Khurram Naik: Neil, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a little more than two years. A lot has changed in law, a lot has changed for you. So it's exciting to have you back here.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, thanks, Carl. It's great to be back. Love your podcast.

Khurram Naik: ⁓ so Neil, you were sharing that you used AI in preparing for a argument you gave before the California Supreme court. And so I'm interested in what you did there. And more generally, we've been talking about uses of technology in the course of law and technology as a tool to augment what a lawyer does rather than replace. So. I'm interested in hearing about what you did here in that matter and talking more generally about patterns you've observed in your career and others for using technology.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. I think one thing that's happening a lot in the legal industry that people are talking about is how AI will replace lawyer jobs. ⁓ And ⁓ we'll talk more about that high-level concept in a moment. But I met with ⁓ a friend of mine who's a former litigator who has now started a legal tech startup called Full Proof AI. Her name's Neda Mansourian. And Neda. really presented to me a concept I hadn't heard about, which was AI can be lawyer adjacent rather than lawyer replacement. And that, it was kind of like an aha moment for me in some ways in that, you know, especially when you're doing high end or complex work where human factors are important, you know, kind of the EQ piece of things are important. ⁓ You can actually use AI to help improve your own performance. And I'll give two examples. The first one I'll do is the California Supreme Court argument. I had a very significant matter for the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. I served on the board for 23 years. I've done pro bono work for them for almost 30. And it was a case involving the California Public Records Act, which is similar to Freedom of Information Act. And I had... know, the die was kind of cast. The briefing is already done. We kind of knew generally what our arguments were going to be. But what I didn't really know was how do the justices on the court approach argument and how do they approach questioning of attorneys? So I went into ⁓ our internal AI tools and I said, what are the types of questions? Not as to a particular subject. But what are the types of questions each justice asks? And the response really kind of gave me a framework for what is the perspective of each of the judges over a large body of oral arguments that the AI reviewed. And I was kind of prepared when a particular judge asked a question, ⁓ what was the perspective they were coming from? And I could not. quite predict the questions they're going to ask, but pretty close based upon kind of this framework of what are the different judges most concerned about in general. Probably the most useful thing was the AI said, one justice doesn't always ask this, but frequently asks the question, what is the rule you want us to adopt here? And then would use that as a springboard to kind of test the boundaries of that and different justices would respond. testing the boundaries of that. It seems kind of obvious, what is the rule you want someone to adopt when you're going to an appellate argument, but it turns out very few people actually argue in that way. And it materially changed the way I structured things because, you I started my argument, you can listen to it online, and I started as the rule we are asking this court to adopt is. And it framed the argument and I could kind of figure out where were the different judges going to kind of come to ask about the outer boundaries of how that rule could apply. And it was a, you know, I thought it was a really helpful tool in framing it. And my recollection is, although this might be wrong, is that the judge asked the other side, what's the rule you want us to adopt? And he kind of floundered around and couldn't really deal with that. Instead, he kind of started arguing about the underlying record, which isn't necessarily the best way to deal with an appellate. So that's ⁓ one example. Another example that ⁓ I used is I had to give an opening statement in a case ⁓ last fall. And ⁓ for a variety of reasons, the preparation for that was on a very accelerated time frame. Typically when I'm getting ready for trial, I start working up my concepts for an opening about six weeks before trial. And it's not like you're working full time, but you're kind of going through an iterative process. Over time to kind of hone it get it down to the key issues get it within the time frames and the like in this particular case I only had two and a half weeks and So it was really helpful again to use my AI tools to Experiment with shortening my opening on prioritizing issues and helping identify core vulnerabilities I Still developed the theme I still wrote my opening and kind of created some preliminary graphics. But then I used the AI as a tool to figure out where the things were complex concepts may not be accessible, where my graphics not quite working. And it gave me some assistance as did the human beings of the team as to where were the vulnerabilities on the way that I was presenting things. And ⁓ I was able to really take a six week effort and compress it into about two and a half weeks. And I think just because of the timeframe, I probably wasn't quite at the level that I would normally want if I had all the time in the world. But I did think it made a hugely helpful ⁓ type of thoughts on how to improve my own performance. The final one I'll talk about is ⁓ I've had to give some speeches, legal, not like ⁓ for a client, but more for events and things. typically you're gonna have a relatively tight time frame and I've used AI to help me find quotes and then I have to make sure they're not phantom quotes and Sometimes when you have a compressed time frame and you want to convey a lot of concepts Transitions between each concept can be very very hard to work out and it's kind of jarring when you just jump and so I used AI to help me figure out strong ways to transition from one point to the next Even though I knew the concepts I wanted And each one of those were really lawyer adjacent, right? They were performance enhancers in a lot of ways, more than replacing anything that I would typically do. ⁓ And I thought that was super helpful. ⁓ I can turn now to kind of my thought on use of AI and use of technology in general and how it affects the legal industry if you'd like.

Khurram Naik: Let me pick up on what you just said, it's interesting, say, in the context of both the appellate matter and the opening statement with all three examples. when comes to, when I think about appellate arguments, the conventional thought around appellate arguments is there are certain appellate lawyers who are very well known by judges at the Supreme Court or in state or federal repeat players and they're known for certain things and therefore they have a credibility so that frankly no matter what the argument is that their credibility ⁓ lends itself to prevailing. Right. And so what's interesting I guess two reactions I have is that ⁓ AI in this context that you're describing is levels of playing field. in that what matters less is, you you mentioned the concept of EQ and maybe what we mean by credibility is EQ of knowing how to size up a given justice and knowing, you know, how to respond one of their questions. There's an EQ component of, you know, people talk about how certain advocates can address ⁓ a justice by name or just they have certain liberties from these arguments. And how do you beat that? That's a compounding you know, a fact that you can't beat. This suggests a way that levels the playing field. So I think that's one interesting aspect. The other interesting aspect that you're describing, it's related, is for yourself, you my impression of, know, Neil, you're an experienced first-chair trial lawyer, and my experience with lawyers like you is that you've honed a style over time. You've honed a thesis last time we talked about some of the principles you use. One of the core principles that you use in complex technology disputes is ⁓ if it's IP had issued to say, hey, we represent the innovator. That's the core of your story. So there's techniques that you've honed over time. What's interesting is what I'm hearing from you is that these, of course, aren't wholesale changing who you are, how you are, et cetera, but there's material. departures from your process. And so it's interesting to hear about how much AI is potentially changing how people operate in a time when what I think the classic concept of what a experienced trial appellate lawyer is, is somebody who is known for something. And here you're suggesting that actually AI is a tool for being a little more adaptive and changing more, which is really, ⁓ The thing seems like a departure from how we've practiced. I'm curious about your reactions.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I would go as quite as far ⁓ as you're suggesting. I I still think that there's a huge benefit for people that are, you know, kind of specialists in particular domain and kind of can read the room because like, of the reasons I hate zoom depositions is because you can't read body language, right? Because we're only seeing our heads and part of our bodies here and you can't, you can't read the humanity of it. So AI can only take you so far on that, right? Cause AI is going to tell you about the questioning style and things like that. But if the judge is making a face when you're making an argument, it's not gonna tell you that, right? You still have to be able to read the room and you still have to know those human factors well enough to be able to read them. And I do think there's a place for the specialists where they're gonna have some strong capabilities in that area. But you are right at the same time that it does make the playing field a little more level, right? because it can help us prepare in ways that ⁓ we couldn't before that make our abilities do some more competitive. ⁓ Just as an example, ⁓ in some courts, in appellate courts, you don't know what judges you're in front of until the day of the hearing. But you can actually use AI to keep track of who are all the judges that handled arguments, you know, that month or during that time frame to try and isolate who are the most likely candidates to be on your panel that day. It's enormously helpful when you're preparing. If you're a specialist in those courts, you're going to know all the judges anyway. Even if you don't use the tool, you're going to show up here, ⁓ this is Judge so-and-so, and I've been in front of them 1,000 times. I know the types of questions they ask. ⁓ And again, these are things that help us improve our performance. And I do think it levels the playing field a little bit. I still think there's a place for specialists along.

Khurram Naik: And what about this concept of, you know, the ways in which, you know, maybe you had from your, let's say without AI lay intuition for what lay is more, it's not lay, it's your specialist, but so your, your intuition, let's say about how to approach an argument. And then AI suggests, you you've got this data that you didn't have before, I, these data tools insights that you didn't have before. And then you may then it sounds like you've made some changes based on this. these data tools and insights. You talk about the value of a specialist, but then if you're changing as a result, how do you think about what is the core part of Neil Chatterjee's approach versus what you're willing to change? How do you think about ⁓ that boundary?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so one of the weaknesses of AI is it always exists to please you. With one exception that I can talk about. But generally speaking, if you go to AI and you say, what do you think of my argument? What are the weaknesses? It's generally going to tell you you did a great job. Right? And so it's not necessarily going to push back. Instead, it'll give this diplomatic thing. If you'd like, I can offer suggestions on blah, blah, blah, and this and that. ⁓ It's helpful to get those things just as an example like, you know, I've done a fair number of appellate arguments or jury trials you do mock juries and you do ⁓ mock arguments if you're going to do an appellate one where you get retired judges or whatever to question you. Those are very useful inputs on the way that you're structuring your argument and what is of importance to various people. But no single judge or no single mock trial is going to completely change the way that you're approaching things. It's going to be more tweaks on the edges, or you might learn in a mock jury trial ⁓ that people just really hate a particular argument. And I'll give an example of that. And you might abandon some things in those instances, but each one of these things are inputs that help you exercise judgment. And I don't view AI as any different than that. ⁓ The example that I'll give on a jury exercise is I've done a lot of work involving data rights. people might have noticed that the price of a television has gone down dramatically. you can get, it used to be TVs would cost $3,000 or $4,000 for the most recent type, and now they're coming out at probably $1,200 despite inflation. And the reason for that is because your TV is watching you. The way that a lot of the TV companies make money is they are delivering served ads to your television through smart functions and they are monitoring everything that you watch. And I've had a lot of patent cases and a lot of other sorts of cases that deal with that issue. And one thing I learned from the jury exercises, cause I would have a tendency to go on and talk about the legal issues, right? Like, is it infringing a patent? Is it not the name of the game is the claim? All of these sorts of mantras that you learn. What I learned from it is that people feel creepy about TVs watching you or about your own computer watching you. And that dramatically affects how they feel about anything. They may not care at all about the patent infringement right, because they're going to say, I just don't like this technology because it creeps me out. And that was a very significant learning where I completely changed my approach on data driven disputes where, you know, kind of quasi privacy rights could be implicated because the creepiness factor has a profound impact on a lot of the tech driven work that we do today.

Khurram Naik: And you're saying that probably benefits lawyers on the defense side, this creepiness factor, who are defending against IP around us.

Neel Chatterjee: It no it can it can it can hurt the plaintiff too because if your plaintiff if the plaintiff has a patent You know the plaintiff can also say look, you know ⁓ It's all about the narrative that you know, you can say, you know as the plaintiff our technology make sure your data is secure and only used in responsible ways and It may be uncomfortable that that that this is being done, but it's a reality of our world, but we keep it safe, right? These defendants, they're not using it in a safe way. They're pirates. They're using your data irresponsibly. And without our patent rights or whatever the rights you're asserting are, you're gonna have these irresponsible uses. So you're actually embracing the creepiness factor to say it validates your technology. But you can do that on both sides. And what I've been learning over the past, I don't know, three or four years is that that issue and embracing kind of the creepiness or the discomfort around...

Khurram Naik: Yeah.

Neel Chatterjee: certain new technologies and kind of the public narratives that are happening are becoming increasingly important.

Khurram Naik: I want to come back to your idea of using tech, the lawyers and how that's evolved. But since you started talking about how juries react to this, I think this is interesting because this is definitely becoming a theme on the podcast. recently interviewed Joe Ahmed of EZA and so something he talked about was framing your arguments to align with the worldview of jurors and the motivations they ascribe. And so it's not just about honing. There's a level past, you know, hopefully you the facts on your side. Hopefully you have the law on your side. There's something past that, is understanding how jury is going to assign allocation of responsibility, what they think is fair. And so, you know, an example he gave, you have a couple of examples, but one is for instance, that, you in his experience, ⁓ jurors have a hard time blaming that corporations don't do things that they're primary or sole motivation is profit. So they have a hard time understanding other motivations that a business might have. They also have a hard time believing that if something important happens, a corporation wouldn't document it. So there's all kinds of things that they say, well, there's no evidence of this because the corporation surely wouldn't record this. So since you're mentioning that there's not just the nature of the technology, but also jurors reactions to it that are relevant, I'm curious for you. I'll also add, Tim, you, ⁓ Oz was building on this theme and his theme as far as approaching juries goes is being a tour guide. And so, you know, like maybe there's dueling tour guides and one person is pointing out a bunch of things. so, you the construct he's using is, you jury can use everything you just heard from opposing counsel. Also though, like, you so he told you to look at this tree. Why don't you walk behind the tree, take a look, walk behind the tree, take a look at the tree, look up the tree, look at the top of the tree and like, just, you can gather more information. I'm just gonna point out other things that you can look at rather than trying to jam some narrative down their throat. So it's becoming a recurring theme of talking about how jurors respond to ideas. So I'm curious for you, you just mentioned this new insight, anything else you wanna add to this topic of... ⁓ ways you align your arguments with how jurors think.

Neel Chatterjee: Yes, ⁓ I guess there's there's two things first of all, I think there is this bias that people have ⁓ About you know, everyone kind of buckets every big company the same their sole motivation is profit so on and there it's a negative concept, ⁓ I've actually tested that issue in certain jurisdictions ⁓ And that actually turns out not being totally true ⁓ People will have very strong opinions about particular companies or people. But just to point out an example, here in the Bay Area, HP has a very storied history. And there was this concept called the HP way, which was a very, very high ethics, high ⁓ values driven organization that even when you weren't legally required to do something that you would ⁓ still do it if it felt like the right thing to do. I kind of thought, okay, that was something that died in the 1970s, the 1980s, and then, you know, all kinds of things happened with HP. They acquired companies, they spun off companies and this and that. For a variety of reasons, I had occasion to go and explore how do people feel about HP. I was not representing HP in the case. was, but it was, I just, had occasion to explore that. And then there were some other companies that we were testing too. And even, today in the Bay Area, that legacy of how HP behaved gives HP, which is a gigantic multi-billion dollar company that would be subject to all of those things you mentioned, have extremely positive feelings about what they did for the Bay Area and the way they approach business. Another company that would be like that is Airbnb. Airbnb, the CLO, and the CEO of the company, the CLO wrote a book called ⁓ intentional integrity, about how you lead as a company with integrity. And I think the way that they democratized kind of where people can stay and gave people extra access to funds and the way that they monitor it and take care of it, overall, they have pretty positive feedback. that's the first thing, is that not all companies are created equal. And I think it's important when you're going into a jurisdiction to understand how do people feel about those companies. And sometimes they won't know who they are, right? You can have multi-billion dollar companies that nobody's ever heard of, right? ⁓ And so that's definitely one thing. The other thing that ⁓ I've learned is I increasingly use this metaphor, and I can't remember if we talked about this before, in cases, because I deal with stuff that's really hard and inaccessible for people to follow sometimes, right? It's like... It's, you you're using all these technical words and you you have a bunch of geeky people sometimes talking and they're using, you know, very inaccessible concepts. And you have to fit that into a narrative and a storyline. And I'll go to jurors and I'll say, you know, my job is, it's kind of like a puzzle box because as a trial lawyer, my opening and my closing are going to show you the cover of the puzzle box. What should the picture look like? And what you're going to hear during the trial are all the puzzle pieces in the box that are disassembled because you're going to hear evidence from witnesses, but it's not going to be in a sequence. It's going to be one witness saying everything they know. And then the next witness saying everything they know. And so you're basically getting this jumble of puzzle pieces, but my job is to show you the picture at the beginning. So as you hear the evidence, you know where it fits into that larger picture. And, ⁓ And then one of the things that each one of us are going to be dealing with our side and the other side is they're going to present two totally different pictures of the cover of the box. And your job fundamentally is to assess credibility. It is important you understand the technology or whatever the facts that we're talking about. But at the end of the day, the reason we have the seventh amendment is because there's a belief that people can assess credibility. What's credible, what's not. And If someone's shifting around in their chairs, can't look you in the eye, people know, even if they don't understand everything that's going on, they know whether someone's telling a lie or not, or whether they're stretching the truth or taking an aggressive position or if they're uncomfortable. And that EQ is a big part of why our constitutional democracy works, right? So you want to kind of let people know you're going to be talking about technology, you're going to try and educate them. But you want to relieve the governor of the stress that that causes a little bit by letting them know that their real job is to assess the credibility of the story and see how the puzzle piece is picked together.

Khurram Naik: That seems weird.

Neel Chatterjee: And that's a more evolutionary thought than I used to have. I used to think I need to get the best teacher in the world for patent cases, ⁓ Reality is if your expert's testifying for three hours, and you're talking about the inner workings of a semiconductor device, you're only gonna be able to get so far on teaching.

Khurram Naik: Was there a moment that changed that perspective of framing this as above all that credibility?

Neel Chatterjee: Yes, and it is ⁓ It's gonna sound ridiculous. Okay, so a number of years ago I decided to create a kind of a mock jury trial program for fifth graders and I wrote and Historically the ABA had something Goldilocks and the three bears and it's all scripted and Goldilocks is always convicted. That's I think it's kind of I Wrote one on a patent case And it was a patent case involving a pet carrier for a bike on an actual litigated patent. And then what we did was I had associates basically present infringement and invalidity of these patents. And we'd show things like ⁓ Toto in The Wizard of Oz, where it's in the little basket in the back and jumps out and runs away from the wicked witch of the West. And to show that you infringe a patent, you have to hit every element of a claim we showed. a little Lego character, you know, hitting a strike and cute things like that. But we then would separate the fifth graders to deliberate and we'd listen in on them. And while jurors are not fifth graders, they behave very similarly. Because these kids, first of all, they thought that putting a pet carrier on a bike is a dumb idea. Not all of them. I mean, I've done this now probably 15 times. But they often would think putting a pet care on a is a dumb idea and is unsafe for children. And so they would either find non-infringement or invalidity because they thought this is just a bad invention. ⁓ The second thing was that they tended to focus, without knowing it, they would focus on which lawyers were better prepared and which ones weren't, and which things were more credible to them about the way things are being talked about. Like we had kind of some mock testimony and things like that that they would Yeah, so we would go and listen in on their deliberations and then this is the most amazing part because you know a lot of kids like if you and I sit sit around with a bunch of our peers and you know, Someone gives a speech and ask people to ask question You're gonna have like two or three gunners in the front that are gonna say everything and everyone else is gonna lay silent, right? Fifth graders aren't like that. They get into it They all want to participate and so at the end I said you are allowed to ask the lawyers anything you want

Khurram Naik: How do they communicate those assessments?

Neel Chatterjee: And you're allowed to give them feedback on what you didn't understand or what you think they could have done better And ⁓ my goodness I mean, know curve I know you have some little kids like I'd love for your kids to experience this like these kids I mean they they would read the patent You know, they they'd only been reading for four years. They would pull out sentences. They'd call the lawyers out They would say you said this thing and you know, I have the device right here We brought the actual devices for them to play with And they say, here, you know, I pulled on this and you know, what you said doesn't make sense. And ⁓ they really lodged, you know, kind of in their mind, they crafted a credibility story and then they would either attack or support the lawyers based upon it. And they would ask these questions. was really incredible. I mean, every time I've done it, it's like so inspiring. Cause you're like, kids are leaving and actually saying they want to serve on a jury someday. Like who does that? Right?

Khurram Naik: Yeah, my three year old's favorite phrase right now, well not favorite, but a really potent phrase he to use is, are you kidding me? So yeah, I can already preview that. And I'm also amused that you decided not to include willful infringement. I think that would have been really entertaining.

Neel Chatterjee: We just did infringement and validity. That's it.

Khurram Naik: Are there, so I guess, it sounds like you did it a number of times, are there any patterns of things you've noticed that these students are identifying for what increases or decreases credibility?

Neel Chatterjee: Because we don't present actual live witnesses, ⁓ how much the lawyers prepare in advance for the arguments is hugely important. Like they know, the kids don't necessarily know this person didn't prepare as much as the others, but they do know, like they infer like who really took this seriously, who really understands what they're talking about, because all our PowerPoints are pre-prepared, right? Like we've had them for a long time, people can use them whenever they want. And so some people just go in and wing it, and some people go and they take it really seriously. They might even tweak our graphics a little bit. And the presentation is flexible enough that you can anticipate what the other side is going to say and say, you might ask yourself that. And that all goes to how much the attorneys prepare and how much they are thoughtful about respecting the jury's time. And that, I mean, they know it, the kids, they know it and they call it out.

Khurram Naik: I think something, I think whether it's children's or jurors or recruiters or AI, I think something I've noticed in different domains is if you don't take something seriously, then you don't get much out of it. And if you, what I've observed from successful trial lawyers is that they take juries seriously. not just that they're important, here's this arbitrary and ⁓ uninformed force that I have to account for, they really treat them seriously as genuine sources of guidance and counsel. They understand the limitations. No one's under any, know, mistaken about whether jurors are experts in learning some complex technology. But so that's something ⁓ that... I've observed. so I think it ties back to say technology where ⁓ if people aren't taking technology seriously, they don't get anything out of it. then we've all, every generation had some generation ahead of them that was just the dinosaur who just like didn't understand ⁓ email and just, it's just memos you're constantly getting the office. Just every generation has something like that. There's a lawyer I worked with who just email documents to a large team of internal lawyers and say, you know, and then just later email the entire group to say, did somebody, does anybody remember that one document that I sent? Like this was this lawyer's organizational technique, right? So I'd be curious to double back to this concept of using technology over time. And then, know, just maybe, you know, in the way that you've approached juries or something has changed over time for you. I'm curious if something has changed in how you relate to technology and use it in any prescriptions you have.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so ⁓ and what I do because it is so inaccessible to people sometimes, high powered graphics with imagery that people can remember that are persistent themes, like the experimentation on that, coming up with it, making sure things aren't too cluttered, that you start with a very simple concept and then you build things out of it. And use of technology to help figure out those builds and eliminate the noise that isn't important. ⁓ is super important. And animations, if you need animations, using animations can be really helpful. It is absolutely true that a picture is worth 1,000 words. That's a really big one. This is going to sound really weird, for the opening that I did, I also asked Harvey When should I pause for emphasis? You know, it's just to get a sense of, know, when you're giving a speech, sometimes, you you're saying something big and dramatic and you need to pause for applause or for reaction from the audience. Well, you do the same thing in trial, right? When you want people to think about things. It was enormously helpful on where should I pause ⁓ on an opening? Like they say, okay, you know, Harvey said, okay, this graphic is great, but it's going to take a little time to process because there's, you know, stuff going on. Stop talking for a minute, just let it go. And I didn't always agree with it, but it forced a discipline on me to think about, okay, how digestible is this and am I rushing too fast or can I go faster at particular moments? And that's something that technology has made an enormous help on for me. And I think that's something everybody deals with when you're dealing with openings or arguments on big cases or things like is pacing how to get people to know when something's particularly important and issues like.

Khurram Naik: I have two reactions. One is I want to double back to your fifth grade example. And I think that might as be something that Tim you in the previous episode, he had suggested as well. So, know, Tim, you as a big fan of professional wrestling. And I think it was the undertaker if I remember right that there's, if I understand correctly, there's a season two professional wrestling and then off season, you you can do other things. And so what he would do is he would attend my understanding is just more like regional circuits for wrestling. Um, and so we had to attend some regional circuit circuit where there's kind of up and comer wrestlers, like maybe that's what they discovered for, for, for professional wrestling. I'm not sure. But so you'd observe some of the crowd work they would do or some of the moves they would do, and he would explicitly copy those for use, you know, in, in the big tent or whatever. And so I think this example you gave of, you know, somebody else might view the fifth grade thing as somewhere between a chore and a game. Maybe it's something like a game for you, but it became something a little more serious where maybe, I guess I'd be surprised to learn that you thought heading into this, boy, I'm going get some really great insights for how to think about the fundamental principle that I want to use when I approach jurors. But then you gained this very big picture insight from that. So think treating somewhat... Play, think play in other domains and things you learn from there and then taking that play seriously is one thing I've noticed. And then the other thing is that I'm also noticing, in the concept of using technology, or you could even apply to what we just said, what I'm noticing that you're doing is you're really not leaving anything unquestioned. You're really testing every premise along the way. like, you might have a big picture. reaction to, oh, I've noticed that jurors view corporations as profit maximizers and that's all they exist for. But it sounds to me like, when I'm in a jurisdiction, I test that. And some of these things are inadvertent. sounds like there's just something you inadvertently learned about HP. wasn't like some thesis you had going into this. there's opportunism involved, but that flows from being methodical about testing assumptions. I wonder if, yeah. curious about if you have more to say about that.

Neel Chatterjee: ⁓ I mean, you you never accept premises, right? We have, come in with our own biases, but you know, if you're trying to case in the Eastern District of Texas or ⁓ in Minnesota ⁓ or Chicago, where I have cases in all those places right now, ⁓ what informs people is totally, totally different. And what their daily experience is and how they feel about various things are. And the juridical construction, like, If you're here in Silicon Valley, you you try a case in San Jose about a technical issue, you're just going to be greeted with a lot more suspicion as a plaintiff because there's so much technology everywhere and you're going to have jurors who have PhDs from God knows where and that are senior executives and tech companies where, you know, it just is going to inform how some of the people feel. But if you're in Marshall, Texas or you're in I don't know, you're in Orlando, Florida or someplace like that, the life experience is quite different and people come in with different perspectives. And so testing is important because you have assumptions that may not be right.

Khurram Naik: Well, and then going back to this concept of, jurors are primarily sets of credibility. It seems to me that's a tool that you can wield. Let's say you're plaintiff in these jurisdictions. Let's say you end up being a defendant in Eastern District of Texas or plaintiff in Northern California. It seems to me that this credibility premise is a leveler, no matter which side of the V you're on in these. If you're on quote, the wrong side of the V in one of these jurisdictions, it's like, let's say you're plaintiff in, in North California and yeah, like you've got, you know, a bunch of executives from Cisco and Intel and whatever, then what you can say is, look, you, you guys have technical chops through the roof and you can spend a lot of time diving into technology and making that, you know, the, the, way that you resolve this. But really if you zoom out, your function is something different here. So just seems like that specifically seems like an interesting tool to deploy in different contexts.

Neel Chatterjee: It's essential. I'll give a really concrete example of that, Karram, which is about, I think it about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more than 10 years ago, I tried a case for a company called MobileIron. And MobileIron, like if you use your iPhone today, your company might have apps on your phone. They manage your email for your work that comes in through it. And if you leave, can all be wiped out. So you can keep your phone, but the enterprise stuff is taken out. And MobileIron was one of the pioneers in that area. And the company on the other side was literally named Good Technology. And so every time we were going to have to get up in court and say something, they're going to be saying the other side was good, right? And so that's a, mean, and it's the same sort of issue that you were just talking about, right? Because there's this inherent bias that comes just from their naming convention. And so when we were doing Vardir, the very first Vardir question I asked is, The plaintiff's name in this case is Good Technology. Can everyone set that name aside to suggest that good may be bad if the evidence shows it? And I asked everyone to raise their hand. And that informed the whole case because it said, look, this name is going to work against me, but I want you to think good may be bad because it put together this dichotomy. And I think I might have made a joke or something like, and I'm glad my client didn't name themselves Evil Industries Incorporated, because they're not. But socializing those issues as part of the jury activity is really important. And how people may feel is different about a company may be different from what they're being asked to do here. You're absolutely right.

Khurram Naik: Does this approach you have of testing premises, has this showed up elsewhere in your practice? Is this otherwise informed how you, I mean, so the two big changes since we last spoke is your leading ⁓ leadership role in ⁓ IP litigation at a new law from King & Spalding, and you helped launch a ⁓ an impact organization, ⁓ Law from Partners United, are those products of this sort of testing mindset, is there some commonality that we can point to? Were there premises you tested that got you to this point, or was there some other process?

Neel Chatterjee: For law firm partners united, the answer is no. ⁓ When it comes to like management of roles about, ⁓ I think about it a lot in terms of marketing and business development. I think we've talked about this before. I have a very unusual style of kind of marketing, business development, authenticity is a big part of it, things like that. There are standard ways that law firms go about doing things or that lawyers go about doing things. And as the world evolves, you know, that may or may not make sense. you know, nobody, you know, for 15 years, no law firm had Instagram pages, right? ⁓ Or and very few law firms have a TikTok presence today, right? But they should. And the young lawyers who are making TikTok videos about legal stuff, they have bigger followings that are building bigger practices in some ways. then the people that are uncomfortable with the use of those communications. That's all marketing, right? And so the premise that writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times, it's a great thing to do. I don't mean to minimize that, but the premise that that's the way to get the communication out to the people who need to hear it most is simply incorrect today, right? I mean, we're doing a podcast here today, 10 years ago. People weren't doing this, right? And so looking at the underlying foundations of why have we done things the way we are, we have, and is that the way it should be done today is kind of fundamental to operating a business, to going into court, to marketing and business development and things like that. The one thing, I guess as I think about it, the one thing about Law Firm Partners United, I refer to it as LFPU. that maybe was breaking the mold a little bit was because I've done so much social media, like representation over the years, I knew you could create private groups on LinkedIn and you could use LinkedIn to promote those private groups. And that was a very disruptive way to form a gigantic professional association in a very short period of time. And that was a premise like people were kind of struggling like, you know. people in law firms are like, okay, my law firm's gotta do what it's gotta do, the business has gotta decide what's right for the business. But I personally don't agree with that and I don't feel good about what's going on, but I don't know how to express a point of view about this. I don't know where I go, I don't know how to release the stress that's causing me, things are causing me. And I woke up one morning during March Madness and was just pissed off and went on to LinkedIn and said, I'm gonna form a group and just see if people wanna talk about this. And and and then it turned into something totally different from that right much bigger and much

Khurram Naik: So have there been any efforts you've made to organize around something before that weren't successful using technology or otherwise? ⁓

Neel Chatterjee: that were not successful. There are so many of them I can't even count. mean, you know, ⁓ you know, ⁓ there are so many of them I can't even count. mean, ⁓ one thing that happens is when you get people around, they ⁓ get too big to be able to execute. Like, everyone just wants to get together and complain about things or whatever. ⁓ For years. So I founded the Bay Area Diversity Career Fair 25 years ago, and now it's called something different because of all the political issues going on. Diversity, for some reason, is a bad name, bad word. I still don't understand why that's the word that's offensive. I don't think any of them should be, but I don't know why people have chosen that that word has to be removed. I have thought there was a place to have a national organization that ran these in jurisdictions large. legal markets all over the country. And I've tried for years to get people together to do it ⁓ through different organizations, through different law firms, through bar associations, and I've never been able to get the momentum to do it. It's probably been among the frustrating things that have happened in my career, it's probably the most frustrating one that's happened. Because Bay Area Diversity Career Fair, whatever it's named now, it's a pioneer, it's the most successful recruiting program in the country today. Although now it's getting dismantled a little bit and it got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people jobs and people that are partners in law firms now come back because they got their first job to that job fair. It's just hugely impactful. And why I haven't been able to get it on a national level just escapes me.

Khurram Naik: So you don't have some theory for why this hasn't happened.

Neel Chatterjee: I don't know if I have a theory. It's just. People's priorities are in other places around the country. They have other things they want to be their signature events. They have other things. ⁓ One of the big issues in some jurisdictions is venue. Where do you do it? ⁓ And that's always a challenge. Another one is ⁓ here in the Bay Area, it became something where if you didn't go, law students would notice, and the quality of candidates were very, very high. And that created a pressure on other law firms to participate. In fact, some law firms abandoned OCI entirely. That kind of pressure would not necessarily occur in some other markets. ⁓ People would just do whatever they wanted to do. In today's world, the reason we haven't been able to marshal something bigger is because of the disastrous approach to recruiting that law firm that ⁓ law schools and law firms are now pursuing because they start recruiting for their 2L summer at the beginning of ⁓ a 1L year. And how you even run a job fair in that circumstance, I don't know. And the thing I'm most worried about is that kind of program ⁓ is going to have a material effect on particularly first-gen lawyers, which tends to be more lawyers of color. ⁓ And because you know, When you're a first-gen lawyer and the first time you're walking into a law firm, it is a scary place. Like you don't know how the dialogues work. don't, I I hate to say it, but you don't know how to play the game entirely. And you have your own, you know, kind of background that you're still working through as you walk through this. Cause a lot of people just, you know, they're nervous about it. Like I've never done this. My parent was a bus driver. I've never walked into, you know, a white marble office with a bunch of people in sport coats or whatever. And it takes some time to be able to socialize how that process works. ⁓ I'm spending a lot of time on that issue right now, on how do we solve that problem.

Khurram Naik: Mm-hmm. I ask this because you're involved in the Bury Diversity Fair and the Silicon Valley Law Foundation as well, and then now LFPU. so someone might see those and say, OK, Neil Chash is a hit machine. Every thing he touches turns to gold. And so I think it's helpful if people understand those setbacks and things that didn't work. in the things you learn along the way from those. ⁓ So yeah, think that's definitely insightful. I want go back to your comment on

Neel Chatterjee: basis, right? You take on big important pro bono cases and they don't work out. know, you know, that's, that's part of the, part of the nature of this business.

Khurram Naik: So going back to authenticity, so that's, I think that's something that you have been known for for a long time. And so, you know, before I knew you, I knew you because you were a very colorful figure. And so, ⁓ that's been a signature part of how you show up at work is that, you know, is being authentically you, you know, having a custom business card with a very, ⁓ colorful and unusual thing. colorful, but interesting thing to say about yourself. I'm curious for you now, it sounds like you this evolution in how you approach juries, going from how to persuade them that you have the best story around technology to saying, hey, it's a different game, and approaching them a different approach. I'm curious if your cons for an authenticity has evolved likewise, and particularly in the past year. You just made two major changes. so I wonder if you have any new views. You're in a new role, a new function. You have a much more national visibility now. Tell me about, do you have a new approach, concepts around authenticity?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. So ⁓ I don't know if you've had Rudir Krishnall on your podcast yet. He's a former law firm partner and now he does kind of business development counseling and as a coach. And Rudir, first of all, I love Rudir like a brother. I really do. There's a handful of South Asian Bar Association people that they are my brothers and sisters. And when the American lawyer named me lawyer of the year,

Khurram Naik: I have.

Neel Chatterjee: He called me and he said, this is the most amazing thing. I, you people had said that and I thought it very appreciative. He's like, no, no, no, no, this isn't an amazing thing because you got it. He says, it's an amazing thing because you got an award because you're you. And I still get kind of choked up, just kind of. that recognition, you know, just, you know, because the founding of LFPU was kind of a, I mean, if you talk to the people who are closest to me, they'll say, well, wouldn't you kind of expect this of Neil? Neil would just do something kind of crazy and outspoken and super creative. And, and it's just, and, and, and, he's going to see if it's going to work, right. And, and, or, or it turns into something, you know, bigger where you didn't even know. I mean a lot of people said that to me when because when people thought it was controversial although I never understood why it was controversial and At the same time it was not easy there were certainly detractors there were certainly people that were coming after me ⁓ and ⁓ and The learning from that though was to stay true to who you are ⁓ because like It was never a hard decision once we had this momentum in Law Firm Partners United and people like Nisha Verma ⁓ and Elizabeth Bodden and Haley Morrison, Josh Clark, ⁓ Eric Savage, a lot of these people, they just became outspoken people through our group ⁓ to be authentically themselves as well. mean, they were always that way before, but this gave them platform to do it. I mean, ⁓ staying true to that and making people feel empowered that they could do these things. Like, it's like such an important message, I think, ⁓ in the authenticity kind of dialogue.

Khurram Naik: Did any friends take issue with this? Did this impact any friendships?

Neel Chatterjee: Did it impact friendships? I don't think it impacted friendships, but different people had different perspectives on it. People were like, you should be careful. Now you could get targeted. I would say people more were, they were more acting out of care for me. And there were some people like when things really got big on it, we started doing the amicus briefs and you know, we had you know, 850 members and you know, and I formed a nonprofit, right? Like when I did all those things, you know, some people are like, you know, like chatter, he's gone off the rails, like, he's, he's, he's, he's gone kind of nuts here. And I kind of say, well, you know, I've gone nuts plenty of times before, and I'm gonna get on that's plenty of times in the future. ⁓ But yeah, I really believe that for people to be successful, they have to stay true to their values. And if their values are to be a little bit quieter and not outspoken, that's OK. Just be who you are.

Khurram Naik: I think that's relevant to some of the background you gave me on governance and approach for LFPU. Because I think something you've communicated is a challenge with law firms now, as law firms have gotten so huge now. They're called partnerships, but given how diffuse the ownership is, it's more similar to a corporation than what we would call... When we say the phrase partnership, that implies... ⁓ I think something much smaller and more ⁓ egalitarian maybe. ⁓

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I'll just give an example that Curram. So ⁓ I remember my first partnership meeting at Oreck. was, it wasn't as a great firm. And ⁓ the, and I, you know, I mean, the partnership then was big at the time. It was a big international firm with offices all over the place, but you could still fit everybody inside of basically something a little bit smaller than a hotel ball. Today's partnership meetings, and I've now been at three firms, and as these firms have grown, they keep running out of spaces at the hotels. Like they go to bigger hotels and they run out of space. They can't even rent the whole hotel and that won't be enough for the partners. That's just to give you a sense on how big these organizations are becoming. Some have started going, we're only gonna meet every two years, because it's just too many of us.

Khurram Naik: And so in building LFPU, you you mentioned people had varying degrees of how much they want to be public about this, ⁓ varying degrees of what sort of criticism they want to make. ⁓ And so like, tell me about how governance works here, because this is beyond just, you know, this wasn't just an old chattergy show of here's my opinions and join me. How did you build a governance mechanism here? Were there tools that you already knew to use heading into this? Were the things you tried that knew, things that worked out better than expected, less than expected? I think it'd be helpful to understand how to meet a moment like this in building something.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I I treated it in two different ways. One, in kind of my experience in running large teams on litigation and kind of having a plan with benchmarks on it. Because I deal with a lot of TROs, right? We had to act relatively quickly. And second, in kind of some of the training and guidance and mentorship I've gotten from others on how to lead large groups. Because I've led groups at large law firms now. ⁓ I formed LFPU. ⁓ I needed a co-founder essentially and Eric Savage at Littler Mendelson agreed to do it. He's such a great guy and ⁓ and and then I went on LFPU and I said look this organization is about empowering individuals in the way they feel comfortable. So if they want to be public you can be public. If you don't want to be public you toggle a button. No one will know that you're a member. If you want to sign your name onto a brief, you can do that. If you don't want to, you don't have to do that. And then I said, you know, I don't want LFPU to be a cult of personality. mean, people still associate it with me. And so very early on when we were, you know, when we were kind of getting a lot of press attention, I got a strategic communications firm involved ⁓ that worked for us pro bono. And I asked people who would like to be spokespeople for this. And we created kind of like you do for a client, set of messaging points and core things like that. A number of people volunteered to do it. And ⁓ so we basically gave our communications firm, here are the people that are available to talk to media and do whatever. And they all kind of spoke up. We had people publish things on LinkedIn about the group. I didn't know how to form a nonprofit, so I just went to LFPU and I said, is anyone here a nonprofit lawyer? And then we had five nonprofit lawyers saying, I'm a nonprofit lawyer. And we scheduled a phone call and they all kind of gave us advice on how to do it. And then one of them actually told us what kind of organization we were. We formed it. We talked a lot about how big should the board be and how did the appointments happen and everything. then what are the formalities, right? How often do you have a board meeting? that kind of stuff. And ⁓ now, you know, we've largely got a governing board. It's about seven people. One of the requirements was that they had to be willing to be public. This was the only place where we thought it was important that people had to be willing to be public about it in case it came out. There's going to be corporate filings or in case there was ever a request for, you know, our corporate board minutes or anything. And ⁓ Really, there's a core group of people who feel very, very passionate about what we're ⁓ Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco ⁓ gave LFPU an award earlier this year, maybe three weeks ago. And it was great. A bunch of the LFPU members all flew out from around the country. We all had dinner. We all met live for the first time. ⁓ I mean, what we've done is cool. But the fact that people have become very close friends, having never met each other before. is almost cooler, you know?

Khurram Naik: Apart from reaction to the tangible circumstances, rational to where the series of executive orders. So apart from that, what is it? Did this do you believe this filled some pre-existing gap that this just triggered? And then relatedly, you know, now, you know, the executive orders, you know, the US government has said it's not going to continue to pursue this administration is not going to pursue this litigation and appeal. ⁓ the rulings. So with that in mind, you know, what, what carries this organization forward?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, so the first thing I'll say about Law from Partners United is a lot of people have characterized it as an anti-Trump organization, which is false. It is a nonpartisan organization where we have plenty of people who are Trump supporters, but they just believe in the rule of law. And they believe in preserving the rule of law. And I don't know if there was a feeling of an unmet need on preserving the rule of law. ⁓ prior to the attacks on law firms. Like I don't know if people really felt that strongly about it, but over the last year, you know, we had the executive orders against law firms. We had the prosecution of Mark Sayed. We have the ABA suing the government. And there's this most recent thing where the Department of Justice is saying they want to be exempt from ethics rules. I can you imagine that? that, that, that the highest ranking governmental officials who are in charge of putting people in jail want to be exempt from ethics rules. that they don't want to have public accountability for things that they do correctly or incorrectly. It just blows the mind on how that could not be considered an attack on the rule of law. The EEOC letters where people want to meddle with the businesses, ⁓ with law firm business on how they decide to do it. And then, you the government says these things to create an interim effect to interfere with the businesses. And then they say, well, it actually wasn't a formal request. So they back off of it to avoid the lawsuits which would invariably follow up. These are all things that in varying degrees, ⁓ Law Firm Partners United cares a lot about. ⁓ Some people might feel more strongly about one issue or another, but the big issue is people are really offended by the efforts to challenge law firms trying to do what they consider to be the right thing, however that's defined, and representing people in what are sometimes unpopular causes, which is fundamental to our system. Justus.

Khurram Naik: You know, I wonder if, you one of the things you said in your last episode, said, so we record in December, 2023. So we're still freshly, I don't know what the lines for. But you said post pandemic, it's been more of a challenge. People's connections are weaker and I've been struggling with that. I'm curious to what degree you think that something like LFPU or maybe other things to observe are reactions to that, to some degree. Now there's lots of solutions for that, so it's just one condition. But the other condition I'll point to is increased mobility at law firms, right? And you yourself are a reflection of that. And so I'm curious if, if just the used to be that, you know, again, with this concept of partnership, a partnership was a partnership and you, you know, just people tended to just to almost literally die at a firm, right? And now with great mobility, there's less of ties to any one particular institution like law firm. ⁓ I wonder if you think in some degree that LFPU or if there's any other trends, if there's any other ⁓ changes like that, you feel our reactions to that of people looking for. more forms of continuity, ⁓ other forms of ties.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, well, I don't know if I tied to the pandemic, but I do think that there are places in the market for people to connect on common ground. Like the thing that I would say related to that, that I think there were two things that LFPU did that I think were absent in the market post pandemic. One was we've forgotten about the concept of hope. You know, people kind of look at large law firms, oh, they're not doing this or they're not doing that. And there's this kind of monolithic perspective. And when people who have some degree of power, whatever that might be, decide to act independently of that because they think it's important, it gives kind of the people that look up to them a little more hope about their ability to be themselves, to be outspoken critics, to challenge authority or to embrace it. That's one. The second thing is, is that in many ways the most inspiring part of LFPU is, as I said, the group is nonpartisan, is that this is an area, this particular area was just one small area where there's an enormous amount of common ground between people on things. Like if you look at what the Article 3 coalition or, ⁓ you know, the protect, preserving our Republic group is doing or things like that. you'll have like a really liberal judge and a really ⁓ conservative judge joining arms on a common purpose. And what that really taught us is that there is so much room for people to get along in a world where everything you see on the news is people dividing each other. It's always a narrative of us versus them. And I think that that was the big takeaway, like post-COVID. There was a lot of us versus them going on. And I think that what LFPU at least taught me is there is a screaming need out there to find micro level issues that bring us together on nonpartisan bases and to recognize like, I mean, we had town hall meetings about the briefs you're writing to get feedback from people. And it was, mean, it was one of the most inspirational moments of my career is just sitting through these town hall meetings to hear people who have very, very different political perspectives, but agree on a concept to figure out how do we present this in a way that we all can agree on? Because we agree with the outcome, we agree with the basic principle, we just may not agree with the way that it's being advocated. And it was done respectfully, it was done ⁓ in a collaborative way, it was done ⁓ in a way to really create exceptional work product together on common cause. And it just... confirm my belief that, you we aren't doing enough of that and there's a crying need for it as a society and as lawyers.

Khurram Naik: One early reaction I had to these executive orders and reactions to them in, I know I'm violating my role where my goal is to talk about evergreen principles and not talk about politics for a moment, but I'm using this as an opportunity to talk about things that are evergreen, ⁓ is that this potentially increased the public's awareness of law firms. My impression about most lawyers, ⁓ most people is that they don't really have a very good sense of how large law firms are and how powerful they are and how impactful they are in society and how they shape, ⁓ there's just the rules, ⁓ the way that, I don't think people get much thought to the pathway from, it's a really common thing to practice, let's say at a large law firm and go to the federal bench or go to the US attorney's office or state AG's office or even to Congress, just Congress is full of ⁓ former. pricing wars, particularly at large law firms. So it's something that I think people are vaguely aware of that impact. And I wonder if ⁓ you've observed something in that way, because I know that people with the visibility of LPO, people ⁓ outside of law have come to you. And I'm just curious if you have a reaction to or thoughts on how, ⁓ earlier we talked about juror sentiment, right? That's public sentiment on certain topics. And so it's relevant, right? So what's public sentiment on law firms? I feel like this brought awareness to law firms that maybe any number of even educated professionals didn't have. And I'm curious what your sense of those reactions and the consequences are.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I guess I have two reactions to that. The first one is that... This is the cynical piece is that a lot of law firms are going to do what they're going to do and they're going to do what they're going to do to preserve their business. ⁓ And no matter what they're saying publicly at any particular moment in time, that may or may not be how they really feel because of what's going on and whatever the political climate is at a particular moment in time. And that's not to say that what people did now or recently is the right thing or what people did before was the right thing. It's just that as these winds shift, will sometimes, you know, they're gonna do what's in their business interests at a lot of times. That's the cynical piece. I would say that the non-cynical piece is that there are a lot of people who don't understand what the rule of law means. And I think what this attack on law firms did was It shined a light on the fact of. the concept of elites and ⁓ elites being large law firms or whatever, ⁓ and how inaccessible the concepts are to lay people. And like my dad is a, he's a sophisticated guy, he's 88 years old, he's not a lawyer, never done anything involving lawyers other than complain about them. And... ⁓ He had all kinds of questions about what I was doing. He had no idea what rule of law meant. And he had no idea, like, why is any of this important? Like, someone wants to go after a law firm, who cares? And as I explained to him the importance of it and why it was happening and what the reasoning was, all of a sudden he was kind of like, I came here on a boat in ⁓ 1963. And I know what India was like during partition and I know what India was like, you ⁓ he grew up in a state that was referred to as the last lawless society in India. And he's like, this is really important what you're doing. And, you know, no matter what people are saying or what people are going to do, you need to keep doing it. And, you know, that really taught me how this concept of what lawyers do is not known well enough to people unless they intersect with the legal community. And so one thing I've been very passionate about in the various groups, not just LFPU, but some of the other groups I'm involved in is how do we build a public education program that has some degree of virality that makes this not an elite concept, but something fundamental to the way we all live? Like nobody wants to be eating poisoned food. Nobody wants that. But without a system of rules and laws written by lawyers, there's a higher likelihood you're going to get poisoned food. How do we know which side of the road to drive down? Well, there's a line that divides the two. One's going that way. The other's going the other way. And how do we know how wide the cars are going to be? Some lawyer wrote those things, right? ⁓

Khurram Naik: I'll challenge you on the right, on the driving the right side. Cause that's, that's a Nash equilibrium. And I think that's going to naturally form and ducks do it. And so that's only thing I'll challenge on. But yes, the point is taken, but I'm curious about, what you said about, ⁓ system user words, cynicism. And you're somebody who I think maybe can interpret certain things you've said. Certain stances you take, I think are cynical, but it's kind of interesting. think this might be like the efficient markets hypothesis. which is, know, markets are efficient. You can't, you know, get some, some, um, you can't, uh, beat the market basically. And so there's that old joke about, know, two economists walking down the street and one sees a $20 bill on the ground. And then, you know, suppose, oh, there's $20 bill on the ground. The other guy says, no, no, no, there's no $20 bill. If there was somebody would already pay that by now. And so the notion is that in order for there to be an efficient market, some people have to treat it as if it. in order for to be efficient, you have to treat it as if there are opportunities to make it efficient. And so I wonder if cynicism and optimism operate the same way for you or for others, where it's in the context of cynicism that you can be an optimist, where, know, that, you know, because you have an awareness of existing conditions that you can act with the optimism that that matters. So I wonder how you relate to the concepts of cynicism and optimism.

Neel Chatterjee: My favorite question of this interview, Curran. So there's two concepts that I've done. If you look up some of the speeches that I've given, I kind of conclude by saying, look, it's easy to sit in a room and have everyone wring their hands and leave with their hands being wrung and then go to the next meeting where they're wringing their hands. But the way to breed optimism in what feels like a cynical society is to just do something. whatever it is, it can be big, can be small, but just doing something is better than doing nothing. And it helps you address that because, ⁓ you know, I've kind of done a riff on a Mother Teresa quote, like, one person creates a ripple, a community, you know, creates a wave and a number of communities can create sea change. And ⁓ the cynicism serves nothing unless you do something about it. And there are opportunities for all of us to do it in big and little ways. And that's always been my mantra. Like, I'm not a guy who's going to go out to the street and protest and hold up my signs and put my fist in the air. Like, I'm going to be like, this thing pisses me off. What is something creative I can do about it to help deal with it? And sometimes I don't even know what it is entirely. And I just do something. Makes me feel better. And it turns out it makes other people feel better, too. ⁓ And I've seen lots of other people do those sorts of things too, right? I mean, you know, that's, that's, I'm not alone in that. And that I think is, is really important. The concept of just do something that's better than doing nothing. And, ⁓ you know, I think today, you know, I've been practicing for 30 years today is the best moment in our lives to be practicing lawyers. Because, you know, if you talk to people that are in their eighties now, you say that they're lawyers and you talk about their most proud achievements, they are not generally going to talk about the multi-billion dollar cases that they won. They're going to talk about going to Alabama and fighting for voting rights, preserving, fighting, you know, death penalty cases in Mississippi or other places around the country, fighting discrimination or voter rights or access to schools and what the difference that they made. What they don't say is that they lost a crap load of stuff along the way, but the differences that they made ended up having profound impacts on our society. In the 30 years of practice I've been in, other than same-sex rights, we've largely been dealing with the fringes of those issues. How do we move the needle one way or another a little bit on things like abortion, just as an example? In today's world, we are at a fundamental point of reset. And we are dealing with these fundamental issues that our mentors and the people we looked up to dealt with 40 or 50 years ago. And as a practitioner, it's the greatest time in our life to be lawyers because we can actually play a role in driving that change.

Khurram Naik: You know, I want to go back to what you were saying about, um, acting on something big or small. And, you know, that resonates with me because you know, something I did, uh, you know, we, we bought a duplex and, in what we should say, an upcoming neighborhood and there's letter and just. a lot of urban areas are dealing with challenges around litter that there's a spike, I think. And so we were dealing with this. And so we said, okay, let's pick it. So we picked up litter in front of our duplex and said, well, if we do that, just the wind's going to blow over from just the next one. So let's just go pick up our neighbor's litter too. So then by then, but then we're just like, okay, we might as just pick up the whole block. So we started just doing that. And first time we did it, we just, had two big bags of trash. We made a post about it on the local Facebook group for the neighborhoods and said, hey, here's some of what we just did. And then we did it again the next week, the next Saturday. It took about 30 minutes again. And so we just kept doing that. We just kept doing it. We did it 100 times. ⁓ what we had found is for something like global warming, global warming is this massive thing that's beyond one person, one company, one country. It's literally this global thing that is literally overwhelming to even think about. And so this tiny act, ⁓ did something to improve the world, but almost as importantly did two things. One is trained us to be high agency that we solve problems before we're given permission to do that. ⁓ And two, it gave us a peace of mind, that we have done something. There's so much existential angst you can have, and we're not the only generation to have that. think our forebears had. nuclear war as existential onyx. And so there's always something you can be terrified about. ⁓ It's a modern condition or whatever. But so this is something to alleviate that. So I think that's something that I've observed ⁓ is the fact of what you're doing. And what's common to that and common what you're talking about is aligning impact with interest. And so I was interested in the outcome. I'm interested in the value of my property. improves when there's little moves that benefits me directly. And I think a lot of times people, when they think about things that are, you when they hear the phrase pro bono, I think many people hear that as a zero something of either it helps someone else or it helps me. And so I think part of what you're talking about is big or small, picking things aligned with your interests, skills that help other people and help you. But I'm curious about your reaction to that.

Neel Chatterjee: Totally agree. So I used to give this ⁓ presentation to diverse law groups called open up your can of maximum awesomeness. And ⁓ one of the things that I ⁓ say in there as far as kind of guidelines for rules, one of them is wear sunglasses because they'll make you look cool. ⁓ But one of the more substantive ones is always look for the twofer. Because in a zero sum game of time that we have in life, if you're trying to do any particular thing that only accomplishes one objective, you're not maximizing the value that you're creating from it. for a first through third year associate who works with me, I will tell them, if you haven't sat down and taken a deposition for a couple of them in your first three years, I have failed you. And the easiest way to do that, to get them that experience, is through a pro bono case. So not only are they doing something that fulfills and warms their heart, They're also developing skills and importance. We're doing two things at once, right? ⁓ And they're learning about the power of going into court and doing all of these other things. And they're developing a relationship with the court as a people ⁓ who did important work for free. And you're accomplishing many objectives at the same time. ⁓ And I really think of that in terms of the return on the investment. Just like you said, you're picking up litter because you don't like it outside your house. but it also has this benefit of increasing your property values. And then it actually has a third thing is it demonstrates you as a community leader because other people are seeing you do it and might inspire them to do it, right? ⁓ And always going for the two for I think is really important as professionals because you just, can't do everything in an isolated category. So you don't have time.

Khurram Naik: And then additionally, it was just another way to practice social media and marketing. so just how to communicate ideas and get people bought in on them. just that is a skill set that, as you were saying earlier, that is the modern skill set that's differentiator. And I think going back to talking about you've had some very public successes and it's helpful to talk about some of the setbacks. ⁓ I think that's important as well. So for myself, early in the pandemic, one of the first thoughts I had is I've been very relationship-oriented in the practice of law. And so when I was a good one in the pandemic, I said, hey, you know what? There's not going to be ⁓ a South Asian Bar Association conference. And so that was just one of the few national conferences that I was a regular at. ⁓ so then I put together, then I also saw that law students were getting clobbered with losing jobs. And so then I... organized to just send an email to, I don't know, about 100 people or so, say, hey, let me know if you have a job for a law student. And so then people started adding other roles and so it just kind of grew into this newsletter and it grew to about 2,500 lawyers. But the thing is that that was... something that was very much of the moment. Like just, was a moment when people were all cooped up in a pandemic and you know, okay, great. I want to read this email, contribute to it. And post pandemic ⁓ demand just plummeted. And so, but even from things that are failed experiments, you never lose, right? Because like you grew your network, there's relationships you grow. there's a ton of lawyers that I've gotten to be friends with and have really strong relationships with as a product of this exercise. I learned about email communications, metrics. There's just a ton of skills and relationships you pick up. This podcast is the same thing. It's skills and relationships. So I think that's something also to orient people to that I think a lot of lawyers are afraid of failure. And one framing is you don't ever fail when you take these kinds of ventures, but you've taken lots of ventures and lots of bets. so I think that's, I'm interested in hearing your reaction to that.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, mean, you know, there's a book that we used to have to read when we were practicing law and people were starting to teach lawyers about business called Good to Great. And it's a management book about that studied kind of like the really successful long term companies and what gave them continuing vitality. And ⁓ one of the things they said is try a lot of things and keep what works. Simple concept, right? Try a lot of things, keeps us working. The unspoken part of that is if you're keeping what works, there's a whole lot of other things that fail. And you're also learning skills from that along the way. And I totally agree with you, on this point is that, you know, I've made my share of failed gambles or things that didn't work out or things that I just lost interest in, even other people might have been interested in it. But every single thing has been a brick in the foundation of building a career. Right? ⁓ And, you know, I've told the story before, I won't repeat it here about how difficult it was for me to get a job out of law school. And, ⁓ you know, when you're sending out 882 resumes and you get, you know, two job offers, and the firm that hires you says they're closing at the end of the summer, you know, that ⁓ those are all failed experiences. And boy, did I spend a lot of money on postage. Now you do them email, but back then it was letters. And, you know, ⁓ You'll learn from that about how do you market yourself? How do you deal with rejection and failure? And how do you deal with picking yourself up and moving forward?

Khurram Naik: You know, something you said earlier is this is the best time to be a lawyer in the time you've practiced law. And something I'm struck with is that this is probably the best time to be an IP lawyer because, you know, when I graduated in 2013 and then pretty much all there was to do was patent litigation and almost every practice focused on that. you know, outside of say New York, LA, you weren't doing much in the way of copyright and then, you know, different lawyers had different degrees of smatterings of trademark work. Some people focused on it more than others. there's more of a hard line between hard and soft IP. What is that concept? It's a phrase I hear a little bit less often now. But so now, really, a lawyer can join a practice, and you can work on a trade secrets case, you can work on a patent case, there's maybe an AI copyright dispute, trademark, whatever. So that has been an explosion in the practice law in just a few years. I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether there was something that was, were there something, what's driving that? mean, like, of course it seems like a confluence of forces and maybe they're all unique or is there some unified theory for why IP has become such a broader concept than just patents?

Neel Chatterjee: There's a lot in that question. ⁓ I'll start with the basic premise that the single largest asset class in the world today is data. That's the biggest asset class. That is the most valuable currency. People say data is the new oil. That's a phrase that you hear around the And it's not about a physical piece of property. It's not even about a contract entirely. It's instead about defining a new asset class that has enormous value and not having a legal topology around how you look at this from a regulatory point of view, from a monetization point of view, from a housing point of view. Patents don't do a great job on protecting data. Copyright kind of does and kind of doesn't. You're seeing all these generative AI cases that are really about use of data and copyright as a vehicle by which lawsuits come up. trade secrets does a pretty good job protecting data, but that's a very, you know, particularized type of use. And I think if you're talking in the tech sector, I'm not going to talk about life sciences. Life science is a totally different animal. But in the tech sector, you know, the currency of data and how you protect it, how you exploit it and how you monetize it, and then what are the regulatory risks associated with it is just, you'd think after, you know, what 25 years, 30 years since the invention of the internet, those things will be worked out. They're completely undefined. And data can be transformed in so many different ways that are unimaginable. It continues to have an undefined legal framework because of the way it can be manipulated and used as processing and use of that can increase. one of the most amazing things is I'll push back a little bit on the premise of IP framing it because I don't know if data rights are IP or not. They're kind of contract. They're kind of commercial. But one of the biggest things in technology today is actually how to build data centers, you know, how to build data centers, harvest the energy and make sure you're protecting those places properly from calamity. And that's construction law and real estate, but it's fundamental to how the economy and things work. The legal issues around that are just as important and highly contentious as the other things.

Khurram Naik: ⁓ And then, you build on some previous system and try to do your best to make analogies. you know, patents are intangible property. And so, you know, the goal there, you know, the phrase you hear a lot is meets and bounds of, know, this claim. there's literally speaking, that's not, you the same like that's that applies to. ⁓ chunk of land, right? So you do your best with some pre-existing set of analogies when you build the next thing. you know, I'm sure that, you know, when, Jefferson and others were developing the, you know, the foundation of patent law, it'd been very difficult to contemplate what patents would get applied to. And so, but, you you're, you're in, you have opportunities to develop new architectures around something. is your suggestion. that, ⁓ I'll put it this way, let's start from a practical law firm perspective. Law firms have to organize their work and make strategic calls. And so something that certain firms have done, firms like our firm from Goodwin or other firms like that is they've identified tech and life sciences as fundamental verticals that they want to invest in. And so there's for tech and life science businesses, they want to do a lot of things for them.

Neel Chatterjee: Mm-hmm.

Khurram Naik: And so it sounds me like you're suggesting the next frontier is firms organize around data as the assets. It's agnostic to some industry maybe. ⁓ And data exists in some orthogonal way to life sciences, tech, whatever. And then you have to have a set of professionals who are servicing the different aspects of data. So there's people who work on. as you say, like building the data centers around it and all the rights that need to be procured for that and so forth. Is that what you're, so for me,

Neel Chatterjee: Kind of, kind of. I mean, I'll give an example. you know, both of my former firms and here at King & Spalding, like I'm taking on a role to co-lead the technology industry group. And the first part of that, right, is to discuss what do you mean by technology at all? Because every company will consider themselves a technology company in some way, right? A life sciences company will consider a, a med device company will consider a technology company, an energy company will consider itself a technology company. ⁓ I still generally subscribe to the view that technology is, you know, ⁓ software, ⁓ semiconductor, ⁓ information technology, communications, ⁓ know, things like that. ⁓ Maybe you could put gaming under it, like online gaming and gaming systems and things like ⁓ I tend to exclude things like crypto and life sciences. Crypto I tend to think more of as a financial service. ⁓ Life sciences areas and things like that. But what happens is that a lot of the frameworks are going to be developed within what I define as a technology industry and then those get exported to these other industries because they have relevance. But then there are going to be tweaks based upon particular things like Financial data has some very unique characteristics because of the privacy and people can steal your money. So you're going to have to put some tweaks on the regulatory scheme in the same way that if we were to analogize it to property, if you're building a nuclear facility, the property rules are going to differ than if you're building a residential facility. But there are also going to be some common underlying principles for them. The same thing for life sciences. There's going to be some underlying principles that are going to be defined universally, I think, from the technology sector. but then you'll have to export it and then put some tweaks on it around the unique things. And none of that's defined right now. It's all still kind of wild, wild west.

Khurram Naik: Yeah, but what you're saying is interesting because it's making me think about, I don't know in the history of legal depression how this has played out, but the interplay between the needs of a law firm as a business to identify what it's working on and have some coherence around that and coherence in the law itself. Like, don't know juncture points which, you know, those two, one is driven the other. I think people tend to think of a one-way street of law to impacting business. I don't know what the answer is if it's ever been the case that business needs have driven some change in law and maybe there's some reciprocal relationship.

Neel Chatterjee: Well, I mean, right now you have all this legal AI stuff going on, So what those are, I mean, a lot of that. if you're in big law, say you're in a New York law firm, your first year associate is going to be billing out, let's say, between $700 and $800. And clients are going to want a significant return on the investment of each hour of time that those junior associates are spending. Much different than when you started practicing law or when I started practicing law, right? The only way to do that, and the businesses are going to require it, is to use technology and to kind of force the law firms to use technology to streamline their business practices to increase the return on the investment. It's a functional necessity because of the way the cost of lawyers has gone.

Khurram Naik: ⁓ Can you talk about in this movie, The King and Spalding, in making the move, we've talked about risks a number of times throughout this conversation. Tell me about the risks that you assess with going over to King and Spalding. my guess is you saw some asymmetric payoff of upside and downside, but I if you can talk about those too.

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah, I you know, I had a ⁓ I think like a 15 factor spreadsheet when I was looking where I was kind of scoring the firm and kind of and there were a couple of firms I was talking to and you know, I was ⁓ thinking about moving on at a time when there's you know, a much bigger test of values going on between law firms. So my moves in some ways were very values driven decision. ⁓ And Another piece of it was I really wanted to build something. Like I like building. When I joined Oric, we were teeny tiny in litigation. When I joined Goodwin on the West Coast, we were relatively small in litigation. And I really want to build something. And I really wanted to get back to doing more large company litigation as well as representing startups rather than being almost uniquely startups. Not entirely, but almost uniquely startups at Goodwin. ⁓ And those factors weighed heavily on me in wanting to move. King & Spalding has an unbelievable litigation practice. In the AmLaw 50, I think we're one of two firms to have over 50 % litigation in our firm. ⁓ And I've been told this, I haven't confirmed it, that King & Spalding has more members of the American College of Trial Lawyers than any other big law firm in the top 50. ⁓ I don't know if that's true, but that's what I've been told or I believe to be true. And being surrounded by litigators was really, really nice. It was something I really wanted because I still feel like I'm learning a lot and ⁓ having people I can learn a lot from was great. Those were really material considerations because King & Spalding has this unbelievable tech client base, but they were relatively small in the Bay Area and the IP lit practice, while outstanding, was also relatively small compared to its peers that were kind punching at the weight that the firms are punching at. So it was a very unique opportunity to kind of come in, build something, but have this unbelievable platform of talent. The hardest set of inquiries was, what does it mean to have shared values? ⁓ Because for a long time, I think you kind of thought, OK, are you more left leaning? Are you right leaning? And because of what was going on with LFPU and what was going on with me personally, the value was really that the firm allows people to be who they are and say what they think. That they weren't going to just muzzle people or they weren't going to, you know, they weren't going to, they were going to respect the individuality that people bring to things. ⁓ And I actually value big tents ⁓ where, you know, you have people of all perspectives, not everyone does. And, know, Kingis Balding was much, much more on that side of the equation than almost any firm I talked to. And it really impressed me. And just the drive, the ambition, the trial lowering, the caliber of litigation that we do was, I mean, it was just off the charts. And I had been lucky to work with some really top litigation practices, not just as a member of the firm, but collaborate with them. and the people here were just unbelievably talented. I'm embarrassed because I don't feel smart enough to be here every day.

Khurram Naik: Can you talk about with this concept of being a builder? And that was definitely a theme in the previous episode. think that was one of the biggest takeaways that I had is being in the Silicon Valley office of Oric. Oric, strong brand in San Francisco, very well established, Silicon Valley, new outfit. You were, I think, a senior associate when you first moved there, which means there's options to do things earlier than other people. Interviewed call clinician of Austin, co-managing partner of Sussman. analogous story in that she came out to clerk the Ninth Circuit and then just kind of discovered Sussman and said, wow, just the energy, this is completely different than the white shoe law firm that I felt predestined to go to back in DC. And again, grew that office. It was very much of a Houston centric firm, very established there, but California is very new. And again, just she's co-managing partner of one of the top trial firms in the country. I think it's a running theme, would say, frankly, particularly in California, because California historically is still a frontier territory. think now Texas is kind of the big frontier territory in a large law firm. But so I think that's something you see again and again is not just, it's true for you, but I think you see it as a pattern across other successful litigators in frontier areas is this asymmetric payoff of taking established brand and growing it. I'm curious for you, if you have prescriptions, I think there's any number of other patent indicators. There's certain practices that have like really strong, like just the leading patent practices are known and they've got a deep bench of really strong patent indicators. And my conversations with these patent education partners is a lot of them are very curious about doing things like what you've done and what we're talking about here about. taking it up and coming, taking a firm that has some other conditions of success, but they don't know how to wrap their heads around it. You've had a few reps on it and, know, Colpina had her reps in it prior to that where she took a risk on being deployed to, you know, for a job in journalism and not knowing where that was gonna go. She had some history of taking risks. And so I think probably you need to have some history of taking risks, but... With that in mind, sure, that maybe some people are disposed to taking risks in ways that others aren't, how do you help someone know whether they want to be a builder, whether they really have it in them? What are the conditions that you think set people up for success in, and what are the internal traits you think really make for builders?

Neel Chatterjee: Yeah. ⁓ I think one of the attributes, I don't know how many I can isolate, but one of them is creativity. ⁓ You have to be willing to be creative in a lot of different ways. ⁓ You have to be very outgoing, because when you're building, you almost have to present yourself in the market as bigger than you are. Because to build a brand, you kind of have to be everywhere at once, right? and your peer firms that you're competing against, they have 500 people in their offices and your office or collective offices may have 30. And you have to have that drive to just show up and be in a lot of different places at once. And you have to be interested in doing that because a lot of people don't want to do that. And that's beyond the just practicing law piece, right? I you have to be exceptional at what you do. You have to get some big high profile wins to build market presence. But being in the market and being active in the market is really, really important and doing it in creative and differentiated ways. ⁓ Those are really important. A lot of the people who are hesitant to, you know, because I've thought about opening my own firm and I think probably some of the people you were talking about have thought about doing. Most of what governs people not wanting to do that or do kind of the building thing is risk aversion. ⁓ And you have to be willing to take risks like, well, what's the phrase, you know, you never hit a ball if you don't take a swing. you know, I've been really lucky in that, you know, going to Oreck at the time I did, ⁓ you know, it was very counterintuitive. ⁓ And it was enormously successful, not just for me, but what Dork did with it. ⁓ And ⁓ taking those swings is something you got to be comfortable doing. And you got to be comfortable with, if it doesn't work out, what are you going to do? Because when I started practicing law, I didn't even know if I'd ever make it in big law. I'm weird. I never met an Indian lawyer before I became one. ⁓ I was going to do what I was going to do. If they didn't like it, I probably would have become a public interest lawyer. And I was comfortable with that when I walked in. And I just made the decision to be unapologetically me. And I think you have to, at some level, have those attributes. Not just be like me. You don't have to be a weirdo. But ⁓ you have to be willing to take the big swings and take risks. You have to have whatever creativity you can bring. have to be good at what you do. And you've got to be willing to work to make be present in the ⁓ Those are, I think, really, really important. And I guess the last thing I'll say is the first judge I worked for had this standard for hiring law clerks that was surround yourself with people who are interesting to get to know. And I've always taken that in my hiring strategy. And then even with my client development strategy, the ones that I keep relationships with, because some of them like, you're like the most painful moment of their life and they don't want to see you anywhere. They don't dislike you, but you're reminder of painful moments in their lives. It's kind like I would never be friends with my cancer doctor. I just wouldn't. But surrounding yourself with people who are interesting to get to know and have interesting things to say is just super, super helpful and inspiring.

Khurram Naik: That's some wisdom, Neil. I don't think we can top that.

Neel Chatterjee: All right, bro. Well, I appreciate you having me here. This is a this is really kind of you for them and you're doing good work here

Khurram Naik: Appreciate it,

Neel Chatterjee: All right, thanks.