Khurram's Quorum – Ep 021: Neel Chatterjee on moving fast and breaking things and counterintuitive career decisions

Neel Chatterjee handles some of the highest-stakes technology disputes in the country, and his business card famously reads "partner and very handsome man." This conversation is about how both of those things are true at once, and why they feed each other. We get into the counterintuitive career bets that shaped his path, his philanthropy for first-generation lawyers, how he built a book of business on relationships instead of pitches, and why being unapologetically himself turned out to be his biggest professional asset.

Top Insights

• His philanthropy targets the front of the legal pipeline, first-generation law students, on the theory that growing the starting numbers does more for diversity than fighting mid-career attrition.
• He treats authenticity as an asset rather than a liability. Jurors and clients respond to someone who is unmistakably himself, "very handsome man" business card and all.
• His defining career move was counterintuitive: joining Orrick's brand-new, litigation-only Silicon Valley office at the peak of the dot-com corporate boom, then running the same playbook decades later at Goodwin.
• "Move fast and break things" is basically his operating style. Do something tangible, optimize for success, and ask forgiveness rather than permission, a lesson he credits to his mentor Gary Weiss.
• He built his book of business on relationships, not pitches. The centerpiece was a deliberately un-fancy annual dinner he hosted for 20 years, plus showing up and getting real things done in nonprofits where future clients could watch him work.
• He's carving out "data rights" as a new litigation niche, following genuine curiosity into undefined areas of law before they get crowded.

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Full Transcript

Khurram Naik: This is Khurram Naik with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Neel Chatterjee, a partner at Goodwin. Neel's fascinating because, on one hand, he's a trial lawyer that handles serious, high-stakes tech disputes. And on the other hand, he's the kind of guy who has "Partner and Very Handsome Man" written on his firm business card. Today we're spending some time going deep on these aspects of Neel, where they came from, and how they converged. Here's Neel. Neel, I'm glad that we're doing this. This has been a long time in the making. I'm glad that we're finally sitting down to have this conversation.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited about it.

Khurram Naik: Okay, I'm going to start with a question from one of your friends. I'll say that I talked to a number of your friends to ask about you, because you are, I would say, quite well-known. I mean, at a minimum, among litigation circles or patent litigation circles. But I think there are definitely a lot of things about you that it seems haven't been very well covered. I'm hoping that today is the day that we get into some of that. But if there's one theme that came up the most, it's echoed in this question from your friend Paul Grewal, who's the chief legal officer at Coinbase. And he asked: you've written a lot of checks for first-generation college grads or 1L law students. What in your personal life do you think motivates your law student philanthropy?

Neel Chatterjee: What in my personal life motivates my law student philanthropy? So when I went to law school, I had never met an Indian lawyer. And when I became a law firm associate, I'd never met a law firm associate. And when I became the managing partner of the Silicon Valley office of my prior firm, I'd never met anyone in management that was of South Asian descent. And then when I ran the IP litigation practice group, I'd never met someone that served on a management committee. And it occurred to me that there are a lot of people who are entering the practice of law, who may or may not be South Asian, but who really may not be able to get the shot that they need because they come from a background that isn't familiar with big law, legal environments, and the like. And I really thought first gen is probably the place where that issue arises the most. And so it became important for me to improve diversity in the legal profession, but really targeting those areas where I thought it could have the most profound impact on making the practice of law, particularly in the higher-profile areas or with higher-profile law schools, where people might not otherwise go if they didn't have that sort of support.

Khurram Naik: How did you conclude that this was the form of impact that was best, instead of, say, working with whatever diverse sources are at big firms already? Like, how did you conclude this is the entry point for you?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I guess I quibble a little bit with the premise, because I'm kind of focused on doing all of it. So, 23 years ago, I founded the Bay Area Diversity Career Fair in San Francisco. One of the things that was instrumental in that career fair was that the very first event is an opening reception at a law firm, because if you're a first-gen person, or if you're a person that doesn't come from a background of lawyers, you may never have set foot inside of a law firm before. And I wanted the first experience for people of those backgrounds walking into a law firm to be knowing it's a welcoming environment where people wanted to meet them. The scholarship stuff that you talk about, you know, I formed the Chatterjee Scholars Scholarship at Vanderbilt Law School. It's the same sort of thing. When they get the scholarship, one of the things they also get is an introduction to me where I can say, look, we want you here, we want you in the legal profession. As far as working with the diverse organizations for associates in my law firm, and also with groups like SABA, the South Asian Bar Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and other diverse organizations — those are all things I'm active in too, and I try and provide mentorship and things like that. But one of the things is that once people have made it into big law, now your goal is really just mentoring them and working with them to keep them there. There's a whole body of people, and a much larger body of people, that don't even know that that's an available option for them, or don't know how to break into that first step. So my philosophy has always been — and it was also this way when I ran the practice group at my prior firm — if you increase the numbers on the intake, even if there's attrition, there's going to be growth of diversity in the legal profession, because the numbers are bigger to begin with, right? Law firms would say, you know, we have 75% attrition of diverse lawyers at the fifth to sixth year, and I'd say, well, how many lawyers were diverse to begin with? And you say, you know, out of a group of 50, there were five. It's like, okay, so you lost four lawyers? That's not a trend. That just means your numbers stink at the beginning.

Khurram Naik: Yeah. Well, then how do you think about, you know, with the allocation of time and resources that you're spending at all these different levels, how do you think about how to allocate that time and energy into those different stages of the pipeline?

Neel Chatterjee: So giving scholarships is the least amount of time in some ways. It takes time to figure out how you want to structure it and who you want to structure it for. But then it just becomes how do you endow it, and how do you endow it over time. That's basically money and then a decision every year. The mentorship stuff is much, much more time-consuming, because you never know when people are going to need guidance or when they're going to want to talk to you. And, I mean, you talk to people like Paul Grewal, or Sho Cramoney, or some of the other people that I'm sure you've talked to — Alamdar and people like that. We get emails every day from people of diverse backgrounds, particularly South Asian descent, but also Asian Americans more generally. And it's a lot of time, and it's just a matter of dedicating it. Some of it is sussing out why people are really contacting you. Because, to be honest with you, there are a lot of people that really do want the mentorship and they want the guidance. And then there are some people that are just looking for a job from you, or they actually want something tangible from you, or they feel like you need to help them because you're of a similar background. And that is not necessarily as valuable as building a relationship. I want to be here for you, but let's talk about where you're at and how I can help you along the way, rather than I'm going to give you a job tomorrow, or I have a responsibility to give you a job tomorrow.

Khurram Naik: Well, so it's interesting, because the job fair you mentioned, that's one that scales, right? So it has scaled. And so the impact you're generating, there's like a network effect, where the more law firms show up, the more students show up, and so forth. So that seems to be a really high ROI on your effort, because that's the thing that's compounded. And of course there are organizations like the South Asian Bar Association you mentioned, and other organizations that do things at larger scales as well for the development of South Asian lawyers. But, you know, mentorship, as you say, is very expensive. It's a lot of one-on-one time. It's unpredictable as well. What do you think needs to be improved in the way of mentorship? Is there a way to do more mentorship at scale, in a more group context? You mentioned a handful of leaders — Sho, Paul Grewal, and there's people like Beejal —

Neel Chatterjee: Beejal, sure.

Khurram Naik: Yeah. And so with this crew, is there a way to do more mentorship at scale in a more group context, or how do you think you can capture some of those network effects that you've gotten in, say, the diversity fair?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So that is heavily driven by level of seniority. So with, let's say, law students and early lawyers, fundamentally the sets of issues that they're dealing with and where they are in their professional development are more or less the same. I mean, there are going to be slight differences. So with those groups, putting together pods — little groups of people to talk about what is their common experience, and having someone kind of getting them together to just talk about it — can actually be really, really valuable. We do that here at Goodwin, and that has been very, very successful. And it isn't just with South Asian people or whatever. It's diverse lawyers getting together in small groups. Also, at the job fair, at that opening reception, the law students come and they all try and meet the lawyers that are there who are considered the high-value targets, right? And they're all kind of swarming you. So I'll have four or five people standing around me, and I always have them introduce themselves to each other. Because I said, you know, I'm not always going to be able to answer every single one of your phone calls with every single question. But you know what? You guys can do that for each other. And you can talk about your common and your different experiences. And I said, why don't you just tell them what law school you go to and what your favorite class is — and I try and provoke that conversation among the peer groups. Now, once you start getting to the fourth-to-sixth-year level, it really does become much more of a one-on-one thing. Because everyone's career goals, what they've learned about where they want to be — they have enough knowledge that adds substantial value on their own. And they might be deciding, do I want to be in-house, do I want to be in government, do I want to stay in a big law firm if they're in big law? It becomes much more of a bespoke thing. And so for that one, I think the network effects of group mentorship — I've just found that's not as useful at that point. And for that one you really, you know, there are a lot more one-off calls that people will have with me about questions that they have and things. But it turns out that years later, when they come back, they'll say that one conversation was really meaningful in helping me frame kind of what I wanted to do. So the return on that later-stage investment of time, for the people who are spending that time, is often much higher for them. And from a personal satisfaction point of view. And those numbers are smaller, generally, of the people who are reaching out.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want to double back to, on this topic of education, investing in the education of these law students, I'm curious about how that ties into your educational history. Because something that you've shared that I'd love to explore a little bit is that you experienced a learning disability when you were growing up. And so I'm curious about the impact that that had, because as I understand it, you said that you didn't learn how to read properly until the end of second grade. And so I'm curious, what is the legacy that had on your professional development? Obviously that led to certain challenges. Were there any benefits to that? I'd just like to explore that a little more and see how it ties into some of the decisions you've made.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so I mean, I can talk about that. Let me start with the kind of educational philosophy question, which was kind of the beginning of your question. So, as people might know, in Hinduism it's a pantheistic faith, right? And, kind of like in Christianity people have patron saints, you choose your god in Hinduism. And in our family, one of the two main gods that our family prays to is Saraswati, the goddess of learning. And so in our family, I come from a very long line of academics, professors, people who put a lot of stock in education. And so imagine the challenge for my parents when their younger son is not learning how to read, right? And what my mom started doing every single day — and she was also studying to be a teacher at the time, she ultimately got a doctorate in education, and her doctoral thesis was on the types of eye disorders that I have — but every day she'd come home with a stack of books from the library and would just sit down at the kitchen table and say, okay, we're going to try again. And that's what we did. And the impact that that had is really, I guess I would say, the value of hard work and persistence. You know, like, I deal with really, really hard technology today, really hard things that are very hard to understand. I don't have a technical background, but I've handled some of the most complicated technologies in the world, and kind of the dogged persistence in trying to understand it and making it accessible to lay people — because I am a lay person — I think those early learnings really affected the development of that skill set, and that kind of tenacious not being willing to just give up and say, oh, this is too hard, I'm going to wash my hands of it kind of thing.

Khurram Naik: I think another dimension of your story that's really interesting — okay, so now I understand there's this legacy of this dogged persistence. But I'm kind of curious, is there any connection between being an outlier in that way in academia and the ways in which you're an outlier today? You don't conform to the typical model of what a litigator looks like. Typically litigators don't have, prior to the business card, "Very Handsome Man." So is there a connection that you see between not fitting into the groove, or whatever, starting at a young age, and then teaching you it's okay to be a little bit different later on?

Neel Chatterjee: I don't know if the educational differences were the driver of that. But, I mean, when you're in high school and you're in college, you're always trying to figure out where does your skin fit in, the environments and the like. And there's an enormous amount of pressure, right, to fit into the communities that you're in — just peer pressure and the like. And I've always been kind of a creative thinker, a little bit of a goofball. I remember I ran for student body treasurer and I told all these jokes, and some of them go horribly wrong. And I was a big personality. Like, I did radio before I went to law school, and then I did improv comedy as a hobby. And I just kind of realized that if I'm trying to not be me to fit in, it's going to hold me back on what I want to do, because I can't always not be me. You just can't do that. And I also feel like in jury trials, one of the things that jurors look for is authenticity. And if you're going up there and you're being someone other than who you are within the environment that you're in, right, people smoke that out. And I think one of the reasons I've been lucky enough to have the career that I've had is because people appreciate that authenticity. They like the goofball stuff too. It makes it more fun to work with me than maybe some other people. But that authenticity, I think — I did not realize until very late in my educational or maybe even professional development that that authenticity was one of the core assets, not a core liability.

Khurram Naik: So is the iconoclasm a consequence of a pursuit for authenticity?

Neel Chatterjee: You're challenging my vocabulary — iconoclasm. Let's try a different word there, buddy.

Khurram Naik: Okay, I'm not buying that from the government-in-the-clinical-science picture, but is it your willingness to go your own way? Is that — and just kind of express a personality, shall we say — is that inherently a goal? And is that, with authenticity, to you? Or is it authenticity that's more important? Or is it more being your own self and kind of standing out in a certain way? Like, which of those two — of course there's a connection between those two, but how do you tease apart the importance of those two?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so being myself includes standing out in my own way. Like, that is kind of — you know, I had this mentor, this guy named Terry McMahon, and he was a guy who was entirely self-made. He started his career as a personal injury lawyer, and he would tell me how he would do a closing argument and actually hold like a pancreas in his hand when he was talking to jurors about some med-mal case. And he had these big Scottish-terrier eyebrows, and he was just a very big, very unique personality. And he ended up being one of the biggest-name patent trial lawyers in the country during his time, and he was a very successful lawyer. And I learned so much working with him, because he was a guy who was unapologetically within his own skin, and he was who he was going to be. And he was a big personality, like I am, although I'll never be Terry McMahon. And it was really influential on me to see a guy like that do what he did and be able to do it at the highest levels. And people could say what they wanted about Terry, but he was great to his team, and he was a force of nature in the courtroom. And I worked with a lot of great mentors and I have a lot of great things to say about other people too. But as far as being an in-court, hardcore technology litigator who did it on their own terms, Terry was one of the most profound impacts on me of anyone. Because that really told me, you can do this if you're good enough at it, while being true to yourself.

Khurram Naik: I guess this is a really interesting counterfactual. So what do you think your career would have been like if you did have South Asian lawyer mentors? Do you feel like there's something about you that would have been different if you had — like, maybe if you had South Asian lawyer mentors, you'd feel like, hey, I already fit into the system, I don't need to stand out in some certain way? Like, what do you think would have been different if you had those models?

Neel Chatterjee: What do I think would have been different if I had had those models? You know, I'm not sure it would have been different, because — and this kind of goes back to your mentorship question — one of the things I think people do wrong on mentorship is they assign mentors without thinking about, are they the right fit for each other? Very early on, I kind of learned that you're never going to be like any individual person you're working with, whether they're South Asian or anything else. And I never looked for a South Asian mentor, because there weren't any around. So I can't even envision what that would look like. But what I did realize was there are aspects of people who have invested their confidence in me that I can adopt — some of the things that they have that are also consistent with the way I think of the world, or the way I am as a person. And I'm going to take those individual bricks from them and build a foundation in my own legal identity. And there are going to be aspects of Justice Mary Malarkey, who's the first judge I worked for in what I do; there are aspects of Judge Trumbull, who was the second judge I worked for, in me. There's Terry, there's Bill Anthony, there's Gary Weiss, Sean Lincoln, a whole bunch of other people, that all little components of them have dramatically affected the way I approach this. But then together they combine into a stew of Neel, right? Stew of Neel — okay, that might be the one on the podcast.

Khurram Naik: So I guess a part of that question I have for you is on this topic of authenticity. Some of what you mentioned before is doing things that weren't necessarily signed off on by your peers or your firm or whatever. It's not that you were necessarily in conflict as such, but it just wasn't sanctioned, shall we say.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah.

Khurram Naik: And I'm curious — famously, one of your clients is Facebook, now Meta. And in their Facebook days, they had this slogan, "move fast and break things." And I'm curious, do you feel like you relate to that statement when it comes to your own career?

Neel Chatterjee: Hmm, that's an interesting question. I haven't really thought of it that way. So when we talk about the stew of Neel, what you're talking about is the Gary Weiss ingredient. Gary Weiss was the head of the IP group at Orrick and then he was also the managing partner of the office. He was a very important mentor to me. He still remains a good friend today. And Gary would always tell me, when we first were practicing together and he was my boss, he says, sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission if you want to do big things. And he said, because institutions have processes, they have things — they come up with a million reasons to say no, or just take forever to say yes. And sometimes it's better to just go and do something. And he also would say, it's better to do something tangible than do something conceptual. And those things were — you know, when I've gone and done a lot of these things, like "Tangible Partner and Very Handsome Man," it's a very tangible thing. You can see it on every business card that I've sent out, right? And it's distinctive and it sends a message, right? One, I'm a partner, and two, you might think I'm handsome — but "very handsome," not sure. But it's certainly a conversation starter, right? Those are all tangible things that can be done, and there's a whole variety of ways you can do it. The job fair is another example — sometimes people may not sanction it, but generally they're going to look back, and if it's successful, they're going to say that was awesome. And so the key is to try and optimize for success.

Khurram Naik: So do you have — I think something I like about, from what I've read of the kind of advice you give, is that you're hesitant to give one-size-fits-all advice, and you recognize, you know, not all lawyers are genetically situated with the same skills and opportunities, and I like that. But having said that, do you think there's something you can generalize to say for a coming crop of lawyers — what are the ways where they can act and do something tangible, and then, as you say, optimize for success, but then worry about getting forgiveness later if needed?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so are we talking about law students or lawyers? Let's say lawyers.

Khurram Naik: Okay. Lawyers.

Neel Chatterjee: So one of the things that people get hung up on is they say, well, my law firm won't pay for this, right? You hear that all the time. And if there's one piece of advice I have for young lawyers, it's this: it is not the law firm's responsibility to build your career. It is your responsibility to build your career. So you always should start from the premise of, is whatever I want to do the right thing for where I want to drive my career forward, or however I want to distinguish myself? And if the law firm pays for it, by all means, take the money and do it. But if you can afford it otherwise, and it's something you think is really important or something you want to learn to see if it's valuable for you to pursue, you should do it. Because that is really critical. The only advice that I have on the — I'll describe it as going off script, not following the firm process — is when you're doing things that are not within the firm-sanctioned areas, just make sure that you're not violating some risk management policy. And when you're doing these other things, just think about the fact that you are a representative of your law firm. Are you doing anything or saying something in a way that could cast the firm in a light that you might not be proud of, or that other people might not be proud of? And if you kind of follow those two guidelines — maybe there are some firms that are going to get super hung up on it, but I don't think most are. I think most are going to celebrate your successes when you have them.

Khurram Naik: Going to what you're saying about lawyers needing to assess how they're going to take control of their career, or where their career is headed — what is the earliest point that you did that?

Neel Chatterjee: The earliest point that I would say I did that — well, I could have two different answers for that. That was definitely the case when I was finishing my clerkship in San Jose for Judge Trumbull, because I made a very counterintuitive decision at some level. But I could also say my third year of law school, my first year of clerkship with Justice Malarkey, because I decided that, in addition to my clerkship, I would really start trying to develop subject-matter expertise in intellectual property areas. And I published one of the very first articles involving copyright and the internet. And this is before the internet had formally been announced. That's how old I am. This was in the 1993, '94 timeframe.

Khurram Naik: What went into the decision? Like, how did you set out, this internet thing — how did you decide it was going to be something that was worth investing in?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so I had had some background from my days in radio in copyright-related issues. I actually thought I would be a copyright lawyer when I started, and kind of law school beats that out of you at some level, and then it changed. But I had noticed when I was on radio that we did this thing called the digital breakfast, which were CDs. And we used to play music on vinyl for the radio station, and then in the morning we would play CDs. And that was a big deal because the sound quality was so much better. And I noticed that we didn't have to replace the CDs very often, but we did have to replace the records pretty often. Because you're playing them with a needle, they'll get scratched, you know, user error, things like that. But with CDs that rarely happened. We had to replace the CD players more than we had to replace the CDs, because, you know, when you take things in and out, it was the doors that break and stuff like that. And it occurred to me, I wonder how the artists are making as much money when you don't have to buy new copies, right? Because copyrights are rights in copies. And then there was this thing called the Internet Underground Music Archive, which was an online music distribution at the time that was kind of getting a lot of press. And I was like, huh, if you're doing it online, you can just distribute it. At the time the word "streaming" didn't really exist. But if you're just listening to it online, I wonder how that impacts copyright rights. And so the article I wrote — I forget the exact title, it was something like "Imperishable Intellectual Creations: The Limits of the First Sale Doctrine in Copyright," or something like that. Because I was wondering, how does the business model change for copyright authors when people aren't having to buy copies? And it was just interesting because it was a growth from what I saw as a radio station person. It was an organic existing interest. It wasn't just some bet on, hey, this is a new category of technology that I want to find some inroads to. No, it was really something that I was interested in and I had seen. And I remember when I was in law school, I read this book that was really popular at the time called This Business of Music. It was kind of like the bible for if you wanted to be a music business person. And it was very interesting and a difficult problem. When I wrote it in law school, I won this award called the Nathan Burkan Award, which is given by ASCAP and BMI. And then I later published it through a law journal.

Khurram Naik: So what was the nature of the other — you said there's a counterintuitive decision you made with your career. What was that?

Neel Chatterjee: The counterintuitive decision was, when I was finishing with Judge Trumbull, this was at the height of the dot-com boom. This was 1997 that I was in a review of offers. Everyone and their brother wanted to be a corporate lawyer at that time, or they even would sometimes go into venture capital. And Orrick, my prior firm, decided to open in Silicon Valley as a litigation-only practice during the height of the dot-com boom — and it was a small office — when most firms just wanted to do millions of dollars in startup tech work for dot-com companies. And that was a very counterintuitive decision for Orrick. And it was a very risky decision for me, because it was a relatively new office doing something that no one else seemed to really want to be concentrating on. I had an offer from a very established Silicon Valley firm that had a great tech corporate practice. And they were interested in having me join them as a litigator. And that probably would have been the safer choice, because they were established. They were printing money through all the dot-com corporate stuff, and they had a solid litigation practice. I just felt like I liked the people at Orrick better. I thought it was a smaller office, so maybe there would be more opportunity. And I also thought, if I try this out for a couple of years and it doesn't work out, at least I'll have the experience of having worked for these really impressive people that I could turn into other job opportunities. And quite frankly, I wasn't sure if I'd make it in a large law firm given how weird I am. And I was like, this will give me a chance to try and see if this is the right type of place for me.

Khurram Naik: That's interesting, because it seems like the mixture there — Orrick was an established firm, but there was also riskiness in this new office, and in something that was litigation and not high in demand. So it's an interesting mix of risk profiles there.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, but it's interesting you say that, because I think today, if you were to talk about my prior firm, it has a great litigation reputation. And it's very, very well established. They've got some really terrific people. But back then, they did have some very strong litigators, but they were really known as the San Francisco bond firm. That's really what Orrick's reputation was. And the chair at the time, Ralph Baxter, had this vision of making a more national practice and a global practice, and went on a very aggressive merger-and-acquisition strategy. And really built the firm into much more of a litigation firm. I can't take credit for this — there are other people who did it — but really built that reputation, line by line, around the country, by doing things like this bold bet in Silicon Valley they made.

Khurram Naik: Would you generally recommend that mix of risk profile for people that are looking to do something that is not — I mean, my position is if you take status quo positions and do the safe bets, you get status quo results. So if you want outlier performance, you have to do something that's an outlier. But that doesn't mean just taking a flyer on some random thing that's not validated, not proven. It sounds like there's a good mix of risk profile in there. How do you think about recommendations for people for how to take calculated risks, then?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, it depends a little bit on what your overall objective is. A lot of people come into big law — and I'll just speak from a big-law perspective — knowing that at some point they're probably going to want to work inside of a business, in-house, or something like that. If that's the goal, it may make more sense to get well credentialed at a higher-status firm or things like that. If what you're really looking for is hardcore, in-the-trenches experience, but maybe getting a little less training, that's where the taking the high risk can really pay off, right? Like, I really think my early days — I mean, the early days at Orrick were the greatest time of my career. And I look back on it with a great deal of fondness, because the partners there were so fantastic at letting us take and obtain great opportunities. And because so many people at that time did not want to be litigators, and so many entrepreneurs were young like us, they would invest confidence in us in these entirely new growing markets. And looking for those sorts of opportunities — I didn't realize it at the time, now I do — it's just awesome. It was one of the things that drew me to my new firm, Goodwin, where I'm working now: that our goal was to build a West Coast litigation practice, and we would do something similar.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, it sounds like that decision was very analogous, right? Goodwin very well established on the East Coast, but hadn't been validated yet on the West Coast. And so there's that mixed risk profile of a strong brand, but not yet on the West Coast, so there's a lot of upside there. Did you consciously have that model in mind, and did you consciously connect that to your decision to go to Goodwin?

Neel Chatterjee: Yes, but with a slight refinement to what you just said, which is, Goodwin had done an excellent job building a West Coast corporate emerging-company practice. And they've continued to do that. Like, they're one of the market leaders out here. They hadn't quite figured out how to build the litigation practice, but they had made a couple of moves prior to me that were impressive — Brett Schumann and Grant Fondo being two of them, two of the hires that they made that were significant. But it was very much a green field when I came, where they were like, we want to help you build a West Coast litigation practice like it was your own firm. It would just be underwritten by Goodwin. And, you know, not many firms can do that, but that's a pretty enticing message, right? And they said, and by the way, we have this completely on-fire tech practice that is the centerpiece of the types of work you do. And we have a couple of great partners, but we have so much more opportunity that we're not capturing. Anthony McCusker, our chairman, actually had a list of clients that he had lost to me when I was at my prior firm. And a list of ones that I had never met, where he was like, look, you're only getting 50% of what you could get in terms of really cool stuff.

Khurram Naik: Let's go back, though. So I want to dial back to this concept of control of your career and business development. Because now you're well known as a rainmaker, but I want to trace the steps. Like, what were those steps that you took to start developing clientele? I know that you said you were thrust into the thick of it, and you were young and the clients were young, and that's some of the mix there. How did you start to get intentional about the kind of clientele you're cultivating? And what did that process look like?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So it's a little bit of a complicated question. So generally speaking — and I don't think I believe this quite as much anymore, given that my practice is so startup-focused today — but if you're working in a legal environment where the core clientele that the firm's looking at are, let's say, Fortune 200 companies, what I would generally say to people is, it'd be good for you to have relationships where you're doing a little bit of work for at least seven different companies at any given time. So trying to establish relationships with people at seven different companies, because at any given time, one of them is going to have something significant where they're going to be able to get you involved. With large companies, that number is a good rough estimate. And the cultivation of those relationships are, one, people who've left your firm that have gone to those places, and two, going to events and environments where you'll interact with like-minded people. A good example of that was, I got very involved with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley relatively early on in my career. And that's a legal nonprofit here in the Bay Area. It's the largest direct-services provider in Silicon Valley. When I joined the board, which was either right before or right after I became partner at Orrick, Orrick did not really represent hardly any of the corporations that were represented on the board. At one point, maybe five years or six years later, our firm represented everyone on the board — every major corporation that had a representative on the board — except for those we chose not to due to conflicts. And that's a legal nonprofit, right? Like, we're all just trying to do the right thing. I didn't join it for a business development purpose. I did it because I was passionate about the organization. But it turned out I was surrounded by other people who were passionate about the same thing. And when I could get things done for the organization, they're like, oh, Neel's a guy who gets stuff done. Maybe I should try out and see if he could get some stuff done for me. And putting yourself in those environments where you can get stuff done, where you can demonstrate some leadership, where people will then feel more comfortable investing confidence in you, is a really helpful way to cultivate and develop client relationships. It's also like — I mean, you and I go to a lot of these conferences and things like that, and this is going to sound a little inappropriate probably, but if you look around the rooms, there's this kind of leg-humping exercise where everyone is circling around whatever the high-value targets are. And they're all asking for something from that person. And it's actually a little off-putting to people if you talk privately with them about it. They do it because they want to support the communities, whatever the groups are and things like that. But someone just going and saying, please give me something, is not as valuable as them seeing you actually getting things done. And so that's one of the reasons I really like SABA leadership or NAPABA leadership and those sorts of things, because you can actually see, can people move the needle and actually do things that are impactful for others? And that gives you confidence as a client or whatever, that they'll also take on my responsibilities with that same vigor.

Khurram Naik: Let's spend a little more time talking about how you are effective and generate impact. Let's take this foundation, then. What is it that people saw you doing? How did you get things done? Like, what is it you got done, and how did you do that in an effective way?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, well, the diversity career fair is the best example, right? So we had our summer associate program three years before it launched. And I arranged with the firm to give essentially billable credit for anyone who was working on having us figure out how to put it together. And we had one associate who had a management consulting background prior to becoming a lawyer, and some other people that were just passionate about diversity things. And we put together a model on how we would research how to make this work and how to make it successful. And we had summer associates help us on it. So they would get credit for doing this important thing. And then we started saying, okay, well, we need to have a panel of practitioners that are talking to these young lawyers at eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. Who can we get to do that, right? That's not easy. And we did all this outreach to in-house lawyers, typically younger in-house lawyers, to get them to do it. But then all of a sudden, those people start saying, oh, Neel and this team of people are doing this really interesting thing that we've never heard about in the Bay Area. And then we have this opening reception. And there are hundreds of people there. And the number one thing we wanted to do — yes, we figured law students would come — was that the law firms had to have a good experience. Because when we did our research, law firms didn't go to diversity career fairs because they didn't have a good experience. It wasn't professionally managed. It was very hard to get through. They were not thought of as the consumer. And so when all these law firms come by, and these law firm partners are coming in and they're like, wow, this is as good as going to OCI, and we're getting candidates from all over the country, so we don't have to just pick from one law school, we can pick from 25 — that showed all of these law firm partners. And I was the one giving the speeches. And I couldn't take credit for all this hard work, but I was going up and giving these speeches and people saw this is really well thought out, really well engineered. And the law students that did it had impacted them, and the law firms that did it, and the in-house lawyers that came and participated saw that. So that was a big one, right? One year, as the president of the Law Foundation, we had a whole bunch of things. I had to run the meeting every month, and I would have to talk about new initiatives, or capital spends, or things like that, or I'd have to talk about leadership transitions. Those are all things — and how you have a plan to get them done are all places where you can kind of demonstrate leadership in actually accomplishing goals.

Khurram Naik: And then when you're working in these different organizations, I think what's hard about both at a firm and also organizations like these is both managing people but then also managing peers. So what's your — how do you approach it? How are you effective with managing peers, managing reports, in that way, of volunteers or otherwise?

Neel Chatterjee: It's actually harder to manage people who are what I'll describe as senior to you. That's the hardest part. Because, you know, I took on leadership roles in law firms at a very young age. And not everyone is all that excited about that, right? I think in today's world, it's much more common for that to happen, but 15 years ago, that was not — there's a little bit more of a mindset of a pecking order and the like. But I've always adopted the view of, you know, sometimes I might be the person in charge, but I try to work really hard to get everyone's input. And kind of, what would you do in this situation? And I like getting everyone's input before I form a conclusion. And really kind of making people feel valued along the way. And I also say, you know, I think your idea was really great, but my instinct is saying we have to go another way, and you might end up being right, I don't know — but giving people validation, and making them feel part of the process, is important. This was another Gary Weiss-ism when he was running the group. He's like, you've always got to show up with charts and graphs, things that show data. Because when people feel like they have access to data, they feel more part of the process. They feel like they understand more. And they do as well, because you're giving the information. But I really thought that was a valuable thing — sharing the data, sharing the information, making people feel included in the decision making.

Khurram Naik: So I do want to bring us back, because we were talking about your business development. So, okay, so you've showcased your talents in getting things done. You generate high impact through these different passions of yours. And that wasn't what you set out to do, but it was just incidental to you pursuing these things you're passionate about. So, okay, so now you're getting clients, and you've got a book of business, and you're kind of following this formula of, you know, seven big companies. What was the inflection point from there to rainmaking, to really having a truly large book of business? Like, what was that transition from solid performer, consistent performance, to, okay, I'm at the next level?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so it was really — so much of my career has been luck more than skill. There was a very significant moment where a very significant partner left, and I'm going to leave the name out of it here. Left the firm I was working at. And I was one of the most senior associates working on some of the largest engagements. And when that announcement was made, you know, this kind of — when you're in a law firm, you kind of see this kind of panic, feeding-frenzy-like behavior. Everyone's calling each other, closed-doors conversations, all that. And people reached out to me, and then the clients called and said, we know you're the one that kind of knows everything about the case, so what are you going to do? And I was still an associate at the time. I was not a partner. And there were three significant matters that I was working on. And after thinking about it, I decided to stay at my firm. And I remember the general counsel of the company called me and he said, well, look, I can't go to my board and say, I'm going to have a senior associate doing this stuff. Who will be our new lead trial lawyer that has the bona fides? Can you introduce me to them? And I did that. I organized a dinner. I had two or three really good candidates, some people that were sticking around that had the right bona fides. And I held on to all of those substantial matters before I became a partner. It was a remarkable moment in my career. Because, you know, sometimes you sit in your career and you kind of look over your shoulder and you're like, are you talking to me? Like, you're saying to me that you're investing this in me, really? And they did invest the trust in me. And we held on to those matters and we were able to grow the relationship afterwards. And there was one thing I did from a business development standpoint — and this is not exactly answering your question, Khurram — but the partner who had left had organized a dinner with the general counsel and a couple other people right after he left. And it was going to be at this restaurant — a restaurant that's not around in Silicon Valley anymore. And they said, you know, this partner had organized this dinner. Could you organize a dinner for us with these people who had lead trial experience at the time, so we can consider it? And I said, sure, I'll do that. And I organized it at this restaurant. And, as I said, we held on to the relationship. And the following year I became partner. And every year I read the Orrick partnership agreement, and the Orrick partnership agreement had a clause on a duty to reasonably entertain. That was the clause. You had a duty to reasonably entertain clients, business associates, and colleagues. And that year was the first year that I organized a dinner at that restaurant that had the "duty to reasonably entertain" on the card. And I invited those clients to come to the dinner, as well as, like, high school friends and graphics vendors — anyone I could think of that had been good to me over the prior year. And I ended up doing that until the pandemic. So that was 20 years I did it. And it got to the point where we would have 50, 60 people coming. It was always on a Saturday night at a nice restaurant, but not a fantastic restaurant. It was only reasonable entertainment. And it became this thing that, like, if I had it one year and someone didn't — like, I forgot about inviting them or something — people would say, oh, did I do something wrong? And I always would invite spouses and significant others. I'd always bring my secretary to the dinner, because everyone interacted with her and would want to meet her. We would not give out law firm swag. It would just be a chance for people to get together, break bread, and share common ground. If there's one thing that was the most influential part of my business development strategy, it was that annual dinner. And it cost a ton of money, and it is worth every penny. And those people, the vast majority of them, were not only clients, but they're also good friends.

Khurram Naik: And in this development — so you describe some very consistent things you're doing. Along the way as you developed your book of business, what is your inflection point where your book doubled, or had some seismic change? Or has it been incremental growth?

Neel Chatterjee: Well, that question is something that works better for corporate lawyers than it does for litigators. Because when you're doing litigation like I do, I'm a big-game hunter, right? So I'm out hunting elephants — and I'm not a hunter, but, you know, an elephant only comes around every once in a while. And so I've had years that have been absolutely massive — global, you know, GHod lawsuits in 10 countries, and five ITC actions, three district court cases, antitrust claims, you name it. And those have been huge years. And then the next year I'll fall off a cliff because the cases all get settled, because the dispute between the parties goes away. And you've got to find the next piece of big game. And so it's hard to say what is my book of business, in the sense that I've had huge years and I've had smaller years. And they kind of go up and down depending on a whole variety of factors.

Khurram Naik: Let's say your five-year rolling average at this point. Is there some point your five-year rolling average was doubled over some other five-year average? Like, was there some transition where — I recognize that it's highly variable, but did the variance kind of go up?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I mean, there's a baseline now. I think generally there's a baseline. But I would say during the smartphone wars — well, there was definitely a huge inflection point when I handled the case against the Winklevoss brothers for Facebook. Like, that, and I was doing adoption.com, which was an adoption equality case. It was very high profile at the same time. And both of those were just constantly in the news, and my name was constantly in the news. That was significant for a very, very long time. I was very close friends with David Shannon, who was the general counsel of Nvidia, who I met through the Law Foundation. And we were very involved in the smartphone wars together, because Nvidia had graphics chips that were kind of implicated in a whole bunch of things. And the Nvidia relationship, and David in particular, was really critical. There was another Law Foundation board member, a guy named Peter Detkin, who was the chief patent counsel at Intel, and then he became a founder of Intellectual Ventures. And there was an article about me right when I was, like, 38 or 39 — I don't have it here in my office, but I have it at my home office — and Peter said in the periodical, Neel isn't one of the rising stars in intellectual property, he is the star in intellectual property, or some sort of comment like that. And when he said that, numerous people noticed it, because Peter was such a highly influential person. And the David Shannon thing, the Winklevoss thing, the adoption.com thing, and Peter's comments — together, that just kind of created this aura for a while that really made a huge material difference. And then I guess the final thing was, in 2001, Sean Lincoln, who's another one of the ingredients in the stew of Neel — he went on a paternity leave right when we were going to trial, and he went to a client. And he said to the client, I think Neel is ready to try his first case as lead counsel. The stakes here are big, but they're not so big that we can't take a little risk. Let him give you what his opening statement would be, and if you're comfortable with it, let him do the trial while I'm out on paternity leave. I mean, imagine that — like, someone just handing off the first-chair opportunity and endorsing you with the client. Like, who does that? So that is a really important part of how I work with my teams. And I got my first trial that way. And, as we all know — or as many people in litigation know — you don't get hired for your second trial if you haven't done your first, right? And so getting that first one and doing it well and having the endorsement really matters. And the fact that Sean was so gracious and so giving to create that opportunity for me — because he could have set up, I'm bringing in some other lead person that's tried 20 cases, he chose not to do that, right? And those things were really the key things where I would say in 2002, 2003 it took it — and then the Zuckerberg case was in the 2007, 2008 timeframe — those took it to an entirely different level.

Khurram Naik: As a quick aside, is that your point of view, that that's a great measure of — if you want to test someone's acumen as a trial lawyer — would you say, here, I want you to write an opening statement for me? Like, how would you measure someone's preparedness to be lead trial counsel?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so nowadays I'm hired to try cases, and I'm also hired to kind of collaborate with people. Like, I'll be brought in at the last minute or something to kind of help out on a trial — either inside my firm, or, even more commonly, when it's outside the firm with someone else. And I definitely get involved in working with people on their opening statements, on their cross-examination strategy, and the — I mean, I would describe it as the how-to-do-it factors. But it turns out that when you are working with new team members and you ask people what their trial experience is, people get very guarded, because they're worried about telling you they don't have certain experiences. And it takes a lot more effort to pull it out of people than you think. I don't have a problem with people that don't have trial experience. It just matters, you know, because I can help build those experiences. But what experiences I'm going to give you will be affected by that, right? Like, I'm not going to have you take the key technical expert if you've never done an examination of another witness before. And on the other hand, a lot of our associates, I have them take their first witnesses at trials and major hearings, and they're awesome. And you do try it out. You do say, okay, let's walk through, what are you going to ask them? How are you going to ask them? What are your vectors if they disagree with you? If you're going to give an opening statement, the way that I train that is I ask people to actually argue a motion to me that they're going to argue in court beforehand. Because that gives you a good sense of how they're approaching themes and efficiency of time.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, that's interesting. We talked a little bit about risk, because I think an interesting dimension that we haven't talked about is, you mentioned that any number of people, let's say in a big firm, are thinking about going in-house. And you have had a front seat at lots of startups of varying success and growth. And different ventures have different narratives that make them seem more successful than others. Like, I remember, say, with Intellectual Ventures, there was a New Yorker article that I think Malcolm Gladwell wrote about them years ago — I think this was before I went to law school, but it made a big impact on me. And it just seemed like this incredibly promising thing that — you know, Intellectual Ventures has kind of not had the preeminence that it once had as a litigant. And so how do you think about risk in that way? Like, you've seen a lot of companies start from modest places and have big success, and things that were feted that kind of didn't pan out. And it strikes me that a great thing about being outside counsel is that — you're mentioning, hey, have seven different companies, because you're diversifying that way. Whereas if you go all in as in-house counsel, that's a big risk on this one company you're betting on. And maybe there's less risk at a really huge company. But I'm curious how you think about risk in a career, and diversification. Like, what do those concepts mean to you as you think about your career, or how you advise others?

Neel Chatterjee: Well, so in-house, the business model works totally differently, right? Because sometimes, if you want to get promoted and advance in a senior career, you can't stay in the company that you're in, because the people senior to you are there. And unless there's a new opening at that seniority level, you're capped out. And so in-house, one of the things to recognize is, what does advancement mean to you, or does advancement mean anything to you? Maybe you just want a cool job where you're doing really interesting stuff all the time as an individual contributor, or you're managing some other people — that's cool. Or you're doing impactful work in your current role. But lateral movement among companies is a much more common thing. I mean, you see it among attorneys too — I mean, that's why you have a job, Khurram. But in-house, it means something very different. And the other thing is that when you go in-house, even if the company doesn't work out, the people are going to go and be entrepreneurs somewhere else. The venture capitalists are going to be investing in other companies if you're doing startup-driven work. Even if that company doesn't work out, it's not that risky, because there are other opportunities out there, and you've now established networks of people who hopefully like you, where they're going to help support you, right? And they're going to help you find new opportunities. The risk profile is a little different, but it's not like an all-or-nothing thing. The company doesn't work out — there are other companies to work for, and all those people are going to work in other places. And you just have to be careful in developing your networks. Big law is safe, to a point, right? Like, when the economy goes south, all of a sudden there are larger amounts of layoffs and things like that. And I remember 2008 was the worst day of my professional career, because in a single day, I laid off 39 people, and I did almost all of them personally. And it was the single worst day of my professional career. And it was even worse for those people — I don't mean to minimize that at all. But there is some security in big law, but not the amount people think. It only goes up to some point, because at some point people are going to be considered for partner. Some people are going to make it, some aren't. And even when you become partner, if you're a two-tiered partnership, there's another gate you've got to pass through. And even if you're a successful equity partner, if you're not producing revenue — and there's a whole sales component that isn't in everybody's DNA — things can get challenging being in a law firm environment. So I'm not sure there's a concept of anything being a safe choice. It's better understanding what's your personal inventory, and where do your priorities lie.

Khurram Naik: You mentioned sales there. Do you think of yourself as a salesperson? Do you relate to that statement?

Neel Chatterjee: Do I think of myself as a salesperson? I think of myself as a producer, quite honestly, because I live in the theater of a courtroom. And everything that I'm doing is creating a completely out-of-order movie that I'm asking people to put together, by giving them a narrative to build around the facts I'm giving them. And, you know, I'm a producer. When it comes to client relationships, I don't view myself necessarily as a salesperson — although that is what you kind of have to do in the job. I look at myself as more relationship-driven. I mean, I'll go out and I'll pitch new work, and I'll do the RFPs and things like that with clients. But where I'm most successful is when I have relationships with people. And they're like, oh, I interacted with Neel at this thing and he was super helpful, even though he didn't charge me anything. And he had really good insights on cutting-edge issues, and he had a lot of creativity. And I just like hanging out with him, and he's kind of clear about his advice. So I'm going to hire him for this thing. That's where the vast majority of my revenue comes from.

Khurram Naik: Let me go back to a question about what differentiates you from other lawyers. I mean, you've talked about this relationship aspect. But you've also mentioned creativity. And so I want to know the inputs to that creativity.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so Charlie Munger just passed away, and he and Warren Buffett were famous for reading 10-Ks every day. Warren Buffett says, hey, you know, just read — I don't know how many — 10-Ks every day. Like, that's what I do. And if you want to get to where I am, just do that.

Khurram Naik: Do you have, since we're on the topic — a practice in some way, daily or otherwise, where you are consuming a kind of information that sets you apart from other lawyers?

Neel Chatterjee: Yes and no. So one of the things that I've always tried to do, in various ways, is to make law accessible to lay people. It's just kind of a weird hobby, I suppose. But I really like taking really hard-law stuff and trying to make it accessible to lay people. And it'll range from my crazy continuing education programs, where I talk about a "Loving the Law Valentine's Day Spectacular" — and they're not even subject matter, right? I'm not even necessarily talking about IP issues. I'm just doing stuff. Or during the pandemic, I started writing Supreme Court summaries for lay people about what the case was really about, and what were people deciding. And let's make it readable for lay people, as opposed to something we would study in law school. And now I'm doing these two-minute videos called "Breaking the Law," where all I try and do is just encapsulate an 80-page court opinion into two minutes or less and make it engaging for people. I do a lot of experimentation around that. And then I also do a lot of things where I try and engage in storytelling for people. One of my closest friends that I grew up with, she had cystic fibrosis. She wasn't supposed to live past 30. And she ended up celebrating her 50th birthday with me, in a group of high school friends. And she passed away right before the pandemic, and her family asked me to deliver a eulogy for her. Which — I had never even attended something where I saw a eulogy. I mean, I conceptually knew what it was, but I didn't know what to do. And I think her greatest gift to me, in her life and then her end of life, was reminding me that that's something I love doing more than anything else, which is telling people's stories. Because when I wrote the eulogy, I wrote her farewell letter. And that is something I really enjoy doing. Like, can I write and tell stories about other people and other things in a way that's meaningful for them?

Khurram Naik: Thanks for sharing that. So what you're saying is, it's this inherent passion for storytelling and breaking down that is this mental exercise you're constantly doing. And that's what makes you a creative lawyer. Does that mean that when you're working with a client and they see, okay, we think this is a case about X, and you say, well, actually, I see it differently, I see this as a case about Y — is that the skill set? Is that the practice that leads to that outcome?

Neel Chatterjee: It's — what is the unanswered legal question that needs to be answered? Sometimes that can be the case, not always. What is the narrative? So one thing I tell people quite a bit is, I don't care what side of the v. we're on in a technology dispute, I represent the innovator. Because ultimately, when you're dealing with kind of the ethos of how people feel, in a civil action — criminal cases are different, but in a civil case — people want to feel like they're representing the people who are right. And they're not going to feel like someone's right in a technology dispute unless there's a story of innovation behind it, either way. And so that storytelling is really important. Because what happens, particularly in technology disputes, is people will — if you're on the defendant side in a patent case or trade secret case — the narrative will inevitably come out, well, all this stuff is obvious, or all this stuff is publicly known. And okay, I know you feel that way, but we live in a world of, what can you prove? And then also, what are the unknown or lesser-known areas of law that we can press? This issue happens quite a bit — not in the patent or trade secret context, but in the internet and data-rights context — where a lot of the rules are unwritten, or how the rules are being interpreted are unknown. And it turns out that if you look at the case law in those areas, the vast majority of the case law has been developed by, what kind of narrative could you build around what these new businesses are, and how to get people comfortable with an inherent creepiness factor that people will have around whatever these new business models are? Whether you're talking about, you know, can you sell a duck on eBay? To, if a self-driving car hits somebody, what are you going to do about it? Or you're mapping a neighborhood, and what happens if you're taking pictures of kids on the street? To, Alexa's listening to me, right? Like, all of those have an inherent creepiness factor to them that people are uncomfortable with. And you're like, okay, there's going to be legal fights about this. How do we develop the narrative to make it a defensible business strategy? And Gen AI is the same thing today, right?

Khurram Naik: There's a theme — since we're talking about themes that you use in jury trials — do you ever weave in narratives around property? Because a big thing about a patent is that that's a property right in this intangible asset. So is that the thing that you relate to, or something that you counter, or do you just ignore it? Do you just kind of focus on the story of innovation? Like, how does that mean?

Neel Chatterjee: I mean, it factors in, right? Like, you say, you know, if you have, if you own a home, you're going to have boundaries, you're going to have limits on it. And you're not allowed to tread onto someone else's land. Those are helpful concepts, but at the core, those boundaries are defined by, what did you innovate, or what did the other people innovate? And the reason — like, if you do jury studies, the jurors always want to know, do you have a patent on your own technology when you're a defendant? Because they think about it that way. They say, okay, my boundary can't begin until I have my own boundaries, where it's not going to overlap on your land. As we all know who do IP litigation, that's not exactly the way patents work, but that concept kind of filters in in various ways. But it's not the centerpiece. It's just part of the overall themes.

Khurram Naik: Do you still work with trial consultants all the time? I mean, you've got so much experience. What do you get out of working with those consultants?

Neel Chatterjee: The jury consultants — well, it depends on what role they're playing. But let's say you're using them for a mock jury. There are a lot of times you want to test different types of thematic approaches, different types of evidence, or different types of witnesses. And you'll get a lot of feedback that's more empirically based on each one of those things, on what to emphasize more or less, or what kinds of witnesses resonate or don't. Sometimes you think you have this great witness who's a great talker, and then it turns out people kind of don't like them. And to really test — there's good facts, there's bad facts, and there's horrible facts. Sometimes you want to test, how horrible are those horrible facts? You have an instinct on it, but you may not always be right. And so that's really helpful. The other thing where jury consultants can be helpful is, a lot of witnesses are just nervous to testify. And lawyers can only go so far in helping people deal with those nerves. And, in my opinion — and I could be wrong about this — people have perceptions of business executives that have to be managed, and people have to understand what those perceptions are. And second, when someone's nervous, sometimes that's interpreted as a lack of credibility. And jury consultants can be very helpful on the psychology of sitting in a witness box and how it works, and they can be helpful in working with witnesses. I mean, I obviously am there, my colleagues are there, to kind of help them understand how that feels and come to deal with the feelings that people have.

Khurram Naik: When you're ready for opening statements, when you're stepping up to deliver your opening statements, do you still feel nervous? Does it still feel the same way it did with your first handful of trials? Like, what does it feel like today when you step up there?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I still feel nervous. I don't know if I feel quite the same, but I still feel — I always have nerves, every time you're going to cross-examine the key witness, or you're doing an opening or a closing. By the time you're at closing, I feel less nervous, because I'm kind of like, okay, I just have a job to do and I've got to get this done. And you've been in it for a long time, you haven't slept at all for two weeks. But at the opening, you know, boy, you still have stage fright. And actually, even when you're doing voir dire, you can even have that, because depending on how much liberty that judge gives you on voir dire, you might be establishing some of your trial themes through that.

Khurram Naik: Hmm. You know, I think it'd be interesting to spend a little more time exploring — you were talking earlier about just the range of outside activities you have. And I feel it'd be remiss if we didn't explore that some more, because when you're talking about work with this jury trial consultant, I mean, I'm thinking about how, when I litigated, I mostly had bench trials. And so there's a lot less of this prep with a jury trial consultant. So there's a lot of things that you juggle in your role. And we talked already about diversity, career fair, mentorship, all these different activities you have. So you juggle a lot of things. But you have the same 24 hours as the rest of us. And something that I've told you that I've observed is that you are among the — if not the most — responsive lawyer that I know. And that was the case when we practiced together, and that's the case today. And that's remarkable, given how busy you are. So tell me more — access seems to be your competitive advantage. It's time management. So what is your time management system that you developed?

Neel Chatterjee: Well, the number one piece of the system that I developed is, if I don't respond right away, I'm going to forget about it. And so I know that about myself.

Khurram Naik: Yeah.

Neel Chatterjee: And I know that about myself. So I always try and respond right away, because if I don't, I'm going to forget.

Khurram Naik: That makes the question of why it's important for you to remember at all. Because any number of people could just say, oh, I'm busy, and I don't need to pick up every single thing. That itself is interesting to explore right there. Where does it — add to that — that I need to respond to people, I need to be responsive at all to begin with. Where does that come from?

Neel Chatterjee: I don't know, man. Like, I kind of look at it as, when you're in a professional services industry, it's never about me, it's always about you. It's always about the client. It's always about the younger lawyers. It's always about your colleagues. It's always about the court. Like, I am just a vehicle by which I'm serving others in a whole variety of ways. And I don't know — I think it's, instinctively, I feel like it's rude to not respond, almost. I will say I get really annoyed when I get these emails that are solicitations, and it says, please go and schedule a time with me on my calendar. Because I'm like, wait, you're wanting to ask — you're asking me to give you my business, but then I have to go and do extra work to have the privilege of meeting with you for something I probably don't want to begin with. That I find really annoying. So the response, to me, it's like, I feel like it's kind of rude to not respond. That's just me, though. Like, I don't think that has to be for everybody. I know lots of people ignore all the inquiries they get. It does get a little overwhelming at times with law students, because I probably get 20 to 30 a week. And I can't schedule Zoom conferences with all of them. And I can't help people with every single resume. I try and do it with a lot. But there are times where even those law students will — I'll give them all sorts of feedback on the resume, and they'll say, you know, well, can you just rewrite it for me? And I'm like, you're the owner of your career, not me.

Khurram Naik: But then how do you schedule all the things you need to in a day? You've got some of these obligations. How do you think about your time? Do you have, all things considered, mornings are a time for blank, afternoon a time for blank — like, how do you think about your day?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so I give this presentation called "Open Up Your Can of Maximum Awesomeness" to young lawyers. I talk about mentorship, and I talk about time management and how to be successful in your career, at least from my perspective. One is being comfortable in your own skin, and being your authentic you, which we've already talked about. The second one is something I say, going for the two-fer — which is, we only have so many hours in the day. So if I were to say, I want to do something that's public-interest related, something that's diversity related, something that's recruiting related, and something that's business development related, and I dealt with each one of those things separately, I am now trying to do a whole lot of things with a limited universe of time. So if I can take at least two of the things that are important to me and accomplish them together, that is always a more efficient return on the investment of my time, because I'm now doing two things at once. If I can do three, even better. If I can do four together, even better than that. And so when I do a whole bunch of things, I will try and dedicate my time to things where I think there are multiple potential avenues for returns on investment that are also valuable and important to me. And that has turned out to have a really material impact on how I allocate time. I also — I mean, I'll do stuff on weekends. Like, I do lots of stuff with my family on weekends. I work a lot on weekends. But I can more often squeeze in time. And if people are only willing — like, for mentorship, if people are willing to meet with me only between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., we may not be able to get a meeting, right? I've got client stuff to do during that time.

Khurram Naik: Have you ever had to handle burnout, or have you just always been very passionate about what you do and really haven't experienced much in the way of burnout?

Neel Chatterjee: In individual years, I've definitely felt burned out. And I've definitely felt like, at times — people will know that I'm crazy busy, working hard, traveling all the time, a million places at once — and people who at times I've felt like maybe should have been a little invested in trying to help me out a bit, in trying to relieve the burden, were not invested in that. Instead, they just asked for more. And those ended up with some very hard conversations. And I've dealt with those things. And it's not easy. You feel tired, you do. And sometimes your family takes a toll for it, right? Like, I don't go on vacation to places where I can't get high-speed internet. Yeah, I just won't do it.

Khurram Naik: What were the inputs to burnout in the past? Was it just that you felt there was an imbalance between how much other people were showing up and pitching in? Or was there something else, some pattern that you're seeing for what caused you to feel burnt out?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, normally it's a million things on all angles, whether it's personal life, professional life, or otherwise. And sometimes — I mean, when you try five cases in a year, which I've done, ITC and district court cases — you're just pooped, you know. It's hard to go from one thing to another thing. And when they're all different from each other, and just within three weeks pick up an entirely new technology and kind of become the subject matter expert and develop your themes and all that stuff, right? And I don't take a lot of vacations, but it starts wearing on you.

Khurram Naik: Earlier you mentioned Maximum Awesomeness, and there's a Maximum Awesomeness practice group. Tell me about that.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so the Maximum Awesomeness Practice Group — I founded that thing a long time ago. It was something in my prior law firm that I did. I was running the group, and I had sensed that there was probably going to be some disruption in the group, that some people were going to be leaving and things like that. And I really thought it was important for us to articulate a vision as to what we stood for, and kind of have a rallying cry around it, which was, you know, we aimed to change the world one lawsuit at a time. And I wanted to encourage people, particularly young lawyers, but also people I was close to, to kind of make sure people felt like we were doing really important and impactful things. And we should appreciate and enjoy that. But then it had to be in my Neel-like way, which was kind of humorous and tongue-in-cheek. Like, we do this really important stuff, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. So I put together MAPG to kind of promote the group and promote people's successes on important things we were doing, pro bono and otherwise — it was both pro bono and actual litigation. And also to give people kudos for the substantial contributions they were making. And it was interesting because when I did it, I was also doing it a little bit to test out a concept of viral marketing, which wasn't really known at the time in internet concepts. To just see, if I did this, would people pick up on it? And I started having clients reach out to me — what is this MAPG thing you're doing? Like, I want to be part of that. I feel like I need to be part of that. And it ended up having this nice marketing impact, but it was really about community building inside the team, and making sure people felt supported and felt like they were part of something doing something important.

Khurram Naik: Is that a theme? And, you know, I know you're very relationship-driven and try to have a big tent, but I'm sensing a theme between what you just described and also your annual dinners. Is there a FOMO component to your community building?

Neel Chatterjee: I never tried to create FOMO. I think I've seen instances where people have felt that way because of things that I do. And I never intend to create that feeling. It just kind of happens. But it's more about building communities and networks of people who recognize they're in it together for one reason or another, and create support, right? Like, I remember one of my annual dinners, it was the first time that heads of litigation or senior IP lawyers from all the major payment companies were all at the dinner together, and they had never met, right? And whether they're adversaries in the competitive marketplace, they do have areas where they're going to have common ground. And just being able to see them sit together and get to know each other was hugely important for me, even though it had no tangible business development benefit.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, I'm struck with another theme in these relationships you're building, which is, of course, it's so Bay Area-centric, right? You're in the epicenter of where your clientele are, and there are these different payments counsel that can be all together geographically. How would you apply the principles you're talking about? You mentioned this consumable virality and trying to apply principles from internet marketing generally to your practice. How would you apply that right now? We live in a much more remote era. How would you apply the principles that you've used around community to an internet era? How can someone who's based in, you know, North Carolina, who isn't in the epicenter — how can that person position themselves where they are, building community in the same way, and these network effects that you're talking about as well?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, well, it depends on what your areas of practice are, right? Like, it depends what your areas of practice are. I have to say, post-pandemic has been more of a challenge for me. People have not gotten together as much. The way that people interact with each other in law-related events is totally different. I feel like people's connections are weaker than they were before, in terms of personal relationships, and I've been struggling with that, and I think other people are too. So it's a little hard to give insights on that. I guess the metaphor I would draw is — I've developed an international clientele and international client bases who are not Silicon Valley-centric. One example, and I'm sure this doesn't work for everyone — the "Partner and Very Handsome Man" card — like, people in China and Taiwan love that card. They love it. And I will have tech companies out there saying, oh, I met such-and-such a person at this other tech company, and they gave me your card, and I really feel I need to meet you. And they'll always ask to do a video call. I think it's really fun. There's probably a —

Khurram Naik: There's probably a tinge of disappointment.

Neel Chatterjee: There's probably a tinge of disappointment, you know. I want to get out of the — oh, you know, give me the opposite.

Khurram Naik: Maybe it's just — I think you maybe are exceptionally handsome in that part of the world.

Neel Chatterjee: Right. But like, what they appreciate is — they appreciate the fact that if you look at my credentials, I have whatever these important credentials are, but there's a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, it's a little bit of lightheartedness on what is very stressful for these companies. And there's a communication style that is easier for them at some level. But things like that can be helpful — like, ways to kind of distinguish yourself, or get to know folks and build virality by having a couple of champions in whatever areas you're in. And then trying to say, oh, what events are you going to that I might want to go to too? We can hang out. But then you go to the events, and you have a sponsor there, right? Someone that you've worked with, that's an in-house lawyer. I'll give you an example — MCCA, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. So I went to the conference this year. I went last year. I did a bunch of pro bono work for them. And I found out there are a couple of my friends who go. And I'm like, hey, you know, after this thing's done — they don't have a dinner event — so why don't we all go grab drinks and dinner? And they'd bring along like four or five of their friends that are all in-house lawyers. That was awesome. I don't know if I'll turn it into any business or not, but I've expanded my network of people who are all similarly minded on diversity in the law.

Khurram Naik: Okay, so picking out the "Very Handsome Man" thing — you're pretty much the only lawyer I can think of that has this angle. And maybe "it might not work" isn't broad enough, but just really, no one I can think of, let's say, literally speaking with just a business card as a marketing tool, is doing something interesting with that. But then it's whatever other jumping-off points — the Maximum Awesomeness group, the practice group — there's a whole string of things that you're doing that seem to me very unique. Are you surprised that more people haven't done something similar, copying or otherwise?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So I'll tell you that other people have tried to do some of these things. They tend to be followers, because they see that what I've done is kind of interesting and distinctive. I think I get away with a lot more than I probably should, to be honest with you. And some people will just kind of say, well, that's Neel, you know, that's kind of who he is. And it's not for everybody. Like, there are a lot of people that are going to be wearing the IBM blue suits, and if that's what they want, I'm not that person. I was considered for an Article III position a number of years ago, and someone asked me about these kind of loony things that I did. And they didn't say it this way, but the question was, well, isn't that a little — this was not the word they used — but demeaning for a judge? And I said, you know, if what you're looking for is a person who isn't authentically themselves, or isn't willing to have an opinion, then I'm not the right person. And I do think that there are people who've tried to replicate it. The problem is, it isn't them when they try and replicate it. This Breaking the Law thing that I'm doing right now — a number of people have come to me about these videos and said, oh, well, you need to do X, Y, and Z, because there are going to be a lot of copycats out there, because it's kind of interesting and differentiated. And I was talking to one of my friends who does a healthcare podcast, a very prominent healthcare M&A lawyer. And he said, you know, Neel, I think someone could get on there and say exactly word-for-word what you say, and it's just not going to be as interesting, because you're kind of your wacky you. And it was a very nice compliment. I don't know if it's true, but I think other people have tried to replicate it. They haven't been successful at it, because they're trying to be something like me as opposed to someone like them.

Khurram Naik: In the context you're talking about, are these people that are more like peers to you?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, they can be peers, or they can be people that are coming up through the ranks.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, I still don't know if I have a sense or explanation for why there aren't more people, South Asian or otherwise. I think one interesting dimension is to say, hey, you know, like, you were already so unique as a South Asian lawyer — why did you feel compelled to stand out even more? You already weren't, you know, novel in that sense. But then also, to the extent that's the dimension we're running on, there are a number of more South Asian lawyers now, of course. So I'm still struck with a sense that I just don't have an explanation for why there aren't more people that feel comfortable expressing themselves more directly in that way. And especially in the era of LinkedIn, where you don't have to do an impersonation, if you're not comfortable with that. There are many other ways to express yourself.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, and I don't know, other than there aren't a whole lot of people in big law that are of that nature. Like, there aren't a whole lot, at least not that I know of. Like, again, I still kind of look around like over my shoulder and I say, how did all this happen? Because I'm not a person that should have been successful in big law.

Khurram Naik: Well, let me ask you about that. Do you feel that now? I mean, just the reality is, look, you have this position of influence at your firm, you're on the executive committee. The reality is that you are the proverbial Man, you know — you are the system now. Do you feel that?

Neel Chatterjee: Do I feel that? Well, so my term on the executive committee ended a year ago, but I was on the executive committee, and I've had certainly a lot of management roles in the firm. Here's what I'll tell you: I couldn't get a job in law school. I was very lucky to get my job in Colorado when I got it. It was the only job offer I had. And, like I said, I'd never met a South Asian lawyer before I became one, never met anyone in management. Like, I look really pridefully at some of the South Asian law firm leaders out there today as doing amazing things that I have not achieved. But in the leadership roles that I've had, there isn't a day that I don't walk into something where I don't say to myself, am I here because I deserve to be? Or am I here because I'm checking some kind of box? And I don't think there's a whole lot of people that feel like they deserve to be there and that they're there because they're supposed to be. I do not live without an element of self-doubt as to, why am I there? At the same time, I view my role as a responsibility. A responsibility — like, when I stepped down as the head of the IP group at Orrick, the diverse lawyers were the ones that came to me and were really upset about it, because of what that meant to them to see someone like me in leadership. And that was hugely impactful when I did it, because I don't want to let people down, where they don't feel like they can look up and see someone that looks like me. And so, I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm filled with self-doubt every single time, but then I take the responsibility enormously seriously.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, I think it seems that you represent this really interesting mixture of that sort of — I mean, you're saying that you feel the self-doubt, and of course at the same time, you are known for being authentically so confident. It's just such an interesting connection. I don't think there's even a contradiction to be had there. I think it's just that both are simultaneously true for you.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, well, I hope so. I mean, like, demonstrating vulnerability to a point is kind of part of the authenticity, right?

Khurram Naik: Right. Let's talk a little about — I think something that is really striking about how you present, about how you position yourself now, on LinkedIn and otherwise, is that you are in crisis management. When was the first time you realized, hey, I'm not just a lawyer, a counselor, or whatever — I manage crises?

Neel Chatterjee: So the first times I started interacting with that were in the early days of eBay, when people just didn't know, like, what could you buy and sell on eBay? And I was still an associate at the time. And then I was also doing stuff for Lucasfilm when the Phantom Menace was first distributed. And I was running the first online anti-piracy campaign. Now, at that point, I wasn't, like, the frontman interacting with all of the PR agencies, or the media and stuff like that. But I got a very deep dose of it, because I was helping frame what the messaging was going to be, and how we were going to be able to defend the business models or whatever the issues were that were coming up. And over time, I started dealing with disruptive businesses, or areas where there were very uncertain areas of law, where there was going to be some element of public accountability. And the litigations were a piece of the much larger portfolio of, kind of, how did the public feel about these things? And that became part — like, it all became part of the communications strategy. And so that all filtered into crisis-communication-related activities. I would say the first time it really played an active role that I remember was probably the adoption.com case, because this was before marriage equality was decided. It was involving same-sex couple rights, internet law, which was super undefined, in this groundbreaking case on a controversial issue at the time about same-sex adoption. I don't know why it was controversial, but it was. And this concept called the best-interest-of-the-child doctrine, where people held out this idea that opposite-sex, husband-and-wife couples provided better parentage than same-sex couples, which was completely untrue in the science. And when that thing launched, I mean — and I was like the lead lawyer on it — there was so much press around it. I had clients that were not totally private. They knew they were filing a public lawsuit, but I don't think they expected the amount of public activity that there was around it. It was globally covered. Like, we were just in it deep. And when you had different publications with different agendas coming at you, having the messaging strategy really mattered. And I've got to take my hat off to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who co-counseled with me on it, because they knew what was going to happen. And they really worked us over on how to message a crisis communication at the beginning, because those guys — Shannon Minter in particular — was just off-the-charts excellent. And I learned so much from those guys.

Khurram Naik: And does this apply to how should other lawyers be thinking about how to manage crisis? I mean, is it just something that you think generalizes, that other lawyers should be thinking in terms of, in shifting the perspectives on themselves? Is it just unique to the cocktail of matters you've worked on? Or is this more a generalizable skill, anything more people should be thinking about?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So the first thing is, you can't be a person who panics easily. You need to be able to kind of at least create the impression of the steady hand, with an architecture in place to manage a challenging problem. And you have to be 24/7 available. I mean, crisis communications, you have to be 24/7 available. And then you do have to have some amount of fungibility depending on, is this a tiny little company that has no marketing or no PR department, or is it a gigantic company that has 200,000 employees with a huge infrastructure internally? The way that you're going to do crisis communications differs greatly depending on which one of those it is. Because in one instance, you're going to have a whole bunch of infrastructure and other tentacles of messaging around the business that are going to require very fast decision-making of a large team. And in other instances, you're going to have people that might have an agenda of just trying to bury themselves under their bed sheets and not say anything. Both of those create different challenges. And you kind of have to understand your client base, and figure out how are you going to be the steady hand to help them navigate this.

Khurram Naik: And is this something that you just realized about yourself retroactively? In the same way that, you know, hey — it's not like I made this decision to join Orrick under these conditions, but just kind of retroactively figured out, oh, this is like a way to draw a line through these experiences that I've had? Or is that something that you've been steering yourself toward?

Neel Chatterjee: I would say I ended up getting experience. It's like one of these luck things. Like, I kind of lucked into it. I got involved in some of those cases. One of the very first cases I was involved in was Sun v. Microsoft, which at the time was the biggest IP case in the country. And I was a mid-level associate on it. But I definitely was participating in some of the communications-related activities going on behind the scenes — but not that much, like, I was too junior at that time for that kind of stuff. But I just kind of started developing a portfolio of having those experiences. And people just started saying, oh, Neel's a person who's good at handling this sort of stuff. And I love doing it. And I like the pressure. I like injunction proceedings. I like the pressure of having to make decisions really quickly. And I don't tend to panic too much. And so I like being invested with that trust, and it just kind of grew over time.

Khurram Naik: So I know we only have a few minutes left, so I want to kind of talk about the future at this point. Where do you see your practice heading? You know, what do you see in the coming, let's say, three years, five years? Is that a useful time frame for you to think about? Like, is that how you think about your career, or is it kind of already heading in the direction it's heading? Are you in a position where you're trying to head in some direction? Like, how are you thinking about that?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So my practice over the last two or three years has expanded substantially in directions that I didn't totally anticipate. And I'll answer your question this way. So historically, I think people would have known me as being a lawyer in three areas, fundamentally: patent litigation, trade secret litigation, and weird internet stuff — internet software stuff, whether it be contracts, computer fraud, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, data scraping, things like that. And I still do a lot of all of those things, and typically, you know, unknown areas of law. But more recently, people have hired me for corporate fraud litigation, for really complicated biotech cases — which, I've typically been in the tech sector — for environmental contamination cases, and a broader portfolio of things. When I look at the market today, I think the days of the storied trial lawyer who could kind of go and try anything are continuing. But the people who are the legendary people are all getting to be an age where they're going to be hanging it up sometime in the not, not, not couple of years. And there is a moment in the market where the next generation behind them were largely second chairs. And maybe some of them will take on the mantle, but even for them, their time period is limited. But I'm in that next generation of people — let's say the people in their late 40s, early 50s. I'm in my early 50s — that could take on this broader portfolio of high-stakes litigation and trial work. And so the next three to five years, I see myself in two areas: continuing to expand beyond core tech litigation and handling matters of significance in a broader portfolio of areas, as I have been in the past couple of years. And the second is, I've kind of carved out this unique area of expertise in what I'll call data rights litigation. Data rights don't have a clear topology for intellectual property rights. They're kind of trade secrets sometimes. They're not copyrights. They're very rarely patented, unless you do certain technology gizmos around them. And the legal framework around data as an asset is somewhat undefined, but it's out there. And I actually teach a class at Vanderbilt Law School now called Data as an Asset. I see myself in the next three to five years really helping define that, either through litigation or through advising businesses on risk management — on helping define a legal topology around this concept of data, which is the single greatest currency we have in the world today. But no one has a legal framework for it.

Khurram Naik: And so I think it was interesting to hear about how you're thinking about your career. If you're taking somebody who's a senior associate, thinking about the path they're shaping for their careers, and maybe they're thinking they want to be at a big firm — how do you think about how you came to this "data as an asset" as something that you want to allocate time and energy towards? What are the ways you expose yourself to the kinds of ideas that you think are going to be something to invest in, to make a new way about yourself?

Neel Chatterjee: The way I look at it — well, so some of it's intellectual curiosity. Like, you've got to have intellectual curiosity around things to want to do it. But, you know, what are the issues that are out there that are not really framed in a meaningful way, or are very uncertain areas of law? Like, we have all kinds of new laws being passed in various areas, right? And it can't just be one law, but what is an area of unanswered questions, undiscovered countries, that are valuable and important to people where we need to get better answers? And then, whatever that area is, whether you're a litigator or a corporate lawyer, how do you start carving out expertise and passion for it? Because I do think clients really like it when you're not marketing to them, but they just feel like you feel passionate about wherever their business might be going, and you're excited about it. You know, like, I would always follow Nvidia's new product launches for years, because I thought it was super cool technology and the multiple applications were great. I would always be following what were the big new Communications Decency Act or online liability cases in the '90s and early 2000s. And I would just kind of email clients, oh, I read this cool case — not because I was marketing to them, but just because I thought they should know about it. And the formal law firm alerts are great and useful and everything, but they take weeks to get out. Just saying, hey, I saw this interesting thing, and I care about you, and you should be interested in it too — that, you know, following your passions and what you're interested in, is super helpful from a career development point of view. And always being there for the other person — that, to me, is making that clear. Like, I'm here for you, you're not here for me, is, in part, key.

Khurram Naik: Final question. Do you have any fears about being replaced by a, let's say, a ChatGPT?

Neel Chatterjee: A ChatGPT. My dad has told me that he is really worried that he'll interact with AI and it'll become his friend. And I guess I'm worried that my dad will become a better friend of an AI tool than I will be to him. He's 86 years old. I'm not so concerned about it for what I do, mainly because I remember when I managed the document production on Christmas Eve of a major case that I was working on in 1997, where we drove up like six semi trucks to another person's office. And today it's a virtual download with a password. And there are tons of e-discovery services that exist now that didn't exist then. And there was lots of technical innovation that they said would make law firm jobs disappear, and it didn't. It created new industries and new opportunities for all of us. I think Gen AI is going to do the same thing.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, love that. Yeah, I think in the early days of printing, actually, paper consumption went up, because it was so much easier to generate printed documents. So yeah, I think there are some very counterintuitive changes to come.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, totally.

Khurram Naik: You know, this is awesome. This is an amazing conversation, and I'm really impressed with how much we covered, and I really appreciate you giving your time to share your story here.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, no, thanks a bunch. I appreciate it, Khurram.