Think Like a Builder: Jeremy Siegel on Being the First Legal Hire Startups Actually Need

Today’s guest is Jeremy Siegel, a legal leader known for operating where things are messy—and making them work. Jeremy currently serves as General Counsel at Final Bell, a cannabis supply chain platform, and is the founder of Legal Mise, where he advises startups at the edge of innovation, including in AI, logistics, and CPG.

Cecilia and Jeremy explore what it means to lead legal from inside the business, how to build trust fast as an early legal hire, and why the best lawyers today are also product-minded operators.

They also cover:
– Lessons from cannabis regulation and navigating high-risk sectors
– What “thinking like a builder” looks like in legal
– Making yourself indispensable in startups
– The future of legal advising in AI and fast-evolving industries

Follow Jeremy Siegel:

@Jeremy Siegel on LinkedIn

Show notes:

– The role of legal in regulated industries
– Startup legal 101: how to advise when speed and ambiguity reign
– AI, cannabis, and other frontier sectors
– Product thinking for legal professionals

Books/Frameworks Mentioned:
– The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
– The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

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⁠@Cecilia Ziniti⁠ on LinkedIn

⁠@CeciliaZin⁠ on Twitter/X

⁠@GC AI⁠ on LinkedIn

⁠gc.ai⁠ website

Transcript

Jeremy Siegel: 0:00

I I remember actually the first judge I interned for at the Court of National Trade, he said that being a judge was the purest form of legal work because they get to decide what the law actually means. Really, that that was really important to me. And I like, what does it actually mean? You know, it's not just what the words are, but what's the intent behind it?

Cecilia Ziniti: 0:20

Welcome back to CZ & Friends, the podcast where we talk about legal leaders, technologists, and operators driving innovation for their companies and beyond. I'm your host, Cecilia Ziniti. As a former GC, founder, and now AI exec, I know that as lawyers and business leaders, we love to keep up and stay curious. And do that while leading well and getting better at what we do. That's what this show is about. All right. Today's guest is Jeremy Siegel. He's built a career navigating complexity from AI to data privacy to cannabis. He's got an operator's mindset and a brilliant legal mind at every table he sits at. He's currently the general counsel at Final Bell and is the founder of LegalMise, where he advises startups and sectors like AI, agriculture, logistics, and CPG. We've been longtime friends. We'll tell the story of how we met, but super excited to dive in with Jeremy and we'll talk about what it means to lead inside the business, how to be the first legal hire at a startup, and why the best lawyers think like builders. All right, let's get into it.

Jeremy Siegel: 1:17

Excited to be here.

Cecilia Ziniti: 1:18

Thank you so much, Jeremy. Really um welcome. Excited to dive in. Tell us a little bit about you.

Jeremy Siegel: 1:24

Sure. So I have been practicing law now for 15 years, 10 years now here in California, and eight in-house. Made the move in-house through, I feel maybe the most California way possible, which was two weeks prior to cannabis becoming fully legalized in California. I joined a startup called Ease to be their first director of compliance to build out the first compliance platform for a cannabis delivery platform in the United States.

Cecilia Ziniti: 1:48

Wow. Wow. So yeah. So Ease, it's kind of like it's direct to consumer, sort of like Instacart for cannabis. Or tell tell us a little bit about the business.

Jeremy Siegel: 1:56

Exactly right. I think the initial kind of blank for blank, it was the Uber for weed. And it was, you know, at its height, it was a very exciting startup that was trying to change minds and change regulations nationwide as cannabis became more normalized and as we tried to bring this new exciting modality of on-demand delivery to a industry where that already existed, but it was in a very different manner. So it was exactly like you said, Instacart. You'd open up um a web page, and then it was very exciting. We were the first cannabis platform actually to get on the app store as well. And you could place an order and a, you know, a an employee of a dispensary would come to your house, deliver a packaged, compliant product to you, and you could pay um either via cash or via digital means.

Cecilia Ziniti: 2:40

So had you been outside counsel for them? My product council, you know, feelers are just going off on all the issues that you just had. So many threads to pull. You got the app store, you got the state regulations, you got employment regulations, you got marketplace. Probably can't even take payments, right? Yeah, it's just just like walk us through.

Jeremy Siegel: 2:58

If you Google ease and payments, you'll find a whole sort of story about that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 3:01

Oh man. Well, I mean, this is a podcast. There's gotta be a sort of, you gotta tell this sort of story. You can't you can't tease that, Jeremy. So, so what what did you? I mean, like, I mean, I'm just fascinated of like what even drew you to that, where you're like, all right, that sounds crazy challenging. I'm in, or like like put us in your headspace of when you just need to be.

Jeremy Siegel: 3:21

That was kind of it, actually. My first role in California was at a boutique regulatory firm that focused initially on alcohol. And our clients at the time were trying to do delivery of alcohol. So Instacart, DoorDash, Uber, Google Express, Postmates, Drizzly, you name it. We worked with all of those as they tried to figure out how to navigate just a myriad of state regulations and trying to bring on-demand to alcohol. And as California decided to legalize cannabis, operators in the space decided they wanted to actually hire lawyers that were not defense lawyers and then we're looking for lawyers that can help them actually navigate these new rules. So our firm, because it's like alcohol, was a natural place to go. To my connections, I brought in a couple of clients myself. And then through you know, another role that I didn't get actually, as our our our um our story goes, the newly hired uh vice president of legal and compliance asked me to be her first director of compliance at ease a month into her stay, her stay, her um, her stay there.

Cecilia Ziniti: 4:15

Okay. That's amazing. So is there a so so you you were at this firm that was doing highly regulated, then you got you were super intrigued at this kind of like new possibility. What's the through line in your experience, right? So, like, so you go to law school and are you like, I'm a lawyer for new tech, I'm a lawyer for new weird things. Like, what was the walk us through that piece?

Jeremy Siegel: 4:34

Oh, I mean, so coming out of law school, I was all set to be a project finance associate in New York, but this was 2009 and not everything worked as we expected in 2009. I was able to leverage relationships mostly through Georgetown to become a clerk at the Court of Financial Trade. And then I applied for and got a clerkship back in DC. And that pulled me away from the project finance route completely, put me more on a litigation path. And when we decided to move out to California, I was trying to find a way that I could take some of those skills and become more of a California lawyer. And regulatory space seemed to make a lot of sense, especially in one that is very California's well known for, which is alcohol.

Cecilia Ziniti: 5:06

I interesting.

Jeremy Siegel: 5:07

So I was trying to find a space that I could create like a niche and uh expertise because I wasn't coming into becoming an in-house lawyer via the more, I think, um traditional commercial corporate roles. It was um a regulated space. So I wanted to find something that made me a little more interesting.

Cecilia Ziniti: 5:23

Wow, interesting. Okay. And when you think about going from, you know, a law firm to in-house, how was how was that adjustment?

Jeremy Siegel: 5:32

I could have made, I think. For me, being at a law firm meant that you could only give advice. You couldn't actually do a change. And once you go in-house, your words have more weight. You're being asked about things that are not purely legal. And as you build trust and relationships, you get involved in conversations that go far beyond whether or not this contract is going to be breached or, you know, our you know, what the what the next corporate governance question is going to be. It's it's much more um integrated into the business itself. So for me, that was very important.

Cecilia Ziniti: 6:01

Got it. Okay. And tell us about so your time at ease. So of everything you achieved at ease, you know, what are you what are you most proud of?

Jeremy Siegel: 6:08

I think so. I was there for about four and a half years, and the most exciting times for me was when I was traveling with my government affairs team, meeting with regulators, meeting with lawmakers, helping draft new rules and regulations and and educating people that were very afraid of this concept of cannabis on demand and showing them that with technology, with guide rails, with information, with data, it would be beneficial both for consumers as well as for governmental agencies that were terrified of a sin, a new sin industry coming up and coming out of the out of the woodwork. And that was so empowering to know that I was I was changing rules, I was writing laws when that that was and that was very legal, you know, specifically, but it was really just kind of changing a conversation and playing a role in that. That was that was the most exciting part for me.

Cecilia Ziniti: 6:56

Yeah, what um what would you say is um any meeting stand out with regulator? And then what advice do you have? I think some of our listeners are adjacent to corporate affairs or adjacent to government affairs. You know, how did you learn that? And then what what anything stick out about any particular meeting with a regulator?

Jeremy Siegel: 7:15

I think that I was really lucky to work with a really talented group of people. I think ease fired way above its belt when it was it was working with tech money, so it was gonna act like a tech company. So we had, you know, an insanely talented group of public policy folks from Lyft and Uber joined us because they were excited about doing the next new thing as well. Like my boss came from Lyft, we had litigators from from Latham, we had we've we have folks that are now, you know, product counselor, cash yeah. We had just really talented people on the team and it was a wealth. And so, especially with the public affairs team, I got to sit down with them, I got to meet with the the lobbyists that they hired, which are the best in the business, and learn a little bit how to, you know, temper myself, because I needed that, and also and how to how to work collaboratively with um within the system. So I think I think the most memorable thing was actually working with uh a representative when they were trying to figure out how to put into law this concept in cannabis around compassionate giving. So, especially in the medical space, there are plenty of patients that don't have enough financial means to purchase what they believe is the medicine they need. And it was an idea that had been kind of contemplated in the in the act that legalized cannabis, but it wasn't fleshed out. So we sat down and we actually wrote in the language that was necessary to allow it to happen while still within the regulated space. And seeing that happen and now seeing people I know building out companies built around that as well has been really empowering and exciting.

Cecilia Ziniti: 8:34

Tell us what you mean, give us a story, and then you know, generalize it for like what that means for in-house practice.

Jeremy Siegel: 8:41

I think that I have a tendency of being a little too familiar with my words, with my tone. It's something I've tried to work on a mental that I need to improve my uh in the past that I need to improve my executive presence. And going in-house, I think actually really attenuated that need because I was talking to C-suite, I was talking to later on to the board members, and but also, you know, communicating clearly and professionally to the rest of the company, informing them of changes that need we needed to make, development, et cetera. So, and especially when dealing with lawmakers and regulators, I couldn't be as brush, I couldn't be as direct, as funny at times. And it was a good learning for me.

Cecilia Ziniti: 9:14

Wow. Yeah. And what um, you know, in that process, it sounds like you know you've worked for multiple founders. So tell us about working for founders and working for execs and you know, your approach now to that.

Jeremy Siegel: 9:26

I think having worked now for a number of startups, working for both founder CEOs and for CEOs kind of brought in as a company's matured, they're very different beasts, that's for sure. Founders have vision, they have passion, they have huge blind spots, I'd say. And I remember very distinctly getting in a very public slack debate with this one of the CEOs at ease over where a product belonged on the menu. And he wanted it to look be in one place, it looked better, and I was explaining to him that the definition of the product required it to be elsewhere. I looking back, I probably shouldn't have had that fight. It was new in-house, trying to be very stick with a lot to the rules, um, and it wouldn't, and when it comes to like kind of risk profile, it was a very low one. Um that being said, he was very, you know, focused on this, it was very important to him for it to look this way. And I I kind of look back in that and recognize that giving into that would have probably bought me more capital of him.

Cecilia Ziniti: 10:18

Interesting. So you you mentioned the calculus of like I shouldn't have fought that fight. So one of the things in-house, at least in my experience, is like um, and I think I think you're right to put to generalize it to founders, is like, um, so I actually heard someone speak, it was uh Sally Yu, the former general counsel of Uber. And she mentioned something to the extent that like, you know, when she really wanted to do something, some new initiative, she had to mention it three times to Travis Kalinick, then the CEO of Uber. And you know, if it was important enough, she'd like make a note on her, you know, the one-on-one document that every couple of weeks she would mention it. And it was like, okay, like I got his attention and I did it. So like that was one strategy. And it and she she mentioned that at one of these women GC dinners, and and that resonated. But like in this case, in the moment, how do you make that decision? And this can be across every level, right? So, you know, some of our listeners are GCs, some of our listeners are brand new corporate counsel, maybe contracts managers, you can pick your thing. But when you're making that judgment call of like, how do I communicate about risk? What are the hills that I die on? What goes through your head now on that?

Jeremy Siegel: 11:25

I think now it's very much what is the audience? This was in a company-wide Slack channel. I could have taken this conversation offline one-on-one, had it resolved, and it not made us both kind of look like we were just picking a fight to pick a fight. So I think there's some maturity in that. Um, and then again, though, also just thinking about the business more holistically. You know, the job of a GC is to understand the business in and out, to not think about things purely through a legal lens, but to think about a way to make sure the business is growing, succeeding in spite of and maybe, you know, for risk at times. So that I think that knowledge and that that lens is much more important than I need to be right. This is the way it needs to be. This is what the law says.

Cecilia Ziniti: 12:01

Yeah, no, I mean that's a huge one. And and I think it is a coming into being a business leader is definitely, you know, a theme we're gonna be exploring here. Uh, you know, and I think it's I saw it as when I became a GC, that was like the ultimate kind of like realization of that. So so tell us about that now. So now you're a G or you're a general counsel or you had your own practice. Tell us about your practice now and tell us about kind of being a general counsel.

Jeremy Siegel: 12:24

Yeah, so my majority of my time is spent as general counsel for another company in the cannabis space called Final Bell, which designs and builds custom vaporization products for some of the largest brands in the world. It is interesting now that I we've recently transitioned from being an actual cannabis company to being a cannabis adjacent company, which changes a lot of the risks and other considerations and it makes things, I'd say, unbalanced easier. It's a very small company at this point as well, as we've kind of shed some of the more labor-intensive aspects of the business. Now it's most of the conversations I'm having are with the CEO, the CEO, EVP, uh, and directly with the board to kind of move us in the direction we want for things like profitability, global expansion, et cetera. And it's very much more, it's still very much a legal role, but I'm in on the conversations, or at least I force myself doing the conversations if I feel like one's happening and I'm not getting that visibility.

Cecilia Ziniti: 13:13

Interesting.

Jeremy Siegel: 13:14

Separately, though, I've also taken on, you mentioned I've I spun up a little entity called Legal Me's, where I have engaged with a number of smaller companies that don't need full-time counsel, but they also don't like the relationship that they have with a law firm. So I'm a fractional GC for yeah, I think right now five or six different companies, different stages of growth with different needs in different industries, which has been really fun for me because I get to stay interested, I get to learn new things, I get to, especially with the younger companies, get really involved with the decisions that are going to impact their growth or their success. And I'm finding it a good mixture for myself right now of just keeping myself interested and touching lots of different things.

Cecilia Ziniti: 13:49

Wow. So five different companies. Okay, so so what's the the how did you decide to be a fractional GC? And then like what did you put in place to do that? How did you how did you meet all the clients that you that you acquired?

Jeremy Siegel: 14:03

You know, it's it's it's all it's been, I think 100% referrals. I have not done a single bit of um marketing or outreach. I have been referred to like a few of my clients have come to me through the law firms that have done their their last raise or their longtime counsel on one aspect. They recognize that they're that the the company needs a little more dedicated support, but also doesn't need to be spending $120 an hour on a junior partner or much more for a senior partner. It's also come through just relationships I've built. For instance, my legal office manager at Ease connected me to the head of HR at the current company that I'm working as well, just because they were friends. So it's all been word of mouth and in relationships. So I've, you know, I've spent a lot of time the last couple of years making sure those relationships all stay fresh, getting coffee with folks, reaching out to them, people that I've never even worked with, just because you never know when they're gonna say, Oh, I want someone just like Jeremy to help on this project.

Cecilia Ziniti: 14:57

When you're the first GC in a startup or you take on a representation, maybe they've just raised, what are the what do you what do you do in the first 30 days? And how do you how do you be successful in finding, you know, how you're gonna relate with that founder or that COO or that company?

Jeremy Siegel: 15:13

I try to do a little bit of of discovery initially, you know, kind of ask ask the questions about where do you where where are the biggest risks right now? What is what's keeping you up at night? And then try to find out who are the people that most likely need the most support legally. Be is it the product team, is it HR, is it is it the is it the is the sales team, and try to build relations with them as well directly. Because I I don't want there to be one person sending me all the work. Then it feels more like a law firm again. It feels like I'm very siloed and not getting the full picture. So my goal is with all of them is to try to understand where the business is going, what their what their goals are, and how I can support that best. For the earlier ones, it's it's it could be as you know, as basic as drafting the first terms and conditions and privacy policy, making sure their merchant portal is going to be working. If we're using their contract with Stripe, for the more established ones, it's it's making sure their their current policies are up to date. You know, California has its fun ruler, every year you have to list how many times you've had requests for deletion. And most folks kind of don't freak don't remember that. So, you know, to kind of check those little boxes that I think just lead to better hygiene as well. I think with better hygiene, the less chance things are going to have to be reactive in nature. And that's kind of the goal.

Cecilia Ziniti: 16:22

Yeah, no, that's great. What do you wish more founders knew about legal as a function?

Jeremy Siegel: 16:27

I hate when people say that that the legal team is the department of no. You know, I hate that people think that legal is blocker. I think that the legal team can be your best partner and can make the company the most successful like it can lead to its highest level of success if you were collaboratively with them and you don't leave them in the dark until the very end. Like the worst thing is when you go in and you see a document everyone's ready to sign, and you're like, oh no, no, no, we cannot sign this. It was a very bad idea. And then there's you know, 12 rounds on a document that would have taken two if you had been asked to opine earlier on in the process. So I think the biggest piece of advice is talk to the legal early and often and things go much faster.

Cecilia Ziniti: 17:04

Yeah. Any um, let's see, when you have a good day at work, what what happened that day?

Jeremy Siegel: 17:11

So I think that for me, as I've kind of matured as a lawyer, it's and and just like as an individual, it's feeling like I am I'm checking, I'm crossing things off. It's I haven't left things kind of hanging. I've spent the last couple of years trying to figure out the best way to kind of manage my workload and you know my projects. When you can check that box on something and it's been a project that's been going for a while, and knowing that it's it's done and dusted and you don't have to worry about it again, that feels really good. But similarly, I feel like when you first it also feels really good, like the first stab you've taken out of new contract, the first stab at a new project, and you're excited about it and you're gonna be energized for the rest of it. That's that's also a really good thing as well. So it's both ends of the life cycle, I think, of anything legal. Feels good.

Cecilia Ziniti: 17:49

Amazing. On that, on that note, um, so tell us about your involvement in AI. I think maybe you have an AI client. And then yeah, tell us about your interest and involvement in AI.

Jeremy Siegel: 17:58

Well, I I did invest in this really cool platform early on through through someone that I really respect. Um, well, GCII.

Cecilia Ziniti: 18:04

Cheers, yeah. So full disclosure, Jeremy and I have been longtime friends. Um, so funny enough, Jeremy actually interviewed for a role at a place where I was a new GC. And we didn't end up hiring Jeremy, which was uh probably a mistake, but the company wasn't uh, you know, ended up not doing as well. Jeremy and I hit it off and we stayed friends, and he was among one of our earliest users at GCAI. But yeah, so so tell us what what AI you're using and how you use AI in your day.

Jeremy Siegel: 18:32

Sure. So I can start. So I work with two companies right now that at least have AI in the name. One is a more traditional machine learning company that doesn't use any Gen A at all, gen AI at all, but it uses its proprietary tools to build out more products for pharmaceutical companies. Um, and then that that was a role that was kind of brought to me through friends. And then another another company that was brought to me through relationship partner Wilson Sanzini after they did their Series A was one of these earlier players in the AI space, trying to create agentic tools for institutional investors. And with them, it was really exciting to sit down with the founder and at least initially kind of help them figure out how they're getting access to some of their data sources, like doing revisions of subscription agreements and things like that, and understanding how much could they do with the data before having to give attribution and things like that. Uh, that was very fun because they were very, very much concerned and that they were they had all the rights to the data they were using. There was no scraping things illegally and um trying to claim transformative use, things like that. So it both sides of that has been really interesting to kind of work with. And also, you know, just with some of the other companies I work with that are kind of in the UGC space or more um like e-commerce, you get questions now about like what are we gonna do with our data, how are we gonna use it? Um, are we gonna kind of try to create some algorithmic um scaling of our of the of our offerings? It's fun to kind of just have this conversation right now, because I think people are still trying to figure out how they're gonna use this this magic word AI, and if it's really just a bolt-on to a traditional product or is there something really transformative you're doing. And so and for myself, uh I I am a power user of GCAI. I I use it many, many times. I because I have multiple clients, I have to kind of change my my lens. I kept using that word, but uh yeah, my I'm I'm looking at things differently each time, and I love that you know I can create different profiles and it it knows the risks I'm looking at fairly well now because I've tried to build those out. And I can speak to it. I type to it, I don't I don't dictate, but I I'll tell it what I want to do. It's fun watching it going from what I believe I thought was kind of an over-eager intern to now being you know a very, very good first pass. I I can I can modify things, I can change things midstream. Now my end product is just done much faster, much more efficiently than if I was doing it myself. If I was trying to go and find because no one actually writes stuff in in like in the legal world, everyone copies and pastes, everyone finds good um good precedent, modifies it to the way that they want to use it, and then claims it their own. It just AI does it much much more efficiently, much cleanly, and it does a much better job maintaining tone as well, which I found.

Cecilia Ziniti: 20:59

Wow, that's fascinating. So so you use it to to sound like for everything, like contracts, research, regulatory communication.

Jeremy Siegel: 21:07

I've used to do comparisons with different like uh different regulatory schemes, which has been helpful. Like, you know, I pull down you know the regulations for this in five states, compare them to me, tell me the biggest difference is put in a table. Um, I recently asked it to I I was asked by a client to trademark uh a new venture for them. I was like, this is a horrible trademark. I know this is bad. It was it was purely descriptive, it was not at all interesting or distinctive. And I was able to just tell them that nine because I knew that, but I also wanted to I wanted to see what an AI an AI answer would look like. GCAI spat out this 10-sectioned ranking system is like one to 10 of like all the different factors you look at for the strength of a trademark and why this was like a two or a three on all of them. And it was it was nice to be um it was nice to have my belief uh supported, but it was also really neat to see the thought process that went into it.

Cecilia Ziniti: 21:57

Interesting. Oh, so you're a futurist, right? So you've you've done cannabis, you've done delivery, you've um gotten into AI. What do you think the legal profession and in-house legal practice looks like in five years?

Jeremy Siegel: 22:08

Um I think it's a little leaner and I think it's it's faster. That's about it. I don't think I don't think lawyers are gonna be replaced. I don't think an AI tool is gonna ask the questions I need to ask to get that good output at that good output. I don't know. I don't think that I think it may be at some point, but not right now, not in the near term. I think that a lot of the more mundane work can't get passed off. I think that things like I, you know, one of the first things I did as a lawyer was doing doc review. That should be done by AI forever and ever and ever. No one should ever have to do that. Um, and there's no real value. I think an AI an AI tool is actually better than than humans are for that kind of project. So, and and same similar things with you know diligence, reviewing documents for like very specific terms and you know, checking on limitations of liability again and again and again. And those are the tools that that'll make just lawyers better and be able to actually focus on the interesting parts of it, thinking through the novel concept, trying to figure out how to get around a regulatory scheme that's gonna be getting in the way of your growth. That that's that's that's the lawyer's mind. That's not the AI's job.

Cecilia Ziniti: 23:02

I love it. Why not you mentioned kind of lawyer's mind and regulatory. Um, so you were a clerk at a at a circuit court, is that right?

Jeremy Siegel: 23:10

District court. I wish I was.

Cecilia Ziniti: 23:12

What was the any any fun stories from that? So a lot of our a lot of our listeners are, you know, either were clerks or, you know, sort of I think for in-house, at least for me, you know, I really love being in-house. I love the business, all the things that you mentioned, but I do sometimes really nerd out on like good lawyer things. And I feel like the pinnacle of that was being a clerk. And so just curious your experience as a clerk and if you still draw on any of those skills or stories or anything from being a clerk today.

Jeremy Siegel: 23:38

I still email with my judge.

Cecilia Ziniti: 23:40

Wow.

Jeremy Siegel: 23:41

You spoke at our wedding. I think that that the clerk-judge relationship is really special, you know, because I don't think a lot of people outside the local profession know that the majority of an opinion that's written is written by the clerk. And that collaborative experience with someone with such depth of knowledge and also such humility to work with someone fresh out of law school is a really, I mean, it was it definitely made me want to be more of a a problem solver, I guess, versus um someone that's just going to be creating uh documents. I guess that's the best way to put it. I I remember actually the first judge I I interned for at the Court of National Trade, he said that being a judge was the purest form of legal work because they get to decide what the law actually means. Really, that that was really important to me. And I and I try to think about that when I'm reading something, like, what does it actually mean? You know, it's not just what the words are, but what's the intent behind it? So I get asked often about you know things that the the cannabis regulators are doing, and they're and people are like, Why what's going on here? What's what's the real purpose here? What these words don't make any sense. And I try to to couch it in the terms of well, you think about what was the actual goal here? What was the intent? Maybe they didn't put it down to the right words, but what do they actually care about? And focusing on that usually gets you to a better result than trying to stick to the letter of the letter of the law. So I think intent really matters when it comes to law.

Cecilia Ziniti: 24:57

Wow. Do you have a a favorite regulation?

Jeremy Siegel: 25:00

Favorite regulation.

Cecilia Ziniti: 25:01

Like anyone where you're just like, all right, CCPA again, let's go. Or any particular, like just for our users that like to nerd out. Like, what's the anything that you're just like, I really like how the Copyright Act has a fair use section, or you know, uh, you know, the TCPA exempts XYZ. Like, I don't know. I just maybe a nerd test.

Jeremy Siegel: 25:22

Unfortunately, I think being in a regular in a highly regulated space that I think by all accounts has been regulated poorly, like in cannabis space, I feel like I have a my my big feeling is the other way, I have so many sections that I think that, wow, this is the worst. Like in Massachusetts, like in Massachusetts, they required that for cannabis delivery there'd be two employees in the car at all times with dash cams and body cams because they they were so fearful of cannabis being delivered to a house that they felt it needed so much more than that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 25:52

Effectively doubling the cost for no no incremental defense and safety.

Jeremy Siegel: 25:57

Working at ease and having such a scale, we were able to actually provide data. I went I went to Massachusetts, I presented this, like that our like the rate of incidence we had where there was any sort of violence or loss of product or anything was much lower than pizza delivery. It was a fraction of a percent, so low.

Cecilia Ziniti: 26:13

Wow. That's fascinating. I mean, this like use of data for your job, I think is a is a fascinating one. Okay, so yeah, so I guess what um let's see. So before we wrap, anything you'd like to leave our listeners with, final thought, lesson, or challenge, or like again, on our themes of sort of personal growth. You talked about that, you talked about you know, tech, you talked about being in-house. Anything for for for legal leaders to to take away?

Jeremy Siegel: 26:39

I think we're like in we're in one of the most exciting times we can be in right now when it comes to the law. There are so many different areas that are rapidly evolving that don't have rules that make sense yet. Um, autonomous vehicles, AI, drones, um, you know, new medical advances of coming out of the pandemic. I think we're just we get to do really cool shit. And that excites me. And that's why I like being a lawyer and and being in house, you get to actually not just do the cool shit, but you get to watch the cool shit get built and you're gonna be a part of that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:09

We're gonna dive into the lightning round. This is where we go super fast. Don't think about it too hard. Jeremy, what is your favorite book?

Jeremy Siegel: 27:15

Uh Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. Oh, it's it was one of those books you read and you've I felt very seen. It was also the book I gave to my my wife on our first date.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:23

Wow.

Jeremy Siegel: 27:23

So it has a special place for me.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:25

So lovely. Um, the most surprising lesson you learned from working in the cannabis industry.

Jeremy Siegel: 27:30

The many different ways that people can hide cash.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:32

Favorite part of being a lawyer.

Jeremy Siegel: 27:34

Getting to tackle new problems and be creative in finding solutions.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:39

Love that. All right. Well, thank you so much, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure talking with you. That was um, so that was my conversation with Jeremy Siegel. I hope his journey from kind of clerk um through to the law firm, through to um, you know, giving birth to an industry around um cannabis delivery and now to his own firm and using AI spark some ideas for you on how um we folks in legal in house can show up and can um you know really grow into advising and really changing the law. I'm Cecilia Ziniti. You can find me on LinkedIn or gc.ai and learn more about how we support uh legal teams.