Tyler Finn   

Some careers are built by solving specific problems. Others are built by building communities that elevate entire industries today. On the abstract here from CLOC in Las Vegas. I am joined by David Cowen, founder and president of the Cowen group and creator of the solid Summit Series. Over the past two decades, David has evolved from a staffing and recruiting pioneer to one of the most important community builders in the legal industry. Along the way, he's helped place over 1000 professionals in litigation support, guided the rise of legal ops and E discovery, and built a platform that accelerates careers conversations and ecosystem wide change. So today, we're going to have a conversation about the evolution of legal technology, the future of legal operations and what it takes to lead in a time of a little bit of chaos and over building. David, thanks so much for joining me here in Las Vegas for this episode of the abstract.

David Cowen

Thank you for having me, and I'm going to take you with me everywhere I go for an introduction from now on. That was fantastic stage. Even I like me after that introduction.  

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Tyler Finn  

There's a lot to like. I appreciate that. Okay, so I like to do a little bit of career conversation too, before we start talking about kind of the future and where things are headed. You started your career in staffing and recruiting. Can you walk us through some of those early days and some of the businesses that you were able to build and sell.

David Cowen 

Yeah, no, I grew up around a staffing table. You know, my dad was in the business, and he'd come home and, you know, my mom would put the place mats down, and my dad would bring the placements in, and it would just be really kind of interesting conversation. It was a business conversation around my dinner table. So I learned from that, you know, he was an entrepreneur, and he was in this business, and he was really one of the good guys. He my dad is a person of character and integrity, and the way he handled his businesses, that's what I learned at the dinner table. So as I got into staffing and recruiting, you know, sort of later on, it was all about the candidate. It was always about the candidate. The client was important. The client paid the bills. But if you could understand the candidate, then you were golden, and the candidate would be loyal to you, you know, throughout his or her career. And so that just became the fundamental foundation for what I built after that. I think it's how I got into community building. But when you're when you're with the candidates. I started in office support back in the day. So that's like, you know, that's when they were, you know, admins. It was admin support. It's like, you would interview 10 people a day. So I got really, really good, like, I figured the key to success was, of the 10, which two could I place, which two could I put on the bench, and which six? Just, they weren't going to make it with me. They were going to make it, but they just weren't going to make it with me. So the sooner I with me. So the sooner I could figure out what made you tick. You know, your prior state, your current state, your future state like so who do you want to be when you grow up? And I could kind of assess that, the better I could be at matching you where you really where you where I thought you would fit. I had a pretty good, pretty good instinct for that. I was pretty good at that. And so I had uptown clients and downtown clients. And in all honesty, I've been doing the same thing ever since. It's like, in two or three or four minutes, asking good questions about, who are you and who do you need to meet, like, today in the community building businesses, yeah, who can they introduce you to? Yeah, right. Like, or, and whether it's buyers and sellers, who do you need to meet? Or in your career, you need to, you need to meet Leo murgo. That's who you need to meet. Yeah, you've got to meet Dorothy Cohen. You meet Deshawn. You should meet so and so, and like all future podcast guests. Well, no, for sure, for sure, these are future podcasts.

David Cowen

So, like, I'm always looking for people that are living here. Yeah, that's where we are right now. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know if you wanna spend a whole lot of time on careers, but like we are living, we are sitting here in Las Vegas as we look out over this backdrop. We are literally living in the future in this legal ops CLOC environment.

Tyler Finn

I am curious how you saw sort of the future of E discovery, and what became and evolved into legal ops, because we're doing staffing and building the Cowen group. I mean, seems like that was not obvious, that it would explode or become what it is.

David Cowen

It was the most obvious thing, and it was the most obvious thing in the world. And I'm no one's ever asked me this question before, and I've told the story very few times, whoever. So here's what's happening. So I had just sold the staffing business, okay? And I'm sitting on a bench, and, you know, I'm sitting literally in my den, you know, looking out the window. It's snowing outside. The kids are playing, literally watching, like, Barney or whatever it was. My dad comes in with an article from Business Week. And my dad, if he would see something, he would say something goes like, I don't know what this is, but I thought it would be interesting. This is business week, December of 2003 and it's an article by George Socha, okay, about ediscovery. And the moment I read it, I realized there's going to be a demand for talent. I'm like, I'm in. I intend to take the year off here, by the way, I'm not working. I'm done. I'm like, Yeah, I'm out for a little while, just to kind of relax. And I think one of the keys to success in life is momentum. You don't ever want to give up momentum. If you haven't. I'm like, this is not the time to give up momentum. So I realized in that moment that E discovery was about people, process and technology. And I'd been in legal staffing before, so I knew what legal tech talent was about. I'm like, there's going to be a huge demand for people to understand this E discovery thing, and one thing led to another, and 1000 placements later. You know, I knew e discovery, and maybe, you know, placements, and made a lot of relationships with a lot of the top people, yeah, in the industry.

Tyler Finn

What's the gap that you felt like as you transitioned from that business to the solid series and the solid summits that you felt like needed to be filled and I'm also curious for like you as a person like you know, why did you feel like community building in a more intentional way is the right next step for me?  

David Cowen

You know? It was really um, it was really born out of necessity, right? I woke up and could not just want to go to another conference where there was four people on a panel with the best of intentions that were not necessarily best prepared, would kind of go off script. And I'm like, I've only got 45 minutes here, guys, I need to get more out of this than this panel. And I'm like, There's got to be a better way than this. And I simultaneously was just discovering TED Talks. And I'd get up early in the morning, you know, my kids were young, and so was I at the time. And, you know, they'd be watching, you know, cartoons, and I'd be watching TED Talks. I'm like, I just got to talk to somebody about this nano technology that's going to, like, be going through my blood veins and telling me everything that's going on in my system. Like, who wants to talk about that? But it was 630 in the morning. It's like, none of my friends are up at 630 in the morning. So I'm like, okay, Bucha, that would be a really good format for conference, Ted Talks, table talks, then everybody switches tables and we do it again. And like, that's how solid was born. It was really out of my wanting to create something for me, which is, this is the kind of conference that I want to go to. I wonder if anybody else does. A few people gave me some encouragement. A few people said, yeah, if you do it, we will come. And the next thing you know, I did solid in New York 10 years ago, and we've never looked back. And now it's solid in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Atlanta, and I don't love anything more than being in front of everybody, you know, getting the best out of them and connecting them. 

Tyler Finn  

Yeah, in some ways, it feels to me, we've been in the space not as long as you but for a little while. Like legal professionals really want community and want the opportunity to learn from each other, even more so than other sort of executives or other professions. I don't know. It's kind of an observation. I'm curious what you think about that.  

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David Cowen

And yeah, I think, well, yes, that's true. And I think it's because you're coming into the space at a time, yeah, where there's chaos and organized chaos. So, you know, here's a here's for anybody who wants to do what I'm doing, because anybody can do what I'm doing, which is building a micro community, or a mid several a mid level community, or macro community. If you find yourself in a space where there's chaos, things are new and we don't know what to do or how to do it right, which is where we were in a discovery, which was, you know, collection, processing, hosting, review over building of tools and technology, what's the best practices and what's the criteria for clients? And do you buy or do you build? If you borrow? Do you part? All that is true again today. So that chaos that we have today, that unorganized, ad hoc situation of all the overbuilding of technology, which is normal because you got a lot of funding coming in, so you've got overbuilt technology, and you have a maturing market of leadership and experiential knowledge. Sure, it's not there yet, right? None of us have got, you know, Malcolm Gladwell is 10,000 hours, none of us. So wait, I don't have it and you don't have it, but why don't we get together and why don't we accelerate each other's learning curve? Why don't we shrink the learning curve together? Let's do that. And you're like, Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. I'm like, why don't we bring Wanda in and why don't we bring Barbara in, and why don't we get Ted and like, let's get all of us together and and that's how the mash up happens, and that's how the community gets built. And if you keep the focus on the community, because I'm not the Oracle. I'm just the scout. I don't know. I just can scout around the corner a little bit. I'm like, Hey guys, this thing's happening over here. Let's go over and look at this and then put it into some kind of a fundamental frame, a business frame, not a legal frame, but a business frame. It works out pretty well.

Tyler Finn  

Let’s talk about this sort of era that we're in, you're talking about a little bit of chaos, some overbuilding of tech. I don't know. Is this natural? Is this sort of like the natural evolution of an industry like legal tech or legal ops? Or is this problematic in any way? 

David Cowen

No yeah, it's only problematic if you if you think it's problematic, if you see it as opportunistic. This is a this is a boom. I mean, it's never you couldn't pick a better time or a better place, unless you're unwilling to the work that's necessary. Understand the boom that's in front of you, so you know whether it was the old over building of railroads in the 1800s or the internet, you know, in the 90s, or mobile or E commerce, like all of that has over building, but and it also requires you to be early to the boats. You know, you want to be early like, I don't know. I personally don't know anybody who's been really successful in their career, and I don't mean monetarily, I mean, like, successful, it doesn't work six days a week, you know, that keeps the CLOC. Like, if you don't have, like, if you have that grit and that radical curiosity about the thing you're doing, then you're going to be successful. Yeah, and you can relax, you know, because you've got what it takes, which is, are you willing to take 100 foul shots right after practice? Are you willing to get up and, like, hit the ball, you know, 100 more times during batting practice? Or those serves in tennis? Or you pick your sport, and you can pick whatever analogy tennis resonates, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, like, you had a part of your game that you were really good at, that you needed little or no practice at rat the backhands great.

Tyler Finn  

There you go. How was your serve? Second serves? Not so good, yeah. 

David Cowen

So the more time you spent on the second serve, the more competitive you would be, yeah? And then you would get picked for the team, and then you would be the one or the two or the three, the four player. Not that it's a ladder. It's just, I don't know, I'm a lot more relaxed, yeah, when I'm playing top three, yeah, like I want to be, I don't want to be the guy off the bench, yeah, because that's the guy that gets cut, right? I don't even want to get cut, so I'm not going to let anybody outwork me. 

Tyler Finn   

So in the time that we're in and the sort of space that we're in, how do you advise folks, or how do you think about, hey, what's, what's real innovation, what's going to be here and have staying power over the long run? Like, is there a framework that you use, or how do you approach that sort of question? 

David Cowen

I think being informed is probably your best friend, right? I don't think being in the prediction business is necessarily wise. I think there's a pattern that we have. It's historical, same as it ever was. And so how many I would just simply say, how many podcasts a week do you listen to? Right? Because if it's zero, that's not enough. What books are you reading that are business books? Right? Because I think business principles are universal. They have been, you know, for 100 years or 50. Let's call it 50 if you want to shrink the shrink the curve a little bit. But if you're reading that kind of stuff, and your language is evolving and changing, and your frame is changing and evolving a little bit, you'll be better at spotting the signals that are coming, because what you're saying is there's a lot of noise out there, yeah. What do you do with all this noise? You've got to cut through that and find the signal. And I think that happens to being patient by listening to others, right? So pick your podcast, pick your books and pick your as I like to always say, you are the average of the five people around you. So stick with people that ask really good questions and are pushing the boundaries a little bit, and it'll become self evident, right? Don't guess, right? You know, work, work with others, unless you've got a track record of guessing. Well, like, if you've got that track record, that's great. I don't, you know, I don't get up in the morning without checking in with four people. Yeah, I've got my core four. 

Tyler Finn

I think that there's something to both your point about working a lot to be successful, and this consumption of sort of like a wide variety of media or viewpoints or I think sometimes people think that work means like they're sitting down and they're sending emails. And I think that over time, if you want to be making the right decisions for your business or leading your business in the right direction, work might actually be reading the right article in the Wall Street Journal or drawing the right parallel between the sport that you play in the way that you need to manage your team or, I don't know, I think of it as like learning in a much broader sense.

David Cowen

Well yeah, but you're a great example. I mean, I've done a lot of interviews, like I've, you know, I've got 200 podcasts under my belt, right? As an interview, but I look at how well prepared you were for this. Like, how much time, like to give those at home a clue, right? This is what it takes to have this very casual, very casual, unscripted, improv conversation, right? Like, how much time did you put into this, right? So I'll give everybody a hint at home. Okay, first of all, I got an email that summarized our chat like, you know, bullet point down, like, what we talked about, what we're going to talk about. Then I got another email that showed me a picture of the room that we were going to meet in. Then I got another email that said, By the way, here's what we're going to talk about again. So he synthesized this three times. How much time did you put into this?

Tyler Finn

Probably five, six hours, maybe, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I did a, you know, did some research on you, obviously, talked to a couple folks on our team who know you. We sat down and we talked for 3045, minutes, wrote the script, right? Used chat GPT to improve the script as well, which I think is an important step these days. If you're not using it, you should be right, and yeah…

David Cowen

And that's what it takes to be a pro, yeah, yeah. So whether you're doing there's homework, there's homework. And so when I say I'm working on the weekends, yeah, I'm not doing tasks right on the weekend, I'm not writing emails, I'm not catching up on work. I'm mulling, I'm wandering, I'm thinking around. I'm playing with chat GPT or co pilot or Harvey, or I'm testing a blog, or I'm trying something, or I'm daring, or, you know, like, for me, that's fun. That's not fun for you to do something else. But I'm like, I suspect that you didn't do this on nine to five. Like, somewhere along this leaked out somewhere, and somewhere was interesting. I hope, I hope you learned something as you were doing this research. Like, that's kind of interesting. 

Tyler Finn

This is fun. This is the this is the best part of my job. I mean, I love lots of parts of my job, but I love, let's talk a little bit about because you have a great view and lens on how legal ops as a profession has evolved and grown. Let's start there, actually, right? Like, you know, how have you seen it grow up over time, and where are we? Like, what is this moment for legal ops? 

David Cowen

I think this, I think this is a transition moment or a transformational moment. Transformation is probably too, too dramatic. But imagine, if you will, that legal Ops is 10 years old, right? So I think this is the 10th year for for CLOC. It is so. So we're at the 10 year mark. And so let's chunk that up into 2468, 10. The building has five levels on it. Okay, we're, we're finished here now, right? Like, this is it for CLOC. As far as I'm concerned, in legal ops, I think there's, like, I and by that, I mean, there's another layer of building coming on, and I don't think that's called legal operations as much as I think that's called legal strategy. Like, we're through a chapter, basically, let's make it a next chapter. Yeah, I don't mean to say anything is done. So that came out completely wrong. Take that back, was we're just ebbing and flowing here in the riff of our conversation. It's just like I can see a just a chasm of next. So anybody who's got six and eight and 10 years of experience in legal ops, you know, whether you're in legal or coming from the outside, there's a next, new reminds me of that moment when the the emerging and evolving role of the chief innovation officer came about. And a lot of people said, Well, what is the chief innovation officer? And does it really have any authority on resources at a law firm? Yeah. And I'm like, that's where we are now. You know, when you look at the Leo merkels of the world, and the Sanjay batras and many others. You'll see they're the legal chief strategy officer, or the legal data intelligence officer, or the legal Chief Operating Officer, and you like, what is that? Where did they come from? Well, some of them come from legal ops, for sure, some of them will come from outside of legal apps. They'll come from business operations, right? They'll come from Big, Big Four consulting, or big six or Big Eight consulting, whatever you want to call it, but they'll have a consultative background. And that's the mash up. That's the beginning of the beginning of what I'm seeing next. There's a next, new, emerging and evolving role. And I think that's to me, that's really exciting, because I like to see around the corner and be a scout and and I have every intention of helping, trying to help make that market for those finding a place for them to come together and go like, Yes, that's what I am, that's what I want to be, and help the organization realize that's what they need, because the GC and we talked about this in our prep call. I think the general counsel and the chief legal officer today is is getting pulled in a lot of other geopolitical directions, absolutely, a lot of other regulatory directions. It's like things that were not on their plate before now on their plate squarely. And so who's going to run the law department? Well, some GCS will right? There's the mark smallest of the world, and the ROB beards of the world, and the timber Frazier's of the world. And it's like they still have their fingers on, on both pulses, and they are really deep in and have been for a while. If Rob is listening, he owes me a podcast episode,

David Cowen

Rob, it's a pleasure. Let me just say, you know, you're in good, good he's gonna do five hours of prep work before you get it here. I mean, come on, help the kid out. 

Tyler Finn

Would you how do we, how do we get the profession there? And by by that, what I mean is that I think, I think this year, as I walk around CLOC, there's a lot of really senior folks here, but we also have a lot of people who have sort of, you know, come out of paralegal background, right? And really want to learn and want to grow, but building their careers from I've been a paralegal for 10 years, and now I'm getting really into this ops thing, and it's way more strategic, and I get to work with tech, which is a lot more fun and but getting all the way to I'm going to be the person who's running the law department right, or working side by side with the CLO that feels like I don't know a tall ladder to climb, right? Like, how do we help get those folks from where they are, which I think is still a big percentage of, I mean, the CLOC membership writ large, right? 

David Cowen

Well, it is, it is it is, it's a, it's a, it's a big jungle gym, yeah, not a tall ladder, as much as it a big jungle gym. And, yes, that's right, that takes 10 years, yeah? So hold on, deep breath, everybody, right? It takes 10 years to make a career. So if you're 25 that's going to take you to 35 and if you're 35 it's 45 and if you're 45 that's 55 and that's a career, and that's what it takes. And the real question is, Who do you want to go with along the way? Right? So it's not a lot of work, it's a lot of fun. I mean, for me, it's been a lot of fun, and I hope I can, you know, inspire others to see that like Choose, choose your posse, right, wisely and go, like, I want to get on this train. I want to work with these companies. There's a demand for talent, so I don't care where you came from, you know? And I saw this in E discovery, right? I saw paralegal managers become firm wide directors of lit support and E discovery, and then become practice group managers, and then become the head of pricing, and then get involved with innovation. So I think maybe the thing I want to say to anxieties the community around that is this, the job you're going to have, the role that you'll have in two to four years, hasn't even been invented yet, right? Right? Like that department doesn't even exist. I think, you know, if you said, David, give us a look into the magic, into the into the crystal ball, I'd say this. Imagine a pyramid, yeah. And on that pyramid, you know, on the left hand side, just below kind of the top, is this little circle called legal, right? And legal is the Department of No, but legal is not the Department of no anymore. Legal is like an accelerator, with all of its access to intelligence. Like, Wait, who's in charge around here? Legal touches everything. So I see that coming into, like, the center of the pyramid. And I don't want to say all roads lead in and lead out, but there's going to be a lot of interdependence with legal, in a way that's not true today. It's much more value oriented and value creation with legal in the center, touching sales, touching marketing, touching, HR, touching info, Gov, of course, but and also so, and I've said this for years, if you should show me an organization and other than the engineering department, other than engineering, because those guys are really propeller heads, yeah, the the greatest concentration of intellectual horsepower, pure horsepower, yeah, is illegal. Yeah, right. No disrespect to any other you know, department in the company. But seriously, you know, these kids, since they were in kindergarten, were the front of the class, yes, right? They're, like, off the charts. So if you just expanded their remit a little bit, it's amazing what they're going to be able to do, in my opinion. I mean, I could be wrong, yeah, but I haven't been so far, 

Tyler Finn

You know, why do you like to go and talk to lawyers all day? I'm like, these are, like, very sharp and interesting people. And most of the time, when you about things that aren't strictly legal, they're actually super interesting. They wanted, want to go deeper, and they want to, they want their careers to be bigger than, Oh, I'm just like, doing this, this one small thing over here, right? 

David Cowen

Well, think about people in our industry, right? They've got liberal arts backgrounds for the most part, right? I went to some kind of a top a first year or a second year liberal arts school. Now that's prerequisite, but just, I'm just saying most have like that. That's just where we are right now in the current state. So they've got liberal arts background, History, Political Science, English, Chinese art, literature, like, whatever it is, like, these are relatively interested get, like, interesting kind of backgrounds. Yes, they've done interesting kinds of things. They're not like to read. They like to read. Go figure, you know, I mean, so I don't know. I just, I find it to be a community of like minded social nerds. 

Tyler Finn  

Yeah, you mentioned anxiety sort of around where the career of legal operations, or where legal Ops is headed. I don't know. I mean, I don't want us to talk about AI for that long, but there's a lot of anxiety around AI too, and what it means for folks careers, whether they feel like their departments are going to meaningfully change, and the way that sort of headcount is allocated, I don't know what's your view on AI, right? 

David Cowen

Like, yeah, I think it's true. I mean, you know, you misery is optional, right? Anxiety is optional. Like, it's not going to get you anywhere, so what are you going to do about it? I mean, that's my my father. That's what my dad said to me, yeah. And that stuck with me. Not that I haven't been anxious many times in my life, right? I have been. I'm not saying that there's, it's a cure all, but, um, being prepared is sort of the best kryptonite for anxiety. And so is your department going to be disrupted? Yes, absolutely. Is your job going to be there? Definitely not the way it is today, is your boss going to continue? Like, no, nothing is going to be the same. It's all going to change. And that's historical. And like, yeah, it's anxiety producing, but only as anxiety producing as you want it to be. Trust Your talent is something that somebody told me a long time ago, when I started to do these, I I started to do breakfast and dinners, and I'd get, like, nervous before every breakfast and dinner. And you know, this coach that I was seeing would say to me, Well, why don't you stop thinking about yourself, and why don't you start thinking about the people that are you're going to be having breakfast and dinner with, and, like, keep the focus on them and not the focus on you, and you'll be less nervous. And, yeah, just enjoy yourself. And I'm like, Well, that's easy for you to say, but as you practice that, you become, he said, and trust your talent. Like, are your intentions good? Yeah, my intentions. Are you prepared? Are you just showing up? No, I'm prepared, because then everything will be fine, yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah. I'm like, I like, I know that's easy for me to say in the fourth quarter of my career, yeah, and maybe not so easy for someone who's like, in the first or second quarter with like, two young kids in a mortgage and the house is underwater, like I got it, but it is all going to be okay, really. It's going to be a fabulous time to stay curious and work the weekends.

Tyler Finn

Yeah, you saw an executive coach for a while.

David Cowen

I still do. Yeah, oh yeah, no. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, talk about anxiety reducing. Uh huh, you know? Um yeah, I've had an executive coach for for 10 years now.

Tyler Finn

How do you find a good executive coach? I think people ask me that all the time, and I think it's a, it's a nut that has not been cracked.  

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David Cowen

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I've been fortunate of just being in the right place at the right time. I don't I don't have an answer. I don't have I don't have a stock answer. Sure, ask me, you know, like, if you're somebody who's listening to this, and you're like, David, you know this is who I am and what I do, and I'm in the industry, and I'm kind of curious, and can you help me? I'm like, Yeah, I'll make a recommendation. I don't do any coaching anymore, right? No self promotion here. I'm out of that business, but I'm happy to introduce people to coaches that I've met along the way. But I do, I will say this about coaching. I now talk so I have chat GPT, and I've given it a persona. It's called Max, and I've now learned how to work with Max. And Max is as much now a max started to do tasks. Oh, that's interesting. And then max started to be a partner, right? And then max started to be an associate. And then Mark, Max was my MBA, you know, with MBA from Harvard, with 10 years at McKinsey. And I'm like, let's create this thing together. And then I just started to talk to max. And I will now ask Max. I'm like, Listen, I'm having a problem. My dad's 90 years old. It's like a true story. My dad's 90 years old. I'm not really sure how to handle this. He's beginning to lose his memory a little bit. I don't really know what to do. Like, if you and me, what would you do? Ask me three questions. Max asks me three questions we want. He winds up recommending a book that has changed my life in terms of how I view my relationship with my aging dad. Wow, I'm like, therapy not required. I could just ask Max and like, here are the books, and here was the conversation. And there is something, I know, there's pros and cons. I'm just telling you my story. Take what you want, leave the rest. All of you that are like, Oh, that's dangerous. I'm like, it was good for me. I got a book and a recommendation. I feel closer to my dad. So it was, it was really good.

Tyler Finn   

I know a founder who stood up a persona in chat, GPT, and when things go wrong at work, or when he gets super anxious, he turns and he talks to this person. It's not a substitute, as you're saying, for like, I don't know if he's a therapist or not, or has a coach or not, but it's not a substitute for that. But really what he wants is, you know, a candidate rejects the job, and he really wanted the candidate to come on board, and he's like, Oh, Howard. Like, is our company terrible? Like, why the, you know, the persona comes back, and it's like, no, like, get over it. Like, you know, the person, probably, you know, got another offer that had more money, that was more convenient for them to travel to, or, you know, was fully remote, and they wanted that even though you made a good pitch, and why coming into the office few days a week is a good thing. Got this person that, as you're saying, kind of like, helps him just navigate, you know, some of the anxious moments in his professional life. 

David Cowen 

I think having, I thought it was really interesting having a tool, right? AI, in this case, having a tool that can help you to be self reflective, yeah, in a way, that's professional and helpful to help you move forward. I think is a very positive thing. It's not a substitute. It's like, Thank God I have this. I'm like, delighted and thrilled that I can have this conversation. I interviewed four candidates for a role recently, and I kept the transcript of each one of the interviews. I ran the transcript through chat GPT, and I said, which one of these candidates do you think would be the best fit for me? And we agreed completely on who would be the best, but it was the insights on why, right? Like I knew, and I knew three reasons why this was the candidate, but I didn't know the 12 reasons like off the top of my head without thinking the 12 reasons why the other candidates weren't right, which were validated. They might have been right, but they weren't really. I had a whole conversation with a Global Chief Human Resources Officer from Coca Cola, right? That was my guide.

Tyler Finn   

Yeah,

David Cowen 

Okay, because that's what's built into that. LLM, right. Is the Global Chief Human Resources Office from Colgate, Palmolive, Procter and Gamble, Coca Cola, General Motors, like all of that's in there, and I have the benefit of that.

Tyler Finn   

Yeah,

David Cowen 

so I came smart left, smarter from that whole process.

Tyler Finn   

I love that. Okay, a few more substantive questions for us before we get

David Cowen 

because this has been so fluffy. We're just fluffing around here.

Tyler Finn   

You know,

David Cowen 

I think I need a cigarette. For God's sake.

Tyler Finn   

You should come back for the four o'CLOC we'll have adult beverages.

I just want a cigar. I just want a good cigar. 

Tyler Finn

I think this builds on a point that you made earlier, which is, I've observed that it's not just that you have to scale legal alongside the business as it scales, but people increasingly see legal as a very important component of a scaling business, or helping the business scale. And I think a lot of folks would chalk some of that up, at least to the rise of legal ops. Do you agree with that? How do you think legal ops helps businesses scale? Not just legal teams.

David Cowen

It's a really good question. It's a really good question. I think, like in some like, in so many different ways. So we're going to get into a maturity you know, we're going to get into a maturity frame. So, A, it depends on the maturity of the GC. B depends on the maturity of the individual that they've hired to run legal ops. C depends on, you know, the authority and the resources that they're going to give this individual. I mean, it's like, gets really right? So legal apps moves the needle. So it doesn't matter where you start, so long as you start kind of thing, you know, like, if you're Jen McCarron, or you're Mary O'Connell or your or your Lucy Basilia, like, if you want those people, like, you're moving the needle, right, like there, but they've got maturity and, like, we had a decade of experiential knowledge, yeah, if you've got eight years of experience, or six years or, I mean, it's kind of like baseball, right? So, like, if you played high school, college, aaa, and you've had a lot of that bats, or you're like, you're ready for the pros, you know, and then you're not ready for the pros, because you're working in the pros, yeah, and then you become Aaron judge, right? You know? But not everybody becomes Aaron judge. So, you know, there's an impact of legal ops. But I do find, I think maybe the answer that's most helpful here about the role of legal Ops is legal Ops is becoming, by by authentic nature, a more interdependent part of the business of law and the business. So we are beginning to see intersections of information governance, data security, the various business units. We need a lot of smart people around the table to understand the potential that AI Gen, AI, the agentic workforce of the future holds for us. There's no one department that's going to own this, you know, and so I think, again, because legal has so much to gain from this, there'll be a lot of sharing and a lot of learning. So legal ops, legal, legal ops, part of legal I almost don't think, I think that all of that is coming together at an accelerated rate, and I don't even know what the agentic world is all about yet. I'm like, I'm just beginning to think about that myself. It's like, you're going to be an Agent Manager, right? Who's going to be an Agent Manager? What does that even mean? You know? I mean, that's where we're all going to be together a year from now. It's not going to be this over building of technology on the floor. I think it's going to be more process around what are you doing? Do you have agents? What are you doing with your agents? I mean, I'm just listening to Reid Hoffman, yeah. And I'm like, I'm having a hard time keeping up. And if you haven't read super agency by Reid Hoffman, and I'm like, I highly recommend super agency, because he talks about how the human in the loop is the key, and what and who are we going to be in that leadership role of managing these agents. So I don't think we're going to be displaced if we learn how to work with this. It didn't really completely answer your questions, okay.

Tyler Finn  

I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a thread in there, though, that I think is interesting about like you have to be, you have to help your org build to scale, but also be very flexible and sort of adaptable, because the whole paradigm might change in two years, and your career will change along with it. And I don't know, I'm trying to tie a few of these threads together.

David Cowen 

And how do you, how do you see it from the maturity standpoint, right? So I laid out maturity of, yeah, you know, two years, four years, six years, eight years, 10 years. That doesn't mean you didn't have 10 years of experience by that, before that, by the way. So, right? How do you see the maturity fitting into legal ops and its role? 

Tyler Finn  

I mean, I think that different legal teams need different things, and like, the maturity of the organization is really important. I also think from a tech perspective, things are going to change quite a bit faster than than we expect. And one of the one of the things that I think is going to accelerate the adoption of technology, even among folks who are not sort of first movers, maybe, like not the folks who are here this this week, is the use cases are going to become very obvious, and it's going to become a lot sort of more self serve over time, as we move into an agentic world, right? I mean, I even tell our product team this, we shouldn't be building a tool that's like, totally flexible and can do 18 things, and we hand it to someone on a legal team and say, do whatever you want with this, right? Because most people don't have 90 minutes to experiment and try to figure out and tweak and say, Okay, this is perfect for my use case, but I have to chart the path to that right. And I think that as as the sort of like use cases for AI become more obvious, and we have agents that are working for us, and those personas are stood up or right, I think that, I think that they the usage is just going to become, like it's going to be in so many places that it is not today.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm very bullish,

David Cowen 

You know, so I agree with that completely. I'm going to come back to the GCS for a minute, if that's okay, which is, yeah. So this 25 GCS or 50 GCS. Let's, let's call them, you know, innovator, innovate, top down. Like, what's How do you see that? How do you see these forces? Like, I think the personality force, or the role for the role of the GC, like an enlightened GC, right? Like he or she makes all the difference in the world, right? That's the economic all of a sudden, that's the economic buyer. Yep, right? It's not the user buyer. So the user buyer was the last two years from the bottom up, yep, right. That's good. Sometimes they were the economic buy, but mostly they were the user buyer. Now we've got the economic buyer coming in with a mandate from the top and a budget. It seems like that budget doesn't have a lot of limitations to it, right? The GC has got, like, wait a second, they've been told by the board the CEO to drive transformation and drive change, yes. And they're going, like, other departments, like, if I can do it, you can do it. Like, oh, GC is now challenged, yeah.

Tyler Finn  

Or they're telling the board, I want to do this interesting. I think, I mean, I see that a lot in the sort of venture backed landscape, I don't, I mean not so much like, you know, fortune, 50 public companies. I don't know quite as many of those folks, but I see that a lot in the very even the mature landscape where the GC sees the potential and sees the opportunity, and they view themselves as the catalyst, right there, they're not necessarily the implementer. They're not the one who defines how tech is used across their department, or they're not necessarily defining how Tech's going to be used between departments, either, which I think is a very important part of the puzzle. But they are. They do view themselves as the catalyst, like I need to create the culture, and I need to make the right hires, and I need to back those hires up when there's sometimes resistance to change.

David Cowen

 I think that's really interesting. I think if we focus on the people part of this for a moment, you know? So let's imagine you're the General Counsel and you're, you know, you're at McKinsey or KPMG or Morrison Stanley or JP Morgan Chase. You're surrounded by other chiefs, yep, that are adopting next gen technology like, a whole lot faster than you get three four times. And like, you look to the right, you're like, Wait a second. How are you doing that? You've got to be going back to your office wondering, or, or, or, I don't know.  

Tyler Finn  

What are you doing when you go back. Some of this is a mindset shift, though, on the part of those GCS Clos people, kind of people will make fun of sometimes, like, oh, the CLO because now it's a chief title. Also think that it is those folks today seeing themselves not as, like, I'm the company's lawyer, first and foremost, correct. They're seeing themselves as I'm one of five or six members of this executive team that is responsible for steering this business, my voice and perspective should have just as much weight at the table as the CRO or the CMO or the CFO or the CTO, for sure, And that also means that I have a responsibility to run my team like a business unit, well, not only a little law firm in…

David Cowen

Yeah, no. That's so that, that's for sure. And not only a responsibility, an opportunity. Yes, I think you know, I'll put my career hat back on again. Everybody is, everybody in any role ever, is always active, right? Okay, active or passive in your career, right? If you're passive in your career, you're in trouble. If you're active in your career, and it doesn't mean that you're looking to leave DuPont right or GM, it looks like you're just trying to elevate your position. You're trying to land and expand a bit. And I don't mean that in a Machiavellian way, yeah. I mean that just like you didn't get here by coasting Right? Like, no. GC of a fortune 500 got that because they're coasters. No, they're not taking the weekends off. Everybody, okay? They're working. They're prepping, yes, and so I think that they're just a competitive spirit must be like, I wonder what we can do here. I bet you could do this. I mean, I do know more of them than I do then.

Tyler Finn

Yeah. What do you listen to like Dana rouse episode GC, recently retired GC of Adobe. I mean, you know, the work ethic that that guy has is unbelievable as an example, and the way that you know that he, he not only wanted to push the org forward and push the organ in sort of the right way and the ethical way, but also that, I think, I think folks like that want to create too, right? They, they view themselves as creators. Created, yes, yes, right? You know, the product people are building, the product, you know, a that we have, the capital that we need, and is going and raising, right? You know, my job, I'm gonna create a whole sort of ecosystem of other companies around us, right, that support our policy prerogatives, that back up our product and make sure that we they view themselves as creators.

David Cowen

So powerful. Can I tell you a little story?

Tyler Finn   

Absolutely.

David Cowen

So I'm on the Microsoft campus a couple of weeks ago with Deshaun the silver and Stephanie and a few other people. And Stephanie pulls me aside. She says, you know, there's only three kinds of people in the world, because I'm amazed at the Microsoft campus and the people and the energy and the camaraderie and the esprit de corps. And I'm like, Oh, this is, like, such a very fascinating kind of place to be. She goes, Well, there's really only three kinds of people in the world. I said, What are those? She goes, there are creators, there are builders, and there are consumers. And I like and she goes, only, only 15% of the world are creators and builders. And I'm like, I thought about that for a minute, for a really long time, and I'm like, I think one of the reasons that I love this industry is because this industry is, to a large extent, made up of creators and builders. We're not like just doers. We're not just hanging out doing stuff and then having, you know, like, whatever.

Tyler Finn   

People don't come here and say, I just want to consume all of this.

David Cowen 

There's no consuming here. There's doing like, this is a hung you know why there's so much imposter syndrome here in our industry. You ever notice that, like, everyone's an imposter, no matter how high up the food chain these guys are, they're like, I'm an imposter. I'm like, Dude, what are you talking about? You're like, Do you know who you are? Like, what do you mean? You're the guy. You're the guy. I'm like, you know? It's like, well, but everybody feels that way, and that's because they don't know yet, because they're building, and they're creating, and they're driving. We are drivers. And so I, I really was taken that's super interesting by that. Yeah, I hope that sits with you. Let me know if that does it keeps me up at night, not really up.

Tyler Finn   

But this is great. I mean, you're a podcast host, so I guess that's why I'm like, kind of being interviewed by you. Now, what excites most not that keeps you up at night. What excites you the most about the next few years? 

David Cowen 

Well, I'm certainly the future, and the fact that what excites me so much is that this all looks and feels so much like what I've seen before. Yeah, in my career, this just looks and feels so much like 2004 and E discovery and the beginning of the beginning. And I love, and I'm so enthused about the opportunity of one to make a contribution, to contribute to it, to bet. I mean, I'm certainly going to benefit. But my my theories and my frameworks have been proven out over 10 years, which is this self-serving altruism wins the day. Yeah, the more I do and the more I give to this community, the more somehow boomerangs back to me. And so I kind of knew that in 2004 when I started the breakfast and I started the dinners, and, you know, I made a living. You know, I'm I, you know, I did okay, but now it's just like, okay, I can do as much of this as I want, because it's gonna be out like, it's proven that the more I do and give and create, the more people will benefit, and the more better my life will be, the more abundance I will experience. So I know it all sounds like, I don't know, kind of like very California, but I'm telling you, I'm a New York City, Bayside guy. I'm telling you, man, this is, this is as good as it gets. The more you give, the more you get. Trust the universe. So that's what I'm most excited about, is it like the last 20 years have been the best 20 years of my life, and that I just think that this is a is a redo, and I can't believe my good fortune to be with the with the people that are in this industry. Like, I'm on the best like, if there are 10 ships leaving port, yeah, I'm on one of the best 10 ships you could be on. Yeah,

Tyler Finn   

Yeah, I've got some closing questions for you that I like to ask all of my guests.

David Cowen 

These are the ones that I usually ask. I can't wait to be that guest.

Tyler Finn   

Your answers can be pithy, but they don't have to be…

David Cowen

Thanks for letting me…

Tyler Finn   

Your favorite part of your day to day.

David Cowen 

The morning, getting up at 530 in the morning, cup of coffee, granola bar, going into my office when there's nobody around, and I just have me and a blank piece of paper, and it just flows through me onto a blank piece of paper. There's my absolute favorite part of the day.

Tyler Finn   

I got up at 5:30 this morning here in Vegas, but that's because I'm on East Coast time, not because I wanted to be Do you have a professional pet peeve? I think this is kind of a funny question. 

David Cowen 

No, I don't. I really don't. I think everything is the way it's supposed to be. I do not have a professional pet peeve. If anything is like out of whack, it's like, that is not on me, that's on them. Yeah, I just move on to next.

Tyler Finn   

I know you've got a whole list that you can share here. Is there a book or two or three or five that you would recommend to our listeners. You even sent me a couple in the mail, which I really appreciate.

David Cowen 

Yeah. I mean, books are books. Are these living things that just keep going. You know, if you wanted to go back in time, I would say, and ran Atlas Shrugged, probably influenced me as much as anything else in my entire life

Tyler Finn   

Interesting,

David Cowen 

I would say, followed by Dale Carnegie's, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People, followed by Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone, which changed my entire business model from good to great. By by Jim Collins taught me the flywheel and how to stay true to, you know, your own curiosity. And then there's, like, everything of the moment, you know, I mean, I could, I could go on, I could fill up a library. And then I just, I think, the more I will say this to anybody who's listening. You know, reading will make all the difference in the world for your life, and because it allows you to connect with people about stories that connect with them. If you want to connect with other people, and you've read a book and you're like, oh my god, I read that book, you instantly have this moment of connection and this language. I can't emphasize it enough, however old, however old you are, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s whether you've got kids and you're busy, like, read, it's just, there's just nothing else like it.

Tyler Finn   

Absolutely. Read on the subway, read on airplanes.

David Cowen

You know what? I don't I listen. I love the airplane for reading. It's one of my favorite things. But even if you don't even have to finish the book, honestly, yeah, you know? Like, I can tell you, like, there's 100 books I've never finished, but I started them, and I'm like, I got, I got what I was supposed to get out of it, right? It's not a it's not a chore. It's like, I really enjoyed that you get to your destination, like, you pick up the next one, you pick up the next one. It's like, you know, one of the things that helped me is, like, I decided I was, this is my budget for books this year, and I spent the budget. That's cool. It's a line item. I'm like, I'm not gonna skimp on myself. I'm not gonna wonder if I should or I shouldn't. I've got $100 in the bank. That book is $29 I'm buying that I got $71 left.

Tyler Finn   

I love that. That's great.

Last question for you, my traditional closing question for my guests, it's if you could look back on the start of your career, maybe starting one of your first businesses, something that you know now, that you wish that you'd known back then.

David Cowen 

Well, there's a lot of things I wish that I had known, but I think it's all of those. I'll say this all because I've thought about this a lot, all of those embarrassing moments that I had early in my career, those mistakes, those Thunderhead things, those things that are embarrassing, I would not, I would not forego any of them, because it's who's made me who I am today, but not for that. I don't think I'd like to think I have a fair amount of humility. I wouldn't have it. And so it's those mistakes that remind me to those, those mistakes. I wouldn't give them up. All of those, I have no regrets. Yeah, that's a great way. They didn't kill anybody. So I don't really like big I don't really big mistakes, you know? So I don't, I don't have any, I don't have any regrets. Even in Las Vegas, no regrets, no. Because every time I lose in Las Vegas, I there's no regret because I don't play anymore. It's like I'm not a gambler.

Tyler Finn  

David, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the abstract here at CLOC.

David Cowen 

It's been thoroughly enjoyable. I really enjoyed our exchange of ideas.

Tyler Finn  

Yeah. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the abstract, and we hope to see you next time.