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EP 14: Building High-Impact Legal Teams in the Age of AI | David Tudor
2 Plays2 seconds ago
In this episode of Beacon Voices, Akshay Verma (COO at SpotDraft) speaks with David Tudor, Group General Counsel at Prosus and Naspers, about what it takes to lead legal teams at scale in today’s fast-moving, tech-driven environment.
David reflects on his career path from private practice in South Africa to overseeing legal strategy for a global technology powerhouse. He shares candid perspectives on how legal teams can prioritize better, move beyond routine work, and align more closely with business goals.
The conversation also dives into the growing influence of AI on legal workflows and decision-making and what it means for the future of both in-house teams and law firms. This episode is packed with actionable ideas for legal professionals looking to elevate their impact and stay ahead in a rapidly changing landscape.
Topics
Introduction: 00:00
Why David Tudor Chose Law and Studied Business Science: 01:06
Life at the University of Edinburgh and Studying European Law: 04:18
Starting a Legal Career and Working on South Africa's First Mobile Network: 06:43
The In-House Experience That Changed His Career Path: 10:27
From Law Firm Lawyer to Business Partner: 14:41
Law Firm Life, Work-Life Balance, and Career Choices: 20:48
How the Role of the In-House Lawyer Has Evolved: 23:50
What Modern Legal Teams Should Stop Spending Time On: 29:51
Why Lawyers Need to Become Product Builders in the AI Era: 32:26
How AI Is Transforming Legal Departments and Law Firms: 34:50
Trusting AI: Risk, Regulation, and the Future of Legal Work: 39:06
Building High-Impact Legal Teams That Understand the Business: 50:00
Connect with us:
David Tudor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-tudor-4211a510/
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
AI and the Future of Jobs
00:00:00
Speaker
It's not about some sort of jobs apocalypse. It hasn't materialized. Jobs will change. and Nature of employment will change. People begin doing other things.
00:00:11
Speaker
And some jobs will be replaced, absolutely true.
Introduction: Akshay Verma and David Tudor
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Spot Draft Beacon Voices podcast. I am your host, Akshay Verma. I am the Chief Operating Officer at the company and excited to have and learn from an incredible in-house lawyer today, David Tudor, who is the Group General Counsel for Process and naprss NASPERS, excuse me has been off and on with the company for close to three decades, including as outside counsel.
00:00:50
Speaker
has a wealth of experience, both growing and transforming in-house legal departments. So i'm really excited to to dig into some of those conversations with you, David. Thanks so much for joining us today.
00:01:03
Speaker
I'm delighted to be here, actually. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.
David Tudor's Journey to Law
00:01:06
Speaker
All right, well, I tend to start with this. I mentioned this during our prep call. I tend to start with this piece of the conversation because i think there's such a a human element to the answer to this question, which I think is fantastic.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I think that often gets overlooked for lawyers. For us lawyers, like you know we get treated as numbers and robots sometimes, but there's such an incredible human story behind each of our journeys. So, and I have a very, very personal story about my own decision to go to law schools and so forth. So, David, I'd love to start around that topic with you and learn a little bit about what that journey to law school was like for you. And then we'll talk a little bit about your journey as a lawyer, what you have found to be particularly interesting, and what has kept you in the NASPERS world for so long. It's not something that we see ah very often in today's
00:01:59
Speaker
free agency world, as I like to call it, with people moving around to different companies for different reasons. And we'll we'll certainly talk about legal operations and technology, how you view those things. but But let's start with the why behind law school for you. What was that like for you?
Educational Path and Business Studies
00:02:14
Speaker
Thanks. um It's always, i always look back on that and i think it's quite difficult to understand, you know, why did one become a lawyer?
00:02:22
Speaker
It's, um I don't have some Damascene moment where I felt, right, I have to be a lawyer. um I was growing up, when I grew up in And the options were relatively limited. you know If you were a you were at school and you either became a doctor or an accountant yeah or or or maybe a lawyer, um that was was pretty much the streams that you were pushed into. Now, i i'm I'm a little bit squeamish, so I don't think being a doctor was going to really work for me um And and i id I certainly, given what I thought accountancy was at that point, it obviously has changed since then. That wasn't for me either. And I'd i'd known lawyers. my My father had qualified as a lawyer, although he never really practiced. um So it was a familiar path to me.
00:03:08
Speaker
um He'd gone through that path. um And i i was I was interested in it. Although I did do business science before I studied law. So I did four years of business science. Okay.
Law in Edinburgh: A Transformative Experience
00:03:19
Speaker
which was quite statistics heavy. um And I never thought I would use it. And I probably use that in some instances more than my law degree. Yes. oh we We're going to talk about data and statistics. Absolutely. yeah It gives you an entire framework to have a conversation with people in business. And it it makes you able to empathize with what they're talking about far more easily than if you come with ah a sort of a more arts background into into law.
00:03:46
Speaker
So that I almost sort of fell into it. And then I thoroughly enjoyed it. I absolutely loved studying law. it was um It was a great time to be becoming a lawyer in South Africa. There massive discussions around the rule of law and what the rule of law meant. It was the first it was the beginning of the transition into um a the the South Africa that we have today, the first this amazing transition into one of the preeminent constitutions in the world. So it was an absolutely fascinating time to be to be becoming a lawyer in South Africa.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic. i also saw that you attended Edinburgh. um And I think I mentioned in our prep call, I have quite a bit of family in the UK. they My cousin, who not squeamish, became a doctor. He actually attended the University of Edinburgh. I've had a chance to visit him a few times.
00:04:37
Speaker
One of my favorite European cities. Incredible there. ah How much time did you spend there? And and what would that what was that like? That was... Probably one of the best years of my life when I was studying. um I'd never traveled out south africa outside South Africa until then. My parents had no money at all. um I won a scholarship. um And I wanted to study in the UK.
00:05:01
Speaker
um And I think, um you know coming from South Africa, I'd never i would never i've never lived in a city the size of London. And I think I would have just been swallowed up. Edinburgh was ah was a more manageable city and incredibly friendly people, yeah a fantastic law school. And i'd so I studied something i'd I'd never done before. I did European community and European competition law.
00:05:24
Speaker
And it was an absolutely fascinating year. had wildly diverse class classmates from from Germany, from the US, from Germany. from Japan, from all over Europe, in fact, in addition to Germany. And I met just such an amazing range of people, a number of whom I'm still in contact with. So it was really a formative year in my life.
00:05:47
Speaker
yeah And the city's amazing. it's it's It's completely manageable. As a student, um you're you're not you're overwhelmed by this sort of immense wealth that that that accumulates in London. And you you can you can live very frugally there, but still thoroughly enjoy yourself.
00:06:04
Speaker
yeah i I remember walking being able to walk pretty much everywhere in Edinburgh ah from his apartment to ah was it Queen Street. i can't remember what the what the main street there was. but being of The Royal Mile on the one side of the old part of the city and then in what's called the New Town, although it's Georgian, is is Prince's Street.
00:06:25
Speaker
Princess Street, that's what it was. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic view of the castle that dominates the landscape. up it's It's stunning. And you. All right. It's been years since I've been back and now this conversation is making want to go back. So maybe
Early Legal Career in South Africa
00:06:37
Speaker
we'll. Absolutely. take but it's um So so you you wrap up law school and you and I are very similarly situated in that the path after law school was fairly set in stone for us anyway.
00:06:51
Speaker
And so exactly go, you do your apprenticeship. The the model in in the UK and in South Africa and other British kind of ah driven school systems is is somewhat different than it is here in the United States.
00:07:05
Speaker
Here in the United States, we have four. I took five years of undergraduate study. Then you go to law school, which is three years. Then you come out, generally speaking, when you're done with law school and your studies, you're looking at training at a law firm for the next few years, studying for for us. It's the bar exam. I'm sure you have some sort of qualification test there as well. What were the first few years like for you studying or starting to work as a lawyer?
00:07:30
Speaker
I think, you know, I got back from Edinburgh and i knew I needed to practice. um As I said before, you know, I come from...
00:07:42
Speaker
very modest background. I knew I needed to work. I didn't have the luxury of, of, of not working. Um, and I need to work very hard. Anyway, I took a year teaching at the university of Cape town, which I, I love teaching, but I knew i needed to, I needed to do something that unfortunately paid me a little more than that. but Although it was an absolutely brilliant thing to do. um So I i became what what what we called then an article clerk, which took two years.
00:08:09
Speaker
And you did a series of equivalent of bar exams over that time, which the Law Society administers. um And, you know, I arrived, i had...
00:08:19
Speaker
three degrees I had taught at university. I thought I knew quite a lot. And think within within the first four weeks of practice, I realized that I knew very, very little about the practice of law.
00:08:31
Speaker
um And that was ah that was a great time. I worked with some extremely interesting people at Weber-Wenzel. and A number of whom are still very good friends of mine. and It was a fantastic time to be practicing as a lawyer in Johannesburg, massive inward investment, the first non-racial elections in the country um and an immensely exciting time in the country's history.
00:08:54
Speaker
So that was that was interesting. we were I was part of the team that helped set up the first mobile, ah second mobile telephone network in South Africa called MTN.
Transition to London with NASPERS
00:09:01
Speaker
um i was working for the pay television company in that country called Mnet and MultiChoice, which is a signal distributor. So it was, I had, through the firm, I had exposure just amazing clients who were doing really fascinating work.
00:09:15
Speaker
And I was super happy working in Johannesburg. And then I yeah ended up being approached by a firm who um I'd worked with, were also actually advising Mnet Multi-Choice. And they were looking at the international expansion of what was then the NASPERS, what is the NASPERS group now.
00:09:34
Speaker
And they invited me to come and work for them in London. And that hadn't really been in part of my future. I was... immensely happy in Webber and so it was a it it is still and was then a very very good practice um doing as I said really interesting work um work that I'm not sure I would have done in any other practice in the country um and that's But there was ah there was a lure. I think Johannesburg, what I discovered after three years, it was a relatively small group of people.
00:10:07
Speaker
um it's It's still a relatively small group of lawyers that practice in those sort of particular areas. And i felt I wanted to test myself a little bit outside. And the obvious places to go were would be New York and London. And London was easier for me to get to.
00:10:23
Speaker
So I ended up working in London. Very cool. what what What about the work, David, made it particularly interesting for you? and Was it the companies, the issues?
00:10:35
Speaker
Were you more tied into and what we talked about this? But as outside counsel at a law firm, it's often difficult to really, really get a feel for the business at a customer. You're often working on side issues, memos, maybe a piece of litigation or a deal.
00:10:52
Speaker
You don't necessarily fully get a chance to immerse yourself in the business of the customer. But what about the work was really interesting for
Cultural Fit in Legal Environments
00:10:58
Speaker
you? think, well, there are two things want to pick up from that because that's a super interesting question. And I think it's really interesting if you take people who've been in a law firm, then joined one of their clients, and they don't really have a clue about what the culture is in that organization. Exactly where I was going with that. And it's very, very hard for them because their perception outside is very different from what it is when they get inside. So I was lucky I spent some time at the end of my first year seconded to a very large coal company in South Africa. I won't name them. I'm not going anything nasty about them. But, you know, it was a very hierarchical organization. The color of your badge showed exactly where you ranked in the organization. which determined which cafeteria you could eat in, which determined the size of the office that you got, which determined the size of the pot plant that you got, which determined the size of the quality of art that you could have on your wall.
00:11:56
Speaker
And i I sort of, you know, I'd, been to a very conservative school in the country and i'd i'd I'd sort of... There's part of my programming that had programmed me for that sort of that sort of hierarchical organisation where you climb up the organisation. And I realised, though, after being there a week that there was absolutely no ways I could work there. It just... I mean...
00:12:17
Speaker
It was fine if that's what you wanted, but they dug coal out of the ground. They put coal on trains, they put coal on ships, and the coal was then burnt. i thought, this is what they're going to be doing for the rest of time. can't sit and do coal contracts for the rest of my life. I'd go brain dead.
00:12:33
Speaker
And then I began working with the folks who were setting up the first mobile telephone network. And I'd also been doing, I began doing some program content acquisition work, which was dealing with the the major studios. and And that just opened up a completely different world. There were people who operated not in this rigidly hierarchical way. They operated in a much more ah egalitarian, very flat structured way.
00:12:58
Speaker
You know, I'd be... dealing with the head of content acquisition, I'd be dealing at with the head of the channel. I was a relatively junior person. If you could do the work, they didn't really care what your status was in the organization at all. yeah um And I really enjoyed that.
00:13:15
Speaker
And it's only ah when I look back on it now that I understand you i was making those choices. But it was very clear that my I was, although I thought I would be temperamentally attracted to that very big corporate organization that I could move up a hierarchy in, I much preferred the much more loosely structured, less hierarchical group of people who were fun.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah.
In-House vs. Law Firm Roles
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. And you get to kind of you get to build your own path. There's more freedom, I think, to also not only lean into your strengths, but learn new things and you don't have to navigate the the the ladder as much as you may have to at a more structured organization. I'm fully with you on that one, by the way. that's the Those are the things that I've really enjoyed. Part of the reason I don't think I enjoyed the law firm life very much myself and left it about 14 years ago is I needed a little bit more freedom to do the things that i probably didn't even know at the time a lawyer that I was really, really good at. so
00:14:16
Speaker
a big plus point. And it's quite difficult to leave because you're a so actually you're a successful lawyer. You know, you you you succeed in the law firm. It becomes quite comfortable and and you feel, okay, I mean, I'm good at all of this. I sort of like my clients. I could make a career here.
00:14:34
Speaker
And making that jump is quite hard. It is. What what and was it was it? Now that you, the secondment experience, and where by the way, were you seconded full time? Yes, I was there, um i think it was two, three months. Okay. Was it two months? So you're not? It was enough for me to know that wasn't for me.
00:14:53
Speaker
yeah got it Yeah. Got it. Got it. But it did give you a little bit of like, Hey, I'm not doing my law firm work right now. I think if i would do that's the third reason I asked the full time because there are times you can go on a secondment where you not only have to pull your weight at the law firm, case go work you also have to do the work with the client and that becomes really difficult. But when you get to just focus in on the secondment, then you get to start to see how businesses run And it sounds like that was really interesting to you is, is starting to grapple with these business issues, but with the power and experience of your legal training. And that's something to me, which I think um ah to your earlier point, Many law firm lawyers don't do well.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's not a transition that they can necessarily do well. And it's not for everybody. But the ones I think that really enjoy it are the ones that end up succeeding and and having careers in-house like the way that you have. Do you do you tend to agree with that?
00:15:53
Speaker
I completely agree with you. um I think it's it's it's finding something that you can read where you can really contribute and you feel you're part of building something together. And some people want to do that in the law firm and they do it exceptionally well. And I yeah i think theyre they're amazing lawyers that I work with in in some of the top law firms. but that wasn't a path that sort of I fell into and I thought I could do all this, i can do all this and maybe there's something else that I could do that I'd prefer um and that's where I ended up.
00:16:25
Speaker
um And I think also working in in that sort of,
Role of In-House Lawyers in Business
00:16:29
Speaker
quite flat environment, which was the media environment at the time, um which was the the client that i was doing a lot of work for, um it prepares you for working for a tech company yeah because it's that fiercely flat structure and it's very, very...
00:16:45
Speaker
it's sort of experimental and we haven't done this the past, but let's try. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We'll do something else. Yeah. which like Which can feel so risky and difficult for law firm lawyers, right? Because they they we we we are trained... to probably, I'll use the word over calibrate on risk because we have to point all of those things out ah for our clients. And we, we, we tend not as outside counsel to really think of it from a business lens. Like what's the, what's good enough.
00:17:19
Speaker
but Exactly. What, what, what, what balances all of those things? Because i think in the law firm, and you you're being paid for that. Your client is coming and you're saying, what are the risks? But that's, Input, it isn't necessarily complete guidance. And that's a factor in the decision. And then if I'm sitting on the other side of the table and I'm the in-house lawyer, I can say, you you've told me that, but there business prioriti priorities that are also need that also need to be balanced in this equation and it will never be zero risk. yeah And I think that the lawyers who I really enjoy working with in outside practices have taken the time to understand our business and begin to understand our approach to risk.
00:17:58
Speaker
And then their advice isn't, well, these are the risks make up your mind. Their advice is more along the lines of these are the risks. And we think consistent with what you've done in the past, this is probably where you'll end up.
00:18:10
Speaker
But then ultimately that's my decision. So they can help me get there, but it's ultimately my decision. Yeah. What do you, what do you think, by the way, did you feel that you had to kind of untrain your law firm mind to be able to work or was there something inherently with you that really helped the transition be very seamless in in terms of thinking about lawyering from the business perspective rather than just the law firm perspective?
Career Choices and Personal Considerations
00:18:37
Speaker
i I think what helped me, I mean, aside from that time when i was in-house, the Naspers Process Group is have been in one form or another. Clients of mine and subsequent employment in my my employers since about 96. So we were the, Nars Best Roses was one of the partners in setting up MTN. That's when I first began working with them. They were, before we unbundled, that we used to own Mnet and MultiChoice. So I'd worked closely with the group and I'd got closer and closer and closer to it as their outside lawyer.
00:19:09
Speaker
And so that made that transition quite easy. I wasn't having, I knew what I was getting into. yeah I knew what the organization was like and I knew how happy I would how happily I'd be able to adjust to it.
00:19:24
Speaker
um I think also at that time, and i i it's ah i'm I'm gay, and at that time you weren't always sure in organizations how well you'd be received. yeah And, you know, i it made me cautious about moving.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah. I was tremendously happy in Johannesburg. I mean, I was out to the entire firm. It was very easy for me to practice as a gay person in Johannesburg. um And that was something I've... And I i sort of resent that we were in a society that forced me to have those discussions, but I have to discuss that with people before I moved and say, look, you know, I'm i'm very happy where I am. There's no issue for me in the practice. So I'm going to If there's an issue for you, then we should rather just stop talking now because...
00:20:11
Speaker
I don't want to go there and then discover I'm i'm i'm unwelcome. I'm very happy to say that that's that discussion is always... The first one was actually quite funny. Oh, God, David, everybody knows you're gay. You're fantastic.
00:20:28
Speaker
Well, now it's out there. Now and now we can talk about it. Jesus, you know, so much for now. didn't know that at all. I thought I'd been relatively discreet.
00:20:39
Speaker
No, it was, it was that that was another factor, I think, in in my decision making that I should talk about because it was actually quite a big factor. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think we talk enough about the personal aspects of our lives that drive the decisions for our careers.
00:20:56
Speaker
ah You know, for me, I decided to leave the practice of law at a law firm because we were about to have our first child.
Balancing Family Life with Legal Careers
00:21:03
Speaker
And I couldn't imagine being a law firm lawyer and a father at the same time. I really could not imagine how I would spend time with my kids. It just, it wasn't, it wasn't something that computed in my head, given everything that I'd seen the previous 12 years and in a law firm life. But you're 100% right.
00:21:20
Speaker
um yeah And I think that's, there There's something wrong with that model, which we can come back to. but one hundred If the upshot of every person who has a family, particularly, unfortunately, and it's still the so-called burden that falls on the woman, yeah is that they leave practice.
00:21:37
Speaker
yeah Because it it it is an unsustainable thing to be doing, what, three and a half, 4,000 hours a year or however many thousand hours one's expected to put in. And I think it's not only...
00:21:49
Speaker
the the hours, it's the fact that you have very little control. I found that extremely difficult that I could get to a Friday afternoon and I'd think, okay, that's pretty much the stuff baked. i need to work again, i don't know, on Sunday afternoon before Monday, but I've got a couple of days out and the phone would go and it'd be a big client and they'd say, look, we're doing this thing.
00:22:13
Speaker
And we need you in another place. And you think, I can't say no. yeah They're my biggest client. So I'll get on a plane and go there. And that's and I was single. It was fine. But if you're with a family, that's completely unsustainable.
00:22:29
Speaker
It is. It is. Absolutely. You can ask my kids about the difficulty they already have with dads travel with this job, which is more than I've traveled for any other job before. So yes, it puts everything on my wife.
00:22:41
Speaker
ah And it's it's very, very difficult. So I absolutely appreciate that. I think that's a whole other podcast episode for for law firm life. And yeah and and we should we should call out, we should call out that Just because you go in-house doesn't mean you're not working your tail off. It doesn't mean there aren't long hours, but there is a there is a level of additional control you have over when and how that does not exist as a law firm because in the law firm because you are a service provider in the law firm. Correct.
00:23:13
Speaker
That is a big difference. 100% right. I work as hard and sometimes harder than I would have worked in practice, but I can determine when I do it. Yes.
Evolving Role of In-House Lawyers
00:23:22
Speaker
And i can I can carve out, quite aggressively carve out time for my now husband in that or for us to spend time together. And I can be a bit more, i'm I'm now also fortunately senior enough to be quite ruthless on when I will be interrupted and when I won't be interrupted. And that wasn't always the case when I was in the house to start off. And I worked nightmarishly hard sometimes. yeah But there was still a higher degree of control.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely. i um You have been in-house and in some form or another for close to 30 years, ah including your time representing as outside counsel and being tied to the business.
00:24:02
Speaker
How would you say that the role of the in-house lawyer and and then as a GC, how would you say that has really evolved, particularly in the last 15 years? um Leaving aside AI for a moment. Yes, we'll get to that as again to that. We're not far away from that conversation. We'll lead up to that. Yes, let's let's put AI aside in just a minute. yes Because it was I think that's you know that's fundamental. yes um I think, you know, when...
00:24:33
Speaker
When I started in practice, there was still very much a feeling that in-house lawyers had chosen a second path and that the Praetorian Guard was the partner in the law firm who was out, you know, the M&A partner in the law firm. That was the the person to whom, the person everybody aspired to be, all the big capital of the markets lawyer. Those are the people, the rainmakers, the people making all the money. Then it became the private equity partners, who whoever it was, who was who is the flavor at the time.
00:25:05
Speaker
And that I i really think in the there was an attitude, certainly I had that when I was early on in my career, that people who got in the house had taken a second tip string. They decided for lifestyle reasons, they weren't going to work as hard and was very much they weren't going to work as hard.
00:25:22
Speaker
And that they were going to be advisors and but you knew that actually if you really wanted to get a view, you would go to the he would go outside. and I think that's completely changed. I think there in-house lawyers who know the business better than some of the business people know the business, who understand the the trade-offs that need to be made in order to keep the business going, um who also are able to manage complex, large teams, difficult projects, multidisciplinary um aspects of of the business or
00:26:01
Speaker
I'm not explaining that particularly well, but they have a wide-ranging set of skills that they bring to bear and are not as narrowly focused as structured finance lawyers sitting in ah in a very high-end law firm.
00:26:16
Speaker
So I think they they're the degree of complexity that they manage, the degree of risk that they are able to balance, these are are made for some of the most highly skilled lawyers in the world are sitting in the large organizations. Yeah. um I mean, it's... When...
00:26:35
Speaker
when Apple or Meta go and recruit. They go and recruit partners out of large law firms. Yes, they do. You know, it's not the sense that this is that this is somehow taking a a second prize.
00:26:52
Speaker
That is a job that in itself is prized and is one of the one of the the great jobs in the world, I think, in particularly in the legal world, is to is to lead a big tech firm. Yeah, yeah.
00:27:04
Speaker
I don't know if you're familiar with Paul Graywall, who is just now stepping down as the chief legal officer at Coinbase. He's somebody I've known for quite some time, but he was an Article III judge. He was a magistrate judge on the federal bench here in the United States, which is a very, very prominent and life lifelong role once you get that appointment.
00:27:27
Speaker
He left the bench in 2016, I believe, ah to join Facebook. And I joined there a couple of years later, and we we got a chance to work together. But that, you know, that kind of a decision um is fairly unique. there There aren't very many people who would leave a federal bench position, which is a lifetime tenure here under the Constitution.
00:27:51
Speaker
um and and go and take a tech job. But but that to him, he was it was very interesting to grapple with those issues and and it led him to the Coinbase role. And boy, I mean, if you've seen anything from a CLO over the last five years, you know the kinds of things that he was able to do and and work on, that's just ah a special, special career path. So I fully agree with that with that sentiment around ah you know law firm partners and so forth, taking these senior roles either as a GC or some other senior role in these in these legal departments, because I think we are raised, so to speak, as lawyers in in our generation to think of law firm partnership as the pinnacle of success. Exactly. I completely agree with you. Yes. I was trying to get there, but that that is exactly the expression.
00:28:41
Speaker
yeah And it's not necessarily, I don't think it is. I think there are a whole lot of different ways to be a lawyer. i no Certainly, I mean, yeah yes, i know I know people are remunerated very well in law firms, but...
00:28:53
Speaker
the amount of the amount of money that Silicon Valley has generated for people in very senior legal positions dwarfs, I think, earnings from absolutely from even the most highly paid law firms. absolutely Absolutely. And I think there's another thing about it. I mean, ah the money' money's interesting, but it's not it's not definitive. I think the...
In-House Lawyers and Technology
00:29:12
Speaker
The influence that you're able to have and the way you're able to work at the very forefront of technology that is shaping the world, if you're in some of the very large tech companies, is fascinating.
00:29:27
Speaker
And I i get, i mean, I know and a number of judges and I... They shape the law. But in some ways, that job is shaping the future.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's the shaping the future, the way people interact with technology, and it's helping ah us to calibrate the risks. um And that' that is absolutely fascinating.
00:29:50
Speaker
yeah it's actually a perfect segue into the next set of questions. As you think about how you have prioritized in your in your role as a GC over time, what do you think modern legals legal teams um should spend less time on?
Focus of In-House Legal Teams
00:30:08
Speaker
cannot spend time on iterative tasks. You cannot spend time on anything that is largely commoditized. You cannot spend time on anything that's repetitive. You cannot spend time on anything, basically, that that we can create an agent to do for you. that that is to know Not us create an agent. You create an agent yourself.
00:30:28
Speaker
That's what you need to be doing. So if you are spending time on that, it's a waste of your time. yeah um Complete waste of your time. I think we need to be spending time on, things where we have a deeper understanding of how the law and the business are intersecting and what what we can, how we can shape that law.
00:30:53
Speaker
So it's both helping the business and and and the law to navigate each other. but And I think there's a big thing that my team is increasingly spending time on and I'm spending a lot certainly most of my time on is interacting with regulators and governments that are trying to regulate where we're going.
00:31:13
Speaker
And no one knows where we're going and they're finding it increasingly difficult. And you need an interlocutor who can talk between the business and government and try and explain to each what the priorities are to try and find reach in ah some sort of negotiated outcome.
00:31:31
Speaker
Because if we don't do that, then I think we're just going to get regulation, which is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what technology is capable of doing and where it's going. will lag, will be unsatisfactory, and will make both sides of the equation deeply unhappy. Because it won't give consumers, customers the protections they expect to have, and it will...
00:31:52
Speaker
hamper business from developing to to its full potential. I think certainly in Europe, we're in grave danger of falling into that trap if we haven't already fallen into that trap. It's the same here in the United States. I think if you look at some of the landmark legislation over the last 10, 15 years ah here in the United States, the ones that I think would be considered somewhat successful are the ones where the regulators reached out to private industry.
00:32:18
Speaker
And said, here's, here are our goals. Here are things that we need to do. And we can't leave this unregulated. What do you recommend? And I think that dance between the private industry and regulators is a critical one. And I think lawyers,
00:32:33
Speaker
Should play a significant role in that. i know i know many big companies, Coinbase, Meta too, that I worked at, have their policy departments. Many of the roles in those policy departments are actually filled by former lawyers. It's a great way when you when you understand how legislation works, how it can be applied, how to navigate it. I think it's ah it's a powerful tool.
00:32:54
Speaker
It is, and I think you know my team is certainly spending a lot of their time on that. If I look at my digital regulatory team, yes, there's time spent around you know engaging with our AI team around what they're building and how that needs, what it means to be compliant with the the Act. um But that I think we can build something that will do that.
00:33:18
Speaker
A sort of queriable platform that will... ideally get integrated into the the build of any product and will will assess compliance as it's being built. That's where I'd like to go so that actually, yes, there'll be a human in the loop if you if you need some specific thing. But largely, the we can engineer in the construction some sort of compliance filter.
00:33:49
Speaker
And that's what that's what the team is working on at the moment. one One of my teams is working on at the moment. That's The other thing what people should should spend more time doing is learning how to build. And I know getting into the AI discussion, but you you you know best what needs to be built to make your job better.
00:34:06
Speaker
And you then need to learn how to build. That's it. And I... i I'm very lucky that I'm surrounded with people who don't. Their first instinct is not to say I'm not an engineer yeah because my entire philosophy has been everybody needs to build. but The CEO is building. we were All of his directs were put onto almost compulsory courses, not because we're going to build anything that's dramatic, although some people have built very nice stuff, but because it gave me certainly an insight into what the capabilities of the tech are.
00:34:38
Speaker
So I can then not talk to people who really do know what they're doing and have a much deeper, richer conversation around the potential of of the technology. How, and and and let's talk a little bit about AI in legal
AI in Legal Departments
00:34:52
Speaker
departments. Certainly the last three plus years, ah you used the word fundamental. i you I would fully agree with that. They have been a fundamental shift in how we think about lawyering and so forth.
00:35:05
Speaker
But how is AI specifically changing the legal department within process? So I think it starts it starts off, and you see, we've been doing AI awareness courses, AI training courses, probably six years, maybe a little bit more than that. I'm trying to remember when we employed our our first head of AI. And that's been just massively grown. And, yeah, this initial awareness, and then people begin adopting it. And and it's a journey from...
00:35:31
Speaker
At the start, I think it helps you to do stuff faster and a bit better. So it's starting off, you know, first drafts of notes, summaries of meetings, doing the minutes for meetings, that sort of thing. And it it's it makes your job, makes you more effective.
00:35:50
Speaker
Efficient, rather efficient, and probably a bit more effective. And now I think where I'm trying to go is to work out, if I had all of these tools and these capabilities, what would the department look like?
00:36:06
Speaker
And I haven't got there yet. We're still thinking about this as a group because we're like, would it still look like three or five different specializations, each person doing this Would there be just a general people a group of people who are able to build things that are interesting for the business to use and to give the advice,
00:36:27
Speaker
that people would otherwise come to us for, that that's automated in some way. We've got at least have that conversation, but maybe the end of the conversation is actually the structure that we have at the moment is exactly right. We use AI to enhance what we're doing, and there's no fundamental transformation.
00:36:43
Speaker
I think there is a fundamental transformation. I think it's completely destroyed the model of outside law firms. Yes. um i just just It's just blown it up completely. People are grappling to understand how they're going to deal with that. Yeah. I've seen lots of different ideas and don't think anybody's actually nailed that at all.
00:37:02
Speaker
um And it's it's, I mean, we just don't go outside for all the stuff. My IP person has has got APIs into all of the law firms we used to use. yeah we don't we don't We don't ask them for anything anymore. We just pull it all out ourselves. We can we built our own dashboards. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
he Essentially, they're repositories of our data. Once we understood that, we then we we learned we could reach in and and use it ourselves. Yes. and More effectively, too. Much more effectively. So, yeah you know, that was a very early adopter in my team.
00:37:36
Speaker
And she turned to be an absolute rock star building things. um So I've been very fortunate. The team took... you know we Once we thought once we've made Claude Code available to everybody, they they absolutely ran with that. And the stuff they're building is is fascinating. I spent half a day with them last week just talking about what one part of the team is building. yeah ah As a legal department, we now we have a product map.
00:37:59
Speaker
yeah I never had a product map. We have lots of work to be done. And this is such an interesting transformation for lawyers because we could become product people. yeah We have the subject matter expertise. We understand the operational capabilities that are required. That is the makings of a product right there.
00:38:19
Speaker
I'll show you, you are
Lawyers as Product Developers
00:38:20
Speaker
100% right. Because we know what needs to be built. yeah And you don't then have to go off to an engineering team, get in their development stack, argue for your position. Then they produce something which doesn't do what you want it to do. They don't understand you. And then you've got to go back to them. And there's iteration, iteration. By the time it's built, it's six to eight months down the line. And what we need is completely changed. Absolutely. So...
00:38:46
Speaker
Absolutely right. This is fascinating. We built a lot of things that are dying, you know, because they just, either they don't work or whatever. I mean, we have 300 agents. 300 agents in production. You know, a lot of the agents didn't have a, what do call it, a product market fit, so they died. Yes, and that's the way it should do it. Well, I will say one of the things and not to say that um yes ah folks who are not lawyers don't require trust from AI, but it is especially important for lawyers to be able to trust AI output
Trust in AI Outputs
00:39:20
Speaker
and so forth. How do you think about trusting AI and how have you operationalized that within your legal team?
00:39:26
Speaker
The way I think about it is I trust up to a point. So I think we still, the hallucinations, there are still hallucinations. There are still things that are coming out that are not perfect.
00:39:39
Speaker
um For stuff that just needs to be done relatively quickly, You scan through it and it doesn't have to be perfect. Yeah. But if I was being paid to put pleadings together, i wouldn't I would be relentlessly going through those to weed out anything that was um suspect.
00:40:01
Speaker
I don't think you can stand up in court where you're on the basis of something that you you're not sure how it's been put together and whether you can trust it. I think you have to trust. You can maybe not be sure how it's been put together, but that's reaching into the the realms of AI that perhaps lawyers are not not able to go into. But on the other hand, I think you do need to be able to stand behind everything that you're pleading. i need to stand behind everything that's in a contract. I can't look at and go, oh, my God, I don't know where this came from. yeah um So you you can tell from my answer that I'm still not 100% sure.
00:40:33
Speaker
sure about where I land there, but i'm I'm somewhere between some stuff it can go out and I'm not going to i'm not going to run through it like yeah in immense detail. Other stuff is going to go out and I'm going to be all over it. yeah and There's this issue in South Africa where the the the the draft AI act that went out was riddled with hallucinations. That's incredible.
00:40:56
Speaker
In citations? You mean with respect to citations? or With respect to citations. i mean that' that's That's just... a terrible egg on face moment. um And, you know, that's the one part of government you expect they would get it right. Now, yeah that'll be corrected and it'll be fixed and it's embarrassing. But, yeah, we we can't afford to have something like that.
00:41:18
Speaker
um So, we we I mean, we've got out a response paper. In fact, the South African government is now really engaging very interestingly around AI trying to understand from industry, participate with industry rather than just some countries on this sort of cut paste the European AI Act, which is completely inappropriate, entirely different context.
00:41:36
Speaker
There's parts the world that are getting it right. you know, India has a fascinating approach to this. We think India is a better load star for people to use or guiding star for people to use and say ah the European AI Act, which I believe is fundamentally flawed and is deeply unfit for purpose. i um I think one thing that I i really like about your answer in terms of when can you trust is it's a typical lawyer answer because it's true, which is it depends. It depends on the use of stuff.
00:42:03
Speaker
If I'm putting something in front of a judge or a panel in a formal proceeding, yeah, that needs to be right. and It needs to be right. But if I'm ah summarizing a set of provisions from 50 contracts,
00:42:18
Speaker
Then the risk profile there, depending on the use case, is probably a little bit lower. Not as much of an issue to have a little bit of a mistake here and there. So it really it really does depend on how you do it. The thing that I love about technology, which is true since the inception and thought of technology, since we started inventing things as human beings, is that it gets better with time.
00:42:40
Speaker
It undoubtedly gets but gets better with time and we're already seeing them. We're still such at the early stages of of AI and what's possible and how to use it and then adopt it and all of those kinds of things. But it is moving so very quickly.
00:42:53
Speaker
And and you know you can't be a Luddite and and and say, oh, we've got one thing wrong and therefore you throw the whole thing out. that that That one thing wrong will be corrected. yeah that the The tech is learning from itself so fast that even we're doing stuff now that we couldn't do in February this year because it the the tech just wasn't there yet. And if that's the speed at which things are happening, then in another three months' time, we'll be doing stuff that we can't do now.
00:43:24
Speaker
And that's how fast it's going and how fundamentally it's changing things. too People say, ah I'm not interacting with AI. I'm sorry, if you're ordering food, you're interacting with AI. The restaurant is running on AI. We we we we have a tech that we make free to available. We run a food delivery business. well but We're very, very big food delivery businesses.
00:43:46
Speaker
dad The restaurants are being powered by AI. The delivery drivers are being powered by AI. It has absolutely transformed that business. And that's one business. Classifieds, online classifieds, it's the same thing. So you are interacting with it as a consumer and it's making your life better.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yes, and indeed. and it's It's a bit like autonomous driving. Everyone says it will never come. It'll come. It's just a matter of time. I mean, it's pretty much here. It's here. I mean, it's here where you are. It's there where where I am. It's a very narrow road. um But it, and unfortunately, along the way, people will get hurt and there will be terrible accidents.
00:44:26
Speaker
But they're terrible accidents. With drunk drivers in cars every week, the death toll on many roads is utterly unacceptable. yeah AI will fix that. yes And I'm sorry, along the way, some people will get hurt. But ultimately, where we get to, I believe, will be a much better place, a much safer place. And it'll be a much less polluting place because we won't all need to have vehicles in our driveways the whole time.
00:44:54
Speaker
I not only we love that perspective, i I fully share. I actually had an interaction with this an autonomous vehicle yesterday. i was taking my son to the library and we came to a three way stop.
00:45:07
Speaker
Okay. And How you manage three simultaneous drivers coming to a three-way stop, in my opinion, is greatly is driven more by the individual egos of those drivers than the rules of the road.
00:45:24
Speaker
and you know what this autonomous vehicle did? It waited for the other two cars, including mine, to go first. and i And I had that in that fleeting moment that I was making a right turn from the stop sign. I had that thought. i was like, it waited because it is the safest thing to do.
00:45:39
Speaker
It is the safest thing to do. And I was like, guess what? We may never have a stop sign collision ever again if there's autonomous vehicles. yeah Because the ego is just removed. It's removed from the equation.
00:45:52
Speaker
I hadn't even thought about ego in that context, but that's absolutely spot on. Now, will AI develop an ego at some point? i don't know. I'm not going to get into that conversation. It's a little too metaphysical for me, but but I remember thinking that, you know, and and these are, by the way, these are, um, the larger robo taxis from te Tesla. So they can hold six, seven people at a time and they're testing all around our area. So we see them quite often. um One was following me for a while at a very safe distance. so I'm seeing the way that they're starting to interact. By the way, there's no training driver in these vehicles anymore, which means they're getting very close to deployment.
00:46:28
Speaker
And I just remember thinking that I was like, yeah, this thing just, it it waited. It waited because that's the right thing to do. I was taught when I was learning how to drive, you never have the right of way. Forget about what the rules say.
00:46:40
Speaker
You never have the right of way until it is given to you. It is the singular lesson from when I was 15 years old that has really stuck me about driving. And as a result of it, I have never gotten into a right of way issue while I've been driving.
00:46:53
Speaker
And this vehicle took that approach, I think. that's That is absolutely fascinating. i'm goingnna use that story. yeah That's brilliant. That's absolutely... It's it's its important and that's that's one thing, you know. I mean, it's it's transforming medicine. It's transforming... yeah And it's's it's... The other thing I think we should say, it's not about...
00:47:14
Speaker
some sort of jobs apocalypse that hasn't materialized. Jobs will change. and Nature of employment will change. People will begin doing other things.
00:47:25
Speaker
um And some jobs will be replaced, absolutely true. I mean, there aren't legions and legions of junior associates reading masses of contracts and huge due diligence from someone. And thank God for that. It was an utterly, utterly mindless exercise.
00:47:39
Speaker
But what you do still need is people in the room talking because there is always that human, exactly the judgment point. And I think and we've we've talked about this a little bit before, but that how do you accumulate that judgment in an AI world? And I think the jury for me is still out on that. I accumulate judgment by sitting in rooms with people, watching them negotiate, watching them deal with people,
00:48:03
Speaker
Learning about how I was managed by people, what I should do better or differently, what I would do differently, for example, in interactions when we're negotiating, that's just stuff you accumulate.
00:48:15
Speaker
um You don't even know you're accumulating. It's like osmosis. But somehow you become more experienced at it. yeah And yeah it you know it's difficult.
00:48:26
Speaker
I won't speak for South African law schools or or British law schools or law schools outside the United States. But I'd say one huge gap, irrespective of AI and the issue that you just raised, which is a gap that is there and it will grow.
00:48:41
Speaker
that I think law schools need to change their model a little bit to more of an apprenticeship model rather than a theoretical conceptual take three years of courses and try and get whatever work experience you can. If they can add an apprenticeship model into the coursework,
00:48:59
Speaker
then I think we have a better shot and because I'm very much an experiential learner myself. So if I, if I'm, if I've never negotiated a contract, the best way that I'm going to learn is to actually sit next to the person who's negotiating a contract and learn from that perspective.
00:49:16
Speaker
Exactly. yeah This why you make these trade-offs. This is all about trade-offs and risk management. And how how do you see that? And I think to make those effectively, it goes back to where we started. You have to understand fundamentally the business that you're in.
00:49:29
Speaker
And or if you're sitting outside, the the client's business. if you're sitting inside, it's easier. It's your business. yeah You should understand it. You need to know how the money flows through that model. where the pain points are for customers, what they why why are customers coming to you anyway? What what what are you solving for them?
00:49:46
Speaker
um And those that' sort of you can't just have an abstract theoretical understanding of the law. has to be integrated into this deep knowledge of how the business runs.
00:50:00
Speaker
David, I have one final question before we wrap. yeah And I'd love for the the audience, especially the the the in-house lawyers and the GCs who listen into this episode, just given your wealth of experience and the way that you think about what makes for high impact legal teams, what is one singular piece of advice that you would give these lawyers in order to build or create a high impact legal team that is in tune with the business and and seen as a true partner to the business?
00:50:30
Speaker
think you have to and this is old advice, but it's still true. You have to understand what the business wants. And I'm not saying give them what they want in ah in a completely supine way that that you just are ah a department of yes.
00:50:48
Speaker
But you also can't be someone who's sitting away from the business. So our most effective advisors, we've integrated, somebody from my team is sitting in the middle of our AI team. So, he sees exactly what they're building.
00:51:02
Speaker
He understands what they're building. He is one of that team. So you don't get to the end of a product cycle and you come to the lawyer and say, what's what do we do with this? How can we launch it tomorrow? Which is usually the question. um You have somebody who's just, who who who who has, he's his understanding has been integrated into what they're building.
00:51:26
Speaker
That's a brilliant model for me so it's the the proximity to the business that the understanding of the business and becoming friends know it it's it's You can't sit in an abstracted way and give advice from the side. you you're You're part of a team. um I think that's that's why for me it's so important that you find people that you enjoy working with.
00:51:51
Speaker
so you You find people that doing interesting things, exciting things, and that you enjoy working with, and it's so much easier to work with it. Sage advice indeed. David, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing a little bit, a little bit. We didn't get to talk for that long, but sharing a little bit of your experience. I know it will be valuable for our listeners and and I wish you the best. Okay. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. I wish we could have talked for longer, but I think people's appetite in podcasts is about 45 minutes. We'll figure out a way to do that more holistically.