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EP 04: When Legal Judgment Becomes Business Judgment
9 Plays18 days ago
In this episode of Beacon Voices, Akshay Verma speaks with Sachin Bansal, former President of SecurityScorecard and a seasoned cybersecurity operator, about an unconventional legal career journey.
Sachin shares how he moved from Big Law to in-house leadership, and ultimately into senior operating roles: navigating pivots driven by market disruption, technology shifts, and the rise of AI. The conversation explores what modern legal leaders must unlearn, how legal operations and AI reshape efficiency, and why business judgment, not just legal accuracy, is now the defining skill.
Read a detailed summary: www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-04
Topics
Introduction: 00:00
Current role and advisory work in cybersecurity and private equity: 01:38
Growing up as a first-generation immigrant and discovering a love for language and problem-solving: 03:08
Choosing law school, early inspirations, and the realities of legal careers: 04:41
Big Law realities: elite training, partnership pressure, and the cost of not having a niche: 10:04
Career pivots in practice: banking secondments, market shocks, and adaptability: 13:19
Learning to pivot: why linear legal careers don’t survive real-world disruption: 15:36
From lawyer to operator: filling business gaps during hypergrowth and COVID: 29:14
Letting go of the GC title and stepping fully into an operating role: 33:33
Developing business judgment: mindset shifts from advisor to owner: 36:41
Legal technology’s evolution from eDiscovery to revenue-enabling infrastructure: 45:39
AI in legal teams: saving time, cost, and risk while keeping humans in the loop: 56:45
Advice to law students and young lawyers: MBAs, AI fluency, and staying adaptable: 1:01:00
Looking ahead: growing as an operator and measuring impact beyond titles: 1:02:57
Connect with us:
Sachin Bansal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinsbansal/
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
Introduction to AI in Legal Tech
00:00:00
Speaker
For legal tech, now you have you have ai kind of layered into it. it's going to save even more time um and and hopefully also will save more money and save more costs, which, ah you know, there's definitely a lot of of fear and concern about AI, you know, how's it going to affect headcount. And my my general thesis is that it's it's augmenting.
00:00:30
Speaker
um There's got to be a human in the loop.
Introducing Beacon Voices and Sachin Bunsel
00:00:41
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is Akshay Verma, COO at Spot Draft, and now the host of our podcast, Beacon Voices. Really excited today to have a great conversation with Sachin Bunsel, who is a the former president and been in ah a long time operator role at security scorecards, a very, very seasoned cybersecurity operator. Excited to hear about his journey, talk a little bit probably about cyber risk and how that applies to lawyers, talk a little bit about how lawyers and operators work together or don't. We might get little spicy in that one too. And and see where that unfolds. Sachin, really well clearly nice to have you on the on the podcast.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, Akshay, thank you so much to Spot Draft and to you for for having me as a guest on the on the podcast today. I'm really excited about ah the conversation and hopefully giving the listeners here some some useful takeaways.
00:01:38
Speaker
Awesome. Look, let's let's hear a little bit about what you're currently
Sachin Bunsel's Career Journey
00:01:41
Speaker
doing. You've had an and iustrious illustrious career over the years. I want i want to dig in a little bit ah into the history, but but what's currently on your plate?
00:01:49
Speaker
Sure. So i I was most recently the president of cybersecurity scorecard, a cybersecurity SaaS business backed by Google, Sequoia and Riverwood Capital.
00:02:02
Speaker
um i ah was was in the business for about six years in progressively more senior roles, initially actually as the GC of the company. And then over the last few months, I have been ah i've been operating my own advisory firm that ah works a lot with private equity firms to help them with cybersecurity due diligence. And then in parallel, I've been evaluating ah senior operating roles like COO, for example, ah and for for my next adventure, which will most likely also be in cybersecurity again.
00:02:38
Speaker
Very cool. Well, look you said the three magic letters, which are near and dear to my heart, which is CEO. And part of the reason I was really excited for this conversation is is i you know I have an affinity for folks who've kind of made that transition.
00:02:53
Speaker
it's been such a It's been such a nice transition and change for me in my career over the last... When did I stop lawyering? In 2012, so about 13 years and all the different flavors that that operator role has taken on for me. But let's let's take it back for you to a little bit of the the earlier years of such and as the human, not nearly just the the lawyer just
Early Life and Interest in Law
00:03:16
Speaker
yet. What was it like for you? Where did you grow up? Was there anything in your early life that was kind of telling you and tugging you towards lawyering?
00:03:23
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, i'm I'm the first person in my family to be born in the United States. ah English was not my first language. Hindi was. And i went from i went from being someone that kids in school made fun of because I couldn't pronounce I didn't pronounce certain English words like they did. yeah and And then fast forward to a number of years later where I was out lapping them in in in like AP US history and AP English and British literature was one of my favorite classes. ah and and And then over time, of course, I just became phenomenally better at English and much, much poorer at Hindi. I think much, I'm sure, I know my my parents were still to this day, i wish my Hindi could be a little bit better, but it's it's still ah it's still okay. but
00:04:13
Speaker
I, I, I, when I, when I reflect back on my early years, uh, I knew very quickly that I was much more of an English humanities history type of person, just because of the nature of those classes and my interest in them and excitement for them versus like.
00:04:30
Speaker
the the the the dread and fear and agony when I had like a pop quiz and in chemistry class, for example. um And i the first book, the first real book I ever read was ah The Client by John Grisham. And I was 10 years old. No kidding. You read that at 10.
00:04:51
Speaker
i I don't know if i fully understood it at 10. But I read it and i i thought i thought that ah courtroom dramas and John Grisham's fiction was just totally fascinating. No one in my my family, both my my immediate family or extended family, was a lawyer.
00:05:10
Speaker
And i ah From then on, I think even until present, my my my life has been a series of twists and turns. And i thought that I was going to become a lawyer. And then when I went to college, my my dad and my brother were both you know senior business professionals. And so I'm thinking I'm going to go into Wall Street and I major in economics. And I realized that I and and just not as excited about ah about
00:05:41
Speaker
taking statistics and and macro and micro econ. And i ah it fell into majoring in in government, specifically public policy. And I remember my parents asking me, okay, well, so what are you going to what are you goingnna do with that degree? um And like like good good Asian parents do, they're always kind of worried about what yeah what you're actually What are they? What are they? think the real question that they. going
Law School Realizations
00:06:09
Speaker
to be. Are you going to be able to support yourself? Yeah. Well, I didn't.
00:06:13
Speaker
it They were paying for college, which I was very fortunate um that that they were able to do that. And and I think there was also like ah that that like Asian fear of guilt of, like you know do we really want to tell our friends that our son is majoring in government or studying government? but um they they They told me that that you don't make a lot of money on Capitol Hill. um So I found out that law school was the one of the the biggest, sort of most popular things that that students in my major did. And so now I was back to law school again and thinking about being a lawyer. And fundamentally I viewed...
00:06:53
Speaker
viewed being a lawyer as as solving problems. yeah and And I was really excited about the idea of solving complex problems that would would change people's lives. And i i think I had a realization that many lawyers do when they graduate from from law schools. And i was fortunate to go to Duke and ah for both undergrad and law school. And then you're you're you're now you're now helping very large companies with with fundamentally like financial related issues and problems.
00:07:30
Speaker
So there was, ah I think for, I would say for anyone who ah considers going to law school, it's um it's not like a lot of things. It's not a straight line.
00:07:45
Speaker
yeah um Some people take time off. I didn't. And yeah, um I'm really glad i i'm really glad ive made the decision to go to law law school and to practice for some time. um I want to back up for just one second because you told me that you were born here, but Hindi was your first language.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah. what and like So at what age did you start learning English? So I learned English while while watching soap operas with my mom, who watched General Hospital, ah which I think is still on the air 50 years later. so I um learned words like a fair you know cheating, marriage, like just all these yeah things that as like a young four or five year old kid, probably just obviously did not understand what a lot of these words meant. But I, um,
00:08:43
Speaker
I, ah my parents spoke him predominantly Hindi in the household, and that was deliberate to make sure that my brother and knew kind of our our native tongue. And, yeah but then it wasn't until I really started to go to school that i I, I formally was learning English other than some, some, some of that, that we were using around the house. Yeah.
00:09:06
Speaker
yeah it's it's I have a very similar story of both language but also soap operas. So I moved to the country in 84. Now you go to school in India, you learn Hindi and English at the same time. Those are the the two dominant languages. But my brother, who was five at the time, didn't speak a lick of English because he hadn't started school yet it in in India. oh dear My parents switched completely to English at home.
00:09:31
Speaker
and And then I watched plenty of soap operas with my mother when we had first moved to the country, especially when I was sick home, you know, from school or whatever. Like I remember those those memories vividly. it was also a little bit of my entry into the American culture a little bit. ah and And I remember that, you know, probably first couple of years in Cleveland, Ohio, watching General Hospital.
00:09:56
Speaker
And there was one more that I'm totally blanking on that she absolutely loves. All my children, maybe. it's Yeah, something like that, something of that nature. All right. So so you go and you you know you become a lawyer, you go into big law.
00:10:08
Speaker
Was there a feeling at at the law firms where you're like, yeah, this is not going to be me for long term? Like, what was that telling you? I loved being so part of part of part. I loved part of what I did at big law firms. You get just phenomenally good training of what it means to service a very, very sophisticated clients on complex matters. And ah and I practiced that at at.
00:10:40
Speaker
two ah big big law firms here in New York and and then at a boutique law firm for a number of years, um also building out their New York office here. i i think it was less about the structure of the law firms and more just that I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself that the end-all be-all was making partner at a firm and nothing else really mattered. And um and and then I also, as I got more senior in my career, I realized that
00:11:14
Speaker
the one of the true success factors of being at a law firm and or and even being a law firm partner is having a true differentiation and a niche that you're really good at. Because once I became a client, and um when I was in-house at a bank, which was before before I was at Security Scorecard, ah you didn't hire a law firm necessarily. You hired a lawyer to solve a particular problem for you. So for example, you might be hiring,
00:11:44
Speaker
one of the best you know one of the best one of the best lawyers to help you on an SEC-related inquiry, or you're hiring you're hiring a ah lawyer who's who's done a particular civil litigation in front of that judge before, maybe even clerked for that judge. And so you are hiring specific people for specific issues and And I and i became I was self-aware enough to know that I hadn't developed a true superpower niche for myself. I was essentially what I felt like it was i was just another one of many litigators.
00:12:21
Speaker
And and that that that didn't sit well with me. and i ah I also just did not. I also felt litigation to be very, very repetitive and um and discovery in particular was just it it it drained my energy. i have a very very close friend of mine who gets energized and excited, actually couple friends of mine, who are both partners at firms and just absolutely love taking depositions. And they this is something that just gets them really going professionally. And for me, I want to run away.
00:13:00
Speaker
had a case where I think I took about 40 depositions across four months. It was a big toxic tort matter. And as much as I liked taking depositions, that was the last year that I ever took depositions in my entire career.
00:13:16
Speaker
So I totally get it. All right. So, so like, is there a little bit of a crisis of conscience here for you? Or is there a little bit of a feeling of, oh crap, like I got here. I thought I wanted to make partner. Okay. Now what, what am I going to do? Like, was there any of that for you?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it definitely was. And i was a senior associate at um at at at Paul Hastings, actually, at the time. And i was i was on the partner track.
00:13:42
Speaker
And and i worked for a partner who ah who had hired me, who had mentored me, and who I felt like was going to be my you know proverbial rabbi uh in the in the partnership process because i had i had heard from a lot of people that you need that sponsor you need that rabbi that person that's going to fight for you with in the in the partnership meetings to get you to be partner because it's just ultimately ah for most you know firms it comes down to a numbers game of yeah of of how many they can take which practice areas which geographies and that person
00:14:15
Speaker
um ended up getting a like a kind of life changing opportunity to go rebuild the legal department, Royal Bank of Canada. And she took me with her on a on a on a secondment was the fastest way for me to go in. But the idea was for me to go sort of rebuild their their legal function in the US. And so my career has just been I has been um has been a series of just unexpected organic changes that i embraced i'm i'm very big on this concept of just pivoting right you have to be able to know when to pivot sometimes it sometimes the pivot kind of happens to you and similar like in my last role i was i was gc but six months after i joined the pandemic hit and
00:15:03
Speaker
I worked for ah ah a founder and a CEO that that sought my help to help him run the business um when it was when because the pandemic required efficient efficient growth. and And there were some other executives that were in and out of the business. So I i was kind of gap filling. And so my my my my transition from lawyer to operator happened happen kind of very organically. And it wasn't overnight, but it also wasn't several years. It happened pretty quickly.
00:15:36
Speaker
And so, I mean, um I want to double click on this concept that you just mentioned around pivoting and kind of embracing that and being ready for that. At what point in your career did you realize, A, that's possible,
00:15:48
Speaker
right Because we we work in a profession, you use the word linear. I mean, it is lockstep linear. It's not just linear. It's here's your path. You will follow it or you won't. like It's very binary. there's There's not a lot of zigging and zagging that you can do in that particular path. And I mean the law firm path. And that's that's the path that was probably most familiar to us as we went into law school, was probably the most visible to us as we're coming out of law school. and that's the path that we're on. but but you realized that somewhere along the way, not only was it feasible to pivot, but it was necessary. Like what was that realization like and how did it come
Career Pivots and Adaptability
00:16:29
Speaker
about?
00:16:29
Speaker
It happened to me at so many different instances in my life. i um I had an early growth spurt and thought I was going to go play college basketball and maybe even the NBA. And so when I got cut from my high school basketball team, it was,
00:16:46
Speaker
I remember even like where I was sitting in my house when I got the phone call from the coach telling me that I had been caught and I ended up coding my high school's website.
00:16:58
Speaker
And that was my, this was like 1998. And at that time that actually, and so at that time that was actually um pretty unique thing when when almost no high schools had their own websites, let alone, you know, if a college had it, was very, very basic. And um when i started when i started practicing as a lawyer, I started that the morning after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. And so here was me as a as a newly minted litigation associate and had avoided bankruptcy during law school because I found it boring.
00:17:34
Speaker
to literally being thrown into the fire and helping financial institutions to navigate the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. And i ended up doing a tremendous amount of bankruptcy litigation ah for the early part of my career because that was just what the the client demand and the need was.
00:17:53
Speaker
and And then there was ah ah a period of time where the there were a number of insider trading cases being being brought in, particularly out of the Southern District of New York. And I spent couple of years ah defending an individual who who was ah ah who was who was part of the part of an investigation and never ah thankfully never charged. and but none of those things were, were what I anticipated doing certainly when I was in law school. And, um and I, I, ah when I, when I made the deliberate move from financial services into tech, I,
00:18:33
Speaker
none of us knew that a pandemic would hit and I would go from being in an office that I had been in for for six months and just loving that to being fully remote. um And there actually there's pivots that sound silly, but like they're like i had oh I had been at jobs where there was always a phone on your desk.
00:18:55
Speaker
yeah and you had a You had a business, like you had a you had like you had a work line yeah and and you sat at a desk and and people called you on that work line. And I remember at all the firms I worked at and even at my at the bank I worked at,
00:19:09
Speaker
um i i will I was always worried that someone would call me and I'd not be at the desk, right? Yeah, people would send an email, but you were always worried about that that old school partner that would call you at like five or six o'clock and God forbid you were not at your desk. yeah And so I remember when i joined um I joined my last company and it's my first day at work and i'm and and there's it's a startup. And first of all,
00:19:37
Speaker
there's no office. right And as like a lawyer, you always pride yourself on your space and your office. And you know initially at a law firm, I'm like sharing space, but for the most part, I had my own office. And so I go from having this like beautiful, nice you know office with a door or glass door to sitting like you know, we're where law firm secretary sat and all of a sudden um'm um i'm ah i'm I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, what did I get myself into? And why is there not a a phone on my desk? And I ask the i asked the head of IT, t
00:20:09
Speaker
um And he, he said, he said, you know, we have a couple of phones, but, but no one's ever asked for it or used it. And he, he brought out a phone that looked like it was from the 1980s.
00:20:21
Speaker
Um, and so I told him to immediately, like, it wasn't one of those fancy Avaya looking phones that now even have like, I guess like a little video camera on them and everything. It was, it looked like something that my parents were using when they moved from India in the late seventies or early eighties. And so, um,
00:20:39
Speaker
you know You have to be prepared for for those sorts of like look at AI now and and and and what that has done to just every industry. And um I tell anyone who's who's who's in school or looking for a job and and I just tell them, I said, like, get yourself to be like amazing at prompting.
00:21:00
Speaker
figure out a way for you to know AI better than anyone you know. and And so like you that's a pivot, right? You have to be willing to make that pivot ah because it's that's what that's what the the kind of world demands, right? It's not, and and I mean, we could probably do a separate podcast about the disruption of AI in the legal space. And i'm i'm there there are definitely people that are better suited to talk about the issue than me. But um but i've I mean, I've been,
00:21:29
Speaker
all in on AI to a point of
Embracing AI and Technology in Law
00:21:33
Speaker
obsession, right? Just constantly watching YouTube videos to learn, like, you know, making, forcing myself to not use Google and to to use, um to use different open source LLM um tools to, and to use them in a very kind of deep way. But it's the, the being open-minded to pivots is, is just, it's it's so critical.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's probably one of the most necessary skill sets that isn't talked about enough, that ability to Absorb information look at trends Have that curiosity teach yourself new things. I mean, I don't you know This is probably a key cliche at this point But the world really feels like it's changing faster than it ever has before thinking technology plays a huge role in that we work in a profession
00:22:27
Speaker
That has not changed very quickly for 150 years. Right. And even that is now picking up speed and in and how that's getting how that's getting transformed in our own profession.
00:22:38
Speaker
And a lot of people who don't start to do these things are actually going to get left behind. I think that's a reality. I think that's a fact. And I think the ability to pivot and teach yourself new skill sets, teach yourself new ways of doing the same role.
00:22:57
Speaker
I think that's what's going to keep you relevant. It's going to keep you energized. It's going to keep you interested in how you're not just what you're doing, but how you're doing your work. That's a big part of what I've been in in the last 10, 12 years. So I think that that continues to happen. And we'll talk a little bit.
Evolution of Legal Tech
00:23:13
Speaker
i have i have I have three standard questions that I ask every guest. I just started this a few podcast episodes ago. We'll get to those in a minute. But one of the one of them is on exactly this subject. But let's let's get back a little bit to your to your in-house world. And so you're at this big bank.
00:23:29
Speaker
You decided not to get a phone on your desk. Good choice. By the way, I started by day. I started by day when I was in house at a bank, we definitely had a phone. Yeah. Yep. For sure. I mean, I still remember when I was a paralegal at Latham after college for three years. This is right at the peak of the dot com bubble. And then it burst like six months into my tenure and like things went crazy for the first time in my career. And then happened again eight years later.
00:23:54
Speaker
But, um, but I remember BlackBerry's for the lawyers at Latham were like a brand new thing. And I remember walking around the office and when you would see an associate a partner walking around, it was the first time it wasn't with the iPhone. It was, they were staring at their little device, handheld device more than they were looking up and walking around and saying hello to people. And they were on that thing like nonstop. Uh, and I was, I was fortunate enough at the tail end of my three year stint as a paralegal to do a six week like massive arbitration. and I was the only paralegal on the case with like six, but it was fantastic. And in between the arbitration sessions,
00:24:35
Speaker
in our war room, everybody was on their BlackBerrys checking their email because that concept of like service and availability that's just like hammered into you in law school and in your associate days, that doesn't go away.
00:24:49
Speaker
think it changes anything. I wonder- No, and it was ah it was a big deal to even, it was a it was a big deal like when you got a BlackBerry, right? Especially as like a- um Because I remember i was a summer associate when they came out and not all the summer associates got BlackBerrys because they just didn't have enough BlackBerrys for all. Didn't want to spend the money on them. No. i well And I also and it was it it wasn't ah it was it was the first time they were being rolled out. So there was like we want to make sure that the associates and partners sort of jive with this before we give it to the rest of the you know summer associates and the staff. And um because it's.
00:25:27
Speaker
there's a hierarchy in law firms, right? There just totally is. And, um and, and summer associates, you're, you're almost at the bottom there pretty much with all the professional staff. yeah And, um Even though a lot of the professional staff these days is like our former or former associates from that same firm yeah or former lawyers. yeah But i i was on a I was on an international anti-corruption matter and in China, actually. And and so i had a I had a BlackBerry and I remember it was just it... it it
00:26:00
Speaker
um it was It was weirdly exciting like at the time to have one and to be able to um to not be... You didn't have to be chained to your desk. and um But ah it's it seems um it seems so so silly and ridiculous now because like people that are 10 years old have to have a phone. but That information is is readily available. okay so minor sidebar because you're a cyber guy.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah. But I remember I was a junior associate. iPhones had kind of started to really come into the kind of the mainstream. And and a lot of firms were struggling with this question. And I remember both at Pillsbury, where I was, but also Forella, there was a there was an extensive conversation that the firm should not issue iPhones.
00:26:54
Speaker
to their lawyers because of security issues that did not exist with BlackBerry. Was that true? such and like Was that a real thing or or was that just firms holding on to the BlackBerry model?
00:27:06
Speaker
No, that was that was a, without getting sort of too geeky and nerdy, but that was, That was a real concern because it took it took some times it took some time for firms to just figure out, like, can people use... Because everyone... The issue the problem was that, you know, individually, people weren't buying BlackBerrys for themselves. They were buying iPhones.
00:27:31
Speaker
And they had their personal email or on their iPhone. And so there was this there was this there was this issue initially of, like, well, can people actually bring their own device? Like, can we, can we, is what, how do we, how do we put like a firm email on, on someone's iPhone? And it just, there wasn't the capability that there is today with having these, essentially these like closed universe container environments where you can have, um, you can have your corporate, you know, your corporate, uh, email and other your corporate, sort of your corporate documents and other things on your phone. Um,
00:28:05
Speaker
And so the short answer is that it was absolutely like a real security ah issue. And part of it was just also just there wasn't like the capability and technology to go to do it. And so BlackBerry was was just the simplest way to have people be able to access their email securely. And then, of course, just evolve from people being able to to you know edit documents or find documents in their document management system as well. Yeah, yeah. And that change, I was talking about the speed of change that happened so very quickly. It wasn't even an issue past 2010. Like I don't even remember it. And then Blackberry just basically went away.
00:28:44
Speaker
Like it was gone. Right. i think But then it became that now it's a number. And I think it's still that question of like, do you carry do you carry two devices, keep the church and state, quote, separate or do you consolidate and just have one? Well, so I told you my wife is also in cybersecurity and she is very adamant that you have two devices, one for work and one for personal, because if there's any cross contamination anywhere, ah you're dead in the water, especially if you have a lot of sensitive information. um All right, let's let's talk a little bit about your transition from lawyering into operator. like What was that like? When did it first kind of come across your desk and you're like, oh, wait a minute, this might actually be far more interesting than the lawyering that I've been doing. And and how did that take place?
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, it it like I said, I mean, it it happened very organically and a lot of it was just driven by factors both externally at my company, but also internally. So internally, as as ah I was at a hyper growth startup and when you're growing very, very fast,
00:29:48
Speaker
um there are there are people there are gonna come in and out of your business for various reasons. And it was also an environment that was hyper competitive. And there were a lot of kind of startups that were trying to poach our talent and vice versa. And and so it's in there was definitely like that tech talent war. and And then there were also those sort of instances where you found people that were,
00:30:13
Speaker
um that were the company kind of out outpaced and outgrown them and and you needed to find somebody for the next sort of stage of your journey. And um and I was a lot of it was just right place at the right time. I was in ah in an environment where company was growing really rapidly and and um In a couple of instances, i needed to fill a gap. So for example, the in my last company, when when the company was in between heads of HR, it was me who ran the HR department. Similarly, the the business was was in between a chief of staff and I was going out and literally in the market hiring for one, but for for almost a year, the business didn't have one. So it was me on top of my other responsibilities. And
00:30:59
Speaker
I um and and part of it was just COVID like it was there was COVID. There was no there's no playbook. There's no precedent. It was it was just like, how do you exercise really good business judgment um in in an environment where you have to you have to grow quickly, but you have to grow efficiently and you have you you can't burn as much cash as as as you maybe normally would. Yeah. um So it.
00:31:27
Speaker
it i And I also just got myself um very energized about everything relating to customers. And that's when i that was when the sort of the light bulb shifted in my head that like, this was going to be the new chapter of my career and the next stage of my growth.
00:31:47
Speaker
Because ah up a customer generally doesn't, they don't want to see ah a lawyer on, on, ah if they're having a lawyer on ah on a call, it's because like, it's, there's like a, there's a red line that you, that yeah they have to kind of go, go into. And I, I,
00:32:02
Speaker
i got more excited about revenue than red lines um that and and and instead of being the advisor to the business i loved being the operator of the business and uh and you you you definitely um you you stop kind of operating in risks and hypotheticals because when you have a p and l it's very black and white of you know are you are you hitting the numbers or not? um Are you, you know, how are your decisions and what you're doing? How are you moving?
00:32:35
Speaker
how are you like really moving the business forward and not just like in in a very outcome driven way? And so that it um it it it was ah it was It was unique to the to the circumstances i was I was involved in, and I was really fortunate that I worked for an amazing CEO who just supported who supported that growth for me as well.
Transition from Legal to Business Operations
00:33:01
Speaker
Because you you you have to be, um you know, you might have great operational sort of chops or desires or interests, but if you you know or working in an environment where so we're where you're always just gonna be seen as a lawyer and you're gonna be kind of put in that box no matter what, then,
00:33:17
Speaker
that may not be the the environment that's going to that's going to where you're going to make that jump um so i i i'm you know i'm really really really grateful for just the support i had to be able to do it and firing myself as the gc was definitely one of the best moves i ever made did you actually send yourself a letter or recorded in board minutes somewhere i'm sure i I will never forget the phone call I made to the number two person on the legal team when I told him that um it was he was now the general counsel of the company because I
00:33:57
Speaker
It was a sense of, ah I had a bit of ah a bit of a relief that I wasn't carrying the title anymore because I had, I worked for a company where um my CEO kind of, i think I think rightfully just believed that you needed to be in the role for quite a while doing it before you got the title change and the compensation change. So I held the general counsel title for quite a while where I was really in an operational role. I was in front of customers. I was dealing with Most of my job had become very non-legal and I had was fortunate to have have built up a couple people in the legal team who were really strong. and so
00:34:32
Speaker
um But I'll never forget that that call I made and and I knew that it it it changed his life because that was some that was a goal for him and he's He's now a general counsel at another another startup, but he he stayed he stayed where where where I was for three or four years after that.
00:34:50
Speaker
um But it it it created capacity for me to be able to take on um a lot of go to market work operations. I built a public sector business um and my my my parents were like a little confused because they were like, we we we paid for law school and you you gave the job away.
00:35:12
Speaker
i think I think there's a special kind of flex that kids of Indian parents have when they confuse the living shit out of their parents with their career choices and they end up so successful and happy. Like, I just think there's a special kind of flex for us in that in that particular respect.
00:35:29
Speaker
i had I had a COO role that um we called it chief business officer for a few reasons, but it was fun to, it was functionally a COO role. But um until I became president at my last company, ah my parents would tell, and I love them dearly, but they would tell our family in India, my friends that I was, I was, I was the company's lawyer and I had stopped being the company's lawyer, like years prior to that. And I, had I, I got to a point where I just, I stopped correcting them. Um, and it, but when, but when people reach out to you and ask for legal advice, it's yeah like, you kind of have to, yeah,
00:36:09
Speaker
you have to sort of give them the like, hey, you know, I'm sure this happened to you too, actually, but i like you have to tell them like, well, you know, i stopped practicing a long time ago, but I'm happy to happy to find you somebody that that can that can help. And then, of course, you have some people that that, that, that go to themselves. Wait, wait, we have to, have to pay for advice. I need to pay for help. Like but you're just going like text me back. Give it to me for free. Why not? Yeah. Now they can just ask chat GPT or something. And so they maybe just leave you alone, but they often do. Yeah. um You use the term business judgment ah just a little while ago. And,
00:36:47
Speaker
in my work with lawyers after my lawyer law firm years, um, you know, during my Axiom tenure, I probably interviewed and worked with close to a thousand lawyers in that seven, seven year period. to land lawyers to work And one of the, one of the biggest, um,
00:37:05
Speaker
One of the biggest signals that we used to look for and who we brought on to into the Axiom fold to service our clients was, will this person have the right kind of business judgment? And that's not inherent to many lawyers.
00:37:19
Speaker
Talk to us a little about like, where did that come for come from for you? Did you feel like it was one of those situations where you're like, I tapped into something that was always there? Or was it something that I really wanted to have and I, I worked on honing that skillset and at the right time I was able to pivot and use it. what was that like?
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I, um, I mean, you make a good point, right? That when someone says business judgment and that, and, and that get phrase gets used a lot, like, what does that really mean? And how do you get that skill? And uh,
00:37:54
Speaker
ah I think a lot of lawyers underestimate their ability to have an exercise business judgment, whether they're doing that in the capacity of being a lawyer or whether they're doing that like as you and I are as operators, because they're confusing identity of of being a lawyer with with their capability.
00:38:16
Speaker
um having the legal training and then practicing in ah in any type of legal environment gives you a significant amount of transferable skills.
00:38:27
Speaker
um It makes you excellent at communications, which is super important um for for exercising business judgment. it gives you great ability to communicate clearly, both in written and in oral form.
00:38:44
Speaker
um you You operate as a lawyer with with imperfect information ah or incomplete information, and that's That's another way of saying you operate with, that's what leaders do.
00:38:58
Speaker
yeah um And, and, and I don't think lawyers lack these skills of communications and being able to have imperfect information, having analytical abilities as well. um It's, it's that they, it's a mindset you have to, you have, as a lawyer, you are,
00:39:21
Speaker
you're seeking permission right you need that sign off you need that ceo or that board or cfo um because you're an advisor role and and i think once you once you unlock the mindset that you don't when you're an operator like you don't need the permission in fact you don't you want to if you are seeking that it's just going to slow you down um And and and so when you reframe that, I'm no longer an advisor, I'm now an owner of this business. I'm a shareholder of this business.
00:39:53
Speaker
it That's when you change. And that's how you get those that that business judgment. Now, having said all of that, ah No question, I had to do a lot of of ah of like what I would call accelerated learning. and And I would have done it regardless of whether I had the legal training or not. I think everybody, you know you always want to be trying to grow and find ways of of learning beyond beyond the training that's provided at your job. And so I did this in two ways. First is I consumed a lot of books and I probably read more books in my last role than I read
00:40:35
Speaker
um in all my previous jobs combined. In fact, I would joke with my CEO, I said, like, you're making me feel like it's law school again, because there's a there's a new book that shows up, you know, every single every single week at that ah from Amazon at my apartment.
00:40:51
Speaker
And um but it was it it helped me tremendously. Like I i um There's a great book by Chris Voss, who is a former FBI hostage negotiator, and he wrote he wrote it's called Never Split the Difference. Never split the difference. Never split the difference. It's all about negotiation, which whether you're a lawyer or you're in a business like in any role, you're always mean,
00:41:18
Speaker
Those of us who are married, we're it's's it's the- You're negotiating. We're parents? My gosh. parents Oh, yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, you're a parent as well. So um that's that that is amazing. There's there's another book um that I loved, and it's called The Secret Lives of Customers.
00:41:38
Speaker
ah And it is by um David Duncan. just want to make sure I have his last name corrected. And i love that book. It's all about- It's all about how you think about customers from ah from a from a perspective of like, what job do you want them to do? Like it's called Jobs to be Done. And the whole the whole book is actually written like a fictional, there's a whole fictional story of a coffee chain that's about to IPO, but they're having difficulty. And so they hire, um they hire, they call it a market detective instead of like a, like a police detective. And yeah it it teaches you that people don't necessarily go to ah a coffee shop because they want a cup of coffee. There are some of people are looking to have a place where they can, you
00:42:28
Speaker
meet other people and form a community or get their homework done. And um and and so i super recommend that one. And the third and I'll i'll stop with the book recommendations. I promise i love it um is is a book called Amp It Up.
00:42:46
Speaker
It's by Frank Slootman. see it back on your on your bookshelf right there. It's I mean, I'm at this point, i'm almost quoting from the book, but it's it's all about how do you increase urgency and speed in um you know in in ah in ah in a business setting. and um and it's I had a, when you're, when you're a lawyer, your speed and velocity is not necessarily skills that you automatically think about. Right. So when I talked about the mindset change, part of one, like I, part of some of the things that I learned from my accelerated learning journey was um you, if there's decision speed and velocity and you have to, you know, when you're, especially if when you're the, when you're the,
00:43:35
Speaker
you know, when you're the son of of Indian immigrants, like, you know, that even getting an A minus is a bad thing. but when you say you're, you know, when you're, when you're in a ah legal environment, oftentimes you have the, you have the bandwidth and the, and the runway to be able to sort of get things to almost a point of perfection. Perfection. Absolutely.
00:43:54
Speaker
But like when you're, especially when you're growing a company and you're, you know, any startup, the the moat is oftentimes the speed. How often, how fast do they move? And you have to be okay with most things being like a B minus.
00:44:11
Speaker
yeah um And that's what books like Amp It Up really teach you. And then I, actually, I don't know if you've done this in your operating career, but I got myself a couple of executive coaching and I've had, um ah you know, I'll use a coach for a year or two and then I'll move to a different coach just so like I get a different perspective. But I've had three really good coaches who've taught me everything from just go to market to branding to um how how to use like psychology and and organizational psychology to, you know,
00:44:47
Speaker
to like improve your own performance and then and then the performance of others around you and uh and and so i'm mean the world's best you know take any tennis player yeah um they've got multiple coaches right someone to help them with their backhand and and their forehand and and so um i i couldn't recommend sort of exec coaching more highly enough whether whether you're in a legal role or or another role Yeah, know I know. One of the first things I did when I took this role was I joined a community for CXOs.
00:45:23
Speaker
We meet monthly both as a group. So there are a variety of kind of perspectives at the table, but I also get plenty of one-on-one coaching. And it has been instrumental in my own journey over the last two years as COO at the company.
00:45:36
Speaker
It's been huge. um Let's pivot a little bit ah and talk a little bit about legal technology. Sure. Has been there in the law firm world for a while. I mean, i it did e-discovery. There's been those kinds of things. Although I still remember when email was like a brand new thing into that world. But it is now a critical part of the infrastructure in the in-house world, including cyber, which is near and dear to your heart.
00:46:05
Speaker
Tell me, tell us a little bit about kind of how the role of legal technology has evolved for you.
Legal Tech's Role in Efficiency and Revenue
00:46:10
Speaker
And obviously we want to transition that, you know, into what AI looks like for lawyers of today.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, Like you said, like legal technology has moved from, in my experience, just like these clunky e-discovery tools that help you with massive amounts of of of of discovery and documents to um enabling enabling legal teams that are are stretched. And I don't think I've ever spoken to a GC that tells me,
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, I've got I've got tons of people on my team. I've got tons of tools like we've got more than enough. Like every you're always you're always you know, if you're you know, if you're in if you're in any kind of what's you know, what's called like G&A role, like legal finance, hr you're always going to operate a little bit more leaner or you should ideally be operating a little bit more leaner than you want to be because.
00:47:14
Speaker
I know the phrase cost center gets used a lot, but your but just i think understanding that your um it is non-revenue generating and and that you're you know your job is to really actually um Instead of cost center, I would say like your revenue enablement and um and and and getting getting the technology that can help you with um whether it's whether it's contract red lines or ah file management, contract management systems and now certainly various kind of AI tools that are there. um
00:47:58
Speaker
it will it it it will get you it will bring you velocity with your business partners that you need. And and in my experience, um it the um you know my my GC and his team would evaluate these sorts of tools on a regular basis. um And it ah I think without them, just the the the team would have would have been more slow and had to absorb absorb more headcount. And and so I think that this like the space is just now evolved so rapidly that
00:48:40
Speaker
it seems almost like that the in-house and the kind of company side are outpacing the innovation that's happening maybe at the law firms, right? It's like what you were talking about earlier, where like there's there's such a there's been such a step change, but yeah know is that happening inside of inside of law firms that might ah you know be be doing the same thing that they've been doing for many years? Yeah.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, look, change is either forced or it comes from the realization of this monumental incentive that can be realized on the back end of that change.
00:49:17
Speaker
And law firms have neither pushing them in that direction. They're not being forced really just yet, even from customers and clients, because that's really where the forcing mechanism will come from. It's not going to come from anywhere else. Clients will either tell them, you will do this or else, and then that change will take place. I've been through plenty of that. in my career ah in so terms of kind of forcing that change. The other is the incentive structure.
00:49:44
Speaker
um What incentives do law firms have in an age of what was Kirkland's revenue last year? Eight billion, nine billion, something like that. So they're making a lot of money. Sounds like I should go work Kerplan. Yeah. They're part of the partner, we're astronomical. We'll see what they are this year.
00:50:04
Speaker
but but so So where's the incentive? They actually have a disincentive to change because when you change the model to create efficiency under their current model, under the current economic model,
00:50:16
Speaker
efficiency is not necessarily offset with volume immediately in terms of revenue. So if you're creating more efficient revenue, that generally meets means lower revenue, less cost to the client, which is great for clients and what it should be.
00:50:32
Speaker
but it means less revenue for the law firm. And the way to offset that that kind of reduction in revenue from a particular customer or client is to add in more customers and clients. well that's not going to happen very easily because many of these firms have customers and clients that have been with them forever. And and that's that's the change in market share is not quite as easy to to realize.
00:50:55
Speaker
So both of those do not exist in the reality for a law firms. So yeah, I think the the innovation that we're talking about there is coming from two areas. One is the in-house world.
00:51:06
Speaker
One is the in-house world because both of those intents both of those forcing mechanisms are there. CFOs, COOs, CEOs are telling GCs, you're not getting as much money as you were last year. In fact, you're getting less. Oh, and by the way, we're quadrupling the amount of legal work that you need to get done through through the legal department. So that's one incentive. like You have to do it. That happened shortly after the financial crisis in 2008. It has continued now.
00:51:33
Speaker
The other is they're actually getting more sophisticated. Legal departments are getting more sophisticated. They are starting to realize that if I pull these three or four different work streams in-house and I put a P&L to it, my OpEx for that P&L in a year or two years is gonna be far more effective from a work product and output perspective, but also from a cost perspective than if I had continued to send this to outside counsel or anywhere else outside my walls.
00:52:03
Speaker
right So you have the makings of this dynamic on the in-house side. Legal technology is now central and core to that principle and to those principles. Now let's add in AI to all of this. like How does that accelerate or obliterate this entire ecosystem in your mind?
AI's Role in Legal Tech with Human Element
00:52:23
Speaker
And we don't need to be AI experts to talk about this because we deal with it plenty on our daily basis. I think either with or without the AI piece but fundamentally you're still talking about the the tech, the SaaS software. And that is supposed to do, whether you're whether you're talking about legal tech or in any other industry, it's supposed to do one one or more four things.
00:52:47
Speaker
Save number one, time, save time. Number two, save costs. Number three, reduce risk. and And number four, produce revenue.
00:52:58
Speaker
um And Legal tech, similar to security technology, um it can it saves time and it saves money.
00:53:09
Speaker
Now, in the case of security technology, you're also saving for risk. yeah but so So then for legal tech, now you have you have ai kind of layered into it. it's going to save it's going to save even more time um and and hopefully also will save more money and save more costs, which, ah you know, there's definitely a lot of of fear and concern about AI, you know, how's it going how iss it goingnna affect headcount? And my my general thesis is that it's
00:53:42
Speaker
it's augmenting. um There's got to be a human in the loop. ah i i spoke to I spoke to a brilliant operator and investor. His name is John Sakoda. He runs a firm called Decibel.
00:53:55
Speaker
And he said me the other day, he said, look, until AI gives us goosebumps, we're not going anywhere, right? So you need that human in the loop because you have to build trust.
00:54:10
Speaker
and um and And especially in ah in a world like of of legal tech and the type of issues that you're dealing with, like you have to have you have to have that trust. So i i ah I think that the faster um a legal department can can, you know, you don't want to be using AI driven or AI native or AI powered tech for the sake of being able to tell a CFO or someone else like, hey, I'm using AI in my department. I'm like checking this box. And I know at a lot of companies there was these these mandates that,
00:54:48
Speaker
um I think you want to be thinking about it from an outcome-driven perspective, right? In your example, it's it's if you have less budget than last year, but you know that your workload has increased, well, yeah is there AI technology that's going to allow you to um to get things to get more things done, to be able to get things done faster? and ah And if you can actually show an ROI,
00:55:14
Speaker
out of that and ideally you're you know you're the vendors that you're hiring you can really partner with you to help you do that absolutely that um which i'm sure you all are doing and uh and you're we are the you know leading the charge on that um then uh that's where you also differentiate yourselves from other from other you know other competitors in the space um who aren't who aren't i would say that you know because i came from a ah I guess I'll kind of maybe I know we're we're getting close on time, but I
00:55:50
Speaker
instead of being a vendor, be a partner. That's that's when i when i when I would have customers call me as and and describe me as a partner to them and their and their team, like that's when I knew that's when i i knew that we had unlocked and another, and and a new part of the relationship. And I knew that growing that relationship, expanding it,
00:56:14
Speaker
it was going to be a lot a lot smoother and ah because being seen as a partner and not just like and and one another one of their many vendors. Yeah, hopefully you're you're going beyond the sale into that trusted advisor to really kind of solve the issue. you know Most of our customers are our legal departments in-house and there's so much that goes on with them that has nothing to do with our tool that we're able to support just of the way because of the way that we approach that conversation. um
00:56:45
Speaker
you know The ah ROI piece that you mentioned is so critical. I mean, any CEO or CFO worth his or her salt cannot take the, yes, we're using ai in our department at face value without seeing at least two slides that show a before and after picture and like, here's what we anticipate and we'll measure it over these two quarters and then we'll we'll show you the proof in the pudding. Maybe it's working, maybe it's not, but we think it will and here's why we think it will work.
00:57:10
Speaker
and then and act and then actually being able to to show that i really liked your four points i've had a ah ah holy trifecta for legal technology and legal operations and as you were saying that i almost wanted to scream like wow that's the first time that i've had a conversation with anyone around this topic and they have actually without you know i know we prepped for this but we didn't talk about this issue actually said exactly what i say which is legal technology should reduce time reduce cost and reduce risk.
00:57:39
Speaker
I do think it reduces risk. You're right. You should reduce also risk too, for sure. If you have insight into termination dates and renewal dates and things like that, think very basic. It actually reduces risk for the company. The the one that I'm going to start adding now, which I don't think I think about enough or at least I don't articulate enough is it should it should accelerate revenue. And I always think it's the same side of the coin of reducing cost. It's not. It's a very different thing.
00:58:05
Speaker
So I'm going to start adding that to to my, well, I can't call it a holy trifecta anymore. I have to think of a different word, a different term. Yeah, I mean, that's how it how how can you, like as a perfect example, it would be,
00:58:18
Speaker
ah your contracts don't have a price increase built into them. You don't have an auto increase provision in there. um That's like a perfect example. Or another is you um you flag the fact that ah you're not you don't you're you're you're not giving multi-year deals, right? And so how do you enable your your contracts and your the the way you approach that to incentivize customers to sign up for multi-year deals, right? Or it makes, or makes, ah you're making termination too easy and you're not providing for, um you're not providing for, ah you know, for for something that's a little bit more sticky.
00:58:59
Speaker
um So those are the just the types of examples that and I think this is where like the partnership with the business is really, really important to um to to have that dialogue with your your sales leader to say, like, hey, what if what are some what are some things that we can we can maybe put in our agreements that will help us to um to to capture some that revenue? And sometimes there's also I got feedback, for example, that um that the business really wanted to make sure, this was when I was amazon the legal side, business really wanted to make sure that there was provisions about how we could use a customer logo ah yeah in the in the agreement.
00:59:41
Speaker
And i um and i my response was, i hear you, but it's one of the most frequently redlined things out of the contract. And, ah and then, and now all of a sudden, and then not only is it going to get taken out, but you're going to have language put in there by the customer that's going to say that we require explicit permission before you put our logo on. yeah And so I coached the business on saying, don't put it, it don't put anything about publicity or logo usage in an agreement because sometimes, sometimes you, you can then operate in a world of, of um ask for forgiveness as opposed to asking for permission. Right. And um and you you know you might have that slide that you're using in ah in a customer meeting and it's got some customer logos on it. and
01:00:29
Speaker
Well, your your agreement was silent on the use of that and for those logos. And it becomes a much easier exercise to to add some logos that you know that other customer will find meaningful. There might be logos of of their ah in their industry, especially. So um that's where you have to be thinking. i know that that's kind of a mantra is like, how do you go from being advisor to business enabler? But that's like a very specific, concrete example of how to do that.
01:00:58
Speaker
Agreed. great Agreed. Agreed. right. I promised you that I would ask three questions towards the end of our conversation that I ask every guest. So ready for those? Ready. The first question is looking back and reminding yourself of your law school years, what is one piece of advice with the benefit of hindsight that would you would give your, let's say two or three year self?
01:01:24
Speaker
i would have i taken at least one or two classes that I knew were outside of my core interest areas um and and done and and done that. so i wish So A, I wish I did that. And B, I really wish I, in hindsight, would have done the combined and MBA program.
01:01:48
Speaker
I think that I really think that every... I think that every lawyer should, i think that every lawyer, everybody who's getting a JD should get an MBA as well, unless you are 110% certain that you could do it, but it'll it removes that, oh, you don't have an MBA sort of of objection um for your future, future-proof SEO.
01:02:13
Speaker
Okay. So fast forwarding to law students of today, would your advice change to them at all, or would it stay the same? Sounds like the MBA piece would stay the same.
01:02:24
Speaker
The MBA piece would stay the same. And the other piece I would add is, um, find find a way to get some AI training, whether it's at the, at the school or on your own. I've read that some schools are literally undergrads can like major in AI now.
01:02:42
Speaker
Um, so I would, I would find a way to, to understand AI very deeply. however, you know, however you can at the school, ideally. Yeah.
01:02:56
Speaker
right, the last one, as you look 10 years from now, Sachin, and you're able to look back, what kind of path do you hope you've taken from where you currently are? So I hope my path involves less broken bones, literally, since I'm recovering from tearing my ACL. um I like to joke that cyber is a contact sport, but know that it it actually was from basketball. yeah um I'm hoping that I've...
01:03:26
Speaker
I've progressed as an operator in in different senior roles, i you know as COO, perhaps as CEO. I'm not as fixated on which titles have I had and so forth. or i i hope that i've I hope that I can point to some specific achievements, like perhaps maybe I've gone through the the process of taking a company public, for example, or I've i've i've i've been involved in ah in a sale of of the company, or maybe it's you know doing a very transfer... I've done M&A, but maybe it's you know doing doing some different types of M&A as well. And I think that those things professionally um would would certainly excite me. And and
01:04:13
Speaker
i um And there's areas of my professional career, particularly in product and technology, that I want to broaden myself on. And and and so whereas I've Post-legal kind of has been a lot of go to market and operations and strategy. And so I want to have a more holistic, um a holistic kind of arc to my to my career. And so I hope I can reflect and say that I've had more of an impact in those areas. So it's it's more about just like personal professional personal impact and and in my career growth. And then, like, you know, i i I got this specific role or title.
01:04:52
Speaker
All right. For any listeners that want to get in touch with you, Sachin, what's the best way?
Connect with Sachin Bunsel
01:04:56
Speaker
LinkedIn? LinkedIn. um My email is Sachin at techoperator.co. Again, Sachin at techoperator.co. So please feel free to drop me an email or send me a LinkedIn message. My my LinkedIn is just, if you look up Sachin S. Bunsel, there's this other Sachin Bunsel who's like a billionaire in India. Yeah. who started Flipkart, like the Amazon of India. And i I wish I could say that I am him, but i'm I'm a few billion short from where he is right now. Yeah, he's actually an advisor to SpotTraft, if you would believe it, as you can imagine. Benny Bonsal. Yeah.
01:05:35
Speaker
All right, Sachin, thanks so much, man. That was a great conversation. i appreciate you taking the time with us today. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks for having me.