CZ and Friends

Bjarne Tellmann spent 30 years as a general counsel at Haleon, Pearson, Coca-Cola, and Aramco. Now, as CEO of FjordStream Advisors and author of "Law in the Era of AI" (Wiley), he argues that the disruption of the law firm model will not come from startups - it will come from clients.

In this episode of CZ and Friends, Cecilia Ziniti joins Bjarne to unpack what he saw from the inside of some of the world's largest legal departments, why most firms are paralyzed right now, and what in-house leaders should do about it.

What you will learn:

• Why the billable hour model is facing a Nokia moment, and what the "job to be done" shift means for law firms.
• How Bjarne cut legal costs by more than 40% at Pearson without simply laying people off.
• The two things in-house teams do that no outside firm can replicate: being proactive and being pragmatic.
• Why AI governance is now a third engine of in-house value, alongside productivity and pragmatism.
• What the "AI factory" model means for how companies will consume legal services by 2030.
• How to build a legal department culture where people understand the "why" behind the work.
• Practical tips for GCs facing board pressure on AI adoption.

About Bjarne Tellmann: Bjarne is the CEO of FjordStream Advisors and the author of "Law in the Era of AI," published by Wiley. He served as General Counsel at Haleon, Pearson, Coca-Cola, and Aramco. Before law, he was a professional actor in Norway, doing film and TV work before coming to the US for theater school.

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@Bjarne Philip Tellmann on LinkedIn

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How does a legal operations team at a global semiconductor company cut contract request time by 73%, earn a seat at the CLO's staff table, and build board-level analytics, all while keeping pace with AI?

In this episode of CZ and Friends, Cecilia Ziniti sits down with Sruthi Kosuri and Cindy Prabhakar from the legal operations team at Marvell Technology, an $8 billion company powering the infrastructure behind AI, cloud, and the devices we use every day.

Sruthi and Cindy share how they transformed Marvell's legal function from a manual, reactive team into a modern, data-driven operation that the rest of the business actively wants to partner with. From auto-triaging 40% of contract requests to building self-serve SOW workflows that close in under 15 minutes, this episode is a practical masterclass in legal ops at global scale.

In this episode:

• How Marvell's legal ops team cut contract request time by 73% across a 7,000-person user base.
• Meeting stakeholders where they are and how that changed how legal is perceived across their company.
• How auto-triage and self-serve workflows replaced a single-point-of-failure manual routing system.
• The strategy behind pushing Marvell paper on the front end to unlock downstream contract speed.
• How the "Legally Brilliant Challenge" gamified AI adoption across the legal team.
• What board-level legal analytics look like and how to get there.
• Why legal ops is no longer just legal ops, and what "global operations" means for the future.

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@Sruthi Kosuri on LinkedIn

@Cindy Prabhakar on LinkedIn

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What if the best thing a lawyer could do is figure out how to make themselves obsolete?

Jimmy Toy, Chief Legal Officer at Articore Group (the company behind Redbubble and TeePublic), has been using AI and machine learning in legal work for over 10 years. In this episode of CZ and Friends, Jimmy joins host Cecilia Ziniti to share why the future of legal is not about working faster with AI, but about working differently.

Jimmy and Cecilia cover:

• Why the best lawyers five years from now will use AI to stop doing legal work entirely, shifting from authoring outputs to reviewing them and architecting systems
• How the billable hour trained lawyers to fear efficiency, and what in-house counsel can do to shed that mindset
• What it looks like to manage 40+ IP cases across global jurisdictions, including a landmark Australian trademark case against the Hells Angels that created new platform liability law
• How Articore built an AI-powered knowledge base from decades of court filings, deposition transcripts, and briefs so any team member can surface consistent legal positions in seconds
• Why Jimmy tells his team to embrace being replaced, and how he built an AI champion role inside his legal function
• The three values that guide his legal team: light touch, no surprises, and make every dollar count
• What it means to be a turnaround GC, and how legal can have a direct impact on OpEx even when it cannot drive revenue

Jimmy also shares his take on copyright, platform liability, user-generated content at scale, and why the 20% that AI cannot replicate is where lawyers need to live.

Follow Jimmy:

@Jimmy Toy on LinkedIn

Chapters: 00:00 Preview 00:12 Welcome and intro: Jimmy Toy, CLO at Articore Group 00:25 Redbubble, TeePublic, and 70 million user-generated images 00:48 Jimmy's 10+ years using AI before modern LLMs 01:16 The future of legal: from authoring to architecting 02:10 Why lawyers resist AI more than other professions 04:21 The billable hour and the psychology of legal work 06:10 In-house vs. firm: shedding the hours-based mindset 07:38 What legal looks like in five years 09:27 Articore's platforms and how the marketplace works 12:42 IP risk, DMCA, and managing copyright at scale 14:51 40+ IP cases across global jurisdictions 16:37 The Hells Angels case and creating Australian platform law 18:54 Deciding to appeal: balancing cost, risk, and principle 21:57 AI and litigation knowledge bases 25:05 The "VP of Existing Obligations" problem and how AI solves it 27:44 Decentralizing institutional knowledge with AI 28:44 What surprised Jimmy most about his tenure 30:44 Has the board noticed legal as a product? 31:07 Being a turnaround GC: cost, OpEx, and impact 33:31 The three team values: light touch, no surprises, make every dollar count 34:17 Lightning round: advice, books, and favorite thing about being a lawyer

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Nicole Komin and Danielle Shainbrown co-founded two companies together out of Buffalo, New York: Bellwether Advisors, a real estate consulting and advisory practice, and Shainbrown Komin PLLC, a law firm. They launched both in 2022 and have been running them side by side ever since.

Their paths to getting there could not be more different. Nicole came up through public interest work, elder law, and pro bono coordination before moving into real estate. Danielle spent nearly a decade at a commercial real estate development company, working her way to president, then stepped away to build something of her own.

In this special episode of CZ and Friends, hosted by GC AI’s General Counsel, Laurel Palluzi, Laurel sits down with Nicole and Danielle to cover:

• Why they launched a law firm and a consulting practice at the same time, and how they keep them distinct
• What working inside a real estate development company teaches you that you cannot learn from the outside
• The real estate law details that never show up in law school, from wetland delineations to title curative work in New York state
• What it actually takes to leave a president title behind and start over
• How they use GC AI to replace the work of multiple FTEs and redline contracts directly in Word
• What Buffalo's real estate market looks like right now, and why it is drawing attention as a climate refuge and residential hotspot
• The one thing nobody tells you before you go from employee to founder

This is the first time CZ and Friends has gone deep into real estate law. Nicole and Danielle bring a perspective most real estate attorneys do not have: they have stood on every side of a deal.

Follow Danielle, Nicole, and Laurel:

@Danielle Shainbrown on Linkedin

@Nicole Komin on LinkedIn

@Laurel Paluzzi on LinkedIn

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:22 Nicole's path from elder law to real estate 6:45 How the McGuire opportunity came together 7:07 Danielle's path: from law firm to general counsel to president 13:05 What it was like to lead through COVID as president 15:41 Why Danielle walked away from the president role 18:43 Nicole's decision to build something of her own 21:19 Planning the escape hatch during one-on-ones 23:02 What nobody tells you about going from employee to founder 27:13 Real estate law: what you only learn from the inside 33:19 Running a law firm and a consulting practice in parallel 36:17 Buffalo's real estate market and what it means to be embedded in a community 43:06 How Nicole and Danielle found GC AI and what changed 47:01 Lightning round: myths, books, and advice for your younger self 50:21 Final takeaways

About the Guests: Nicole Komin and Danielle Shainbrown are co-founders of Bellwether Advisors and Shainbrown Komin PLLC, based in Buffalo, New York. Their practices cover commercial real estate, business law, owner's representation, and real estate development consulting.

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Rachel Harris, General Counsel and AI Governance & Privacy Officer at Suzy, joins Cecilia to talk about what it takes to be a solo GC at a high-growth AI startup.

Rachel's career started in an unlikely place: plaintiff-side pharmaceutical MDL litigation in St. Louis, where she learned to work fast, take big bets, and operate alongside founders who mortgaged their homes to finance cases. That scrappy, high-risk-tolerance mindset turned out to be the perfect training ground for startup life.

Now at Suzy, Rachel has built the company's privacy program from the ground up, shipped a hacky-but-brilliant CLM alternative inside Salesforce, and is pushing the boundaries of what product counsel looks like in the AI era. Her philosophy: if legal is a bottleneck, something upstream is broken. The fix is not more process; it is deeper integration into the workflows where decisions actually happen.

Rachel also shares a real-time example of using AI to create a markdown file spec for a product feature involving consent capture, handing it directly to engineering, and watching them build a prototype overnight. Her CEO's reaction: "Can you infuse the brain of Rachel into the thing?" That, she argues, is the future of in-house legal.

The conversation covers compliance theater (and how to avoid it), the ROI calculus of certifications like ISO 42001 and SOC 2, optimizing security questionnaires, and why the modern GC is already a product manager whether they know it or not.

Follow Rachel:

@Rachel Harris on LinkedIn

Show notes:

• Why plaintiff-side litigation is better startup prep than big law
• The "go upstream" framework for eliminating legal bottlenecks
• How to build a CLM workaround when there is no CLM budget
• Using markdown files to go from legal spec to product prototype
• Avoiding compliance theater in security, privacy, and AI governance
• Why in-house lawyers are better positioned for AI than law firms

Lightning Round: Rachel recommends The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins and shares her two-line advice to her younger self: be kind and make friends.

00:00 – Preview
00:11 – Meet Rachel Harris: From Pharma MDLs to Startup GC
02:22 – What Plaintiff-Side Litigation Teaches You About Startups
05:23 – Craziest Litigation Stories
06:59 – The Journey to Suzy
11:42 – First Days In-House: Imposter Syndrome and Making Friends
16:09 – If Legal Is a Bottleneck, Something Upstream Is Broken
18:40 – Building a DIY CLM Inside Salesforce
22:48 – The Future of Product Counsel: Markdown Files and AI Prototyping
28:22 – Why AI Is Better Placed In-House Than at Law Firms
32:01 – AI Governance, ISO 42001, and Avoiding Compliance Theater
37:01 – Taming the 500-Question Security Questionnaire
42:29 – The Modern GC Is Already a Product Manager
44:24 – Lightning Round
45:31 – Outro

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Molly Abraham, VP of Legal at Coinbase, joins Cecilia to talk about what it takes to build and lead a 90-person legal team through one of the most scrutinized regulatory periods in tech history.

Molly started as a chemical engineer at Procter and Gamble, taught the LSAT at night to pay for law school, and went on to Wachtell Lipton before moving in-house at Kitty Hawk (the Larry Page-backed flying car company) and then Coinbase. Her path is unconventional, and her framework for legal leadership is sharper for it.

Follow Molly:

@Molly Abraham on LinkedIn

Show notes:

• Why the best GCs and CLOs are business leaders first, lawyers second
• The "dot connecting" role that makes product counsel indispensable across an organization
• How Coinbase challenged the SEC's authority and what it looked like from inside the legal team when the case was dismissed with prejudice
• Why Molly hires for people who question everything, including the policy rationale behind the rules themselves
• Her three-hat framework for how legal leaders should think about AI: enabler, protector, and super user
• Why in-house lawyers who do not embrace AI will become less relevant, and what to do about it
• Her contrarian career advice: be dispensable

Molly also shares the story of a Kitty Hawk aircraft that did not fit neatly into FAA jurisdiction, how she thinks about privilege in the age of AI tools, and why she bought Crypto for Dummies the day before she started at Coinbase.

Chapters: 

00:00 Preview 

00:14 Intro: Molly's background and path to Coinbase 

01:43 Engineering at Procter and Gamble, Pampers, and patent strategy 

06:11 Dot connecting as a core legal skill 

07:41 Legal as a training ground for founders 

08:53 Kitty Hawk: flying cars, the FAA, and the Coast Guard 

12:05 How to give creative regulatory advice 

14:38 Why Molly chose Coinbase 

17:36 The crypto mission and why it stuck 

22:11 What Molly is most proud of at Coinbase 

27:12 The SEC lawsuit and what transparency looked like from inside 

31:47 Enlisting users in regulatory advocacy 

35:55 How to work with regulators effectively 

38:52 How to give legal advice engineers and product teams believe 

41:16 AI and the future of in-house legal 

42:56 Privilege, AI tools, and the three hats framework 

48:51 Becoming an AI super user 

51:03 Lightning round: best career advice, favorite book

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Online learning, AI adoption, and what it really takes to build a company worth building.

Today's guest is Gagan Biyani, CEO and Co-founder of Maven and co-founder of Udemy, one of the largest online learning marketplaces in the world. Gagan has spent over 15 years building at the intersection of education and technology. His perspective on how professionals learn, adopt new tools, and think about ambition is unlike anyone else in the space.

You'll hear:

– Why Udemy pivoted from live to recorded learning in 2009 and what that decision unlocked for an entire industry

– How Gagan built Maven from scratch a decade later, starting over with first principles

– His honest take on AI adoption, including why even tech-forward CEOs still call their lawyers

– The business case for investing in employee learning and why L&D has a reputation problem worth fixing

– How to think about ambition, risk, and picking the right wave to ride in your career

– Why startups are less risky than most people think

Whether you are a GC thinking about staying relevant, a senior leader trying to build a learning culture, or someone curious about the future of work, this one is worth your time.

Follow Gagan: 

@Gagan Biyani on LinkedIn

SHOW NOTES

Books, Authors & Thinkers Mentioned:

– Ben Horowitz (What You Do Is Who You Are, cultural lore, Amazon door desks)

– Bob Iger (career ambition and picking industries that can go big)

Other References:

– Maven (maven.com) and GC AI cohort classes (gc.ai/classes)

– Udemy, Coursera, and the recorded video learning era

– ChatGPT and Claude as first-research tools for legal and business questions

– Jevons Paradox applied to AI and legal work

– Exponential adoption curves and why AI is moving faster than the early internet did

– WSGR (Wilson Sonsini) referenced as Gagan's corporate counsel

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What does it mean to lead legal without white-knuckling every outcome? Matthew Campobasso, Chief Legal Officer of Zone & Co., joins Cecilia Ziniti on CZ and Friends to answer that question head-on.

Matthew brings nearly 20 years of legal experience across criminal prosecution, big law litigation, and in-house leadership. In this conversation, he unpacks why the legal profession has a control problem, how anxiety can be a feature or a bug depending on your self-awareness, and what it looks like to build a legal function that the business actually wants to come to.

Follow Matthew:

@Matthew Campobasso on Linkedin

They also get into:

The difference between competence and control, and why lawyers confuse the two
How to hold authority without pretending to own the outcome
What it means to be a legal partner vs. a legal gatekeeper
The real cost of being the lawyer people route around
How his background in criminal law shaped his ability to stay unflappable in the boardroom
The pro bono case he is most proud of after two decades of practice
His book, The Case for Letting Go, and the thinking behind it
If you work in-house, lead a legal team, or are thinking about what legal leadership looks like as AI reshapes the profession, this episode is worth your time.

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Timestamps: 

00:00 — Intro: Matthew Campobasso and The Case for Letting Go
01:07 — Does the legal profession have a control problem?
03:12 — When anxiety helps lawyers—and when it starts hurting
05:49 — A real story about legal, trust, and letting the business learn
09:00 — From prosecutor to litigator to CLO
12:19 — The case Matthew is most proud of
13:58 — Law, ethics, and teaching the business to do the right thing
19:04 — The thesis behind The Case for Letting Go
21:57 — How to keep standards high without holding everything yourself
25:24 — Why legal is the most interesting seat at the table in tech
28:31 — AI, founder mode, and the new era of legal
29:37 — Bold prediction: when not using AI becomes malpractice
34:09 — What a great day for an AI-enabled legal team looks like
36:03 — What CEOs should expect from legal with AI
38:35 — Regulators, filings, and the rising standard AI creates
40:50 — The traits law selects against in future leaders
44:11 — How lawyers can learn to sit with uncertainty
46:24 — Lightning round: the book Upstream
48:58 — The mentor who shaped Matthew’s career
51:53 — Advice for younger lawyers and future CLOs
54:20 — Closing thoughts and where to learn more

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Sarah Binder, General Counsel at BetterUp, and Sophie McNaught, Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank and advisor at Primary Venture Partners, join Cecilia for a sharp conversation on how legal and business leaders think about risk when the stakes are high, and the technology is moving even faster.

They get into where risk shows up inside fast-growing companies, why the biggest early-stage risk is often not surviving long enough to matter, and how AI is reshaping decision-making across product, sales, legal, insurance, and venture. 

Sarah shares what it means to “know thy product,” and why great legal teams cannot just be right - they need to be effective. Sophie brings the capital markets view, including what she is seeing across AI company formation, enterprise buying behavior, and the pressure AI is putting on venture itself.

This episode is full of practical insight for in-house lawyers, founders, operators, and anyone working at the edge of AI adoption: how to spot the risks that slow a company down and how to help teams move faster without losing judgment. 

Follow Sophie and Sarah:

@Sarah Binder on LinkedIn

@Sophie McNaught on LinkedIn

Show notes:

• The real startup risk: Sophie McNaught (Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank) shares why for most Seed–Series B companies, the biggest risk isn’t compliance, it’s not existing in a year if they can’t sell their product.
• AI’s impact on venture and markets: Sophie discusses how a handful of companies are absorbing a massive share of AI investment while thousands compete for the remaining capital.
• Why legal teams must “know the product”: Sarah argues that great in-house lawyers must deeply understand the product and customer to help the business move faster.
• Embedding legal inside engineering: The group discusses a model where a lawyer sits within product or engineering teams to translate between legal, technical, and sales concerns around AI risk.
• Being effective vs. being right: Sarah shares a key lesson for in-house lawyers: technical legal correctness isn’t enough - you must build relationships and help the company make practical decisions.

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Michael Jacobs, recently retired Partner and Trial Lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, current Evaluative Mediator and Arbitrator at JAMS, has spent decades at the center of the biggest technology disputes of our time, including Oracle v. Google and the Smartphone Wars. 

Michael shares his journey from serving as a U.S. diplomat in the Foreign Service to becoming a top intellectual property trial lawyer. He offers a masterclass on navigating billion-dollar cases, arguing that launching major litigation should be treated like "opening a new line of business" that requires careful management, a SWOT analysis, and a strong partnership between inside and outside counsel.

Michael also explores the constant challenge of translating complex technology to a lay audience - spanning from mainframe software in the 1980s to today's generative AI models - and discusses how the pace of change in the AI era is shifting the litigation landscape. Finally, Michael weighs in on the future of the billable hour, why the ultimate value of a lawyer is human-to-human strategy, and his perspectives as an evaluative mediator and arbitrator.

Follow Michael:
@Michael A. Jacobs on LinkedIn

Show Notes & Key Takeaways:

• The Billion-Dollar Playbook: What happens behind the scenes in massive IP disputes and why managing a big case is exactly like launching a new corporate product.
• When to Walk Away: Michael shares a story of advising a major U.S. industrial company not to pursue a massive case, highlighting the fiduciary duty to put a client's financial interests over a law firm's potential fees.
• Tech Translation: The core task of a great IP litigator is analogizing complex technology for judges and juries. Michael tracks this evolution from his first big case (Fujitsu v. IBM) through the smartphone wars, to currently applying traditional copyright law to LLMs in the OpenAI litigation.
• Lessons from the Foreign Service: How Michael's early career as a consular officer in Jamaica and working in Washington D.C. taught him the critical skill of truly understanding "who the client is."
• The Two Voices of Outside Counsel: How to deliver bad news to a General Counsel by clearly separating your "advocacy voice" from your "advisory voice."
• AI and the Law Firm Model: Why the new baseline for law firms is delivering a product that is demonstrably better than an AI's output, and why the ultimate strategic value remains "humans talking to humans."
• Insights from the Arbitrator's Chair: Michael discusses his work as an evaluative mediator and why drafting convoluted contracts with nested definitions is a terrible strategy for eventual disputes.
• Lightning Round: Michael recommends Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a guide for using "quality" as a North Star, and shares his best career advice for young lawyers: "No shortcuts. Read the rules."

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