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Deep conversations with underrated lawyers.
This is Horam with Horam's Quoram. My guest today is Neil Chatterjee, a partner at Goodwin. Neil's fascinating because on one hand, he's a trial lawyer that handles serious high stakes tech disputes. And on the other hand, he's the kind of
Khurram Naik:guy who has partner and very handsome man written on his firm business card. Today, we're spending some time going deep on these aspects of Neil, where they came from, and how they converge. Here's Neil. Neil, I'm glad that we're doing this. This been a long time in the making.
Khurram Naik:I'm glad that we're finally sitting down to to have this conversation.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about it.
Khurram Naik:Okay. I'm gonna start with a question from one of your friends. I'll say that I I I talked to a number of your friends to ask about you because you are, I would say, quite well known, I mean, at a minimum among
Neel Chatterjee:litigation circles or patent litigation circles.
Khurram Naik:But I think there's definitely a lot of things about you that it seems that haven't been very well covered, and I think I'm hoping that today is the day that we we get into some of that. But if there's one theme that came up the most, it's echoed in this question from your friend Paul Graywall, who's the chief legal officer at Coinbase, and he asked, You've written a lot of checks for first generation college grads who attend law school. What in your personal life do you think motivates your law student philanthropy?
Neel Chatterjee:What in my personal life motivates my law student philanthropy? So when I went to law school, I had never met an Indian lawyer. And when I became a law firm associate, I never had met a law firm associate. And when I became the managing partner of the Silicon Valley office of my prior firm, I'd never met anyone in management that was of South Asian descent. And then when I ran the IP litigation practice group, I'd never met someone that served on a management committee.
Neel Chatterjee:And it occurred to me that there are a lot of people who are entering the practice of law who may or may not be South Asian, but who really may not be able to get the shot that they need because they come from a background that isn't familiar with big law, legal environments, the like. And I really thought first gen is probably the place where that issue arises the most. And so, it became important for me to improve diversity in the legal profession, but really targeting those areas where I thought it could have the most profound impact on making the practice of law, particularly in the higher profile areas or with higher profile law schools where people might not otherwise go if they didn't have that sort of support.
Khurram Naik:How did you conclude that this was the form of impact that was best to not say working with, you know, whatever diverse associates are at big firms already? Like, how did you conclude this was the the entry point for you?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. I guess I quibble a little bit with the premise because, you know, I'm kind of focused on doing all of it.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm.
Neel Chatterjee:So, you know, twenty three years ago, I founded the Bay Area Diversity Career Fair in San Francisco. One of the things that was instrumental on that career fair was the very first event is an opening reception at a law firm. Because if you're a first gen person or if you're a person that doesn't come from a background of lawyers, you may never have set foot inside of a law firm before. And I wanted the first experience for people of those backgrounds walking into a law firm as knowing it's a welcoming environment where people wanted to meet them. The scholarship stuff that you talk about, I formed the Chatterjee Scholars scholarship at Vanderbilt Law School.
Neel Chatterjee:It's the same sort of thing. Like when they get the scholarship, one of the things they also get is an introduction to me where I can say, Look, we want you here. We want you in the legal profession. Working with the diverse organizations for associates in my law firm and also with groups like SABA and South Asian Bar Association, the National South Asian Bar Association, and other diverse organizations. Those are all things I'm active in too and try and provide mentorship and things like that.
Neel Chatterjee:But one of the things is that once people have made it into Big Law, now your goal is really just mentoring them and working with them to keep them there. There's a whole body of people and a much larger body of people that don't even know that that's an available option for them or don't know how to break into that first step. So my philosophy has always been, and it was also this way when I ran the practice group at my prior firm, if you increase the numbers on the intake, even if there's attrition, there's going to be growth of diversity in the legal profession because the numbers are bigger to begin with, right? Like law firms would say, We have 75% attrition of diverse lawyers at the fifth to sixth year. And I say, Well, how many lawyers were diverse to begin with?
Neel Chatterjee:And you say, Out of a group of 50, there were five. It's like, Okay, so you lost four lawyers? That's not a trend. That just means your numbers stink at the beginning.
Khurram Naik:Well, then how do you think about you know, with with the allocation of of time and and resources that you're spending at at all these different levels, how do you think about how to allocate those that that time and energy into those different stages of the pipeline?
Neel Chatterjee:So scholarship, like, giving scholarships is the least amount of time in some ways. Like it takes time to figure out how you want to structure it, who you want to structure it, but then it just becomes how do you endow it and how do you endow it over time. That's basically money and then a decision every year. The mentorship stuff is much, much more time consuming because you never know when people are going to need guidance or when they're going to want to talk to you. And I mean, you talk to people like Paul Graywall or Ashok Ramani or some of the other people that I'm sure you've talked to, Al Amdar and people like that.
Neel Chatterjee:We get emails every day from people of diverse backgrounds, particularly South Asian descent, but also Asian Americans more generally. And it's a lot of time and it's just a matter of dedicating it. Some of it is sussing out why are people really contacting you. Because to be honest with you, there are a lot of people that really do want the mentorship and they want the guidance. And then there are some people that are just looking for a job from you.
Neel Chatterjee:Or they actually want something tangible from you. Or they feel like it's, you need to help them because you're of a similar background. And that is not necessarily as valuable as kind of building a relationship. I want to be here for you, but let's talk about where you're at and how I can help you along the way, rather than I'm going to give you a job tomorrow or I have a responsibility to give you a job tomorrow.
Khurram Naik:Well, it's interesting because, you know, the job for you mentioned, you know, that's one that scales well. Right? So it has scaled, and so then that impact you're generating, there's like a network effect where, you know, the more law firms show up, the more students show up and so forth. That seems to be a really high ROI of your effort because that's the thing that's compounded. And of course, there's organizations like the South Asian Bar Association you mentioned and other organizations that do things at larger scales as well for development of South Asian lawyers.
Khurram Naik:But, you know, in mentioning mentorship, your mentorship, as you say, is is very expensive. It's it's a lot of one on one time. It's unpredictable as well. What do you think needs to be improved in the way of mentorship? Like, is there something that's you know, you mentioned a handful of of kind of leaders, you know, that are you know, you mentioned a show
Neel Chatterjee:that can play very well, and and and, you know, there's people like Beechel. Beechel. Sure.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. And so, you know, with this crew, you know, is there something that you think that would be is there some way to do more mentorship at scale in a more group context? Or, like, how do you think you can capture some
Neel Chatterjee:of those network effects that you've gotten in, say, the Diversity Affair? Yeah. So that is heavily driven by level of seniority. So with, let's say, law students and early lawyers, fundamentally, the sets of issues that they're dealing with and where they are in their professional development are more or less the same. I mean, there are going be slight differences.
Neel Chatterjee:So with those groups putting together pods, little groups of people to talk about what is their common experience and having someone kind of getting them together to just talk about it can actually be really, really valuable. We do that here at Goodwin and that has been very, very successful. It isn't just with South Asian people or whatever, it's diverse lawyers getting together in small groups. I also, like at the job fair, at that opening reception, the law students come and they all try and meet the other lawyers that are there. We're considered the high value targets, right?
Neel Chatterjee:And they're all kind of swarming you. And so I'll have four or five people standing around me, and I'll always have them introduce themselves to each other. Because I said, you know, I'm not always going to be able to answer every single one of your phone calls with every single question. But you know what? You guys can do that for each other.
Neel Chatterjee:And you can talk about your common and your different experiences. And I said, why don't you just tell them what law school you go to and what your favorite class is? And I try and provoke that conversation among the peer groups. Now, once you start getting to the fourth to sixth year level, it really does become much more of a one on one thing. Because everyone's career goals, what they've learned about where they want to be, they have enough knowledge to add substantial value on their own.
Neel Chatterjee:And they might be deciding, do I want to be in house? Do I want to be in government? Do I want to stay in a big law firm if they're in big law? It becomes much more of a bespoke thing. And so that one, I think the network effects of group kind of mentorship, I've just found that's not as useful at that point.
Neel Chatterjee:And that one, really know, are a lot more one off calls that people will have with me about, you know, questions that they have and things. But it turns out that years later when they come back, they'll say that one conversation was really meaningful in helping me frame kind of what I wanted to do. So the return on that later stage investment of time for the people who are spending that time is it's often much higher, for them and then from a personal satisfaction point of view. And those numbers are smaller generally of the people who are reaching out.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Wanna double back to you know, on on this topic of of education, investing in the education of of, you know, these law students. I'm curious about how that ties into your educational history because something that you shared that I'd love to to explore a little bit is you experienced a learning disability when you were growing up. And so I'm curious about the the the impact that that had because as I understand it, you said that you didn't learn how to read properly until the end of second grade.
Khurram Naik:And so I'm curious, you know, what is what is what is a legacy that had on your professional development? Obviously, led to certain challenges. Were there any benefits to that? I'd just like to explore that a little more and see how it ties into some of the decisions you've made.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. I mean, I can talk about that. Let me start with the kind of educational philosophy question, which was kind of the beginning of your question. So, and as people might know, in Hinduism, it's a pantheistic faith, right? Kind of like in Christianity, people have patron saints, you choose your god in Hinduism.
Neel Chatterjee:And in our family, one of the two main gods that our family prays to, is Sharashati, the goddess of learning. And so in our family, I come from a very long line of, you know, of kind of, you know, academics, professors, people who put a lot of stock in education. And so imagine the challenge for my parents when their younger son is not learning how to read, right? And what my mom started doing every single day, and she was also studying to be a teacher at the time, she ultimately got a doctorate in education and her doctoral thesis was on the types of eye disorders that I have. But every day she'd come home with a stack of books from the library and would just sit down at the kitchen table and say, Okay, we're going to try again.
Neel Chatterjee:And that's what we did. And the impact that that had is really, I guess I would say, it's the value of hard work and persistence. I deal with really, really hard technology today, really hard things that are very hard to understand. I don't have a technical background, but I've handled some of the most complicated technologies in the world. And kind of the dogged persistence in trying to understand it and making it accessible to laypeople, because I am a layperson, I think that those early learnings really, you know, really affected that, you know, the development of that skill set and that kind of tenacious, like, not not being willing to just give up and say, oh, this is too hard.
Neel Chatterjee:I'm gonna wash my hands of it kind of thing.
Khurram Naik:And I think another dimension of your story that I think is really interesting. So so okay. So now I understand there's this legacy of this dog of persistence, but I'm kind of curious because is there any connection between being an outlier in that way in academia and the ways in which you're an outlier today. You conform to the typical model of what a litigator looks like. Typically, litigators don't have print on the business card, very handsome man.
Khurram Naik:Is there a connection that you see between not fitting into the groove or whatever starting at a young age and then teaching them to say, Hey, it's okay to be a little bit different later on?
Neel Chatterjee:I I know if the educational differences were, you know, were were were the driver of that. But, you know, I mean, when you're in high school and you're in college, you're always trying to figure out, you know, where does your skin fit in and the environments you're in? There's an enormous amount of pressure, right, to fit into the communities that you're in, just peer pressure and the like. And I've always been kind of you know, kind of a, a creative thinker, a little bit of a goofball. I remember I ran for student body treasurer and I told all these jokes, you know, and some of them go horribly wrong.
Neel Chatterjee:I was a big personality. Like, did radio before I went to law school, and then I did improv comedy as a hobby. And I just kind of I realized that if I'm trying to not be me to fit in, it's going to hold me back on what I want to do because I can't always not be me. You you can't do that. And I also feel like in jury trials, one of the things that jurors look for is authenticity.
Neel Chatterjee:And if you're going up there and you're being someone other than who you are within the environment that you're in, right, people smoke that out. I think one of the reasons I've been lucky enough to have the career that I've had is because people appreciate that authenticity. They like the goofball stuff too. It makes it more fun to work with me than maybe some other people. But that authenticity, I think, is a I did not realize until very late in my educational and maybe even professional development that that authenticity was one of the core assets, not a core liability.
Khurram Naik:So is the iconoclasm a consequence of a pursuit for authenticity?
Neel Chatterjee:You're gonna you're you're challenging my, my my vocabulary. Iconoclasm. Let's let's try a different word there, buddy.
Khurram Naik:Okay. I'm not buying that from the government and the clinical science major. Is it your willingness to go your own way, is and just kind of have this expressive personality, shall we say, that inherent was that inherently a goal and that's what's authentic to you? Or is is it authenticity that's more important, or is it more being your own self and and and kind of standing out in a certain way? Like, which of those two of course, there's a connection between those two, but, like, how you tease apart the importance of those two?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So being myself includes standing out in my own way. Like, that is kinda, you know, you know, the I had this mentor, this guy named Terry McMahon, and he was this guy who was entirely self made. He started started his career as a personal injury lawyer, and he would tell me how he would do a closing argument and actually hold like a pancreas in his hand when he was talking to jurors about some med mal case. And he had these big Scottish terrier eyebrows, and he was just was kind of a very big, very unique personality.
Neel Chatterjee:And he ended up being one of the biggest name patent trial lawyers in the country during his time, and he was a very successful lawyer. And I learned so much working with him because, you know, he was a guy who was unapologetically within his own skin. And he was who he was going to be and, you know, and he was a big personality like I am, although, you know, I'll never be Terry McMahon. And that just, I mean, was really influential on me to see a guy like that do what he did and be able to do it at the highest levels. And, you know, people could say what they wanted about Terry, but he was great to his team and he was a force of nature in the courtroom.
Neel Chatterjee:And I always I mean, I worked with a lot of great mentors and I have a lot of great things to say about other people too. But as far as being an in court, hardcore technology litigator who did it on their own terms, Terry was one of the most profound impacts on me of anyone. Because that really told me you can do this if you're good enough at it while being true to yourself.
Khurram Naik:I guess this is really interesting and counterfactual. So what do you think your career would have like if you didn't have South Asian lawyer mentors? Do feel like, you know, there's something about you that would have been different if you had some like, maybe you if you had South Asian lawyer mentors, you feel like, hey. You know what? I already fit into this system.
Khurram Naik:I don't need to stand out in some certain way. Like, what do you think would have been different if you if you had those models?
Neel Chatterjee:What do I think would have been different if I had had those models? I'm not sure it would have been different because and this kind of goes back to your mentorship question. Like, one of the things I think people do wrong on mentorship is they assign mentors without thinking about are they the right fit for each other. Very early on, I kind of learned that, you know, you're never going to be like any individual person you're working with, whether they're South Asian or anything else. And I never looked for a South Asian mentor because there weren't any around, so I can't even envision what that would look like.
Neel Chatterjee:But what I did realize was there are aspects of people who have invested their confidence in me that I can adopt some of the things that they have that are also consistent with the way I think of the world or the way I am as a person. And I'm going to take those individual bricks from them and build a foundation in my own legal identity. And, you know, there there are aspects of Justice Mary Malarkey, who's the first judge I worked for in what I do. There are aspects of Judge Trumbull, who is the second judge I worked for. In me, there's Terry, there's Bill Anthony, there's Gary Weiss, Sean Lincoln, a whole bunch of other people that all little components of them have dramatically affected the way I approach this.
Neel Chatterjee:But then together, they combine into a stew of Neil, right?
Khurram Naik:Stew of Neil, okay. That might be the title of the podcast. So I guess a part of that question I have for you is on this topic of authenticity. Something you mentioned before is doing things that weren't necessarily signed off by your peers or your firm whatever. It's not that you were necessarily in conflict as such, but, you know, it just it wasn't sanctioned, shall we say.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, you you know, famously, one of your clients is is Facebook, now Meta. And, you know, in their Facebook days, you know, they they they had this slogan, Move fast and break things. I'm curious, do you feel like you relate to that statement when it comes to your own career?
Neel Chatterjee:That's an interesting question. I haven't really thought of it that way. So when we talk about the Stew O'Neill, you're talking about is the Gary Weiss ingredient. Gary Weiss was the head of the IT group at Auric, and then he was also the managing partner of the office. Was a very important mentor to me.
Neel Chatterjee:He still remains a good friend today. Gary would always tell me when we first were practicing together and he was my boss, He says, Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission if you want to do big things. And he said, Because, you know, institutions have processes. They have things that come up with a million reasons to say no or just take forever to say yes. Sometimes it's better to just go and do something.
Neel Chatterjee:And he also, you know, would say, It's better to do something tangible than do something conceptual. And those things were, you know, when I go and have done a lot of these things, like tangible, partner and very handsome man. It's a very tangible thing you can see on every business card that I've sent out, right? And it's distinctive and it sends a message, right? One, I'm a partner and two, you might think I'm handsome, but very handsome, not sure.
Neel Chatterjee:But it's certainly a conversation starter, right? Those are all like tangible things that can be done that And there's a whole variety of ways you can do it. The job fair is another example that sometimes people may not sanction it, but generally they're going to look back and if it's successful, they're going to say, That was awesome. And so the key is to try and optimize for success.
Khurram Naik:Do you have I think something I like about, from what I've read of the kinds of advice you give, is that you're hesitant to give one size fits all advice and recognizing not all lawyers are identically situated with the same skills and opportunities, and I like that. But having said that, you know, do you think there's some way you can generalize to say for a coming crop of lawyers, what are the ways where they can, you know, act and do something tangible? And then, you know, as you say, like, optimize your success, but then worry about getting forgiveness later if needed.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So are we talking about lawyers or law students? Lawyers. Let's say lawyers. Okay.
Neel Chatterjee:Lawyers. So like one of the things that people get hung up on is they say, Well, my law firm won't pay for this. Right? You hear that all the time. And if there's one piece of advice I have for young lawyers, it's this.
Neel Chatterjee:It is not the law firm's responsibility to build your career. It is your responsibility to build your career. So you always should start from the premise of, is whatever I want to do the right thing for where I want to drive my career forward or however I want to distinguish myself? And if the law firm pays for it, I mean, by all means, take the money and do it. But if you can afford it otherwise, and it's something you think is really important or something you want to learn to see if it's valuable for you to pursue, you should do it.
Neel Chatterjee:Because, like, that is really, you know, really, really critical. The only advice that I have on, you know, kind of the I'll describe it as going off script, you know, like not following the firm process, is when you're doing things that are not within the firm sanctioned, you know, areas, just make sure that you're not violating, like, some risk management policy. And when you're doing these other things, just think about the fact that you are a representative of your law firm. And are you doing anything or saying something in a way that could cast the firm in a light that you might not be proud of or that other people might not be proud of. If you kind of follow those two guidelines, maybe there are some firms that are going to get super hung up on it, but I don't think most are.
Neel Chatterjee:I think most are going to celebrate your successes when you have them.
Khurram Naik:Your mentor you're saying about lawyers needing to assess how they're going to take control of their career and where their career is headed. What is the earliest point that you did that?
Neel Chatterjee:The earliest point that I would say I did that well, I have two different answers for that. That was definitely the case when I was finishing my clerkship in San Jose for Judge Trumbull because I made a very counterintuitive decision at some level. But I could also say my third year of law school, my first year of clerkship with Justice Malarkey because I decided that in addition to my clerkship, I would really start trying to develop subject matter expertise in intellectual property areas. And I published one of the very first articles involving copyright and the Internet. And this was before the Internet had formally been announced.
Neel Chatterjee:That's how old I am. This was in 1993, 'ninety four timeframe.
Khurram Naik:Is that decision? Like, how did you suss out this internet thing and assess it to be something that was worth investing in?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So I had had some background just from my days in radio and copyright related issues. I actually thought I would be a copyright lawyer when I started and kind of law school kind of beats that out of you at some level and then it changed. But I had noticed when I was on radio that we did this thing called the digital breakfast, which were CDs. And we used to play music on vinyl for the radio station and then in the morning we would play CDs and that was a big deal because the sound quality was so much better.
Neel Chatterjee:And I noticed that we didn't have to replace the CDs very often, but we did have to replace the records pretty often because, you know, you're playing them with a needle, they'll get scratched, you know, user error, things like that. But with CDs, that rarely happen. We had to replace the CD players more than we had to replace the CDs because, you know, when you take things in and out, the doors would break and stuff like that. And it occurred to me that I wonder how the artists are making as much money when you don't have to buy new copies, right? Because copyrights are rights and copies.
Neel Chatterjee:And then I said there was this thing called the Internet Underground Music Archive, which was an online music distribution at the time that was kind of getting a lot of kind of press. And I was like, if you're doing it online, then you can just distribute it. Or, you know, at the time, word streaming didn't really exist. But if you're just listening to it online, I wonder how that impacts copyright rights. And so, the article I wrote, I forget the exact title, it was something like imperishable intellectual creations, the limits of the first sale doctrine and copyright or something like that.
Neel Chatterjee:Because I was wondering, how does the business model change for copyright authors when people aren't having to buy copies? And it was just interesting because it was a growth from kind of what I saw as a radio station person.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Mhmm. It was now a growth of an existing interest, that just kind of organic. It wasn't just some some bet on, hey. This is a new category of technology that I want to find some inroads to.
Neel Chatterjee:No. It was it was really something that I was interested in and I had seen. And I remember when I was in law school, read this book that was really popular at the time called This Business of Music. It was kind of like the bible for if you wanted to be a music, like business person. And I I it just it was very interesting and I difficult problem.
Neel Chatterjee:I when I wrote it in law school, I won this award called the Nathan Berkin Award, which was given by, ASCAP and BMI, and then I later published it through a law journal.
Khurram Naik:But so with with, what was the nature of the other you said there's a counterintuitive decision you made with your career.
Neel Chatterjee:What was that? The counterintuitive decision was when I was finishing with judge Trumbull, this was at the height of the .com boom. This was in 1997 that I was interviewing law firms. Everyone and their brother used to want to be a corporate lawyer at that time, or they even would sometimes go into venture capitalists. And, ORIC, my prior firm, decided to open in Silicon Valley as a litigation only practice during the height of the .com boom when, and it was a small office, when most firms just wanted to do kajillions of dollars in, you know, startup tech work for .com companies.
Neel Chatterjee:That was a very counterintuitive decision for Orrick and it was a risky decision for me because it was a relatively new office doing something that no one else seemed to really want to be concentrating on. I had an offer from a very established Silicon Valley firm that had a great tech corporate practice, and they were interested in having me join them as a litigator. And that probably would have been the safer choice, right? Because they were established, were printing money through all the .com corporate stuff, and they had a solid litigation practice. I just felt like I liked the people at Orec better.
Neel Chatterjee:I thought it was a smaller office, so maybe there'd be more opportunity. And I also thought if I try this out for a couple of years and it doesn't work out, at least I'll have the experience of having worked for these really impressive people that I could turn into other job opportunities. And quite frankly, I wasn't sure if I'd make it in in a large law firm given how weird I am. And, I was like, you know, this will give me a chance to try and, you know, see if this is the right type of place for me.
Khurram Naik:Interesting because it seems like the mixture that bet was, you know, work was an established firm, but there's also riskiness in this, you know, this new office and, you know, in something that was litigation and not highly demand. So it's an interesting mix of risk profiles there.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. But, you know, it's interesting you say that because I think today, if you were to talk about, you know, my prior firm, like, it it has a great litigation reputation, and, you know, it's very, very well established. That's some really terrific people. But back then, they did have some very strong litigators, but they were really known as the San Francisco bond firm. That's really what ORIX reputation was, and the chair at the time, Ralph Bachter, had this vision of making a more national practice and a global practice and went on a very aggressive kind of merger and acquisition strategy and really built the firm into much more of a litigation firm.
Neel Chatterjee:And I I can't take credit for this. This was other people who did it, but really built that reputation, you know, line by line around the country by by by doing things like this bold bet in Silicon Valley they made.
Khurram Naik:Would you generally recommend that mix of risk profile for people that are looking to do something that is not you know, if you if my my my position is if you take status quo decisions and do the safe bets, then you'll get status quo results. So if you want outlier performance, you have to do something that's an outlier, but that doesn't mean just taking a flyer in some random thing that's not validated, not proven. Sounds like there's a good mix of risk profile in there. How do you think about recommendations for people for how to take calculated risks then?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. It depends a little bit on what your overall objective is. A lot of people come into big law, and I'll just speak from a big law perspective, knowing that at some point they're probably going to want to work inside a business, in house or something like that. If that's the goal, it may make more sense to get well credentialed at a higher status firm or things like that. If what you're really looking for is hardcore in the trenches experience, but maybe getting a little less training, that's where taking the high risk can really pay off, right?
Neel Chatterjee:Think my early days, I mean, the early days at ORC were the greatest time of my career. I look back on it with a great deal of fondness because the partners there were so fantastic on letting us take and obtain great opportunities. And because so many people at that time did not want to be litigators and so many entrepreneurs were young like us, they would invest confidence in us in these entirely new growing markets. And looking for those sorts of opportunities, like I didn't know it, realize it at the time, now I do, it's just awesome. It's just awesome.
Neel Chatterjee:Was one of the things that drew me to my new firm, Goodwin, where I'm working now, that our goal was to build a West Coast litigation practice and we would do something similar.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. It sounds like that decision was very analogous. Right? Goodwin, very well established in the East Coast, but, you know, hadn't been validated yet on the West Coast. And so there's a mixture of that that mixed risk profile of, you know, strong brand, you know, but not yet on the West Coast, so there's lot of upside there.
Khurram Naik:Did did you you consciously have that model in mind, and did you constantly connect that to your decision to go to work?
Neel Chatterjee:Yes. But in a slight refinement to what you just said, which is Goodwin had done an excellent job building a West Coast corporate emerging company practice. Mhmm. They they they yeah. And they've continued to do that.
Neel Chatterjee:Like, you know, they're one of the market leaders out here. They hadn't quite figured out how to build the litigation practice, but they had made a couple moves prior to me that were impressive. Brett Schuman and Grant Fondo being two of them, two of the hires that they made that were significant. But it was very much a greenfield when I came where they were like, we we we you know, the the the pitch they said is this, we wanna help you. We wanna help we we to help you build a West Coast litigation practice like it was your own firm.
Neel Chatterjee:It would just be underwritten by Goodwin. Not many firms can do that, but that's a pretty enticing message, right? Yes. And they said, And by the way, we have this completely on fire tech practice that is the centerpiece of the types of work you do. And we have a couple of great partners, we have so much more opportunity that we're not capturing.
Neel Chatterjee:Anthony McCusker, our chairman, actually had a list of clients that he had lost to me when I was at my prior firm and then a list of ones that I had never met that he was like, Look, you're only getting 50% of what you could get in terms of really cool stuff.
Khurram Naik:Let's double back, though. So I want to double back to this concept of control of your career and business development because now you're well known as a rainmaker, but I wanna trace the steps to that. So, like, what were those steps that you you took to start developing clientele? I know that you said you were thrust in the thick of it, and, you know, you were young and the clients were young, and and that's some the mix there. How did you start to get intentional about the clientele you were cultivating, and what did that process look like?
Khurram Naik:Yeah. So
Neel Chatterjee:it's a little bit of a complicated question. So generally speaking, I don't think I believe this quite as much anymore given that my practice is so startup focused today. But, you know, if you're working in a legal environment where the core clientele that the firm's looking at are, let's say, Fortune 200 companies, What I would generally say to people is it'd be good for you to have relationships where you're doing a little bit of work for at least seven different companies at any given time. So try and establish relationships with people at seven different companies because at any given time, one of them is going to have something significant where they're going be able to get you involved. With large companies, that number is a good rough estimate.
Neel Chatterjee:And the cultivation of those relationships are, one, people who've left your firm that have gone to those places, and two, going to events and environments where you'll interact with like minded people. A good example of that was I got very involved with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley relatively early on in my career. And that's a legal nonprofit here in the Bay Area that's the largest direct services provider in Silicon Valley. When I joined the board, which was either right before or right after I became partner at ORIC, ORIC did not really represent hardly anyone, any of the corporations that were represented on the board. At one point, maybe five years or six years later, our firm represented everyone on the board, every major corporation that had a representative on the board except for those we chose not to due to conflicts.
Neel Chatterjee:That's a legal nonprofit, right? We're all just trying to do the right thing. I didn't join it for a business development purpose. I did it because I was passionate about the organization. But it turned out I was surrounded by other people who were passionate about the same thing.
Neel Chatterjee:And when I could get things done for the organization, they're like, oh, Neil's a guy who gets stuff done. Maybe I should try out and see if he could get some stuff done for me. And like putting yourself in those environments where you can get stuff done, you can demonstrate some leadership, where people will then feel more comfortable investing a confidence in you is a really helpful way to cultivate and develop client relationships. It's also like, mean, Horem, you and I go to a lot of these conferences and things like that, and this is going to sound a little inappropriate probably, but if you look around the rooms, there's this kind of leg humping exercise where everyone is circling around whatever the high value targets are and they're all asking for something from that person. It's actually a little off putting to people if you talk privately with them about it.
Neel Chatterjee:They do it because they want to support the communities, whatever the groups are and things like that. But, you know, someone just going and saying, please give me something is not as valuable as them seeing you actually getting things done. And so, that's one of the reasons I really like Saba leadership or Napata leadership, those sorts of things. Because you can actually see, can people move the needle and actually do things that are impactful for others? And that gives you a confidence as a client or whatever that they'll also take on my responsibilities with that same vigor.
Khurram Naik:Let let's spend a little more time talking about how you are effective and generate impact. Let's take this foundation then. What is it that people saw you doing? How did you get things done? What is it you got done and how did you do that in an effective way?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. Well, I mean, the Vursity Career Fair is the best example. We had our summer associate program three years before it launched, and I arranged with the firm to give essentially billable hour credit for anyone who was working on having us figure out how to put it together. And, we had one associate who had a management consulting background prior to becoming a lawyer and some other people that were just passionate about diversity things, and we put together a model on how we would research how to make this work and how to make it successful. We had some associates help us on it.
Neel Chatterjee:So they would get credit for doing this important thing. Then we started saying, okay, well, we need to have a panel of practitioners that are talking to these young lawyers at 08:00 in the morning on a Saturday. Who can we get to do that? Right? That's not easy.
Neel Chatterjee:And we did all this outreach to in house lawyers, typically younger in house lawyers, to get them to do it. But then all of a sudden, those people start saying, Oh, know, Neil and this team of people are doing this really interesting thing that we've never heard about in the Bay Area. And then we have this opening reception and there's hundreds of people there. And the number one thing we wanted to do was, yes, we figured law students would come, was the law firms had to have a good experience. Because when we did our research, law firms didn't go to diversity career fairs because they didn't have a good experience.
Neel Chatterjee:It wasn't professionally managed. It was very hard to get through. They were not thought of as the consumer. And so, you know, when all these law firms come by and these law firm partners are coming in, they're like, Wow, this is as good as going on to OCI and we're getting candidates from all over the country. So we don't have to just pick from one law school.
Neel Chatterjee:We can pick from 25. That showed all of these law firm partners and I was the one giving the speeches. I couldn't take credit for all this hard work, but I was the one giving the speeches. People saw this is like really well thought out, really well engineered. And the law students, it impacted them.
Neel Chatterjee:The law firms that did, and then the in house lawyers that came and participated saw that. So that was like a big one, right? One year, I was the president of the Law Foundation and we had a whole bunch of things. And I had to run the meeting every month. And I would have to talk about new initiatives or capital spends or things like that.
Neel Chatterjee:Or I'd have to talk about leadership transitions. Those are all things and how you have a plan to get them done are all places where you can kind of demonstrate leadership on actually accomplishing goals, but things like that.
Khurram Naik:And then when you're working in these different organizations and you're I think what's hard about both at a firm and then also in organizations like these is both managing people, but then also managing peers. How do you approach it? How are you effective with managing peers, managing reports in that way of volunteers or otherwise?
Neel Chatterjee:It's actually harder to manage people who are what I'll describe as senior to you. That's the hardest part because I took on leadership roles in law firms at a very young age and, you know, not everyone is all that excited about that, right? I think in today's world, it's much more common for that to happen, but, know, fifteen years ago, that was not. There was a little bit more of a mindset of a pecking order and the like. But, you know, I've always adopted the view of, you know, sometimes I might be the person in charge, but I tried and worked really hard to get everyone's input and, you know, and kind of, what would you do in this situation?
Neel Chatterjee:And then I'll kind of, I like getting everyone's input before I form a conclusion, and, you know, really kind of making people feel valued along the way. And I also say, you know, I think your idea was really great, but my instinct is saying we have to go another way, and you might end up being right. I don't know. But giving people validation, you know, and making them feel part of the process is important. This was another Gary Weissism when he was running the group.
Neel Chatterjee:He's like, you always got to show up with charts and graphs, things that show data. Because when people feel like they have access to data, they feel more part of the process. They feel like they understand more. They do as well because you're giving the information. But I really thought that was a valuable thing, sharing the data, sharing the information, making people feel included in the decision making.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. So I I I didn't wanna be make this too much inversion because we were talking about your business development. So okay. So you you've you've showcased your talents in getting things done. You're you're you generate high impact through these different passions of yours, And that wasn't what you set out to do, but it was just incidental to you pursuing these these things that you're passionate about.
Khurram Naik:So okay. So now you're you're you're getting clients, you and you've got a book of business, and and you're kind of following this form of of, you know, seven big companies. What was the inflection point from there to rainmaking, to to really having a truly large book of business? Like, what was that transition from solid performer, consistent performance to, okay. I'm in the next level.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So was really it was a little bit like so much of my career has been luck more than skill. There was a very significant moment where a very significant partner left, I'm going to leave the name out of it here, left the firm I was working at. And I was one of the most senior associates working on some of the largest engagements. And when that announcement was made, when you're in a law firm, you see this panicked, feeding frenzy like behavior.
Neel Chatterjee:Everyone's calling each other, closed doors, conversations, all that. People reached out to me and then the clients called and said, we know you're the one that kind of knows everything about the case, so what are you going to do? I was still an associate at the time. Was not a partner. And there were three significant matters that I was working on.
Neel Chatterjee:After thinking about it, I said I decided to stay at my firm. I remember the general counsel of the company called me and he said, Well, look, I can't go to my board and say, I'm going to have a senior associate doing this stuff. Who will be our new lead trial lawyer that has, you know, the bona fides? Can you introduce me to them? And I did that.
Neel Chatterjee:I organized a dinner. I had, you know, two or three really good candidates, some people that were sticking around that had, you know, the right bona fides. And, you know, I held on to all of those substantial matters before I became a partner. It was a remarkable moment in my career because sometimes you sit in your career and you kind of look over your shoulder and you're like, are you talking to me? Like, you're saying to me that you're investing this, really?
Neel Chatterjee:And they did invest the trust in me and, you know, I mean, we held onto those matters and we were able to grow the relationship afterwards. And there was one thing I did from a business development, and this is not exactly answering your question, Karam, but the partner who had left had organized a dinner with the general counsel and a couple other people, right after he left. And it was going to be at this restaurant. Restaurant's not around in Silicon Valley anymore. They said, this partner had organized this dinner.
Neel Chatterjee:Could you organize a dinner for us with these people who had lead trial experience at the time, so we can consider it? I said, sure, I'll do that. I organized it at this restaurant, And, as I said, we held on to the relationship. And the following year, I became partner. And, every year, I read the, Oryk partnership agreement, and the Oryk partnership agreement had a clause on a duty to reasonably entertain.
Neel Chatterjee:That was the clause. You had a duty to reasonably entertain clients, business associates, and colleagues. And that year was the first year that I organized a dinner at that restaurant that had the duty to reasonably entertain on the card, and I invited those clients to come to the dinner as well as high school friends and graphics vendors, anyone I could think of that had been good to me over the prior year. And I ended up doing that until the pandemic. So that was twenty years I did it.
Neel Chatterjee:It got to the point where we would have fifty, sixty people coming. It was always on a Saturday night at a nice restaurant, but not a fantastic restaurant. It was only reasonable entertainment. It became this thing that, like, if I had it one year and someone didn't like I forgot about inviting them or something, people would say, Oh, did I do something wrong? And then I always would invite spouses and significant others.
Neel Chatterjee:I'd always bring my secretary to the dinner because everyone interacted with her and would want to meet her. We would not give out law firm swag. It would just be a chance for people to get together, break bread, and share common ground. If there's one thing that was the most influential part of my business development strategy, it was that annual dinner. It costs a ton of money and it is worth every penny.
Neel Chatterjee:Those people, the vast majority of them were not only clients, but they were also good friends.
Khurram Naik:In this development, so you described something very consistent you were doing. Along the way as you developed your book of business, was there an inflection point where your book doubled or had some seismic change or has it Well, been incremental
Neel Chatterjee:so, you know, that question is something that works better for corporate lawyers than it does for litigators. Because when you're doing litigation like I do, I'm a big game hunter. Right? So I'm out hunting elephants, and I'm not a hunter, but, you know, an elephant only comes around every once in a while. And so, like, I've had years that have been absolutely massive global jihad, you know, lawsuits in 10 countries and, you know, five ITC actions, three district court cases, antitrust claims, you know, you name it.
Neel Chatterjee:And those have been huge years. And then the next year, I'll fall off a cliff because the cases all get settled because the dispute between the party goes away, and you've to find the next piece of big game. And so like it's hard to say what is my book of business in the sense that I've had huge years and I've had smaller years. And they they kinda go, you know, up up and down depending on a whole variety of factors.
Khurram Naik:But you're let's say your five year rolling average at this point, is there some point your five year rolling average was doubled over some other set of five year average? Like, there some transition where I recognize that it's highly variable, but did the variance kind of go up long? You know? Yeah.
Neel Chatterjee:I mean, I mean, there's a baseline now, I think. Generally, there's a baseline. But I would say during the Smart For well, there was definitely a huge inflection point when I handled case against the Winklevoss Brothers for Facebook. Like, was just I was doing that and adoption.com, which was an adoption equality case that was very high profile at the same time. And both of those were just constantly in the news and my name was constantly in the news.
Neel Chatterjee:That was significant. For a very, very long time, was very close friends with David Shannon, was the general counsel of NVIDIA, who I met through the Law Foundation. We were very involved in the smartphone wars together because Nvidia had graphics chips that were kind of implicated in a whole bunch of things. The Nvidia relationship and David in particular was really critical. There was another Law Foundation board member, a guy named Peter Detkin, who was the chief patent counsel at Intel, and then he became a founder of Intellectual Ventures.
Neel Chatterjee:And there was an article about me right when I was like 38 or 39. I don't have it here in my office, but I have it in my home office. And Peter said in the periodical, Neil isn't one of the rising stars in intellectual property. He is the star in intellectual property or some sort of comment like that. And when he said that, like, numerous people noticed it because Peter was such a highly influential person.
Neel Chatterjee:And, like, the David Shannon thing, the Winklevoss thing, the adoption.com, and and Peter's comments together, that just kind of created this aura for a while that really made a huge material difference. And then I guess the final thing was, in 02/2001, Sean Lincoln, who's another one of the ingredients in the Stew of Neil, he went on a paternity leave right when we were going to trial, and he went to a client, and he said to the client, I think Neil is ready to try his first case as lead counsel. The stakes here are big, but they're not so big that we can't take a little risk. Let him give you what his opening statement would be, and if you're comfortable with it, let him do the trial while I'm out on paternity leave. I mean, imagine that like someone, just handing off the first chair opportunity and endorsing you with a client.
Neel Chatterjee:Like who does that? So like that is a really important part of how I work with my teams. And I got my first trial that way. And as we all know, or as many people in litigation know, you don't get hired for your second trial if you haven't done your first. Right?
Neel Chatterjee:And so getting that first one and doing it well and having the endorsement really matters. And the fact that Sean was so gracious and so giving to, you know, create that opportunity for me. Because he could have said, I'm bringing in some other lead person that's tried 20 cases. He chose not to do that, right? And those things were really the key things where I would say in 02/2002, 02/2003, it took it.
Neel Chatterjee:And and then, you know, the the Zuckerberg case was, you know, 02/2007, 2008 time frame. Yeah. That that those took it to an entirely different level.
Khurram Naik:As a quick aside, do you is that your point of view that that's a great measure of of of if you wanna test someone's acumen as a trial lawyer, would you say here I mean, I I want you to write an opening statement for me. Like, how would you measure someone's preparedness to to to lead trial counsel?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. I mean, nowadays I'm hired to try cases and I'm also hired to kind of collaborate with people. Like, I'll be brought in a last minute or something to kind of help out on a trial, either inside my firm or even outside my firm, more commonly when it's outside the firm with someone else. And I definitely get involved on working with people on their opening statements, on their cross examination strategy, and their, you know, kind of, I mean, I would describe it as the how to do it factors. But, you know, it turns out that when you are working with new team members and you ask people what their trial experience is, people get very guarded because they're worried about telling you they don't have certain experiences.
Neel Chatterjee:And, it takes a lot more effort to pull it out of people than you'd think. I don't have a problem with people that don't have trial experience. It's just Matt, you know, like because I can help build those experiences, but what experiences I'm going to give you will be affected by that. I'm not going to have you take the key technical expert if you've never done an examination of another witness before. On the other hand, like, you know, a lot of our associates, like I have them take their first witnesses at trials and major hearings, and they're awesome, you know?
Neel Chatterjee:And, you know, like you do try it out. You do say, okay, let's walk through. What are you going to ask them? How are you going to ask them? What are your vectors if they disagree with you?
Neel Chatterjee:If you're going to give an opening statement, the way that I train that is I ask people to actually argue a motion to me that they're going to argue in court beforehand because that gives you a good sense of how are they approaching themes and efficiency of time.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. That's interesting. Can we talk a little more about risk? Because I think an interesting dimension that we haven't talked about is you you mentioned that any number of people, let's say, in a big firm thinking about going in house. And, you know, you have had a front seat at, you know, lots of startups of of varying success and growth.
Khurram Naik:And and different, you know, ventures have different, you know, narratives that make them seem more successful than others. Like, I remember saying with intellectual ventures, there was a New Yorker article that I think Malcolm Gladwell wrote about them years ago. I think this is before I went to law school, but it made a big impact to me, it just seemed like this incredible promising thing that, you know, intellectual ventures had had has, you know, kind of not had the preeminence that it once had as a a as a litigant. And so how do you think about risk in that way? Like, you've seen a lot of of of companies start from modest places and and had big success and things that were feted that that kinda didn't pan out.
Khurram Naik:And it strikes me that a great thing about being outside counsel is that, you know, you're mentioning, hey. Have seven different companies because you're you're diversifying that way. Whereas, you know, if you go all in as in house counsel, you know, that's a big risk on this one company you're betting, and, you know, maybe there's less risk at a really huge company. But so I'm curious how you think about risk in a career and diversification. Like, what do those concepts mean to you as you think about your career or or how you advise others?
Neel Chatterjee:Well, well, so so in house, you you know, the business model works totally differently, right? Because sometimes if you want to get promoted and advance in your career, you can't stay in the company that you're in because the people senior to you are there. And unless there's a new opening at that seniority level, you're capped out. And so, you know, in house, one of the things to recognize is what does advancement mean to you or is it does advancement mean anything to you? Maybe you just want a cool job where you're doing really interesting stuff all the time and you're an individual contributor or you're managing some other people.
Neel Chatterjee:That's cool. Or you're doing impactful work in your current role. But lateral movement among companies is a much more common thing. I mean, you see it among attorneys too. I mean, that's why you have a job quorum.
Neel Chatterjee:But, you know, like in house, it means something very different. And the other thing is that, you know, when you go in house, even if the company doesn't work out, the people are gonna go and be entrepreneurs somewhere else. The venture capitalists are gonna be investing in other companies if you're doing startup driven work. Even if that company doesn't work out, it's not that risky because there are other opportunities out there and you've now established networks of people who hopefully they liked you where they're going to help support you. Right?
Neel Chatterjee:And they're going to help you find new opportunities. The risk profile is a little different, but it's not like an all or nothing thing. The company doesn't work out. There are other companies to work for and all those people are going to work in other places. You have to be careful in developing your networks.
Neel Chatterjee:Big law is safe to a point, right? When the economy goes south, all of a sudden there are larger amounts of layoffs and things like that. I remember in 2008 was the worst day of my professional career because in a single day I laid off 39 people and I did not almost all of them personally. And it was the single worst day in my professional career. And it was even worse for those people.
Neel Chatterjee:I don't mean to minimize that at all. But, you know, there is some security in big law, not the amount people think. It only goes up to some point because at some point people are going to be considered for partners. Some people are going make it, some aren't. Even when you become partner, if you're a two tiered partnership, there's another gate you've to pass through.
Neel Chatterjee:Even if you're a successful equity partner, if you're not producing revenue and there's a whole sales component that isn't in everybody's DNA, you know, things can get challenging being in a law firm environment. So I'm not sure there's a concept of anything being a safe choice. It's better understanding what's your personal inventory and where do your priorities lie.
Khurram Naik:You mentioned the word sales. Do you do you think of yourself as a salesperson? Do you relate to that statement?
Neel Chatterjee:Do I think of myself as a salesperson? I don't think of myself as I I think of myself as a producer, quite honestly, because I live in the theater of a courtroom. Nice. And everything that I'm doing is creating a completely out of order movie that I'm asking people to put together by giving them a narrative to build around the facts I'm giving them. And and, you know, like, I I I'm a producer.
Neel Chatterjee:When it comes to client relationships, I don't view myself necessarily as a salesperson, although that that is what you kind of have to do on the job. I look at myself as more relationship driven, like a very large I mean, I'll go out and I'll pitch new work and I'll do the RFPs and things like that with clients. But where I'm most successful is when I have relationships with people. And they're like, oh, I interacted with Neil at this thing and he was super helpful even though he didn't charge me anything. And, you know, he had really good insights on kind of cutting edge issues and he had a lot of creativity.
Neel Chatterjee:And I just I like hanging out with him, and he's kind of clear about his advice. So I'm gonna hire him for this thing. That's the things where, you know, the vast majority of my revenue comes from.
Khurram Naik:Let me go back to a question about what differentiates you from other lawyers. So, I mean, you've talked to this relationship aspect, but you've also mentioned creativity. And so I wanna know the inputs to that creativity. You know? So Charlie Munger just passed away, and and he and Warren Buffett were famous for reading 10 k's every day.
Khurram Naik:Warren Buffett says, hey. You know, just read, I don't know, how many 10 k's every day. Like, that's what I do. And, you know, if you wanna get to where I am, just do that. Do you have some sort of practice in some way daily or otherwise where you are consuming a kind of information that sets you apart from other lawyers?
Neel Chatterjee:Yes and no. So one of the things that I've always tried to do in various ways is to make law accessible to laypeople. It's just something, it's kind of a weird hobby, I suppose. But, you know, like I really like taking, you know, really hard law stuff and trying to make it accessible to lay people. And it'll range from my crazy continuing legal education programs where I talk about loving the law, Valentine's Day spectacular, and they're not even subject matter.
Neel Chatterjee:I'm not even necessarily talking about IP issues. I'm just doing stuff. Or during the pandemic, I started writing Supreme Court summaries for laypeople about what was the case really about and what were people deciding, And let's make it readable for laypeople as opposed to something we would study in law school. And now I'm doing these two minute videos called Breaking the Law where all I try and do is just encapsulate an 80 page court opinion into two minutes or less and make it engaging for people. I do a lot of experimentation around that.
Neel Chatterjee:And then I also do a lot of things where I try and engage in storytelling for people. One of my closest friends that I grew up with, she had cystic fibrosis. She wasn't supposed to live past 30. And she ended up celebrating her fiftieth birthday, with me and a group of high school friends. And she passed away right before the pandemic, and her family asked me to deliver a eulogy for her, which I I never even I never even attended something where I saw a eulogy.
Neel Chatterjee:I mean, I conceptually knew what it was, but I didn't know what to do. I think her greatest gift to me, in her life and then her end of life was reminding me that that's something I love doing more than anything else, which is telling people stories. Because when I wrote the eulogy, I wrote her farewell letter. And, that is something I really enjoy doing. Like, is can I write and tell stories about other people and other things in a way that's meaningful for them?
Khurram Naik:Thanks for sharing that. What you're saying is it's this inherent passion for storytelling and breaking down that is this mental exercise you're constantly doing, and that's what makes you a creative lawyer? Means when you're working with a client and they see, okay, we think this is a case about x, and you say, well, Ashley, I see it differently. I see this as a case about y. Is that the set?
Neel Chatterjee:Is that the practice that leads to that outcome? It's the what is the unanswered legal question that needs to be answered. Sometimes that can be the case, not always. What is the narrative? So one thing I tell people quite a bit is I don't care what side of the V on we're on in a technology dispute, I represent the innovator.
Neel Chatterjee:Because ultimately, when you're dealing with kind of the ethos of how people feel, in a civil action, criminal cases are different. In a civil case, people want to feel like they're representing the people who are right, and they're not going to feel like someone's right technology dispute unless there's a story of innovation behind it. Well, either way. And so that to me is a really that storytelling is really important because what happens, particularly in technology disputes, is people will, if you're on the defendant side, in a patent case or a trade secret case, the narrative will inevitably come up, Well, all this stuff is obvious or All this stuff is publicly known. And okay, I know you feel that way, but we live in a world of what can you prove.
Neel Chatterjee:And then also, are the unknown or lesser known areas of law that we can press? This issue happens quite a bit, not in the patent or trade secret context, but in the Internet and data rights context where a lot of the rules are unwritten or how the rules are being interpreted are unknown. And it turns out that if you look at the case law in those areas, the vast majority of the case law has been developed by what kind of narrative could you build around what these new businesses are and how to get people comfortable with an inherent creepiness factor that people will have around whatever these new business models are. Whether you're talking about, can you sell a duck on eBay to if a self driving car hits somebody, what are you going to do about it? Or you're mapping a neighborhood and what happens if you're taking pictures of kids on the street to, Alexa's listening to me, right?
Neel Chatterjee:Like all of those have an inherent creepiness factor to it that people are uncomfortable with. And you're like, okay, there's going to be legal fights about this. How do we develop the narrative to make it a defensible business strategy? And Gen AI is the same thing today. Right?
Khurram Naik:There's a theme of since we're talking about themes that you use in in jury trials, there's a theme do you ever weave in narratives around property? Because, know, a big thing that that a patent is that that's a property right in this intangible asset. So just is is that a thing that you relate to or or something that you counter, or is this something you just ignore? You just kinda focus on the story of innovation? Like, how does that I
Neel Chatterjee:mean, it it factors in. Right? Like you say, you know, if you own a home, you're going to have boundaries. You're going to have limits on it, and, you know, you're not allowed to tread onto someone else's land. Those are helpful concepts, but at the core, those boundaries are defined by what did you innovate or what did the other people innovate.
Neel Chatterjee:And my boundaries, the reason like if you do jury studies, the jurors always want to know, do you have a patent on your own technology when you're a defendant, is because they think about it that way. They say, okay, my boundary can't begin until I have my own boundaries where it's not going to overlap on your land. As we all know that do IP litigation, that's not exactly the way patents work, But but that concept kind of filters in in various ways, but it's not the centerpiece. It's just it's part of the overall themes.
Khurram Naik:What do you do you still work with trial consultants?
Neel Chatterjee:All the time.
Khurram Naik:What do you still I mean, you've got so much experience. What do you get out of working with those consultants?
Neel Chatterjee:The jury consultants do well, it depends on what role they're playing. But let's say you're using them for a mock jury. There are a lot of times you want to test different types of thematic approaches, different types of evidence, or different types of witnesses. And you'll get a lot of feedback that's more empirically based on each one of those things, on what to emphasize more or less or what kinds of witnesses resonate or don't. Sometimes you think you have this great witness who's a great talker, and then it turns out people kind of don't like them.
Neel Chatterjee:And to really test your, you know, like there's good facts, there's bad facts, and there's horrible facts. Sometimes you want to test how horrible are those horrible facts. You have an instinct on it, but you may not always be right. And so that's really helpful. The other thing where jury consultants can be helpful is a lot of witnesses are just nervous to testify.
Neel Chatterjee:Lawyers can only go so far on helping people deal with those nerves. In my opinion, and I could be wrong about this, people have perceptions of business executives that have to be managed and people have to understand what those perceptions are. And second, when someone's nervous, sometimes that's interpreted as a lack of credibility. And jury consultants can be very helpful on the psychology of sitting in a witness box and how it works and what, and they can be helpful on working with witnesses. I mean, I obviously am there.
Neel Chatterjee:You know, my colleagues are there, to kind of help them understand how that feels and come to kind of deal with the feelings that people have.
Khurram Naik:When you're getting ready for opening statements, when stepping up to deliver your opening statements, do you still feel nervous? Does it still feel the same way you did with your first handful of trials? Like, what does it feel like today when you step up there?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. I still feel nervous. I don't know if I feel quite the same, but I still feel I always have nerves. Every time you're going to cross examine the key witness or you're doing an opening or a closing, by the time you're at closing, I feel less nervous because I'm kind of like, Okay, I just got a job to do and I got to get this done. And you're kind of you've been in it for a long time.
Neel Chatterjee:You haven't slept at all for two weeks. But at the opening, boy, you still have stage fright. Actually, even when you're doing Vardier, you can even have that because depending on how much liberty the judge gives you on Vardier, you might be establishing some of your trial themes through that.
Khurram Naik:You know, I I think it'd be interesting to to spend a little more time exploring you were talking earlier about, you know, just the the range of outside activities you have, and I I feel like it'd be remiss if we didn't explore that some more because, you know, when you're talking about, you know, working with these jury trial consultants, I mean, I'm thinking about how when I was litigator, mostly had bench trials, and so there's a there's a lot less of this prep with with jury trial consultants. So there's a there's a lot of things that you juggle in your role. And I know, you know, we talked already about, you know, diversity, career fair, mentorship, all these different activities you have. So you juggle a lot of things. And but, you you have the same twenty four hours as the rest of us.
Khurram Naik:And something that I told you that I've observed is that you are among the, if not the, most responsive lawyer that I know, and and that's the case when we practice together, and that's the case today. And that's remarkable given how busy you are. So can we spend a little more time on that? Because that seems to be your competitive advantage is is time management. So what is your time management?
Khurram Naik:How what is the system that you've developed?
Neel Chatterjee:Well, the the number one piece of the system that I developed is if I don't respond right away, I'm going to forget about it. So I know that about myself. Nice. I know that about myself. So I always try and respond right away because if I don't, I'm going to forget.
Neel Chatterjee:That that that I guess that
Khurram Naik:it begs the question why it's important for you to remember at all because any number of people could just say, oh, I'm busy, and I don't need to pick up every single thing. That that itself is interesting to explore right there. Where does that attitude of, I need to respond to people, I need to be responsive at all to begin with, come come from?
Neel Chatterjee:I don't know, man. Like, I I kinda look at it as, like, you know, when you're in a professional services industry, it's never about me. It's always about you. Like, you know, it's always about the client. It's always about the younger lawyers.
Neel Chatterjee:It's always about your colleagues. It's always about the court, you know? Like, I am just a vehicle by which I'm serving others in a whole variety of ways. And I don't know, like, think it's I don't know. Like, instinctively, I feel like it's rude to not respond almost, you know?
Neel Chatterjee:I will say I get really annoyed when I get these emails that are solicitations, and it says, please go and schedule a time with me on my calendar. Because I'm like, wait, you're wanting to ask you're asking me to give you my business, but then I have to go and do extra work to go and have the privilege of meeting with you for something I probably don't want to begin with? I find really annoying. So the responsiveness to me, feel like it's kind of rude to not respond. That's just me though.
Neel Chatterjee:That doesn't have to be for everybody. I know lots of people ignore all the inquiries they get. It does get a little overwhelming at time with law students because, you know, like I probably get, you know, 20 to 30 a week. You know, I can't schedule Zoom conferences with all of them. I can't help people with every single resume.
Neel Chatterjee:I try and do it with a lot. There are times where even those law students will be, I'll give them all sorts of feedback on their resume and they'll say, well, can you just rewrite it for me? You're the owner of your career, not me.
Khurram Naik:But then how do you schedule all the things you need to in a day? You've got so many of these obligations. How do you think about your time? All things considered, mornings is the time for blank, afternoon is the time for blank. How do you think about your day?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So I give this presentation called Open Up Your Can of Maximum Awesomeness to Young Lawyers. I talk about mentorship, and I talk about time management and how to be successful in your careers, at least from my perspective. One is being comfortable in your own skin and being your authentic you, which we've already talked about. The second one is something I say going for the twofer, which is we only have so many hours in the day.
Neel Chatterjee:So if I were to say I want to do something that's public interest related, something that's diversity related, something that's recruiting related, and something that's business development related, and I dealt with each one of those things separately, I am now trying to do a whole lot of things with a limited universe of time. So if I can take at least two of the things that are important to me and accomplish them together, that is always a more efficient return on the investment of my time because I'm now doing two things at once. If I can do three, even better. If I can do four together, even better than that. And so when I do a whole bunch of things, will try and dedicate my time to things where I think there's multiple potential avenues for returns on investment that are also valuable and important to me.
Neel Chatterjee:And that has turned out to be a really material impact on how I allocate time. I also, I mean, I'll do stuff on weekends. Like, I mean, you know, I do lots of stuff with my family on weekends. I work a lot on weekends, but, you know, I can more often squeeze in time. And if people are only willing, like for mentorship, if people are only willing to meet with me between the hours of 9AM and 5PM, we may not be able to get a meeting, Right?
Neel Chatterjee:I client stuff to do during that time.
Khurram Naik:Have you ever had to handle burnout or you've just always been very passionate about you do and you really hadn't really experienced much in the way of burnout?
Neel Chatterjee:In individual years, I've definitely felt burned out, and I definitely have felt like at times, people will know that I'm like crazy busy working hard, traveling all the time, million places at once, and, people who at times I felt like maybe should have been a little invested in trying to help me out a bit on trying to relieve the burden or trying to help out a bit, were not invested in that. Instead, they just asked for more. Those ended up with some very hard conversations, you know? I've dealt with those things and it's it's not easy. You feel tired.
Neel Chatterjee:You do. And, you know, and sometimes your family takes a toll for it. Right? Like, you know, I I don't go on vacation to places where I can't get high speed Internet. Yeah.
Neel Chatterjee:I just won't do it.
Khurram Naik:What were the inputs to burnout in the past? Or was it just that, you know, you felt there was an imbalance between how much other people were showing up and and pitching in, or or was there something else that that that as a pattern that you're seeing for what caused you to get feel burnt out?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. Normally, there's a million things on all angles, whether it's personal life, professional life, or otherwise. And sometimes, I mean, when you try five cases in a year, which I've done, ITC and district court cases, you're just pooped. It's hard to go from one thing to another thing when they're all different from each other and just within three weeks pick up an entirely new technology expert and develop your themes and all that stuff. Right?
Neel Chatterjee:And, you know, I don't take a lot of vacations, but, you know, it starts wearing on you. Earlier, you mentioned Maximum Awesomeness, and there's
Khurram Naik:a Maximum Awesomeness practice group. Tell me about that.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So Maximum Awesomeness Practice Group, I founded that thing a long time ago. It was something in my prior law firm that I did. I was running the group and I had sensed that there was probably going to be some disruption in the group, that some people were going to be leaving and things like that. I really thought it was important for us to articulate a vision as to what we stood for and kind of have a rallying cry around it, which was, you know, we aim to change the world one lawsuit at a time.
Neel Chatterjee:And I wanted to encourage people, particularly young lawyers, but also people I was close to, to kind of make sure people felt like we were doing really important and impactful things and we should appreciate and enjoy that, but then it had to be in its I wanted to put it in my Neil like way, which was kind of humorous and tongue in cheek. Like, we do this really important stuff, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. So I put together MAPG to kind of promote the group and promote people's successes on important things we were doing, pro bono and otherwise. It was also both pro bono and actual litigation and also to give people kudos for the substantial contributions they were making. And it was interesting because when I did it, I was also doing it a little bit to test out a concept of viral marketing, which wasn't really known at the time in Internet concepts, to just see if I did this, would people pick up on it?
Neel Chatterjee:And I started having clients reaching out to me. What is this MAPG thing you're doing? I want to be part of that. I feel like I need to be part of that. It ended up having this nice marketing impact, but it was really about community building inside the team and making sure people felt supported and felt like they were a part of doing something important.
Neel Chatterjee:Is there a theme? I know you're very relationship driven and try to have
Khurram Naik:a big tense, but I'm sensing a theme between what you just described and then also your annual dinners. Is there a FOMO component to your community building?
Neel Chatterjee:I never tried to create FOMO. I think I've seen instances where people have felt that way because of things that I do, And I never intend to create that feeling. It just, you know, it kinda happens. But, you know, it's more about building communities and networks of people who recognize they're in it together for one reason or another and create support. Remember one of my annual dinners, it was the first time that heads of litigation or senior IP lawyers from all the major payment companies were all at the dinner together and they had never met.
Neel Chatterjee:Whether they're adversaries in the competitive marketplace, they do have areas where there are going to be common ground. Just being able to see them sit together and get to know each other was hugely important for me even though it had no tangible business development benefit.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I'm struck with another theme in in in these relationship building is, of course, it's so big area centric. Right? Like, you are in the epicenter of of, you know, where your clientele are, and, there is a there is, these different payments council that can be all together geographically. How would you apply the principles you're talking about?
Khurram Naik:You know, you mentioned this concept of virality and trying to apply principles from internet marketing generally to to your practice. How would you apply you know, right now, we we we live much more remote era. How would you apply the principles that you've used around community to a to a to an Internet era? You know, how can someone who's based in, you know, North Carolina who isn't in the epicenter, how can that person position themselves where they are building community in that same way and these network effects that you're talking about as well?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. Well, it depends on what your areas of practice are, right? Like, you know, it depends what your areas of practice are. I have to say post pandemic has been, more of a challenge for me. People have not got together as much.
Neel Chatterjee:The way that people interact with each other in law related events is totally different. I feel like people's connections are weaker than they were before in terms of personal relationships, and I've been struggling with that, and I think other people are too. So it's a little hard to give insights on that. I guess the metaphor I would draw is when I've developed international clientele and international client bases who are not Silicon Valley centric. One example, and I'm sure this doesn't work for everyone, the Partner and Very Handsome Man card, like people in China and Taiwan love that card.
Neel Chatterjee:They love it. And I will have tech companies out there, saying, Oh, I met such and such a person at this other tech company and they gave me your card and I feel I really need to meet you. And they'll always ask to do a video call, which I think is really fun. There's probably a disappointment tinge when they get out of the, Oh.
Khurram Naik:It could be the opposite. Maybe you're exceptionally handsome in that part of the world.
Neel Chatterjee:Right. What they appreciate is they appreciate the fact that if you look at my credentials, I have whatever these important credentials are, but there's a little bit of tongue in cheek. It's a little bit of lightheartedness on what is very stressful for these companies. And there's a communication style that is easier for them at some level. But things like that can be helpful, like ways to kind of distinguish yourself or get to know folks and build virality by having a couple of champions in whatever areas you're in and then trying to say, Oh, what events are you going to that I might want to go to too?
Neel Chatterjee:We can hang out. But then you go to the events and you have a sponsor there, right? Someone that you've worked with that's an in house lawyer. I'll give you examples. MCCA, Minority Corporate Counsel Association.
Neel Chatterjee:So I went to the conference this year. I went last year. I did a bunch of pro bono work for them and I found out there are a couple of my friends who go and I'm like, Hey, after this thing's done, they don't have a dinner event, so why don't we all go grab drinks and dinner? They'd bring along four or five of their friends that are all in house lawyers. That was awesome.
Neel Chatterjee:I don't know if it'll turn any business or not, but now I've expanded my network of people who are all similar minded on diversity and the law.
Khurram Naik:Okay. So picking up the very handsome man thing, You're pretty much the only lawyer I can think of that that has this angle, and and maybe my network isn't broad enough. But there's really no one I can think of, let's say, literally speaking with with with just a business card as as a marketing tool, doing something interesting with that. But then it just whatever other jumping off points, Maximus Group, Practice Group, there's a whole string of things that you're doing that seem to be very unique. Are you surprised that more people haven't done something similar to comping or otherwise?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So, I'll tell you that other people have tried to do some of these things. They tend to be followers because they see that what I've done is kind of interesting and distinctive. I think I get away with a lot more than I probably should, to be honest with you. Like, and some people will just kind of say, well, that's Neil, you know?
Neel Chatterjee:Like, that's kind of, you know, who he is and, you know, it's not for everybody. Like, there's a lot of people that are going to be rows and columns and, you know, the IBM blue suits and, you know, and if that's what they want, I'm not that person. I was considered for an Article III position a number of years ago when someone asked me about these kind of loony things that I do. They didn't say it this way, but the question was, well, isn't that a little this was not the word they used, but demeaning for a judge. I said, you know, if what you're looking for is a person who isn't authentically themselves or isn't willing to have an opinion, then I'm not the right person.
Neel Chatterjee:And, you know, I do think that there are people who've tried to replicate it. The problem is it isn't them when they try and replicate it. This breaking the law thing that I'm doing right now, a number of people have come to me about these videos and said, Oh, well, you need to do X, Y, and Z because there are going to be a lot of copycats out there because it's kind of interesting and differentiated. I was talking to one of my friends who does a healthcare podcast, a very prominent healthcare M and A lawyer, he said, You know, Neil, I think someone could get on there and say exactly word for word what you say. It's just not going to be as interesting because wacky you.
Neel Chatterjee:And it was a very nice compliment. I don't know if it's true, but, I think other people have tried to replicate it. They haven't been successful at it because they're trying to be something like me as opposed to someone like them.
Khurram Naik:In the context you're talking about, are are these people that are more like something like a peer to you?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. They can be peers, or they can be people that are, you know, coming up through the ranks. You know? Sure.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I still don't know if I have a sense or explanation for why there aren't more people, South Asian or otherwise. I think it it one interesting dimension is to say, hey. You know, like, you were already so unique as a South Asian lawyer. Why did you feel compelled to to to stand out even more?
Khurram Naik:You already were, you know, novel in that sense. But then also, you know, to the extent if that's the dimension we're running on, you know, there's a number of more South Asian lawyers now, of course. So I'm still struck with this, and I I just don't have a satisfactory explanation for why there aren't more people there that feel comfortable with expressing themselves more directly in that way and and, you know, especially in the area of of LinkedIn where you don't have to do it in person if you're not comfortable with that. There's many other ways to express yourself.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. I don't know other than there aren't a whole lot of people in BigLaw that are of that nature. Fair. There aren't a whole lot, at least not that I know of. Again, I still kind of look around over my shoulder and I said, How did all this happen?
Neel Chatterjee:Because I'm not a person that should have been successful in a big law firm.
Khurram Naik:Well, let me ask you about that. Do you feel sitting here now, I mean, just the reality is, look, you have this position of influence at your firm. You're on the executive committee. The reality is that you are the proverbial man. You are the system now.
Khurram Naik:Do you feel that?
Neel Chatterjee:Do I feel? Well, so my term on the executive committee ended a year ago, but I was on the executive committee, I've had certainly a lot of management roles in the firm. Here's what I'll tell you is that I couldn't get a job in law school. I was very lucky to get my job in Colorado when I got it. It was the only job offer I had.
Neel Chatterjee:Like I said, I'd never met a South Asian lawyer before I became one, never met anyone in management. Like I look really pridefully at some of the South Asian law firm leaders out there today as doing amazing things that I have not achieved. But in the leadership roles that I've had, there isn't a day that I don't walk into something where I don't say to myself, Am I here because I deserve to be or am I here because I'm checking some kind of box? And, you know, I don't think I think there's a whole lot of people that feel like they deserve to be there and that they're there because they're supposed to be. I do not live without an element of self doubt as to why am I there.
Neel Chatterjee:At the same time, I view my role as a responsibility. A responsibility like, when I stepped down as the head of the IP group at ORIC, the diverse lawyers were the ones that came to me and were really upset about it because of what that meant to them to see someone like me in leadership. And that was hugely impactful when I did it because I don't want to let people down where they don't feel like they can't look up and see someone that looks like me. And so, like, I I don't know if that answers your question, but, like, I'm filled with self doubt every single time, but then I take the responsibility enormously seriously.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I think you just it seems that you just represent this really interesting mixture of that sort of you're you're saying that you feel the self doubt, then, of course, at the same time, you are known for being authentically so confident. It's just such an interesting connection. The two, I think there's even a contradiction to be had there. Think it's just that both are simultaneously true for you.
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope so. I mean, like, demonstrating vulnerability to a point is kind of it's part of the authenticity.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm.
Neel Chatterjee:Right.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. We talked a little about, I think, something that is really striking about how you present, about how you position yourself now, it's on your LinkedIn and otherwise, is that you are in crisis management. What was the first that you realized when, Hey, you know what? I'm not just a lawyer or a counselor or whatever. I manage
Neel Chatterjee:crises. So the first times I started interacting with that were in the early days of eBay when people just didn't know, like, what could you buy and sell on eBay? And I was still an associate at the time. And then I was also doing stuff for Lucasfilm when The Phantom Menace was first distributed, and I was running the first online anti piracy campaign. Now at that point, I wasn't like the front man interacting with all of the PR agencies or the media and stuff like that.
Neel Chatterjee:But I got a very deep dose of it because I was helping frame what the messaging was going to be and how we were going to be able to defend the business models or whatever the issues were that were coming up. And over time, I started dealing with disruptive businesses or areas where there were very uncertain areas of law where there was going to be some element of public accountability. The litigations were a piece of the much larger portfolio of kind of how did the public feel about these things. And that became part, like, it all became part of the communications strategy. And so, you know, that all filtered into crisis communication related activities.
Neel Chatterjee:I would say the first time it really played an active role that I remember was probably the adoption.com case because this was before marriage equality was decided. It was involving same sex couple rights, Internet law, which was super undefined, and this groundbreaking case on controversial issue at the time about same sex adoption. I don't know why it was controversial, but it was. And this concept called best interests of the child doctrine where people held out this idea that opposite sex, husband and wife couples provide a better parentage than than same sex couples, which was completely untrue in the science. And when that thing launched, I mean, there was and I was, like, the lead lawyer on it.
Neel Chatterjee:There was so much press around it. I had clients that were not totally private. They knew they were filing a public lawsuit, but I don't think they expected the amount of public activity there was around it. It was globally covered. Like, that really like, we were just in it deep.
Neel Chatterjee:And, you know, when you had different publications with different agendas coming at you, you know, having the messaging strategy really mattered. And I got to give my hats off to the National Center for Lesbian Rights who co counseled with me on it because they knew what was going to happen, and they really worked us over on how to message the crisis communications at the beginning. Because those guys, Shannon Mentor in particular, was just off the charts excellent. And I I learned so much from those guys.
Khurram Naik:And then, I mean, does this apply to how how should other lawyers be thinking about how to manage crisis? I mean, is this something that you think is generalizable that other lawyers should be thinking in terms in in shifting the perspectives on themselves? Is it just unique to the cocktail of of matters that you worked on, or is this more generalizable skills that you think more people should be thinking about?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So the first thing is is you can't be a person who panics easily. You need to be able to kind of at least create the impression as the sound hand with an architecture in place to manage a challenging problem. And you have to be 20 fourseven available. I mean, crisis communications, you have to be 20 fourseven available.
Neel Chatterjee:And then you do have to have some amount of fungibility depending on is this a tiny little company that has no marketing or no PR department Or is it a gigantic company that has 200,000 employees with a huge infrastructure internally? The way that you're going to do crisis communications differs greatly depending on which one of those are because in one instance, you're going have a whole bunch of infrastructure and other tentacles of messaging around the business that are going to require very fast decision making of a large team. And in other instances, you're going to have people that might have an agenda of just trying to bury themselves under their bedsheets and not say anything. Both of those create different challenges, and you kind of got to understand your client base and figuring out how are you gonna be the steady hand to help them navigate this.
Khurram Naik:And, you know, is this something that you just realized about yourself retroactively in the same way that, know, hey. Like, it's not like I made this decision to join Oregon under these conditions, but just kind of retroactively figure out, oh, this is like a way to, you know, draw a line through these experiences that I've had, or is that something you've been steering yourself towards?
Neel Chatterjee:I would say I ended up getting experience It's like one of these luck things. Like, I kind of lucked into it. I got involved in some of those cases. One of the very first cases I was involved in was Sun versus Microsoft, which at the time was the biggest IP case in the country. And I was a mid level associate on it.
Neel Chatterjee:But I definitely was participating in some of the communications related activities going on behind the scenes, but not that much. I was too junior at that time for that kind of stuff. But I just kind of started developing a portfolio of having those experiences and people just started saying, Oh, Neil's a person who's good at handling this sort of stuff. I mean, I love doing it and I like the pressure. I like injunction proceedings.
Neel Chatterjee:I like the pressure of having to make decisions really quickly, and I don't tend to panic too much. And so I like being invested with that trust, it just kind of grew over time.
Khurram Naik:I know we only have a few minutes left, so I want to kind of talk about the future at this point. Where do you see your practice heading to? What do you see in the coming, let's say, three years, five years? Is that a useful time frame for you to think about? Is that how you think about your career, or is it kind of already heading the direction it's heading?
Khurram Naik:Are you in a position where you're trying to head it in some direction? How are you thinking about that?
Neel Chatterjee:Yeah. So my practice over the last two or three years has expanded substantially in directions that I didn't totally anticipate. And I'll answer your question by answering it this way. So historically, I think people would have known me as being a lawyer in three areas fundamentally in patent litigation, trade secret litigation, and weird Internet stuff, Internet software stuff, whether it be contracts, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, data scraping, things like that. And I still do a lot of all of those things and typically unknown areas of law.
Neel Chatterjee:But more recently, people have hired me for corporate fraud litigation for really complicated biotech cases, which I've typically been in the tech sector, for environmental contamination cases, and a broader portfolio of things. When I look at the market today, I think the days of the storied trial lawyer, who could kind of go and try anything are continuing, but the people who are the legendary people are all getting to be an age where they're going to be hanging it up sometime in the not couple of few years. There is a moment in the market where the next generation behind them were largely second chairs and maybe some of them will take on the mantle. But even for them, their time period is limited. But I'm in that next generation of people, let's say the people in the late 40s, early 50s, I'm in my early 50s, that could take on this broader portfolio of high stakes litigation and trial work.
Neel Chatterjee:And so the next three to five years, I see myself in two areas, continuing to expand beyond core tech litigation and handling matters of significance in a broader portfolio of areas as I have been in the past couple of years. The second is I've kind of carved out this unique area of expertise in what I'll call data rights litigation. Data rights don't have a clear topology for for intellectual property rights. They're kind of trade secrets sometimes. They're not copyrights.
Neel Chatterjee:They're very rarely patent related unless you do certain, you know, technology gizmos around them. And The legal framework around data as an asset is somewhat undefined, but it's out there. I actually teach a class at Vanderbilt Law School now called Data as an Asset. I see myself in the next three to five years really helping define that either through litigation or through advising businesses on risk management on helping define a legal topology around this concept of data, which is the single greatest currency we have in the world today. But no one has a legal framework for it.
Khurram Naik:And then do you I mean, so so I think it was interesting to hear about how you're thinking about your career. If you're taking somebody who's a senior associate thinking about the path there's they're they're they're shaping for their careers, and maybe they're thinking they wanna to be at a big firm, what would you think that know, how do you think about, you know, like, how did you come to this data as an asset as the thing that you wanna allocate time and energy towards? You know, what are the ways you expose yourself to the kinds of ideas that you think are going to be something to invest in and to make a new wave out of? Well,
Neel Chatterjee:some of it's intellectual curiosity. You got to have intellectual curiosity around things to want to do it. But one of the things that are kind of issues that are out there that are not really framed in a meaningful way are very uncertain areas of law. Like have all kinds of new laws being passed in various areas, right? It can't just be one law, but what is an area of unanswered questions, undiscovered countries that are valuable and important to people where we need to get better answers.
Neel Chatterjee:And then whatever that area is, whether you're a litigator or a corporate lawyer, how do you start carving out expertise and passion for it? Because I do think clients really like it when you're not marketing to them, but they just feel like you feel passionate about wherever their business might be going and you're excited about it. I would always follow NVIDIA's new product launches for years because I thought it was super cool technology and the multiple applications are great. I would always be following what were the big new Communications Decency Act or online liability cases in the '90s and early 2000s. And I would just kind of email clients, Oh, I read this cool case, not because I was marketing to them, but just because I thought they should know about it.
Neel Chatterjee:The formal law firm alerts are great and useful and everything, but they take weeks to get out just saying, Hey, I saw this interesting thing and I care about you and you should be interested in it too. Following your passions and what you're interested in on that is super helpful from a career development point of view and always being there for the other person. Making that clear, I'm here for you, you're not here for me is important.
Khurram Naik:Final question. Do you have any fears about being replaced by AI, let's say, a Chatter GPT?
Neel Chatterjee:A Chatter GPT. My dad has told me that he is really worried that he'll interact with AI and it'll become his friend. And I guess I'm worried that my dad will become a better friend of an AI tool than I will be to him. He's 86 years old. I'm not so concerned about it for what I do, mainly because I remember when I managed the document production on Christmas Eve of a major case that I was working on in 1997 where we drove up like six semi trucks to another person's office.
Neel Chatterjee:And today, it's a virtual download with a password. And there are tons of e discovery services that exist now that didn't exist then. There was lots of technical innovation that they said would make law firm jobs disappear and it didn't. It created new industries and new opportunities for all of us. I think Gen AI is going to do the same thing.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I think, in the early days of printing, actually, consumption went up because now it's so much easier to generate printed documents. So, yeah, I think there's some very counterintuitive changes
Neel Chatterjee:come.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. Totally. Neil, this is awesome. This is an amazing conversation, and and I'm I'm really, impressed with how much we covered. And, I really appreciate you giving your time to to share your story here.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. No.
Neel Chatterjee:Thanks a bunch. I appreciate it, Karam.