fit that process and and grow with that process. Because that's the other thing is like you can meet the needs of your process today, but can you evolve with it?
00:38:43
Speaker
to scale. So, so these are all the factors. i I really love that you mentioned that because I think a lot of teams do have it backwards. They're like, okay, we're going to get tool and then we're going to bake a process into it and then things break. And then, you know, it's just a mess.
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah. I use this analogy, especially with our prospects and customers who are lawyers, because it really resonates with them. i was like, and I tell them, it's think back to when you took the bar exam.
00:39:07
Speaker
And when you were studying for the bar exam and whoever you chose to study with, whatever, Barbary or whoever, there's a million others now. But um when you are studying for taking essays, and I don't mean a specific subject of essays, but writing, essay writing, you have whatever, 50 minutes or 60 minutes to write the essay.
00:39:26
Speaker
And they say, spend the first five to seven minutes outlining your answer. read the prompt, outline, read it again, outline a little bit. Spend that time up front to do the outline, and then it is far easier for you to structure your answer and write the actual essay itself. And I think about the selection of tooling as that kind of a project.
00:39:50
Speaker
If you spend the first, however long it takes you, um to do the actual planning. And I want to talk a little bit about what you think about specifically as you were thinking about a new tool or a new initiative or whatever it might be. But if you do that planning up front, your chances of success in the execution, implementation, adoption,
00:40:10
Speaker
are significantly higher. a do you agree with that? I think you do. And B, what specifically, like specific steps would you engage in? Or let's say somebody comes to you and say, hey, Wei, I'd love some advice on this new tool that we want to buy. Like, what is it that you want to start that conversation in response with?
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, for first and foremost, I absolutely agree. i think that's such a good analogy and I might steal it. yeah feeling ah And the second one is, you know, if somebody is coming up with a solution, then I would first want to know what they're solving for.
00:40:43
Speaker
yeah love that. Yes. Because if you can't articulate the problem statement and where the friction points are, then it's really hard to evaluate whether the tool is going to be the one for you. So, yeah and sometimes it's surprising because they'll come to you and they'll have a bunch of different problems that they're trying to solve. And it's not really clear what the focus is. So even just helping them prioritize, okay. Like of all these pain points, which one is the most, you know, which one is the one that if you solve for that one, it kicks loose all the others. Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah. so So start with the problem statement. What are you trying to solve? 100% agree. um Which takes us into things that are literally part of every conversation in this day and age, which is AI. um Let's start very broad. Your thoughts, like when was the first time you came across generative AI as a lawyer? And what are your what are your overall thoughts around AI right now in 2026 and as we look through the the next couple years?
AI Revolution and New Legal Jobs
00:41:44
Speaker
Oh, man, what a what a question. um i think I think I came across my first chat GPT answer maybe a year and a half ago.
00:41:55
Speaker
it was it was it was it a legal thing or a personal thing? It was personal. It was somebody was like, hey, have you tried this? It's really fun um And i looked at it and I thought it was i was like, oh, this is actually, you know, kind of a cool thing to interact with that might make Google have to like that gives Google a a run for its money. You know, if you were to accumulate knowledge like that and then.
00:42:18
Speaker
And then I started to and of course, like when you're at a startup and I think this is what's so great about being at a smaller company during this day and age, you know, is that you're so fast at pivoting because there is a need to your resource strapped. And so you have to pivot fast. um So we were onboarded and encouraged by our founders to experiment and play around with to the extent, say, you know, that is safe and responsible, but yeah to play around with AI. and You mean at TRM?
00:42:45
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yes. We had, you know, AI demo days, we had AI enablement days, and they really invested a lot of time in in the people that work here to to help us find new ways to engage with the tool. So over the course of like the last 12 to 16 months, I would say, um we built our first iteration of a contracts review bot.
00:43:08
Speaker
We loaded it with our with our playbooks. It's just MNDAs, right? you know It's just like a very low low complexity review, but we we taught it what to look for and what we cared about. And it actually enabled us to review MNDAs fairly quickly when it's not on our paper. yeah And we hired, so it's really good for onboarding because if you hire a paralegal and you have to then train them on every single and NDA you know, exception, that's going to be very time consuming at a startup. But if you give them a bot and you say, yeah run the bot, and if you have questions, we can talk about it.
00:43:43
Speaker
That cuts down your, your, you know, oversight by more than half. Yeah, that's fantastic. And this is to me, this is the beauty that the AI technology is bringing, it's democratizing to a great extent, the ability of people to do things. Now, we obviously saw all the block news yesterday and there's plenty of, you know well, there's two diametric views on this. One is that he has built an incredibly efficient company and this and that. And the other is, well, they hired like 6,000 people during COVID and now they had to cut, like whatever your view may be on that, irrespective of that.
00:44:21
Speaker
we're probably going to see more instances of those kinds of things. And so that brings all this fear. FUD, you're familiar with with that with that acronym, right?
00:44:32
Speaker
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. bring It in floods the market and and and the population with FUD. What advice do you have for lawyers who are law students who are in law school, who are coming out in the next two or three years or maybe next year,
00:44:47
Speaker
And junior lawyers now who are like, oh my gosh, where am I going to get that training? Right? You got that. You got advice. Yeah. As did i which is that if you want really good legal training, you got to go to a law firm.
Embracing AI as an Opportunity for Legal Professionals
00:45:01
Speaker
Well, law firms aren't really using AI, whatever Harvey may be telling you, they're not using it. ah and And so you're not you're probably not going to get those skill sets there. And on top of that, so many clients are pushing their law firms to use AI and even going so far as to say, hey, like I don't really expect to see first, second or third year associates doing this work because ai should be doing it. That's a real thing that's happening.
00:45:28
Speaker
What advice do you give this group of people who are in our profession on how to think about AI? What should they be focusing on? Yeah, what ah what a very pertinent question for this day and age. um I would say, first of all, you know fear is normal. And having invested all of this money and time into law school to have this be something that you're facing when you're graduating is very challenging.
00:45:53
Speaker
But it also opens up a lot of opportunity, like the same thing with me when I didn't go down the traditional path of going to a law firm out of law school. I would say a lot of the 10 percenters of the the class were looking at me going, well, like, thanks for you like because you didn't make it. Yeah.
00:46:13
Speaker
um And um and and that's that's such a limiting belief, right? That there is only one way to to succeed in a legal career. There are jobs that have not been made possible yet. Like there are jobs that haven't been created yet because of this AI revolution that is coming.
00:46:31
Speaker
And there's some really great talks on this, but if you look at the history of time and just like the number of jobs throughout every single technological revolution, there has been more jobs created with each of them, not less. So I think it's more, it's less of a zero sum, like, oh, there's nothing for me. Like, I'm not going to just, I'm going to go drive Uber now, you know, whatever. more about- Well, we'll be do that for long because driverless cars are new. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but that career path may be gone too.
00:47:02
Speaker
um Yeah, I just i think there, you know, you can you can almost harness that kind of anxiety, right? Like, because it's just energy, like you can harness that energy and into something that is more creative, into something that's more curious and just. Yeah. work on skills that are portable, work on skills that to me, I think what served me in my career is really just this like fearlessness of of the unknown.
00:47:27
Speaker
Like I think most lawyers are not like that. Like they they like the the known, but because I've been always on kind of the unconventional path and made it work, I have built this confidence that it's going to be fine.
00:47:40
Speaker
it is You're going to figure it out because we're humans, we're adaptive. And the more you work on those adaptive muscles, the better you get at them. And then the less fearful you are of the uncertainty that comes. And I think it's just part of life. I'm going to say, i think you are one of the most centered lawyers that I've ever had the opportunity to speak with. And I think that's such a refreshing take. And it's out there. To to be very clear, it's out there.
00:48:05
Speaker
um I read about this stuff every single day. um And that concept, which was newer to me in the last maybe six months or so, which is with the with the advent of any new revolutionary technology, so email, the internet, ah and now AI, with every one of the previous such um changes,
00:48:29
Speaker
the number of jobs has increased exponentially. They're not the same jobs. And so you're gonna see a little bit of pain as we go through this evolution and this whatever you may be calling this change, the time of change right now. You're going to feel a little bit of pain, but people have to take that individual intention to be like, I need to learn these new skills now.
00:48:53
Speaker
And here's how my new path is going to look. So you you talked about, creating that path through the mountain. Here is our mountain to climb. What does ai look like on the other side? What does it look like for us individually on the other side? And unless you're willing to take that intention, and this is this is a singular piece of advice I will give to every single human being today, including my kids, although they're not they allowed to use AI for homework.
00:49:18
Speaker
But you got to learn how to use this thing. Learn how to use it. Understand its limitations. Understand its benefits. Understand its dangers. Understand how to navigate those. and Understand how to use it for your own benefit. But never lose the things that made us so human and so successful. Curiosity.
00:49:36
Speaker
Resilience. You embody both of those in the way that you have gone about your career in the last 12 years. And if you keep those things, you keep that growth mindset, you are going to succeed in this world.
00:49:47
Speaker
It will. Now, will it mean that you are going to have exactly the kind of career that you envision today? Probably not. But then who does? I certainly didn't think I'd be a COO 10 years ago. I didn't think I'd be a COO five years ago. And yet here I am in this role. So I think you take that learning lesson, which is the stepping stone is there. You've got to be ready for it.
00:50:06
Speaker
And in order to be ready for it, you have to teach yourself new things. And AI is teaching yourself new things. Learn how to use it. Don't be afraid of it. Don't shy away from it. I am also of the belief that we are going to have far more new kinds of jobs and titles and roles with the advent of AI than we currently have today. And the thing is, we don't know what those are. And that uncertainty makes us incredibly anxious. And I totally get that.
00:50:31
Speaker
But you got to learn to live with that anxiety, I think, and and and you just kind of force your way through it. Very well said, very eloquently, yes. All right, I have a couple of AI questions. I want i try to ask this of most people. gonna try these with you. Okay, so you're playing around with a bunch of different AI tools for TRM um Labs. What is the biggest gap in your mind between what AI can technically do, like what's the tech what the what the technology is capable of doing and how lawyers are actually using
AI Use Gap in Legal Field
00:50:58
Speaker
it?
00:50:58
Speaker
A, do you think there's a gap and and how big do you think that gap is right now? I think there's a huge gap. um And the gap that I'm seeing just in my own world is that lawyers are using AI like Google, right? Or we're using it as a as a search tool.
00:51:14
Speaker
And there is a there is an operational side to AI that lawyers don't know how to how to loop together. So if you can build a bot that pulls from whatever it is, let's just put ah a day-to-day example, read my email every morning, pull out the five top emails that are the most important with action items for me, draft my to-do list, and then prioritize it on my calendar. That is a loop that currently I don't think a lot of lawyers know how to build on their own unless there's an off-the-shelf tool that can do it. yeah um
00:51:49
Speaker
But that's kind of the nature and the vein of what I think is possible with AI is it's operational. You can loop it into different action items based on your set of rules. But because lawyers are using us solely for revise this contract to send it to me, whatever, it's still kind of like in phase one of what's out there.
00:52:08
Speaker
Okay, second question. um And again, I think this is something you're all actively doing. How do you experiment aggressively with AI without losing judgment or accountability?
00:52:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think you got to hold on to the ownership of your work product. Like that's the biggest thing is maybe start with the low risk, but high friction risk.
00:52:30
Speaker
you know, tasks on your desk, like what we were encouraged to do at the start of is like, look at your calendar and like, look at how you're spending your week, right? yeah what Where are you spending the most of your time that has the least value to the business? And if you can identify that and it's low risk, then that's a really great candidate for experimentation. And I would say, you know, it's hard.
00:52:51
Speaker
It's hard for lawyers because we're very black and white. It's like whether we have an AI tool or or we don't. But it's like you can use AI for a very small section of your work. You don't have to use it for everything.
00:53:02
Speaker
You can identify one area that could be optimized and experiment with a tool that just optimizes that. Because like I think the challenge is like there is no there is no one tool fits all for legal.
00:53:15
Speaker
And in order to, and everybody's trying to do it, but i it's not there yet. Right. So solve one problem. um Third question. What mind shift does the legal department need to make in order to thrive in this AI moment?
Mindset Shift to Integrate AI Effectively
00:53:32
Speaker
Hmm.
00:53:35
Speaker
I think a lot of people are fearful of AI, so they don't want to use it. There's a lot of hesitation, almost like an ownership, like I'm protecting my clients by not exposing their data or, you know, exposing them to this.
00:53:49
Speaker
And that's a nice narrative that I think will work for a while. But, um, the the point is not perfect the point is iterative so even if ai is not where you need it to be for you to be comfortable with handing you know all of the cases over to the ai bot you can like we were just talking about dissect it and then use it for for parts of what it could help you with and then over time you grow that muscle and it compounds The AI literacy is really something that i I believe like you just it compounds on itself. So the more you know, the more tools you use, the better you get.
00:54:27
Speaker
i love that phrase, AI literacy. I think becoming more AI literate is it should be the goal, certainly of every human being on the planet. but especially lawyers right now, and especially those who are hanging on to their identity and are afraid. So you talked about the fear with respect to clients and data and privacy and security and so, which is very real. There's the another aspect of fear for me that I see, which is that lawyers attach their identity to the effort that they put into their work. And to reduce that effort reduces their identity to a certain extent. And I think we have to get rid of that mentality in order to really thrive in this AI world. And we can. I think we can do it. But it takes that intention.
00:55:08
Speaker
All right, three more questions, and then we're going wrap up. These are more on kind of the professional development side of things in your career. um With the benefit of hindsight and going back and thinking about your law school experience and your law school self, what advice would you give your law school self?
00:55:27
Speaker
I was stressed so much less as a law student if I knew that this would be me today. i'm very i'm very excited about where things have landed today. yeah And you know the narratives, we talk a lot about the social pressures, the environmental pressures.
00:55:46
Speaker
That all had a toll on kind of like my wellness as a law student because I was stressed about this split between what I wanted to do versus what I thought I should do because of everybody else's advice. So yeah, I think I was stressed less and just go with the flow more.
00:56:03
Speaker
yeah Okay. So shifting that away from your law school self to current law students, um is there, would you change that advice at all? would there be Would you advise them of something different, particularly given everything that's going on in our profession these days?
00:56:22
Speaker
I think I would focus on identifying where your strengths are. Like, what are the the the attributes about you as a person that are going to build some portable skills?
00:56:33
Speaker
Be curious about, you know, what what do I enjoy doing? and And see if that translates into something that could make you... better at your profession. I mean, this is kind of like a weird bridge, but that's that's what I'm trying to get at is like I wasn't that self-aware when I was in law school that, oh, my curiosity and adaptiveness is really going to get me somewhere. Like, I wish somebody told me that that yeah these traits are not just a personality feature. They're actually going to be your greatest strengths and um and they will be the the things that carry you from one job to to the next. Absolutely. So there was an aha moment in the class that I teach and ah along with some of the data that I shared earlier.
00:57:16
Speaker
One of the other things that i share is a huge study that's done every two or three years. And they go out and they talk to 35,000, 40,000 employers and clients of lawyers.
00:57:29
Speaker
And they ask them, what are the top 10 competencies that you look for from your lawyers? Yeah. or they They actually say, what are the top competencies? And there's there's a long list.
00:57:40
Speaker
And the top 10, and this is this was an aha moment for me as I started teaching this class eight years ago. um Of the top 10, only three are actually taught in law school.
00:57:52
Speaker
ah Writing, legal research, and oral communication. The other seven are the things that you talked about. Right. So it's such an interesting thing because we were not taught these things in law school. I certainly was not taught these things in life or undergrad, certainly not by my parents. ah It was all about hard work and getting good grades and those kinds of things, which which I'm not going to say those are not important.
00:58:18
Speaker
But of those set of those top 10, that the people who pay lawyers, the people who pay lawyers, they're telling their lawyers, this is what I value from you. And it's not how well you can write a brief or anything. It's not those things really.
00:58:34
Speaker
How well do you show up? Your customer service, your responsiveness, your resilience, your dedication and loyalty to me as a client and a customer or the organization for which you work.
00:58:46
Speaker
Those are the really important things. And I think that it was such an aha moment for me. And I'm so glad that this class is being taught to law students because I think they will have the opportunity to either gain more of this self-awareness earlier on in their process. professions than we ever did. And I think it'll, it'll suit them really, really well.
00:59:05
Speaker
Okay, last question. This one is forward looking for you. And this the the analogy of like the mountain and the path, I think fits in nicely. So as you, let's I'm going to say, let's say 10 years from now. And I realized that in 2026, that's a really long time. So if you want to think five years ahead, that's fine too.
00:59:25
Speaker
But what's the path that you hope you have taken in the next five to 10 years? Where do you hope to be? And it doesn't have to be a company or anything like that, but where do you want Way to be? Oh, man.
00:59:40
Speaker
Yeah, that that really is tough with AI these days. um i hope I hope I'm you know still in the loop. I hope I'm still somewhere in the architectural you know program management part of when one AI bot negotiates with a another AI bot and they're just fighting each other over an MSA, you know, I hope i'm I'm more intertwined with the business and I'm getting to be, you know, like a co-pilot for them so that they have an extra brain that's legal minded that can help them facilitate, you know, whatever it is that they're trying to do.
01:00:16
Speaker
um and enjoying life, truly. like you know we are so We're such maximalists in this in this country, and but you know just having time to spend a quality time with family, friends, and and have the AI bot run a program that I created you know so yeah Friday afternoon.
01:00:34
Speaker
We all go skiing. I love that. I love that analogy. That's a really good one. All right. My guest today has been Wei Wang from TRM Labs. Thank you so much. This was a really fun conversation.
01:00:46
Speaker
Thank you so much, actually. I had such a blast.