Before joining GC AI just over a month ago, I was a litigator in Big Law. My experience was fairly conventional. I went to law school, realized I liked “the law”, and clerked at the Federal Court (in Canada) before joining an international law firm. There, I went through the full spectrum of Big Law associate life. Responding to urgent requests and “pls fix” subject lines, diving into endless tranches of document review, and, what I found most satisfying, researching and crafting legal arguments and brainstorming legal strategy with colleagues to advance the client’s position.
Now, I’m a non-practicing attorney at GC AI. I work mostly on the product side as an R&D Attorney. I collaborate with engineers to bring my legal experience to bear on the product's features and roadmap. I also work on client-facing initiatives, helping customers better understand the product to achieve better results and collecting feedback to relay to our engineers. But not a single day has looked the same, and not a single hour has gone by without learning something new.
A common piece of advice I heard in Big Law was that “law is a marathon, not a sprint”. Here, it seems like everyone is sprinting: automated Slack notifications show our account executives closing deals around the clock and our engineers shipping new features and fixing bugs at speeds I didn’t know were possible. I felt like I was teleported to a different planet in my first few days (not just because of the generous use of the 🚀 emoji). No more starting and stopping my timekeeper app or manually searching for precedents. I’m joining the sprint now, too, but the sprint isn’t solo: it’s more like running together toward the same finish line, wearing rocket-powered shoes (read: AI). These are my first impressions.
You Have Agency to Learn
Impostor syndrome is real; its limitations are not. “You have agency to learn” was one of the key themes discussed on the latest episode of CEO Cecilia Ziniti’s podcast, CZ and Friends. I thought this quote perfectly captured one of the most empowering sentiments I’ve experienced since starting my journey in legal AI.
I was told in my first week “you’re going to learn how to [vibe] code”, and having no tech background whatsoever, I understandably felt some level of panic. With AI though, you can really learn so much: Ask (in plain language), and you shall receive (in plain language). A few weeks’ worth of dumb questions to Cursor (and kind colleagues) later, I’m vibe coding and I’m having fun with it, with an endless amount more to learn.
If I can go from drafting briefs to drafting code in a month, so can you. The ability to make an impact at a fast-growing company is real and meaningful. A month in, I'm not just learning new skills on the margins. I own various projects, including the launch of our case law feature, an important piece of our product roadmap. That's the kind of responsibility (and opportunity) open to you at a start-up.
One of our mantras is that no idea is too big or too small. Be 1% better every day, and every contribution counts.
Go with the Flow
My substantive work experience prior to joining GC AI was limited to lawyering at an international law firm and working as a student researcher at the federal government. Orientations often spanned over weeks and squeezed in well-scripted HR sessions and polished videos going over policies and procedures.
While my litigation experience was in all respects tied to a business law firm, the prioritization of billable hours necessarily means the business is set up for you to succeed, a.k.a. bill. The result was that I didn’t know much about the business at all, or what people did outside of the legal work.
At a startup, things are different. There’s less siloing of groups and divisions, and more cross-functional engagement to get it done. When I started to ask in my first few days how certain things are done, I often got a “there is no process”, with a grin. Knowing I had to adapt to this culture shift, I let go of the comfort I felt with rigid structure and embraced the mentality of figure it out. That’s not to say there’s no structure; things are just moving so fast that what’s true today may not be true tomorrow.
So be flexible and be resourceful. The benefit of being at an AI-native company? Ask one of the many AI tools we’re equipped with. Hey Slack, what’s the best channel for my question? I’ve learned that understanding how all avenues of the business work only amplifies your ability to make an impact and your power to own what you do.
The Intensity Is Different, and That's the Point
Big Law was intense. When what you’re selling is not only a skillset, but also your time, there’s naturally an impulse to Always Be Billing. If you’re like me and an empath, the adversarial nature of litigation augmented that intensity; the same motivation to help your clients also meant the tendency to carry the weight of your clients’ problems on your shoulders.
Legal AI is intense too, but the intensity comes from building, not billing. To me, it’s felt different: more positive, and so rewarding.
In law, you spend your days spotting risk: finding issues in a counterparty's redlines, assessing gaps in arguments, and waiting months (sometimes years) to see the outcome. In legal AI, the feedback loop is measured in hours; to describe the legal AI space as competitive is an understatement. But if you're at a company where everyone is motivated to win, that fuels a culture where everyone is immersed in the mission.
At GC AI, customers play a central role in that mission, too. We’re constantly collecting feedback, big or small, from prospects during the classes we teach, to customers during office hours. Sometimes a requested feature gets shipped days (or even hours) later, a process our R&D team is equipped to take direct part in. That kind of responsiveness fuels our customer obsession philosophy and only works when everyone on the team is bought in.
There's a feeling of building something together that's new to me, and one I find deeply motivating.
AI Needs a Lawyer (Human) in the Room
There’s no shortage of anxiety about AI replacing humans. AI is fundamentally reshaping how people work across every industry. But we’ve seen disruption before: spreadsheets didn't replace accountants, and e-discovery didn't replace litigators. The tools changed, the judgment behind them didn't.
In the age of AI, the human touch matters more than ever, and that’s something we lead with here. In my role, it’s not just my human judgment, but also my judgment as someone who practiced law, that adds value to how we build a tool and platform to make in-house lawyers’ lives easier (not to replace in-house lawyers). And the same is true on the other side. When you’re using legal AI as a lawyer, or AI more generally, it's the culmination of your human experience, your instincts, and your judgment that turn a powerful tool into a trustworthy one.
I saw this firsthand on a recent sales call, when a prospect asked how GC AI could fit into their litigation workflows. I joined the call but didn't put on a sales hat. I put on my former litigator hat and walked them through the product the way I'd want someone to walk me through it: candidly, from one practitioner to another. That kind of person-to-person teaching is part of the care that we believe is required to continuously build trust in the age of AI.
AI needs a lawyer in the room, and the more of us who get in the room, the bigger role we play in shaping how it’s used.
P.S. If building the future of legal AI sounds like your kind of work, we’re hiring.
