How Legal Teams Drive Business Growth: David Morris on the Department of How

David Morris0:00
So legal isn't the department of no, it's the department of how. That's how I think about it. Like, that's how do we get this done? How do I achieve the goal of the company? And that's how I think of like reframing the traditional understanding of kind of legal function from people who may be skeptics.

Cecilia Ziniti0:22
Welcome back to CZ and Friends, where we talk with legal leaders, technologists, and operators building the future of business and law. I'm your host, Cecilia Ziniti. Today I'm joined by David Morris. He's a general counsel who knows what it takes to lead through IPOs, global expansion, and major business shifts. At TripAdvisor, David played a key role in taking the company public, opening new markets, including Cuba, and advocating before Congress and EU regulators. Later, he built Vivid Seats his legal team from the ground up, guiding the company through a $2 billion D spec transaction during COVID. Along the way, David has rebuilt legal organizations, including full scale at security company Sneak. He's done cross-border deals, and he's championed what he calls a legal as a product mindset that we're going to dig into and really thinking about how legal can actually drive impact and be a force multiplier. I met David at a TechGC event some years ago, and we've been friends ever since. In this episode, we'll dig into David's playbook for building high impact teams, how his product-diven approach reshapes the GC role, and what he's learned leading through hypergrowth and high-stakes moment. David, welcome to the show. Julia, thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here, and it's great to catch up. All right, let's dive in. So, David, you've said before you see the general counsel role as more than managing risk. It's really about being a business architect.

David Morris1:35
What does that mean? So I think of it as legal isn't like isn't the enemy of innovation. I feel like that's sort of a reputation that legal departments get, like the business of no, that comes from unclear ownership and unclear directive. And who are you hiring ultimately, right? And what's your mandate? Do you have the buy-in of leaders of the organization to actually be a business partner? Are you bringing people onto your team who have that commercial get stuff done, politely said, mindset? And I think there's a lot of law departments that have people who like see things in a very linear job. This is my, I look at this contract. I must remove risk, right? And that isn't necessarily uh one way to look at it. I think the better way is to kind of really think about what risk is and what's your organization's appetite for risk. Do you have the right lawyers who are level setting to it? And understand you have to be really careful when you are saying no to someone in a certain way, right? What are you saying, hey, we could do it differently, right? Here's another way to think about this. What is the ultimate business and commercial goal that the business in that moment is trying to get at? And do your lawyers understand it? Because a lot of times they're just, you know, they have a hundred things coming at them from different angles. I've got an HR issue in this country. I have a the 10 commercial contracts here, I've got a product question. And they're just trying to get stuff off the list, but not understanding the larger picture as to what's happening in the organization. And some of that comes back to the person sitting in the GCC and or CLOC, right? Are they giving the lawyers the full context as to what the business is doing? Do they know their role in this? And I find that a lot of the time, unless you explicitly lay these things out, the team doesn't necessarily understand that. It takes extra effort and intentionality to do that. Other challenge of the GC role is you want to, speaking for myself, I'd like to be transparent, right? As much as I can be by the nature of this role and the things that you do, that isn't always possible 100% of the time to give all of the information. So I think the motto is be as transparent as you can be with your team, to give them the big picture, level set for them and have them operate in that picture. And that produces better results for the lawyers and critically makes them much happier at their jobs, right? That creates additional retention for the company because they feel like they are part of it. They are not just there clocking in and clocking out, so to speak. And I I found like in terms of keeping people on my team happy and engaged, that's been a huge win.

Cecilia Ziniti4:20
So one of the guests last week mentioned that in some legal departments, you're kind of clean up on aisle nine, sort of like, we did this, you know, fix it. Uh, I guess a New Yorker cartoon that's got, you know, a long document and somebody's like, hey, go run this up legal's, you know, rear. That's not what you're talking about. So show me like how is that different day to day? So I'm a corporate counsel on your team. How do I experience the act of being in your team in that background?

David Morris4:49
I think a big piece of it is how do you get yourself in the right meetings, right? Are you are you there just to be responsive when someone says, I have a problem? I think that's oh, that's part of all of our jobs. Like I'm not gonna tell people like that's not. It is, for sure. But it can't be all of it, right? What I push my teams for is are you in the meetings with the business groups you support? Right. And sometimes the answer is the answer is just, oh yeah, I am. And then I press. I'm like, tell me what meetings? What's the cadence of them? And when you put ask those questions, the answer tends to be, well, you know, we meet quarterly about this, like, okay, so you're not in the meetings, like you're in a quarterly recap meeting and you're finding out things long after the fact, unless it was a crisis. What about their weekly team meetings? Are you there? Do you know how to get yourself into that room, the room where it happened, so to speak, to kind of steal that line? Are you in those meetings and have you earned that seat at the table by giving feedback, but knowing to make sure you're not overstepping, right? If you're if you can get yourself into those meetings, you understand strategically what's happening for the folks you are supporting, but really your role there is in those meetings is to listen. And obviously, if someone's if something's going really far afield, yeah, you're there to course correct and catch those things. But I I found that was some of the biggest learnings. And what I talked to the people on my team about is are you getting yourself in those meetings? Are you building deep relationships with the customers you're supporting? If you're supporting a sales team and they have their sales kickoff that a lot of B2B SaaS companies have, are you going out with them after eight o'clock at night that dear? Honestly, I'm telling you, is it part of the job? No. Should you? Hell yeah. You should be doing that. It's once or twice a year. It's not a hard thing to do. They need to know you and trust you. And that is part of it, especially in a world that is, well, I mean, I would say increasingly remote. It was getting very remote, and now it's getting less remote. But there's certainly still that element in a lot of tech companies. Certainly, and certainly all the ones that I've worked for, there's still a significant element of that, where it's that much more critical when you're not seeing people every day.

Cecilia Ziniti6:52
So, as someone on your team, I hear you tell me, hey, Cecilia, get in these meetings. And then you're like, all right, add value. What am I like let's get real tactical for a second? Like, what am I doing? What am I saying? Like, let's just say it's a new product launch meeting. I'm product counsel on David's team. You're giving me a pep talk before I head in. What am I doing?

David Morris7:10
So I think you're going in there. I said the first thing you're doing is listening and understanding, right? Figuring out who are the key players that are making the decisions in this meeting. What's the role of everyone there? A lot of this is really EQ stuff and not lawyer stuff, right? And you'd almost expect this from your product, your product folks, your engineering folks, folks in different business groups. So are you doing that for legal and doing your issue spotting? Right. Is there, I thought the most common things I hear about often tie to privacy and data security type questions and then international legal nuances if you're launching products that people are thinking with often a US or UK lens, and like, well, what about mainland Europe on the privacy fraud? Have we thought about these different laws in different countries? If you, if they even know about them, right? And so I say answers be cautious, start by listening. And if you see, like again, if you see something that is just, you know, there's no way the company can launch this product, yeah, there's a time and a place to step in on that one. Honestly, most of the time, it's much more subtle and more iterative than that. And you don't have to, but you find a way to kind of add small bits of value as you go without interrupting the flow of those meetings. And then the business views those lawyers as they're like Jenny, she's part of the team, right? That's where you want to get to. I found when we start this process at my certainly my last two companies, it often was me having to go knock on the door and say, hey, I really need John and Jenny to join for this group and for this group. And usually if it's the GC asking the question and you kind of and giving proper context and making clear, this is not a threat to your innovative spirit. We're not going to go cut you off. The answer is usually yes. Oftentimes, if if they if they come in, it may or may not, depending on the culture of the company, it can be a shock to the system, honestly. Mod companies aren't used to that approach. I think, you know, forward-leaning software companies, a little more so, a little more used to it. Um, but there definitely is a lot of effort and uh uh in your early days, GC, some political capital that needs to be used to open those doors.

Cecilia Ziniti9:21
I love that advice. I mean, I I I remember one of my proudest moments as product counsel was when they invited me to basically their fun off site. And we did one of those like fake, you know, the fake skydiving where you're in like a fan. But but the point of it was like part of the team. And I think for me, a big thing, you know, you everybody talks about department of no. There was this funny meme that was like, we're not the department of no, we're the department of like told you so. Yeah, no, that's not good. But I guess like this yes and is there something where it's like, is that just experience of like, okay, we've launched this relatively aggressive product where we're using data in a certain way, but we've been very careful to use experience. We wrote great things, we looked up 50 states of privacy laws, you know, like what is, you know, when you say political capital, how do you build it to get to that point to be part of the team?

David Morris10:09
So it's a great question. And it's hard, right? It's finding some early wins for the teams you work with that you have added value, whether it was closing a deal, supporting on a product effort, making something go smoothly for them, whatever that early, and it can be so many different things depending on what you do for the company. When you kind of demonstrate a couple of wins to the team and that you're there to be part of it, and then they understand you're not there to check boxes, right? You're there to get the product launched like they are, right? Obviously, to do it in a legally compliant way. Yes, 100%. But when they understand that, it just becomes very easy. But in the beginning, yeah, there's some political capital because you probably have to push a little bit, right? And it often means escalating to the GC, the head of product, whoever it might be in that particular scenario, to say, hey, I really like to be part of this, and here's why. And don't worry, we're not going to do anything that is going to change your process, right? There is people are always afraid of that. Like, they're gonna style, is it gonna be stifling? Are people gonna be willing to speak their minds? So those are the concerns that I've heard multiple times that you have to kind of set at ease um up front. And that usually then opens the door. And to your point, when have you like made it in this respect? When you're invited to the faux skydiving offsite, you're in. And so I've seen that happen both my last two comes where like the lawyers who supported product and engineering and like a couple other functions were never invited. In fact, didn't know when those offsites were happening. And a couple months ago, I I kind of got a note from someone on my team saying, Oh, hey, is it okay if I'm coming up to HQ next week? I was invited to the RD offsite. And I was like, that's like yes, a thousand times.

Cecilia Ziniti12:04
I'm so proud of that person.

David Morris12:05
I don't even know what you're doing. I don't know what I don't like, whatever you're accomplishing, the answer is yes. You have to be there for that. That's great. And hopefully there'll be good, good, effective time spent in addition to whatever you're doing at night. Sky diving, you know, whatever. Foosball, whatever it might be.

Cecilia Ziniti12:21
Oh, and this is the thing too, uh that I think about the impact of AI on this, where just like, you know, go run this up legal's rear, you can do that with AI, but you can't, you can't do the skydiving where somebody's like, hey, we're thinking I'm launching XYZ new product, or hey, our big priority at the time I supported Alexa. And it was like to build to entertain, supply, and manage the home. And it was like, okay, we've got a bunch of different vectors to think about this. It's a holistic product. Like, I believe that I, you know, after I I kind of combed my hair after the faux skydiving, I believe I actually was quite a bit of a better lawyer from that point. So I guess like, so we've got this like very graphical example of going to the off-site. Any particular, I know obviously, you know, things aren't public, but any examples stand out in your career of just some amazing in-house lawyering that you did. Obviously, I'm seeing Cuba and I'm thinking, okay, you know, let's go have some cubanos or something. But I mean, this is any example like really jump out at you of like, okay, that was an example of like I was truly part of the team and kind of reach that pinnacle moment.

David Morris13:21
Yeah. I mean, that's one that, you know, it's 10 years ago, so I can talk about it now, right? It's nice to get far enough away, and even though I'm dating myself. So I had a question come in from our product and engineering team, product and sales teams of like, hey, want to go sell travel into Cuba. And it was one of the very rare times where I had to say, hey, sorry, we actually can't do that right now because I don't want to go spend time with you in a jumpsuit in prison, right? Like, I'm not sure I look good in orange and white, probably not. My complexion, not really a great match. And it's one of the times we're like, there's actually kind of a binary answer to this question. And it's, you know, most risks, when you think about it, are really boiled down to financial and reputational risk. And ultimately, these can be escalated or turned into business risks in terms of like, well, do we want to take this on? Right? What's the magnitude of this risk if something goes wrong? And what's the likelihood of this going wrong? And we're gonna go make a call, and that's how it's gonna go. And that'll be escalated to the right people on the business and legal sides. Um, this is a different one. When you're talking about jail, you're talking about something very, very different. But what we did was say, hey, we can't do this right now, right? Today there's no way to do this. So what did we do? We kicked off a kind of government affairs. We had a very nascent government affairs practice that I was asked to start up. Did I know anything about government affairs before this? Not really. No, I'm a commercial and corporate lawyer by trade, but you learn these things as you go. And we went and had discussions with the government at the time. And after traveling to Cuba and getting to experience the culture there and talk to folks in the government in Cuba as well, were able to a year later get a license to sell travel into Cuba. So TripAdvisor and Airbnb were doing that when, again, when that was permissible for a period of time under a prior administration. And that was amazing. It was such a win to know that this was something that was a hard no, was one of the very few things that was a really hard no. And we turned this into a yes. And people immediately understood when they hear jail, people get it right away, right? Like usually, you know, listen, you're selling software, the risk really are usually financial reputation. It really isn't life or death or prison. It's just that's not usually what you're looking at. And that was really unique and special to able to take something that was such a hard no and turn it into a win. And the business really understood that and really appreciated that. And that to me was a super special moment to kind of you get that license, you're like, wow, this is on the site now. People are going and when they could, traveling to Cuba.

Cecilia Ziniti15:56
And customers and the impact. I mean, there's so many threads to pull here of like being there. So physically going to Cuba, meeting with the regulators, you know, not the sort of like ask for forgiveness. It was, it was permission, but permission with, you know, some incentives and with, you know, a real product to offer. I I I love that story.

David Morris16:14
And it's a balance because that's that's the that's the permission approach, right? There's always, you said, ask for forgiveness versus permission. That's a dialogue. And that's one of the things for the younger lawyers to understand too, is I think sometimes they err so much towards can't do it. We can't do it. Well, the business hears that. Like, what is it we can't do? Why can't we do it? Can we do it if we want to take on, take on this risk? Is it just financial risk? Who should be making that decision? And that's that's where they need to be kind of taught. Like, hey, we have to be really nuanced and careful in what we say to the business folks because they will take it and they may not fully understand it, or it may get spun a different way. You send a Slack, it's always Slack without context, and that gets spun 14 ways, forwarded on, and and then the Slack gets forwarded back to the GC. You're like, hey, Bob said this. And you're like, oh boy, okay, let's go unpack this whole thing, explain and contextualize. And then you've spun a cycle and lost half a day contextualizing and fixing something. And yeah, I had this, I have the exact oh, go ahead, Sarah. No, and like, so that's that's hard. And that balance of forgiveness and permission, the flip side is short-term rentals. Like that was obviously with Airbnb is the big name there. Uh Uber, if you if you're on that side of things, if you had just said, hey, we can't do this, you need a taxi medallion in New York City or San Francisco, someone else is gonna do it. It's gonna happen, right? Ultimately, sometimes the laws are so far behind the reality and the pace of innovation that you're gonna take an educated risk and say to the business, like, hey, here is the risk. Here's how it can go down, here's what might happen. Maybe we should try to do this anyway and go in eyes wide open, right? That's a business judgment. There's no, it's not criminal, right? It's just, again, these are financial and reputational issues. But you have to take some businesses, you take that approach. Airbnb absolutely took that approach, and you can see where they are now. Does that apply to everyone and every vertical? No, that doesn't work in cybersecurity. Like, just doesn't, right? But when you're talking about travel, yeah, that can work. And I mean, you saw you saw the Uber Airbnb playbook, and for certain verticals, that you know, that will be approach you could take in some measure of moderation.

Cecilia Ziniti18:30
Yeah, I mean, I I think the Airbnb example is absolutely brilliant because the other thing that they had was really that customer obsession, right? Of like, it is great to be able to pull up your app and be able to call an Uber or be able to stay. Airbnb put out this stat, interestingly, something to the effect that in Italy, most hotels are sort of in cities and there's all these beautiful villages that don't have, you know, a Hilton or what have you. But you can get coverage, and I think it's like 98% of Italy through Airbnb. It's these beautiful use cases of like widows making extra money from, you know, their wine cellar or things like that. And that is something that to your point was through government affairs, where it's like, yes, and okay, you know what? We're gonna have to get a city by city, you know, fight in their case to get these permits. But meanwhile, we're gonna be making widows' lives better, we're gonna be making tourism better, we're gonna be bringing money, we're gonna have this offering. And I mean, I early Airbnb, I super admire on the legal side. Belinda Johnson eventually became COO. She's great. Worked with her at Yahoo and just absolutely really a great example of legal as the business driver. So, like for me, I guess I'm a sucker for pain with like the regulated industries. So, so say more on that. So, you've worked in different industries, obviously, travel, security now, security, I would say, privacy, I would call it heavily regulated at this point. Anything that our listeners should know about kind of working in regulated industry versus versus not and just advice on lawyers.

David Morris19:55
I mean, so in my research of online travel, secondary market ticketing, and cybersecurity, so all different in their own way. I'm not sure I'd categorize any of them as heavily regulated. When I think of heavily regulated, I think of banks, I think of healthcare, where the risks are just different, right? They're just much more material when you're holding someone's life savings and someone's all of your health information versus, well, someone's going on a trip, they're buying tickets to go see Coldplay, whatever. I was at that concert, by the way. That was really in Boston. Look at that. I've heard completely insane. Like, and no one knew who that was in that moment, by the way.

Cecilia Ziniti20:30
Yeah, but I mean, you know, we have we've all talked about the astronomer company, so we'll probably show uh uh we don't I don't think we need a show notes for that one, but yeah, see your cold plate company with tickets purchased from vivid seeds. Yeah, okay, so it's not highly regulated. I guess it's not highly regulated, regulated regime.

David Morris20:45
But okay, but I think the part of the lesson is I think 10, 20, I mean 15, 20 years ago, smaller companies didn't appreciate the need for government and regulatory engagement. They kind of said, hey, we'll mind our business, run our business, try to not break any laws, and it's all fine. We don't need to spend money on any of this stuff. I think there's been a come to Jesus moment from a lot of companies of saying government's going to regulate you anyway. Government is now a lot less predictable than it was 10 years ago. It's just sort of a reality, um, whether one likes it or not. And so you can't just put your head in the sand and kind of figure, well, we're small, we're a hundred million dollar SaaS company, there's no overlays into this. There is. It's there. I was fortunate enough uh in my career, when I was TripAdvisor especially, to kind of help start a government affairs function and then hand it off to a real, actual government affairs professional. But when you spend a decade, seem like every month, going back and forth to DC or elsewhere, you kind of learn your way around and you understand these cycle times to get things done are so much longer than what lawyers understand. If you're a litigator, maybe you may have a little more patience or use litigation that can last a year. But if you're a deal lawyer, if you're someone who came up like I did on A or commercial transactions, where these things usually happen in a cycle of months. If it's a commercial transaction, it could be weeks, big deal could be a year. You're not looking at two, three, four-year cycles to get either laws passed or regulatory clarification from an agency on a particular topic. And that comes somewhat as a shock to the system. And it's an especially big shock to the system to your CEO and CFO and your leadership team. They will go, oh, well, we can get this clarified, right? You can take care of that next month, right? And the answer is no, you can't do that. You could send people down there, you could hire the best lobbyists. That simply isn't the nature of the cycles that occur in government. And I'm not sure if those cycles are even longer now or shorter, but I think the need for that regulatory and government affairs engagement is absolutely critical, especially in the time we're living in right now. And that's not just in the United States, it's elsewhere too. It's sort of chaos in a lot of different places. And that was kind of something I want people to take away is that this is a different time. And even before the last election, if you're not engaging, your ability, your value as GC, is willing to see it look around corners, right? Like, yeah, and I love sports analogies. So, like, yes, can I call balls and strikes? I can go all day with sports analogies, but like, sure, I can call balls and strikes, play Monday morning quarterback. We can go on and on with these. You need to see around the corner. And if you don't know what's happening at the agencies, potentially in Congress, is there something that's going to affect your industry and your company? Which for my business for the last couple of companies, it has, then you're flying blind and you can't give the best advice to your leadership team or your board, your product managers to them. And I think it's really underrated, even though it is frustrating because it's hard to get these defined wins in the period of time that technology businesses operate at. They are completely opposite in how those things operate.

Cecilia Ziniti24:00
It's interesting. I mean, it's funny that you that you mentioned the sports analogies. I'm a food analogy person. So the one that that was just screaming at me and your and your uh as you made that point is like the if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, right? So this idea that like, you know, Andreessen Horowitz and others have this whole like small tech thing, and particularly with AI, right? Like, so we've seen lots of wins for smaller companies in AI. We've seen companies hitting revenue levels they haven't ever hit before. So I think from a government standpoint, like, so what are the so I'm a new GC, let's say it's a similar position to you, 100 million revenue, you know, product that's got some interest. Maybe it's in AI. What am I doing to set up my government affairs program? Do I start with meetings? Do I start with PR? You know, just tactical things.

David Morris24:47
I think the first thing you're doing is frankly, it's probably figuring out it's it's it probably starts with a meeting of figure out who are the right stakeholders in DC that are influencing your agenda. And this could be Brussels too, for that matter. Like, who are those right stakeholders that, from a right agency perspective or from a congressional perspective, you get to the executive branch, I think, later, a little bit after that, that can influence what you're doing. Who are making these rules? And are the people who are making the rules right now, are the rules that being discussed, gonna hit you harder? Because you also have to accept that big tech is spending a lot more money than small tech is. And I'm gonna define big tech as companies over $75 billion, right? So, like, and that's not so that's that mag seven. No, I'm I'm stepping down from Mag 7 by certainly by a level here. But there's a lot of companies that are that level magic. They're spending a lot of money there that have in-house government affairs, an array of lobbyists, and they know everything that's coming. And they probably have touch points into potential bills or regulatory, just regulatory discussions that are intended, as you would expect, to put a favorable light on the plans of their company. And if you're at a much smaller competitor, there's a good chance they're gonna try to put things in there that are gonna be easier for them to comply with and onerous on smaller companies and smaller platforms. That is how that simply tends to work. That's sort of been Google's playbook among a whole bunch of other companies, Google, Meta, et cetera. And it's listen, they're all there's a lot of really smart people. And the revolving door between government and big tech over the last since the Obama administration is pretty, you know, it's it's extensive, is the way to put it. So I think you're exactly, you know, if if you don't know what's on the, if you know what's on the on you, it might be you, right? It might be if you're and so you can't spend in those in the way they can, right? You don't have the same resources. We all understand that. But is it worth that resource to have a lobbyist to tell you at least what is going on on the ground here? What do I need to be aware of? And then, hey, we're small, we're scrappy, we can go figure out what it is we need to do about it internally. Does that require anything on the product side or whatever it might be or strategy side broadly? And do we need this lobbyist to go actually engage more formally? Do we need, you know, grassroots boots on the ground? What do we need here to do something about it? But these things can affect really the financial health and you know plans of your company. And, you know, it's for young, smaller company leadership to process that this really can have an impact on them until it's already happening and it's too late.

Cecilia Ziniti27:23
No, I pulled some quick stats while you were speaking. Meta employed 65 lobbyists in 2024. That's one for every eight members of Congress, which is amazing.

David Morris27:33
Even more than I would have thought. And like, I think the hard thing is, right, you think of yourself as a GC, like, hey, I'm here to be a builder, not a bureaucrat, right? So that dichotomy is what we're talking about, is like tech company, we're builders. DC, Brussels, they're bureaucrats. So you have to bridge that. You like to bridge it. Take the builder mentality with you, but you have to, you you can't not engage with them because it's not comfortable or it's not how your CEO or CFO or leaders want to spend their time. They don't need to spend a lot of their time on this. They do need to be aware of it. And trust me, your board is going to be interested and ask about these things.

Cecilia Ziniti28:10
I have definitely seen that. I mean, I think it's also this idea that, like, you know, as lawyers and in-house lawyers in particular, we definitely play that translation function, right? So for me, I went to Georgetown undergrad. Every second roommate of mine is a lawyer. It's a whole thing. But that ability to like, you know, take that tech immersion, you know, all the the faux skydiving trips, and then speak to the DC folks and the beltway and the pantyhose and the, you know, wingtip shoes and all that and get there. So and any any funny stories, any anything interesting? You you have some looks like you went to Singapore, you've done you've done this all over the world. Any kind of GA efforts stand out in particular that you can talk about?

David Morris28:51
Obviously, there was the Cuba one we discussed, but so I mean the Cuba one is the one that really sticks out for me. But I think I'd say in terms of like the only I say to kind of the lawyers on my team and the folks I've mentored is don't get too pigeonholed, right? Like I think it's easy early in a career, especially if you're a law firm. Like, all right, I'm doing structured finance. Okay, cool. That's great. Don't only do structured finance. I hope you're doing some or something else, you know, adjacent to what you're doing. So I think it actually ends up being a little bit dangerous when you're too narrow too soon. And I'm always so grateful that, you know, I was, I was on a I was in law firms for two years, and then I was in-house. I had a chance to do a hundred different things, right? I was, yes, I was there as an A lawyer who then I did hundreds and hundreds upon of commercial deals. Then it was, well, hey, can you do government affairs? Then it was, hey, can you be figure out legal tech and legal ops for our company? Because everyone was just everything was very manual in the dating, in the aughts. I'm dating myself, but like that is what it was back in those days. And those are amazing things. And part of it's not only it's you're doing different types of work, but what kind of exposure do you have outside of the United States. States. Right. And so the example is a long time ago. I have a son who's 19 now, and he was seven months old. And my company said, Hey, would you go to Singapore for three months and cover maternity leave? My wife is on ironically maternity leave at the same time. And I was like, my flippant answer was, well, sure, fly us business class, put us up in a rate apart middle of the city. Like, you know, we'll do it. Why not? Like, they're not going to say yes to any of this stuff. And the next day it was like, Yeah, can you go in three weeks? And I was like, maybe. But give me the chill. That is so lovely. That was come home, talk to my wife and say, uh, honey, can we do this? Is this okay? My wife full credit. She was like, Yes, that sounds amazing. Let's go move across the world and miss the New England winter, which was awesome, by the way, and live somewhere completely different, have a completely different life experience, and then manage a small team of lawyers for Asia Pacific. And that also was a different vibe, different feel. And how do you do that? Live somewhere else and have that kind of experience. I can't replicate that, right? Like that opportunity came up at a latter point in my career, but by that point, I had two kids, they're a little older, someone's near school, and it just wasn't viable. When you have two kids and you get, you know, you get one in kindergarten and one in third grade. You can, some people can do it. I wish, and it's amazing. It's a lot harder. So when those things come up when pre-kids or if you have one kid, you're able to do those things and like don't pass those opportunities up. So it's don't get pigeonholed into kind of being super narrow, but also when you have these chances to have these diverse lowercase D, diverse experiences of any kind to round out you as a person, your experience set, like jump on them because 10 years from now, whatever it is, it's going to be harder to do it. And so it's just easier when you're when life is not as complex.

Cecilia Ziniti31:45
I mean, I keep hearing a theme in what you're saying, and it's really this yes and and say yes. And, you know, I remember very clearly my first deposition at the firm was in like rural Ohio or something. And I was telling a friend about it, and they're like, oh, you have to go to rural Ohio. And I'm like, no, no, no. I get to go to rural Ohio. And I was so happy and it went great. And I still remember that deposition like it was yesterday. And, you know, it's definitely similar to these like a global experience or, you know, experience with a deposition or a big deal or a client mat or a GA, whatever. Is like you get one and then you get lots. And so, like the doors that have opened to you, I can imagine the Singapore experience. How often does it come up? Do you get asked about it? Maybe interviews, anything like that? Like I get asked here.

David Morris32:32
Like I've got asked about that. It's, you know, it's part of your background. So I asked about that a pretty fair amount of times because it's not an opportunity most people have had a chance to do. Like by travel, you know, it's great. Get a chance to travel and do deals in places like China and Europe, Japan, other places. That's great. And it's really wonderful. But a chance to actually go live somewhere and be part of the fabric of the company, but in a totally different way. And that was a pretty large company I was working at at that time, early in my career. That was amazing. That was just absolutely unbelievable. To your point, like part of what Zoom has taken away, right? Zoom has given us a lot, like there's a lot of good things there. But you talk about going to rural Ohio and like can't say I'd be dying on that one, dying for that one. But I've gone to a bunch of really random places for like mediations and deal negotiations. And like, yeah, they're a couple of days or a week. And it was cool to see all these different parts of the world and the country that I never otherwise would have experienced. And I think now, you know, that was a lot of it was call it 2000 to 2015 or so was a lot of that. Now, so much of that can be done by Zoom, and a lot more can get done. Like there's a lot of value to it. But like you don't build relationships the same way purely over Zoom as you do in person, shaking someone's hand, having a meal with them. And then like maintaining it over Zoom, I think is not that hard at all, but much harder to form it that way. Right. And that's why I think you see remote companies like us at Vivid Seats. We were Chicago-based, but pretty remote. I was in Boston, I'd go out periodically. But I made it a point to go out there more than I needed to because I wanted to get to know people beyond the Zoom box. And that was really, really important to me. It doesn't mean you can't have a super successful career remotely. I don't, I don't want to suggest that, but the level of attentionality you need to show as a person who is working remotely, just by human nature, has to be greater than it is in person in terms of forming, forging, and maintaining relationships.

Cecilia Ziniti34:25
I mean, I remember that same vintage was the height of patent litigation and I was at the law firm. It was like this idea of the um we we uh, you know, I asked so some colleagues how they knew each other if they worked on case before. They're like, yeah, we spent three weeks in Tyler together in Tyler, Texas. And they're like, you know, that that chicken fried steak moment of like, you know, just like laughing over whatever it is. It's like you you can't replicate it. That actually is a really nice segue to AI, right? So at GCAI, we have one of our leadership principles basically says something to the effect of like in a post-AI world, like being more human, you know, physically showing up in this case matters more. So, from your perspective, um, you know, you're an early adopter of AI, you've been an advisor, you've been an angel investor in legal tech, you know, involved in the Boston legal scene. Um, how do you see AI changing things?

David Morris35:15
It's been really dramatic in the last, I don't call it 18 months, and then maybe it's 12 months. I just feel like things change so quickly. The lawyers that I'm working, you working with that are using AI tools are simply a lot more productive than they were before. So it's allowing them to kind of get to answers much more quickly, and it's dramatic. And like I don't want to pitch for anything, but like just to be clear, when I've, as someone who's been kind of a focused on legal ops in building my legal functions over the last decade plus, um, you know, it's e-billing tools, I'm a huge advocate for, contract management tools, board portal, et cetera. So we introduced the AI tool. It was with a, you know, the the team goes, Oh, all right, David wants us to try another tool. It's another login, it's another headache. And I understand that the eye rolling that goes on in the back. That's okay. I get it. Like these things are really important in terms of a modern, really high-functioning legal team, right? Legal is a product. And this is the first time that after a trial, team came to me and said, So we can't live without this. And my head, like, on a swivel, I'm like, Whoa, can't live without it? I'm like, well, the free trial's over, so you're kind of gonna be. I don't really have budget right now for this. And the response then was, so we'll give up other stuff. What tools can we get rid of? And I said, I had like it was that aha moment, like some magical epiphany here, but that never happened in my career before. No one ever was this excited about any legal technology ever. It was always, I was dragging people along for the ride because this was the best thing to make us more efficient, faster, smarter, manage our knowledge. And this was the team saying, Yes, I'm dragging you along. And now that we want to run ahead. We think it's amazing. Like, we'll give up whatever you need us to. And so we found other things to give up. We were we were crafty and creative, and it's become a daily part of what they all do. And I I've managed uh our GRC compliance function as well, and they adopted the tool. And so it's been amazing to see. And then kind of the follow-up question, though, is that I feel like I've gotten a bunch lately in kind of like G like local GC dinners and the like is what does this mean for young lawyers? And I think that's a harder question to answer. And like, because my view is the team is getting more done faster. So I think, is it getting rid of young lawyers' jobs? I don't think so. I think it's raising the bar significantly. And your ability to use AI legal tools well is now going to be table stakes. Your ability to find the right answer and present it well in writing is something that the expectations are simply gonna be a lot higher, and then how much you produce is going to be a lot higher because the questions that you can answer with this, you know, it's just increased speed in terms of contract review, legal research, et cetera. And what I found the other interesting result was for a lot of kind of prod projects I would send to law firms. So there's still the project still exists, but the framing is different. The framing was before, hey, law firm X, I have this project. Can you look into this and give us a series of recommendations? Again, don't give me a 10-page memo that makes me crazy, but give me something like, you know, clear, easy to read, understandable, and go run this project and like, hey, let's assume this is a privacy project and take 20 hours, whatever it may be. Now we're doing a lot of that work ourselves, right? And we can get, let's call it 75% of the way to a good answer. And then we're going to the firm and saying, hey, listen, have this project. I think I have a lot of the answers, but can you check this? Is this right? Are we in the are we going in the right direction with this? Is this just totally wrong? Tell whatever it is, tell me whatever, tell me what you think here. And what's happened is typically we're on the right path. Is it always right? No, it's not always right, but it's usually pretty close. And there's often nuances that might be missed because you need a sub that true subject matter expert right there. So that 20 hours becomes five hours. And I've watched over the past year as that has impacted legal bills, right? On certain types of matters that lend themselves well to this. I'm seeing the like the amount of hours we're spending on external counsel for certain things are lower. That said, when you accelerate, you can get more done. You're gonna get to more projects and have more questions. So, like, does that mean that the bill to law firm X over the course of a year will be lower? Maybe, maybe not, because I might then have more questions for them because I got more stuff done and there's more things happening, which is like, I'm not trying to get around like the answer of like.

Cecilia Ziniti39:50
Yeah. I mean, it's like Gemon's paradox of like, and then the example I like to use back to your sports metaphor is that it's like basketball, right? Where so before the 90s, basketball players did not lift weights as a practice. Then they started with basically Michael Jordan and his coach, and now everyone's bulkier, more aggressive. But, you know, it's adversarial system and business. Of course, you got to move fast, you got to get more things done. Maybe you're opening up more countries. Yeah. I mean, I I've seen it's sort of the short-term retraction, just exactly as you described. But I think long term, particularly because you can use it also, these smaller companies. You can launch government affairs, you can redo your privacy policy, you can challenge more things with this. So I think you're right. I don't think the the net is gonna go down. I think you're getting more shots up, right?

David Morris40:35
Again, back to the basketball analogy like, hey, basketball games NBA 30 years ago were like teams would score 95 to 100 points, now they're scoring 120 points a game. You're getting more shots up. And that's sort of what AI is doing, is accelerating it. You're more accurate, you're getting more shots up. And that if you're getting more shots up, and then you're spending, you know, you have more questions for the firm, ultimately it may net out to the same. But the law firms also need to come along for this run. Like, as I talk to my friends at law firms, some law firms are kind of AI forward, have their own software devs in-house. They're demoing AI tools and trying to plug in their knowledge bases into it. And other firms are completely afraid of this. And someone very uh kind of a smaller, risk-averse firm, uh, someone I was I was having dinner with was kind of asking about it and said, Yeah, you know, the firm and the management are really kind of concerned what this is gonna mean for the business and the clients, and we're not really adopting it. I was like, okay, I'm like, do you want to be here in five years? Because if you don't have a choice, I'm telling you, it's a choice. It's a choice. Your choice is not if we do it. Like, your choice is either you're going to or you're effectively not going to be here. So, like, I'm not saying I'm someone I work with, not gonna fire them or anything, but like the reality is the future looks a lot different if you're not doing it. And you may, there's a lot of listen, there's we the issues with AI, there's there's lots of things to discuss that we certainly don't have time for, and I would profess to be the expert on, but the world is going, you're gonna have to find a way to come to Jesus and come along with it in a way that you feel is comfortable for your own risk tolerance. I think that's exactly right.

Cecilia Ziniti42:10
So, in moving fast and also being responsible. So I I'm homing in on your head on a swivel comment of like your team being like, we gotta live with this tool. So is that is that you and your encouragement that you're like, okay, you know, we're gonna we're gonna get on board. Like as a GC, maybe I've got a bigger team, maybe I've got a global team, I've got a mix of folks at different levels of you know attraction to AI. How do how do I do it? Do you do you throw people into the pool? Do you give them the tool? What do you what what do you what do you physically do so to get on board fast?

David Morris42:41
I think having that free demo and kind of asking, saying, hey, I need everyone to sign up and I need you to try this a couple of times, right? You have a legal research question, you have a contract red line, whatever the right use case is for you, plug it in. Try this a couple of times. Make I'm not making you do this, but I'm telling you, I need you to give it a good faith, the old college try, as they say, right? That was more than enough. I think I had a team that was more forward-leaning than most, but I wouldn't have described everyone as forward-leaning. And I found that once a couple people kind of got into it and it got used to it and became part of their routine, everyone else saw, right? It became evident to everyone. And like, and not everyone's in the same place. There's lots of remote people in different play different locations. They understood what was happening, and it was sort of obvious, and it didn't require them to be the best at AI prompts. You could kind of you throw a word salad in there, and as long as you gave enough information, like it'll kind of work, and then you get better at it, prompting classes, et cetera, over time. I genuinely, this was the easiest tool that I've ever had adopted by my legal team.

Cecilia Ziniti43:52
I don't think funny because like yeah, and I mean it led you to invest. So, like, I'm flattered. So, full disclosure, David is in fact a small investor in GC AI, but that was after his many months after long after.

David Morris44:03
So, but having rolled out in multiple companies, electronic billing, by the way, everyone hates it, they don't like it, it's not easy to use. Those tools have gotten much, much better, but no one likes it. And I had to like basically mandate it in like iron fist style, and that's not how I like to operate. I like to inspire and say, Oh, we should do this, try it out. And then if you don't, you have to, I'm gonna kind of come down at that point. Contract management tools, again, people don't love those either, but like they're a necessary evil. This was different. It it's just it's the first time I didn't have to kind of I start with always start with carrots, right? Like you always want to start with carrots until you have to get to a stick. The stick's somewhere in the back of the car. I don't know. That's the sticks in the in the trunk, I guess. Sticks in the trunk, I don't know.

Cecilia Ziniti44:47
No, it's good. No, it's great. I I love it. Well, this has been so much fun. Let's do some lightning round. All right, book, podcast, or concept that has influenced you and how you lead. We like to put these in the show notes.

David Morris44:58
Book, podcast. So books. It's funny, like I thought so much as podcasts right now, but my podcast diet is, I think these days is much lighter. Like, you know, I think one day, one thing I like is everyday AI, like legal podcasts. That's actually really good for me for learning purposes. I find that to be great. Masters of scale, plain English, those are all, I think, those are all business, like others are business podcasts, but I feel like I learn a lot listening to them. Like, and I think that's also for the young lawyers like, are you deep in business? Like you have to get deep in business if you're trying to progress in your career beyond your specialty. And then once you get past that, then like, yeah, like you know, if you're commuting and like I just want my junk music, your junk food, which is the ringer for me, right? That's just like pop culture and sports and all that stuff. But books I love so Tom Friedman, Frank Herbert, Michael Lewis, kind of big picture thinkers. Tom Friedman, kind of like geopolitics, Frank Herbert, science fiction author of Doom, which 99% of people who listen to this podcast will not know what I'm talking about, but that's great. And Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker, and like kind of Wall Street and again, social concepts. I like, I tend to think of things in these big picture moments and then figure out the systems that help run them and understand what are those systems that guide these big concepts, and how can I be helpful in guiding inside of those structures?

Cecilia Ziniti46:20
Love it. David, if someone listened to just this conversation to understand how you operate, what's a principle or mindset you'd want them to take away?

David Morris46:28
All right. Um, so legal isn't the department of no, it's the department of how. That's how I think about it. Like, that's how do we get this done? How do I achieve the goal of the company? And that's how I think of like reframing the traditional understanding of kind of legal function from people who may be skeptics. And those aren't usually your executive spot. That's usually actually more junior people in other departments, which I think people need to think about because those are the people who often the lawyers on your team are dealing with day to day, and you need to convert those folks. And when you want to go have success, product, sales, wherever it might be, they need to understand what you do because they're there doing their job. It's not their job to understand what you do. But when you can kind of give a little color and context and show we're all on the same team, it goes an incredibly long way for the company and for you, like for everyone for your own individual company.

Cecilia Ziniti47:18
I love that. So we've got Department of How and We Not They. We're all a team. This is just it's gold. So thank you so much, David. You've given us a masterclass in how legal can be product driven, globally minded, deeply connected. We got sports metaphors in there. This is a lot of fun. Where uh where can people connect with you if they want to learn more? LinkedIn.

David Morris47:38
Easy, that's the easiest place to find me. I can't I'm not on Twitter much these days, but LinkedIn I tend to post a pretty fair amount.

Cecilia Ziniti47:44
Good stuff. We'll see you there. Thanks so much. That was my conversation with David Morris, a general counsel, advisor, investing, and someone really that I can look up to around how legal teams can create impact. If you're thinking about how to elevate your legal function, whether through hiring, frameworks, showing up in real life as a great business partner, I hope this episode gave you something to bring back to your team. Follow CZ and Friends wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to our newsletter at gc.ai slash newsletter. Or check us out at gc.ai for more conversations, behind the scenes tools, and takeaways for legal and business leaders. Thanks for listening.