Tim Chen Saulsbury is an IP litigation partner at Morrison & Foerster who sits at the intersection of trial work and deep technical command. In this conversation we get into why he refuses to outsource the technical record, how he reads what AI will and won't displace in the next two to five years, and what it takes to win a patent case before it ever reaches a jury. We also dig into his Japan practice and what state court taught him that patent litigation never could.
Top Insights
- A trial lawyer should command the technical record better than the other side's hired expert, because the opposing technical witness is often where you score the most points at trial.
- AI will displace expert-report and deposition-outline drafting long before it touches the courtroom, since federal judges resist technology and robots will not be putting on trials anytime soon.
- The future premium goes to lawyers who pair a technical foundation with enough trial reps to do prompt engineering that elicits answers a jury can actually use.
- Juries decide on credibility and broader human signals like respect for the judge, so you never want a jury to see your fact witness as an advocate.
- Tim takes pleasure in the clean, cheap walkaway, advising clients to skip $600,000 IPRs in favor of a tight non-infringement position backed by an engineer's declaration and early code production.
- Japan business culture is relational with a long dating process, while the US legal market is reputational and rewards the cold outreach, and Tim relates more to the fragmented, reputation-driven side.
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Full Transcript
Khurram Naik: Tim, I am glad to have you on the podcast. This is such an interesting chain, where I post on LinkedIn and there's been sometimes you've liked my posts and I've appreciated that, and then I recorded an episode with Tim U. We end up talking about Lewis Tompross, who was a mutual connection, and then I followed up with Lewis because it had been a while since I recorded an episode with him. You liked that post, and then I just messaged you to say, hey, you know, I've been interested in your work and, you know, thanks for taking a look at this. This episode, we started talking there. So this is what I love about the podcast, and I appreciate you being part of this chain reaction of people with their ideas.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: No, I'm delighted to be here. I find it fascinating that in this world that we work in, there's often, you know, one degree of separation from just about everybody who's doing this. So Lewis's episode really caught my eye, and I've just generally been following what you've been doing out there, and I think you've been doing a really great job of helping educate associates in the market about what matters, and I've found that really interesting.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, appreciate that. And for sure, plenty of your peers listen to this too. What I've discovered through this podcast is that every senior lawyer is, I think we use the word mentorship for junior lawyers primarily, but I think the word that even senior lawyers have used explicitly, that they're looking for, is mentorship, because people were looking for mentorship in new domains other than, you know, where they feel they have their expertise. But yeah, so for sure, plenty of associates listen to this, but then I think partners like yourself too. So I want to start with, we have a number of interesting topics that we have honed in on, but one thing I think is interesting is you are a trial lawyer and you have technical expertise. And you sit at the intersection of those two, and I wonder if we can talk about, in your practice, how you allocate attention resources to building in each of these, and why not more of one than the other, let's say primarily trial or primarily technical, why the blend? Yeah, I wonder if we can start with that.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, that's a great question. I find that in my practice, sort of where I sit in my level of seniority, there's not really a tension. And the reason is because, in order to put on that strong trial presentation, I really need to understand the technical merits at a core level. You know, you run into some lawyers that practice outside of the patent litigation context, where people say you're never going to be an expert at their own game, right? Because you're never going to know more than them. When it comes to the work that we do, I actually think that in many cases, when it comes to the subject matter of what's in dispute, whether it's about the accused products or whether it's about the prior art that anticipates, you should have a command of that better than these hired experts who aren't living it day to day. Such that you can use them as a punching bag at trial. I mean, that's often the witness, the other side's technical expert is often the witness with whom you score the most points, but you can only do that if you have a complete command of the technical record. And so the technical piece, I end up sort of ingesting just in order to feel like I have the foundation to litigate the case aggressively on that axis. When you're more junior, I think you do have to think a little bit more about how am I going to allocate my time, right? In part because when you're less experienced with trial, you have to spend a whole bunch more time thinking about how to do things for the first time. And that's where you end up with more tension between, am I going to invest my time really making sure I understand this technical subject matter through and through, or am I going to really learn how to do a super tight impeachment with the deposition transcript, right? I think that in many respects, my perspective on how to reconcile that tension is, look, if you're headed to trial, given that trials are sufficiently infrequent in our line of business, you just have to sort of put in the extra 50% and get both of those really down solid. And don't be shy about leaning on your colleagues to help you, right? Because oftentimes talking to a more experienced lawyer, you can sort of take that prep down. Whether it's learning about the technical subject matter or learning how to do the trial mechanics, you can shorten that time by 50% or more. And so I think it's really important to be strategic about reconciling those tensions. Both are absolutely critical to practicing at a high level, especially at trial.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I think something I'm interested in exploring on the podcast is all the strategies that can work. I think in any context, among high-level performers, you can come up with different strategies that are all, there's like these equilibria that work for everyone, right? And different people can exist in context of each other, different approaches exist in context of each other. You know, an easy way to think about that as an equilibrium is driving down the street. It's an equilibrium for everyone to be on the right side, no matter what side you're going on. Can you talk through other approaches, like what would it look like, or what have you seen for success for someone who's taken a technical-first approach, or a trial-first orientation? You have articulated a strong basis for why that intersection works for you. What have you seen in terms of success for these other two strategies?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, that's a great question. I do think you can play a really important role specializing essentially. I think that's basically what you're getting at, right? Is there room to specialize in the technical side or specialize in the trial piece? And absolutely, right? On the trial side, I have a colleague, Ramsey Fisher, who, you know, he's this eighth-year associate, but he's done nine trials, I think. And including, you know, doing openings. And so he's very much a trial specialist. I use him as an example. I think the way it's worked out for him is that, given all his trial experience, he can jump on any trial team and provide like huge value-adds in any aspect of the trial. Even if he's hopping on last minute, where it's much less important for him to have the really deep technical foundation that some of our other team members have. And it ends up being sort of like a Captain America type situation, where you've got a variety of different people with, you know, a range of skills. And you end up assembling a team where the sum of those skills is highly complementary. And so Ramsey ends up sort of being able to put together, he often puts together the closing before we even start trial. Which is incredibly helpful for ensuring that all of your witness examinations build up the evidence that you're going to need in your closing. And he's able to do that because, you know, maybe he doesn't have to spend as much time in the technical, it's because there's other people on the team for whom that's going to be faster and who are providing that set of skills at the table. So that's an example of someone I've seen specializing in the trial piece. I will say, once folks get more senior, if you sort of look at the people who are, you know, the very best trial lawyers out there, what I have found is that relatively few are consistently successful if they sort of brush aside the technical weeds and say like, oh, like technical person, go figure that out, right? Because going back to some earlier discussion, if the expert sort of takes you down, it's a lot easier for an expert to sort of dance around you if you don't have a complete understanding of how to shut down all the exit paths. You can only do that if you understand the technical record pretty deeply. But I think Ramsey's found a really nice niche where it works for him, and to be sure, like he very much ingests the technical record at the level necessary for what he's doing, but it doesn't have to be quite as deep as the person who's going to cross the technical expert. And then on the other side of the equation, if you're talking about somebody who's the technical specialist, I think that what's important, I've certainly seen that work effectively, I think what's really important, however, is that as a technical specialist, you're not shy about really trying to understand deeply how to effectively communicate things at trial. Because otherwise, when you're taking the deposition of the technical expert, for example, you don't have enough context to ask the questions in a way that's going to be super digestible for the jury, such that your deposition questions and the answers thereto can serve as tight control, right? If you're in the technical weeds in your deposition at a level that you'd never cross the technical expert at a trial, then you're getting all this control that's not really going to be that helpful at trial because you're going to be addressing the subject matter at a totally different level of reading. The net of all of this is, I do see room for specialization, and I've seen it be very effective, but whether you're specializing in the technical subject matter or at the trial piece, it's super important to be educated and mindful of the other side of the equation.
Khurram Naik: That's helpful. And so I'm also wondering what is, if you choose specialization in either trial or technical expertise, or a blended approach, what are each of these a bet on?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: That's a good question. And look, I think my mind is perhaps overly focused on this just because, you know, we at the firm have been thinking a ton about what AI is going to do to the practice of law, but I think in a lot of respects it's a bet on how this practice is going to play out in the next two to five-year horizon. What I mean by that is, I think that no matter what level you're at in your practice, it's worth thinking about, you know, what aspects of my practice are likely to be displaced by AI? Whether it's stuff that you would be doing or stuff that people on your teams would be doing. And it does seem to me, right, this is all pretty preliminary, but it does seem to me that in terms of displacement, we're going to see that happen much slower in the trial context. You know, federal judges tend to be resistant to technology, right? We still don't have cameras in the courtroom in most places, right? And it's hard to see robots putting on trials in the next five years, right? Like, you're just going to be trial lawyers doing that. And on the other hand, it's pretty easy for me to see AI, especially, you know, the generation that will be out three to five years from now, AI tools that can do a really solid draft of a deposition outline for a technical expert, or a really solid draft of a technical expert report. I mean, even now, there are AI tools, Cream Patents is one of them, that can build out invalidity contentions if you just ingest prior art into it, right? And if you can do that, it's not that far away from drafting a technical expert report. And so, bringing us back to your question, I think that in a lot of respects, you're betting on what work is going to be available going forward. What clients are actually going to be willing to pay for going forward, where the alternative to paying for, you know, humans to spend 300 hours drafting an expert report is to have AI do 80% of the work. And maybe have humans do 50%. And then what does that mean in terms of how many people with technical specialization you need on these teams? And how much work they're going to have to do in any given case? I think that's really what you're betting on, or at least that's one axis on which you're placing bets.
Khurram Naik: When you, I wondered if the trial lawyer versus technical expertise were bets on the kinds of client relationships and teams you found yourself as part of, because it sounds like, you know, the example you gave of your colleague, somebody with trial experience can be brought into a variety of matters. So you're betting on other people bringing in trial matters that you can jump on. And maybe the technical expertise is a bet on being tech savvy. Okay, maybe it's not, maybe historically, let's say historically it was, hey, I really understand the technology. Maybe in the construct you're using of what might happen in the next two to five years, that part begins to matter less, sorry, but what remains in that area is clients know me to be able to have technical mastery or be able to manage the technical mastery aspect. And so I am more client-facing because clients in a given vertical know to come to me for this expertise. Does that resonate? I'm trying to understand, in terms of other ways to look at the bet that you're making, is the kind of platform you're at, the teams you're part of, the client relationships you have. Can you speak to that?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Because look, I talked about the AI tools creating drafts of things. You're still absolutely going to need lawyers to review it for all sorts of reasons, even, sort of, as we see the rate of hallucinations go down. The way I was thinking about it in the context of the bet we were just talking about is, I just think there's less volume more. So I think there's going to be probably a need for fewer of those specialists. But I think you're right, like there's still going to be a huge role for them. And I think it's going to put a premium on people who actually I think have that blend of, maybe being a technical person as your primary strength, but having enough reps with trial so that you can understand sort of how to tell the technical narrative in a way that's going to be compelling for trial. And the reason I think that is likely to be sort of how this shakes out is, you're going to have, I expect, less of a role for like all the technical people that would be doing these drafts in the first instance. The clients are going to be looking for people who can sort of do prompt engineering essentially to really get the AI to focus on what matters. You're absolutely going to need to have the technical foundation to do that prompt engineering, I think, in two respects. One of them is, you're going to have to like redirect the AI tools when they're marching down the wrong path, and you can only do that well if you have the good technical foundations. But I think the other piece is, if you're one of these technical people that has trial experience, you can also sort of do your prompt engineering in a way that elicits responses that are going to be more useful with the jury. Now, and then the third piece is, I do think the highly technical people tend to have a competitive advantage when using these AI tools to begin with, right? For the most part, especially if they're sort of technical in software, those are the people who are like really sort of working on the bleeding edge use of AI. And I think that I wouldn't be surprised if you end up seeing people who are specialists, and can hold themselves out to clients as specialists, in leveraging AI most effectively to get the most value for the client and be able to sort of have a better ratio of use of AI tools to use of human hours, and also be able to extract more quality out of the AI tools. So I could see, I could certainly see folks placing bets in that respect. It's like, how can I position myself as someone who's the most effective, or among the most effective, at leveraging AI to provide extreme client value?
Khurram Naik: Normally, I'm not someone to make, I think everyone is making a bet on something. I think I am, through my work, making a prediction with a future, for instance, about the durability of patent litigation, sure. So yes, everyone's doing that, but I also, that aside, try not to make lots of predictions with a future. But I can tell that you like doing that. So I'm curious, because that's often been a recurring theme in our conversation. So is that just like a disposition, or is that just an interest, and you find things may evolve a certain way, maybe they don't? Because it seems to me that you are focused on evergreen skills, like you're saying the trial lawyer work, like as you say, it's really hard to picture a robot in the courtroom anytime soon. So it seems like you're focusing on evergreen skills. For you, what do you find the utility of prediction is, because you're doing so many things that could be just evergreen and never obsolete. We don't know, as I think it's panned out, like, tell me about the role that prediction plays and how you approach your work.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Totally. And I will just, as a general matter, I don't have a strong inclination to being like, oh, I know what's going to happen in the future, right? I think I find myself at this fascinating inflection point, where it's become clear to me and my colleagues that the practice of law is going to change drastically in the next two to five years. It's going to continue to change in years five to 10, right? And this is therefore extremely top of mind for me, because I think what we're going to see is, for the law firms that did not figure out how to make effective use of AI, like we may well see a bunch of those law firms fail, right? Because one thing I think we can be pretty sure about, even being fairly adverse to engaging in prediction, is clients are going to be driving for like the very best value. And that's going to be like a persistent factor in all of this. And it has also become clear that AI tools are capable of cutting thousands of hours off of the time you're going to have to spend on the case. Maybe not right this minute, maybe not for every client, but we're really sort of on the cusp of that. And so that's part of why I'm more willing to engage in this, because every week I'm thinking about what bets do we want to place, to the framework you were talking about earlier, to ensure that we're best positioned one, two, three years down the road? Because the last thing I want to see is us being, I think, taking more of a wait-and-see approach, because I think you're just going to be far too late, in part because I think the people who are likely to be most successful in leveraging AI are the folks who've used it enough to figure out what is it especially good at? What is it less good at? Additionally, I think that if you have various folks within the firm exploring different uses of AI, and then have a process for making sure that the effective uses are communicated throughout the practice group, you're just going to see extreme gains that way. Bottom line is, I don't want to be the person five years from now who missed the boat, and then all of a sudden you have this urgent situation where it's like, how are we going to keep everybody employed in doing the cutting-edge patent litigation and other IP work that we really enjoy doing? Because we didn't leverage AI tools, we didn't figure out how to drive extreme client value, and now the clients are looking elsewhere. That's really why I'm much more willing to engage in prediction around these topics these days.
Khurram Naik: And so suddenly I wonder, there is this book, Co-opetition, that I read years ago that I still revisit now and then, about game theory in business, and part of it talks about ironic consequences of different parts of an ecosystem. And so an ironic consequence of technology, there's an ironic apocrypha of technology where, from the book, it cites a data point that paper usage after computers became more prevalent, paper usage actually went up because it became easier to generate print documents, like the ones behind you.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Exactly.
Khurram Naik: So then the easiest thing I can think of that, I'm thinking of the post, the e-discovery phase. I think I was somewhat early to the Westlaw adoption phase, based on my vantage. And let's say with Westlaw, I think there's a pretty clear, I don't know how much it cost firms in terms of what impact compared to going through a bunch of books, which it seemed I think would probably be cheaper. But of course it makes research much more efficient and more high-powered. But then I think a clear case of ironic consequences is e-discovery, because my understanding is everyone said, oh, this will drive down discovery costs, but it made it easier to process more and more discovery, right? And so I wondered, in your example of your technical experts, yes, in the universe we're operating in today, that same finite amount of technical subject matter will be digested and require less raw time. What that maybe we could do is increase the capacity for how much, the kinds of technical data we're digesting, and then just the problem actually, the costs therefore actually expand. So I don't know, those are thoughts that I have about the difficulty of making predictions, because there are these ironic consequences. But I don't know if you've had exposure to that in the course of your practice.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: In the econ space, we often call these unintended consequences, and they happen all the time. It happens all the time. No matter how much focus you put on trying to figure out how the chips are going to fall on something, something completely unexpected happens. Either because you made some sort of incorrect prediction about human behavior, or there was just this additional variable that you didn't identify. And that's always the risk in prediction. In terms of this question of whether there's a possibility that the efficiencies driven by AI will end up motivating people to do even more technical analysis because it drives down the cost. Look, I think that's possible. I'm skeptical. And the reason I'm skeptical is because, I think at some point, you pretty relatively quickly hit diminishing returns within any given case on the sort of additional granular technical analysis. To be very clear, and we've talked about this previously, I'm a strong believer that on the technical side, it's really useful to go deep and to do that early. But what I'm saying is once you've done that, further refinement is pretty incremental. In part because it is really hard to get judges and juries to focus on the extremely granular, extremely esoteric. I think they have a tendency to be like, okay, what's the bottom line? Which completely makes sense, right? Humans are conditioned to be efficient decision makers. And I think therefore, you're quickly going to hit diminishing marginal returns on doing that incremental technical analysis. Now, I do think that one thing we could see is, even if on any given case, the amount of technical analysis necessary to be done by humans is going to go down a bunch, I expect we'll see an increase in the volume of cases, because of a variety of factors, including policies from the current administration. But also, if you can get AI to do an infringement analysis in like 10 minutes that would take a patent engineer a week, right? I think we're going to see more and more patent lawsuits. The cost of putting together a Rule 11 word complaint is going to go down to, I think, probably a tenth of what it has been historically, outside of situations where you need to do reverse engineering and SEM analysis of the inside of a semiconductor package. But like, setting aside that, where you actually have to sort of go out in the physical world and do work, the time it'll take to put together those complaints is going to go down drastically. The time it's going to take the plaintiffs' lawyers to litigate those cases is going to go down drastically. And so if you zoom out from any given case, I could see a world in which there's an increase in technical analysis that's happening, sort of at a macro level. It's hard for me to see that knitting out in sort of a need for more humans to do that technical analysis. But we'll see, right? Because as you say, all the time, we sort of fail to observe some factor. It's going to drive an unintended result. And so I'm curious to see how that all plays out.
Khurram Naik: I can see that sort of fractal nature of predictions, because then you just start making like, other predictions, top of projections. I'm like, okay, so let's say you see all these more matters. Maybe it would just be a lot more meaningful to get rid of a case on 101 right away. You can just start to see, just, okay, well, then then one. And then one. And then one. That's fun. Okay, so let me ask you this. Going back to the technical analysis thing, the diminishing returns is interesting. Something I was thinking about when you were saying this earlier is, I'm starting to think in terms of the previous episode as this like ongoing dialogue among practitioners. And so one of the meta-narratives of the podcast is approach to jury work. And what's the thesis there? What is your core thesis? Let's say recently we had Chatterjee back on. And so something he talked about is his current approach is really driven by credibility. So his thesis is that, why we have the Seventh Amendment, why we have juries for matters of legal damages, is that these juries are best positioned, it's not because they're technical experts and they're able to adjudge the operations of a semiconductor. It's because they are experts in credibility. They will use their human experience to evaluate and look at technical experts in the eye, or see if they're not looking them in the eye. And so that's why I wondered if ultimately, fine, we can propose a concept of a robot providing some sort of analysis in the courtroom on a technical level. But ultimately, what we need in the legal system is, we have parties, and these parties have representatives who speak to the credibility of the positions of these parties. And so that's really what we're evaluating in the courtroom is things like credibility. But I think that ties into your thesis on juries, and maybe if some thoughts on what I just said, but otherwise we can start talking about jury approach. If you have a high-level take on your approach to juries, because I actually have another specific question based on something you said earlier.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, so I think Niels is absolutely right. Credibility is huge. And I think about that concept in a slightly broader way, which is just like overall, how do you present as a human? Because in addition to credibility, things that matter are, are you respectful? Are you following the rules? One recent example, and it's something I've been focused on because I have this trial coming up in front of Judge Gilstrap's court. But Apple had a trial in front of Gilstrap. And I think Apple was on the other side. And I was following the trial in part because I'm thinking, there was some overlap with my case in terms of how the parties lined up. And it was the third time they were trying the case, I believe, because it had been up to the Federal Circuit a couple times. The first two times resulted in infringement verdicts of hundreds of millions of dollars. The most recent trial was a complete defense verdict. And when I was talking to our Texas co-counsel about this, what ended up being a huge driving factor was just the sort of how respectful, or maybe not entirely respectful, the various witnesses and lawyers were. Because the jury ended up making judgments pretty early on. It's like, who's respecting the judge, right? Because from the jury's perspective, the judge is the person who demands the most respect in the courtroom. And so if you're not respecting the judge, they're going to draw inferences about sort of what you think about yourself. And witnesses who couldn't answer questions without throwing in their own word, right? I don't think they necessarily viewed the witness as a liar, but I think they viewed the witness as someone who's an advocate. And you don't want juries to view your fact witnesses as an advocate. They're going to view the experts that way, no matter what, they're hired guns. But you really want them viewing the fact witnesses as someone who's just there because they have something relevant to say to the case, and they're just telling you the facts as they are, so that the jury can make the decision. Jurors have been told that they're the ones who get to make the decision. They're going to, I think, we see it time and time again, they tend to discount fact witnesses who come off as advocates. So like I said, Niels is absolutely right. Credibility is huge, but I think that is even a broader concept. Like, what are all the other meta-factors that your witness is going to have beyond the words that come out of their mouth and go onto the transcript? Because those are often going to be what drive the jury's decision making.
Khurram Naik: Earlier, when you were talking about work in a jury context, you used the word controlling earlier, controlling, directing. And then you also used the phrase closing off the exits. And so I thought there was an interesting, I'm noticing a pattern. And so how do you view what your role is heading into a trial? There's all the things you do in a case heading to trial and what you do in trial. Is this controlling, directing metaphor? Is this more chess than poker? How do you think about what your function is for accomplishing objectives for the client?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Great question. I think it depends a lot on the particular task you're engaged in at trial. And what I mean by that is, I was speaking about controlling and closing off exits in the context of cross-examining the other side's expert. And in that context, that's 100% what you have to do, because in order to score points on him or her, you really have to know exactly what they're going to say in response to your question. And in order to do that, you have to have shut down the exits, either through logic or through some sort of prior testimony or document that you use to impeach them. It goes back to the credibility thing, right? If you can get the expert to say something that's inconsistent with the record, like that's how you're scoring points. In other contexts, I much prefer the jury's experience to be me being largely out of the way. And so for a direct exam, especially of a witness who was highly involved in the facts that matter, I love to be able to just ask relatively tight questions, signpost, and steer the conversation. But I really want to get that person just sort of talking in a natural way, so that the jury feels like this person isn't trying to tell me a curated narrative. They're just sort of giving me their impression of what happened. And I think that can be especially valuable when you have witnesses that are maybe in a little bit of a defensive position, based upon sort of how they were involved in the matter. If they can just sort of tell it from their perspective, how it is, rather than you steering them, I think the jury's going to find that a lot more credible. Whenever a lawyer's talking too much on direct, I think the jury's like, why is a lawyer telling us what happened? They weren't the one who was there.
Khurram Naik: What is your favorite part of trial?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Great question. I mean, winning obviously, but that doesn't really count. I think there are two pieces that I enjoy the most. One of them is just that it's one of these aspects of our practice that allows you to have incredible community in a way that we don't find as often in this hybrid work environment. You've got people that are like all in a war room working extremely hard at the singular task. And there's just a bunch of energy there that's really fun. And I also think you end up seeing people grow tremendously, more junior lawyers grow tremendously in that context. So that's one aspect I really like about it. In fact, we even had some folks be like, we should war room more often and not just for trial, why do you only do it for trial? And you even have some more junior lawyers who have enough awareness to be like, this is great for me, right? Because I can learn so much faster if I can just sort of like turn to the person next to me and just like bounce ideas off of somebody. And that's something that's, even if you have a good culture about like cold-Zooming people, like it's not the same. It's just like putting a document in front of somebody and being like, hey, do you think this works? Do you think this is going to cash out? Like, people just don't end up asking those questions in a hybrid environment. So that's one aspect I love about it. And the other aspect I love about it is just sort of like working with the fact witnesses and the client. And there's two aspects about that that I really enjoy. One of them is I really enjoy seeing them get invested in the case, right? Because oftentimes the initial reaction, or at least the impression of lawyers, is going to be like, this engineer, this product manager, wants nothing at all to do with this case. But like oftentimes the very best exams come out when the person is like, look, they're accusing my team of taking their technology and using it improperly. That's insane. My team put like 80-hour weeks on this project for like three months, right? Like I need to step up and defend my team. It's those witnesses who end up putting on some of the most compelling examinations. And so working with them, seeing them get invested, and then seeing sort of their excitement with the process is really fun. Like I've had engineers, product managers, other business folks tell me at the end of a trial before the verdict comes in, it's like, hey, if we get sued again, you know where to find me. Like they're happy to help because they've seen the process and they really sort of understand how important it is. So I think those are probably the two aspects of trial I enjoy the most.
Khurram Naik: Mm-hmm. What's the most surprising thing that's happened at trial?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Good question. I'm not sure if it would surprise me as much these days. But I had a trial now many years ago when I was an associate, where it was a pretty technical case. It was a case for Sonoma State University involving claims of environmental issues relating to asbestos. And the interesting thing about where we were in Northern California is that asbestos is very much part of the natural environment. Like it is in the geology of Northern California. And so, and then the other piece of it, which some people sort of have reason to understand and others don't, is that it's also in like basically all the buildings that were made in the 80s. Because it was just like a really commonly used building material, because it's like fire resistant and has a bunch of other great properties. And what was surprising about that case is that we were able to get the jury to like very much understand the science. They would understand, for example, that asbestos that is not airborne is not harmful to you. That's why it was used in building materials. And it ends up being harmful to you if it's airborne because that's how it gets into your lungs, where it can be problematic for you. And they also sort of understood like the different forms in which it could take, some of which were sort of more hazardous than others. The judge didn't get it at all. Like if she had been on our jury, that would have been tough. Like this would have been our toughest juror. And so that was surprising to me. I think there was a bit of a, it seemed to be a bit of a prejudice coming to the table. Or it might have just been like well-intentioned skepticism, but it was interesting. In some respects it was helpful, right? Because like there's a lot of feedback that we got. Where it's like, oh, maybe we have to sort of like draw out this principle a little bit more. It seems like we haven't gotten across that, if a material containing asbestos is wet, it can't be airborne, right? Because the water sort of holds it down and it necessarily can't be airborne in that context. Like, how do we get that across? And how do we get that across in a way where it feels like it comes from a place of authority, right? So that you think about, okay, like how can we lean on the regulations, for example, about how you need to sort of deal with cleaning in an asbestos environment as a source of authority, so that maybe we can get people to understand that, well, if the regulations say that wetting the materials makes it safe, like I can sort of trust that it's going to make it safe. So that's probably the most surprising situation I had, because I think a lot of times folks think, okay, like I can get the judge to understand it. I'll do great in a bench trial, but like how am I going to get the jury to understand this complex subject matter? It was a context in which we sort of had the inverse situation.
Khurram Naik: And you had a fair amount of state court work earlier in your career. Can you speak to both litigating in that forum and then also this non-patent subject matter? What's the legacy of that on your practice today?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah. I did do a fair amount of state court work historically. And it was incredibly helpful for my perspective, because state courts don't have the time constraints that federal courts have most of the time, right? And so this trial that I was just talking about, we were up in Sonoma for four months, right, in this case. As compared to your standard federal trial, which is five days usually. In the context of a four-month trial, your witness list is like 70 witnesses. And what that means is that, as a fifth-year associate, I have a trial where I'm down for 10 witnesses, right? I mean, if you were to only do patent litigation, right, I think it would probably take you a couple years to get 10 witnesses under your belt. And so it was incredibly helpful in that respect just in terms of being able to get reps. The other thing that was really helpful is you get data points that allow you to think more outside the box. And what I mean is, in a lot of these state court cases, it is more obvious, for example, how like a third party might end up being a really good trial witness for you. And so you're motivated to go seek out those third parties, see if you can convince them to like go through the burden of showing up for trial, and then sort of work with them to present their testimony in a way where it seems like they're sort of an independent bystander that's going to tell the jury how it is. It's not as obvious sort of how to find those witnesses in patent cases, but if you've been trained to think like that, then it can really pay dividends in the patent context. And so for example, for this trial I have coming up in front of Judge Gilstrap, one of the witnesses that we'll be calling, or at least who's on our witness list, is the inventor of the two patents that are being asserted against our client, right? I think that's sort of a pretty unusual situation, where the accused infringer is calling the inventor, but it's something that we think about in a lot of our cases, in part because a number of us have had the experience doing those state court cases where you have sort of a lot of opportunities to think outside the box.
Khurram Naik: Well, I want to pick up with something early in the conversation, when we were talking about the context of what you're making these different predictions about, what the career has to future, you were couching it all in terms of clients, in terms of what clients are looking for, efficiency and better outcomes. And so I wonder how you can, can you speak to how you think about ultimate client objectives being efficient? You'd shared the story about taking a non-infringement position for a client over filing some IPRs. I think that seems like a good example, but otherwise, how do you situate yourself in the shoes of a client and think about what's going to move the needle for being efficient, and then why be efficient?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: I find it relatively easy to seek the value part, because I think I was just sort of socialized to really like a deal. When I was growing up, I'm not sure exactly where this came from. I think part of it is just like child-of-an-immigrant mentality, where it's like, we're never paying full price for something. We're only going to buy this when it's on sale and we'll throw it in the freezer, right? But I'm always looking for a way to get a deal out of something, even if it's defending a patent case, right? And so I take a lot of pleasure in identifying sort of the clean, quick, cheap way of getting a walkaway, for example, or sort of getting an early, dispositive victory, because it just like, it brings me joy. That's part of what I enjoy so much about the practice. And it happens to align very closely with the client objectives of like, how do we get the best results subject to cost? And so I think that's why I do it. I just get a tremendous pleasure from that value play. And I think one way we've been able to do it effectively is by really focusing in on and having enough sort of confidence with respect to singular arguments. Like once you get enough reps, it's easier to advise a client like, look, I think the best play here is, forget about those IPRs that are going to cost you, you know, $600,000 a pop. I expect that if we dig into this particular claim limitation, I can't imagine your product operates in the way that they claim it does. Let's go talk to the engineer. We only need 20 to 30 minutes on her calendar. And I bet we can nail this down. And then we go get that declaration from the engineer. We even often produce some of the code early. And the reason we do that is so that we can equip the plaintiff with as much exculpatory evidence such that they have to think like, if I litigate this case, am I just going to get wronged out for fees? And so I think that part of it's the reps, another part of it is just like having relationships with your clients where they have that trust in you, right? Because a lot of times they don't have the bandwidth to make their own independent evaluation. Like, should I be spending the extra $1.2 million on two or three IPRs here, or are we really going to be okay just going in with a silver bullet on non-infringement? So having that trust in the relationship where they're like, you know what, that seems like a skinny approach, but let's do it. Like, that helps as well.
Khurram Naik: And look, it sounds good to be the human that helps the client that way, but then also you don't get a trial out of that, right? And so there's, again, with principals and agents, there's inherently tensions to be resolved that are resolvable. But so what's the resolution of why do you want early dispositions? How does that benefit your practice?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah. Great question. It turns out that there's definitely not all that much tension, for two reasons. One of them is, like, I very much see this as a long game. And in order to play the long game, like credibility with your clients is the most important thing. And if you're able to cause them to think, Tim's always going to be looking for the lowest-cost way out of this, the lowest-cost way to get a win, that just makes their decision-making calculus easier, it's easier for them to set higher you going forward. So that's one reason. The other reason is just, as a bandwidth matter, this job would be impossible if, like, even a few more cases went to trial. So it ends up being really important to sprinkle in dispositive victories and walkaways. I mean, oftentimes we tell associates, you really got to be thinking about filling your plate to 120, 140%, because in litigation, unless you're just losing at every turn, like stuff falls out, right? And so even a couple of months ago, I was talking with associates, like, how are we going to make all these puzzle pieces fit together? It's not working. We're going to have to bring in additional people to help. And then we got like a grant of a motion to dismiss, like killing an entire case on Alice grounds, right? It was like, that was that like long Tetris piece coming down the side, just like clearing out a bunch of bandwidth to focus on some other matters. So I think like bottom line is, there's absolutely the tension that you identify, but we have a lot of motivation to sort of reconcile those tensions, because I mean, from a basic bandwidth perspective, we need to resolve, you know, the majority of cases short of trial.
Khurram Naik: And this ties into something we've talked about before about your business development. So you've done a lot to call, to develop clients in Japan. And so one thing I think would be interesting to speak to is why Japan, and then why not have a domestic focus? And then that conversation also spoke to the difference between relationship-driven selection of clients versus reputation. I wonder if you can talk about that as well.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, yeah. So why Japan? I think there's a couple of aspects here. I mean, one of them is like, it's nice to have cause to sort of have more points of contact with my Japanese ancestry. And the Japan practice has been, you know, great for that, right? It's one of the things about coming to MoFo that I probably like didn't anticipate anywhere sort of close to the degree that it would impact my practice. But, you know, MoFo has this massive historical presence in Japan. It's got the biggest office of an international law firm in Tokyo. And that really allowed me to sort of go out to Japan and sell a US litigation practice to these Japanese companies who, you know, occasionally find themselves sued here. They're not being sued here to the extent they were back in the, you know, 80s and 90s, where Japanese consumer electronics were, you know, everywhere. We've definitely in the US had sort of a realignment where the big consumer electronics players are primarily Korean and Chinese now. But it's nevertheless been a nice way to sort of have that connection with my Japanese ancestry. Additionally, it's just, you know, it provides a different dimension to my practice that has allowed me to sort of work on skills that aren't as critical in the US practice. So some of it is just like, there's way more formality in dealing with Japanese companies. Whereas California companies, California software companies are sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum. And sort of exercising those muscles, I think, has been interesting for me. And in part because I just like doing new things, but I think it's also going to be helpful, sort of as I work with, you know, companies that are more in the high-tech space rather than in the software space, because there's this whole spectrum of formality. And then additionally, it's got me sort of in this mode where I have to think about international dynamics a lot more. And so for example, juries have, you know, impressions about foreign companies. And I think that's especially prominent in today's environment, where a lot of the political discussion involves like, okay, the job market for manufacturing in the United States has become very difficult because foreign companies are taking it away and offshoring things. Now, Japan isn't nearly as prominent in that discussion, in part because, you know, it has long been an ally of the United States. And additionally, I don't think they are typically thought of as a country that's, you know, undercutting US labor. Nevertheless, like, you know, if you look at sort of classic manufacturing industry in the United States, take aerospace, for example, Japan's clearly one of the biggest competitors. And so you do have to be mindful of that sort of dynamic. And just like thinking along that additional dimension, I find to be really interesting, in terms of the trial presentation. And then the last piece is there's the additional complication of dealing with interpreted testimony. That's something that is relatively infrequent these days, especially in patent cases, because English has become so prominent in the developed world. But in Japan, it's still pretty uncommon for people to speak fluent English, even in business. And so that's yet another additional dimension that I've just had to sort of figure out and work with. And so it brings more sort of diversity to my practice in a way that I've enjoyed.
Khurram Naik: Hey, I'll ask about what you've taught me so far, because what I'm hearing is, these are all, you find these interesting. They're also hard. And on the last point, does that create a moat? Is that some of the context?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Good point, good point. I do think there's a good bit of a moat with respect to the Japan practice. And a lot of it relates to sort of having the necessary cultural awareness, because again, Japanese business culture is very different than US business culture. And then the second piece that creates a moat is language. One reason I'm able to have this practice is that I have phenomenal colleagues in Tokyo who are US-qualified litigators, but who are completely bilingual. I think it would be very challenging, sort of near impossible, to sort of do this practice in a fluid way without having those sorts of colleagues.
Khurram Naik: And then can you speak to the, you flagged as between Japanese business culture and US business culture, there's a, in Japan, it's more relational. And US, our legal market is more reputational. Can you talk more about that and the implications of that?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Totally. Yeah, the one way I think about it is that, in Japan, like there's a really long dating process oftentimes with clients, there's sort of this tradition of meeting with prospective clients a couple times a year. So they can get to know you better, so that you can sort of develop trust before they're going to want to hire you for a bigger matter. And sort of the flip side of that is they tend to have even more stickiness. You know, and I think you can think about the stickiness by talking about what the US approach is, especially if you think about SaaS companies. With them oftentimes, they're like, I've got 10, 20, 40 patent litigations coming in at a given time. Like, I need a stable of like law firms to help with this. And I need data on what's good there in the market. And so they're often willing to try out a new lawyer, to your point, especially if they have a strong reputation. Because from their perspective, it's relatively low cost, right? Like, they're sophisticated enough that, if things aren't working out well with that new lawyer, they can either sort of manage that situation within this particular case or bring on a different lawyer to do that case. But they're much more willing to try out someone completely new. And so, you're right, reputation matters a lot in that sort of environment. But it also means there's like a whole lot more opportunity. And, you know, you don't have to have this longer-term dating process. A lot of times, I've had situations where, you know, I might know someone through a mutual contact and essentially do a cold outreach, you should say, you know, like, I've litigated against this point tip before, we got this result. I have this idea about how you should be able to win this case early. You have people who take you up on that and just be like, that sounds great. Let's give it a try. And so, you know, I find that fun too. I mean, in some respects, it's a lot more dynamic in the US context, where it doesn't take sort of that long-term relationship building to get hired for a client for the first time.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, it seems like the two systems have pretty even benefits and costs.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, I think I probably just by virtue of, you know, having trained in this country, I think I relate more to the reputational approach. You know, I think I'm drawn to businesses where the market is highly fragmented, because that means you can enter easily, but the flip side is that as an incumbent, you have less hold on things. But it seems to me very mirrored, a crack at it. That more resonates with me. But I mean, you know, relationships are a form of meritocracy too. Like, you form relationships and that's a skill. So I think both have pretty even benefits and costs.
Khurram Naik: Can you speak to, you know, as you've developed more understanding of Japanese business culture, what's something in the last year or so that's been a new insight about Japanese business culture, how they think about technology, technology disputes, what's new in your understanding and perception of Japanese clients?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah. This isn't super, super new, but it is, I mean, new relative to all my practice that was like before working with Japanese companies. Like I'm used to doing work for software and high-tech companies where people bounce around, like engineers bounce around every two to three years. And what that means is that it's pretty rare that you have somebody at the company who like developed your own company's prior art to a certain patent, right? It just almost never happens. And you know, it's more often the case that your witnesses will not be around at the company for trial than they are to be around. Which Japanese companies is like the complete opposite. You often have people who have been at the company for their entire careers, right up, up from college. And actually, A, it just sort of helps you get this information that you wouldn't have access to before. Additionally, I think you're able to put on more of a narrative about how like this company must be so great and so good to its people that like everybody sort of wishes to stay here. So it does impact the trial presentation quite a bit. And one thing just to be mindful of in these cases is it is worth investing more in identifying, you know, whether there are folks at the company who developed the accused technology even before the priority date of these sort of patents. We do that in all our cases, but it's a lot more likely to have payoff at these Japanese clients where you have a lot of people who have been there 20, 30, 40 years. Yeah, it's interesting. The other thing that's unique about Japanese practice is, in contrast to US in-house legal departments, there's often a patent group that's distinct from the legal group. It's full of people who I think in sort of US parlance we call patent engineers, who aren't necessarily legally qualified, but they're extremely sophisticated about patent merits, including about how things cash out in US litigation. That has been really interesting because it's been fun to have sort of someone within the company who can be a real partner in digging in on the technical merits, and sort of like finding the sort of better experts within the company who could be your witness or who can help sort of figure out how this very finite detail in the firmware works. It's a different dynamic that I've found to be fun and interesting.
Khurram Naik: Let's say you were to switch gears and focus on domestic practice. How would you take the skills you've acquired, experiences you've acquired, and develop your Japanese clientele? How would that differentiate you from somebody who would only ever focus on domestic practice?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that perhaps the biggest payoff is just like the way the Japanese practice causes you to think a lot more about building long-term relationships. And I think sort of on a surface level, you can imagine thinking like, does that really matter as much in the US practice? We're just talking about how it's more of a meritocracy, people hire you even if they don't know you that well, et cetera, et cetera. I think notwithstanding that, the long-term relationships are still critically important, because even though people are bouncing around, they're often just going to like other software companies that you probably want to work with as well. And so if you're able to sort of focus energy on really building those deep personal relationships, it can actually be really fruitful in terms of broadening your client profile, because like these people start pollinating other companies. And if they've had a really good experience with you, in part because you've taken the time to really understand what they, that human, cares about, it allows you to retain that work even after they've called out for work.
Khurram Naik: So we talked a lot about your experience in state court, and a lot of that, I think, happened at, you know, you were in a boutique that came over to MoFo, a team that came over to MoFo from this boutique. And I wonder, I think one of the most persistent things that I see in patent litigation at all seniorities is, a mutual fascination from lawyers at boutiques about general practice firms, as Pat let the gears that says, and conversely, you know, patent lawyers at general practice firms about boutiques. And I think both kind of fantasize a bit about the one as, you know, the greener pasture. And of course, there's strengths to both, but you're uniquely situated to speak about the roles these play. So I wonder, you know, if you can compare, what would it have been like, you know, for you, you came up, you know, in key part through a boutique, and now you're at a general practice firm, how do you think your experience would differ if you had flipped that?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Great question. Great question. With the, I think, obvious caveat that this is just going to vary very much depending on which particular boutique you're at and which particular general practice firm you're at. It is hard to imagine that I would have gotten nearly as much early experience at a general practice firm. And there's all sorts of reasons for that. One of them is, at Durie Tangri, you know, there were, you know, between 10 to 12 partners at any given time. And when you have like that small population of decision-makers, it's a lot easier to optimize for non-monetary things that people value. It's just, it's harder to get consensus if you've got, you know, 200, 300, 400 partners. And so one thing the firm really prioritized that I benefited tremendously from is the firm would often think like, what are some cases that we could take on that would help our associates develop really quickly, even if they're not going to make the firm a ton of money? Or even if like, they're barely going to make the firm money, right? You can do that when you've got 10 to 12 stakeholders, where their preferences are such that like they all really value seeing people grow. And so that's why we ended up doing cases like that trial up in Sonoma that was four months long. We were willing to sort of place bets on sort of investing in human capital, rather than necessarily investing in revenue. I think the other thing is the conflict profiles are completely different. It hasn't, moving to a bigger platform, hasn't impacted me quite as much as other folks in the life sciences space, where you end up seeing more tension. But, you know, at Durie Tangri, we didn't have a corporate practice, right? And so just the number of clients we had was significantly more constrained, and you had a much more open conflicts profile. And then, I think the last piece to highlight is, from a recruiting perspective, it is much easier to have a differentiated proposition if you're at a boutique. There are way fewer places that look like you and they can present the same sort of narrative to law students. One thing that I think was especially unique about Durie Tangri is that, for some time, we paid below market. And so we had a very explicit pitch that was like, we paid below market, and the reason we do that is because the firm as a whole, like not just the partnership, but everyone here has decided we care more about sort of opportunity than necessarily sort of maximizing dollars. And so, what we were able to do is use that as a built, a bit of a filter, to get people coming out of law school who had a primary focus on just developing as quickly as they can. And weren't like the sorts that are like, I'm going to go to a law firm for three years, pay off my loan, go do something different. So it was incredibly helpful from a recruiting perspective. The last piece on recruiting is like, we can be like, look, we're a 25-person law firm and we had three trials this year. Like, you don't end up getting that hit rate, like the per capita hit rate, at, you know, most places. So that was another very differentiated proposition we had to sell. And then in terms of the bigger platform, there's just, from my perspective, there's just like a different set of benefits. One of them is something we touched on earlier. It's like, you can have a global practice. There's no way I could have had the Japanese practice back at Durie Tangri. We didn't have the presence in Japan. We didn't have the bilingual litigators, and it goes on and on. I think the other tremendously nice thing about a platform like MoFo's is, you can provide clients with like an integrated experience across a bunch of adjacent areas that just makes it like better for the client. And so oftentimes, I'll have cases where like, you have an opportunity to resolve the thing through like a quasi-business resolution. And being able to bring in our tech transactions lawyers early on in that process, it like allows the clients to even like scope those possibilities in a way that we didn't really have the depth to do at Durie Tangri.
Khurram Naik: Do you, what do you mean by that? What do you mean, resolve a matter through corporate tech transactions?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, so like, even in a patent case, one way to resolve the case might be like, should we be working together? Should we, the plaintiff and the defendant, be working together instead of against each other? And so that may be an M&A transaction or maybe a joint venture, what have you. But like, unless you have the tech transactions lawyers who can think in a sophisticated way about sort of like, how do we partner while still protecting our core IP? The client's really sensitized to that because they're in litigation with the other party, right? So they're like, I definitely need to protect my core IP. But there's all this sort of business, there's all this business upside. And like, you're just able to explore that in a much more robust way with the sort of tech transactions practice that MoFo has. I mean, to be clear, I'd occasionally do that at Durie Tangri. But what happened when I needed to do that is I actually worked with Billy Schwartz at MoFo for that. Like, there were a couple situations where it's like, look, we just need tech transactions expertise here. And then Billy, who's sort of one of the very best in the business, like he was able to come in and help out with that piece of things. So it's doable at a boutique. But I think you can start that process much earlier at a platform like MoFo because there's less friction to bringing somebody like Billy.
Khurram Naik: What do you think your practice would be like if you never joined MoFo? If Durie Tangri kept on going, what do you think your practice would look like today?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, yeah, very good question. You know, I'm not sure it would be all that different, outside of the Japan piece. Just in terms of the, you know, client mix, the type of cases I'm doing, et cetera, et cetera. And that's in part because, in the sort of final years of Durie Tangri, we were sort of presented with this inflection point where it's like, okay, we've got a number of people who have practices that require leverage. And we were presented with a decision, basically, of like, do we change our leverage model here at the boutique to be able to support those people's practices? Or do we go do that at a different firm that's already sort of built that machine? You know, obviously an additional option would have been like, or we just keep our leverage as it is and we don't support those people's practices, but like none of us was really interested in that, right? We cared about each other's practices. Bottom line is, like, I think had we not come to MoFo, we would have endeavored to sort of hire to increase leverage to make it look more like a big-firm leverage model in order to support the practices that people were developing. And so assuming we were successful in growing like that, and you know, that's an assumption, but if we were successful in growing like that, I think the practices would look fairly similar, setting aside the Japan piece, which, you know, I think truly would have been impossible at the boutique.
Khurram Naik: Can you speak to the role of institutional clients, what you see as the role of them in a practice, because I think you can have different points of view on this. It's always full of trade-offs. And so on one hand it just seems like, oh, that's perfect. Like, who wouldn't have these like, you know, marquee clients that have high-six-figure disputes and so forth. But I think one answer to one trade-off, that is, you know, the proverbial pissing contest, where then you're really locked into servicing that client and, you know, you have to keep on serving that client to sustain them. How do you think about the role of large ongoing clients with ongoing needs? You know, you mentioned these clients that have like, hey, I've got eight to 20 matters or whatever. Like, how do you think about those kinds of clients in your mix versus the relationship approach? You've got the meritocratic, the reputational approach? How do institutional clients fit into that in your practice?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, yeah, so I think they're incredibly helpful to have for just having sort of like a consistent sort of baseline of work that you can reasonably expect to have. To be clear, like, the relationship requires continued focus. However, if it's one of these clients that's being sued, that does litigation routinely, I think you can sort of count on a relative baseline amount of work. On the other hand, I think it's really important to be quite diversified. I mean, this is something we were very focused on while at Durie Tangri, right? Because we have these reports that are like, who are our top 10 clients? And one thing we really liked about what we had sort of managed at Durie Tangri is that the list of top 10 clients would change dramatically, year over year. And to us, that was incredibly healthy, because as a 25-person shop, we didn't want to be so invested in like one single client because things change. GCs get replaced, companies get acquired, or you know, all sorts of different dynamics happen. And we always wanted to make sure that we were well diversified. And I think the other sort of reason I like the diversification is because I have found that with like true startup clients, like pre-public startup clients, especially in the software case. Those are often the clients that sort of allow associates to have like the broadest range of stand-up opportunities. And so it's helped a lot from like the perspective of just being able to get my associates trial witnesses, spots, motion hearings, and so on and so forth. And I think it's a sort of like pretty natural dynamic. If you've been hired by a company's founders, who are like 22 because they started the company when they dropped out of their first year of undergrad, their perspective is, I want someone good, literally in my case, I don't really care sort of how old you are. If I can tell that like you're a true specialist and you're going to do the preparation necessary to do something well. So that's another reason why I prefer to have the diverse client mix.
Khurram Naik: You mentioned things changing and that's a good thing. So what do you think will change the most about your practice here?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: I think this takes us back to the top of our conversation. I think there is going to be a dramatic uptake in the use of AI in cases. Not just in terms of the work that sort of we're doing for our clients, but in terms of how the other side is litigated. Like, I do tend to think that for, you know, copyright plaintiffs, for example, who are filing all these class actions against generative AI companies. It will be a lot easier to just like generate new complaints, generate deposition outlines, generate offensive discovery, generate like discovery letters, right? All that, like they'll be able to do it much more efficiently, and therefore, like, unless we are adopting AI use, it's just going to drive up dramatically the cost of litigation for our clients. So that I think is really the thing that I expect to change the most over the next year. And as we touched on earlier, I'm excited about sort of figuring out ways to make sure that we are ahead of the curve with respect to that dynamic.
Khurram Naik: I don't know how you'll answer this, but do you relate more to being, this is another ongoing conversation across lawyers. Do you relate more to being strategic or opportunistic? Because the way you're talking about what might change the practice, you know, you can argue that it's either one. How do you think about, you know, what do you think has been the story of your practice so far, and has that changed, or are you different in that way now?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Great question. I think it depends on sort of what level of granularity you're looking at. So the big picture, if you look at the arc of my career, I think opportunistic is the more appropriate label. Like as an associate, I once like learned from local counsel like at 8 PM, the night before a hearing, that this judge like really likes junior lawyers. So even though the partner was already in Dallas for the hearing the next day, like I got on Kayak and found an overnight flight that would get me to Dallas so I could go argue this thing.
Khurram Naik: And so can you talk more about that decision? Okay, was that easy for you to do?
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Well, absolutely. I mean, like, to be fair, this was pre-kids, I didn't have to make arrangements, right? Like other than like, you know, figure out which flight would actually get me there. But like that was an easy calculus, right? Like I was going to encounter some short-term pain from like, you know, having very little sleep from taking the red eye, but like I was going to get a hearing out of this, right? So that was totally worth it. And then that's sort of an extreme example, but there's like a variety where it's like, hey, I'm going to have to push myself to 140% to like jump on this opportunity. Especially sort of earlier on in my career, I always found that to be a relatively easy decision to make as the opportunities come up. Especially sort of now they come up relatively episodically. So I think you've got to just got to prepare yourself to be able to jump. And it's, I guess going back to your strategic point, or thinking strategically about things, like you can sort of marry being strategic and opportunistic if you can figure out ways to set up your life such that you're like positioned to jump on those opportunities when they arrive.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I mean, I think that's poker, and I play very little of it. It's also so just a good thing. I would play it a little more of. Yeah, so I really resonate with that approach. And I'm sure many people listen to episode two.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Right, right. And then within cases, I think of myself as a strategist, like that's what I really, really enjoy. When people sometimes like, what do you, what do you like about this job? When you want to talk to non-lawyers, what I usually say is like, you're so often playing 3D chess, you're like optimizing across like seven different axes that all interrelate, and sort of that complex decision tree. You're trying to figure out like how to pull on various levers to force your adversary down a particular path. That's one of the things I enjoy most about this job. So that's why I said at the top, it depends on what level of granularity you're thinking about. Within a case, I see myself as a strategist, but sort of at a more macro level, I would describe myself more as someone who's opportunistic.
Khurram Naik: Fascinating. Thanks for not saying it depends.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: I try to avoid that. I find, as it turns out, like clients find it to be a pretty good answer.
Khurram Naik: Tim, this is a great episode. Thanks for taking the time to break down your practice, sweet fascinating. I appreciate all the insights.
Tim Chen Saulsbury: Yeah, this is a definite episode I'd like to re-listen to. Well, thank you. This has been a really fun conversation. It's been great to have a cause to think hard about a number of these issues, and I really appreciate the time.