Move Fast, Build Trust: Peter Katz on Scaling Legal at Duo and Expel

Peter Katz (GC at Expel; former first GC at Duo Security) shares how he scaled legal inside high-growth cybersecurity companies while keeping the business moving. He explains why great in-house lawyering starts with relationships, clear risk choices, and the humility to say “I don’t know - yet.”

You’ll hear:
– Why Peter left firm life in year four and chose Vanguard to build business context and people management skills
– Building the legal startup inside the startup at Duo—through dual-tracking an IPO and a $2.5B acquisition process
– How Expel’s MDR model shapes legal support, and why privacy × security is where in-house teams add outsized value
– The principle that unlocks speed: informed, collaborative risk decisions instead of “capital-L Legal” answers
– Hiring for ceiling, not tasks: developing future GCs and CPOs
– AI as a tool that gives time back for judgment work across legal and security

The book he rereads in every new role: The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins

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⁠@Cecilia Ziniti⁠ on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Peter Katz: 0:00

I'm good at accepting that I I don't know the capital L legal answer to every legal question. And I've gotten enough experience and confidence and perspective over the years to realize that most of the time I don't need to know the exact legal answer to a legal question because we're dealing with business decisions and the ability for us to decide how much risk we're comfortable taking on. As long as those decisions are well informed and we're kind of making them collaboratively and knowing what the trade-offs are, that that's the part that I enjoy. Just making sure that we understand what we're deciding together to help the company move forward.

Cecilia Ziniti: 0:42

Welcome back to CZ & Friends, where we talk with legal leaders, technologists, and operators building the future of business and law. I'm your host, Cecilia Ziniti. Today I'm joined by Peter Katz, the General Counsel at Expel, a cybersecurity company helping organizations detect and respond to threats in real time. Peter's career spans startups, consulting, public companies, and teaching. He's held senior legal roles at Duo Security, Alex Partners, Vanguard, and now Expel. And he taught a course called the Startup General Council at Michigan Law. In this episode, we unpack what drove Peter to leave the law firm life relatively early, how legal can move at the speed of cybersecurity, and why building trust across teams isn't just a nice to have, it's a strategic advantage and how he built that. Excited to talk with Peter today. Let's dive in. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Katz: 1:27

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here. Appreciate the opportunity.

Cecilia Ziniti: 1:30

Thank you. So, all right, let's dive right in. So you knew pretty early that the law firm track wasn't going to be right for you. And so you made the move in-house in your fourth year. Pretty, pretty relatively early. What helped you make that decision and what were you looking for at the time?

Peter Katz: 1:45

Trying to rewind back all those years, but I do, I do remember very early on in my career, like maybe month one or two in the law firm, where I started doing calculations on how long it would take me to pay back my student loans if I went back to teach like high school. Um and I think for me, I I learned a ton in a in a short period of time. I I think the challenge for me was I realized that I didn't quite understand the work and the value that it was providing to the clients. So I knew that we were busy. I knew that I had a lot of partners and senior associates to answer to. I knew I stayed up all night at times for reasons that were unbeknownst to me, but I never quite made that connection between the work and the value that it was it was providing to our clients. And so once I realized that the partner track really meant just doing more of that, as I saw, at least in my firm, the partners weren't going off and leaving all of the work to the associates while they went and played golf or went out to dinner. They were in the trenches with us with us, which was really great for mentorship. It was also eye-opening that I knew that once I was out of my mid-20s, 30s, 50s, that I wasn't looking to be uh working those types of hours.

Cecilia Ziniti: 2:57

And the proverbial more pie, right?

Peter Katz: 2:59

More pie, exactly. And so I I was fortunate to get an early opportunity to go in-house. And I and I think I also recognized that if I was going to do that, it had to be somewhere with a lot of structure. Um, I did not bul pretend or believe that I knew everything. Um in fact, I was, you know, I was scared to death about altering my career path. And even a partner told me that one of the partners I worked most closely with said I would never get out of a mid-level in-house role because I left so early and I didn't know enough to go do anything.

Cecilia Ziniti: 3:28

Wow. Yeah, that's so you'll people always have doubters. So so in the case of this particular doubter, what did you do to make that not true?

Peter Katz: 3:35

I set myself up for success by going to a company that actually had essentially an in-house law firm because Vanguard, which is you know the world's largest mutual fund company and just happened to be based in suburban Pennsylvania, where I where I was, I was living in Philly, and Vanguard's campus is not far outside the city. Had the highly regulated industry, really tech forward at the time, and had an in-house legal department of, I don't even remember, I want to say close to 100 lawyers, my guess, with probably half doing 40-act regulatory mutual fund work. And then the rest of us in departments just like a law firm. Like I was in a corporate department, there was an IP department, there was a litigation department, employment practices. And so I really got a lot of the structure of working in a law firm, but a more clear picture of why this mattered to our client, which was all of our collective employer. And and Vanguard did a great job from a branding perspective to always everybody knew what the mission was and how it was to help serve customers, keep costs down in the mutual fund world and and help everybody get to their retirement goals. So it was not hard to to align with the message.

Cecilia Ziniti: 4:40

So what did you, you know, so it sounds like it was a super well-run department. How did you, you know, as a junior attorney, kind of like what are the tools in the toolkit you took from from from Vanguard and any particular stories you can share with us about that?

Peter Katz: 4:53

Yeah. Yeah. You know what it was? It was, it was, it was the working closely one-to-one with actual human clients. And in Vanguard, it was set up like a college campus. I mean, the place was huge and every building and it had this beautiful courtyards and and all sorts of stuff named after ships that I don't remember. But but but we were encouraged at that time. None of us had offices. We were all in cubes, but there were tons of conference rooms and outdoor space and all that. So all of my meetings were really in person. And so I would get my, you know, my files for the day, and I would go building to building to building, client to client to client, and sit down and talk about the work that we were doing together. And a lot of it was just ordinary course of business, commercial contracts, software agreements, partnership type things, 529 plan relationships, but it felt more meaningful to me because I could um I saw where I fit into the picture of why this was important for the client. And so recognizing that it's not really the sexiest of work, but doing it in collaboration with the people who needed the work to get done and then seeing that direct result um was was the biggest benefit and something that I took took from that experience for sure of like get with your clients, sit down with them, make sure they understand, make sure they know you as a human so that when you have pushback, they don't just think it's a legal person saying no. It's, oh, I know Peter, I've gone out to lunch with him. We've had a few conversations about things that are not work. And if he's telling me that this risk is really important for us to pause and make some different decisions, then I I already trust him. So so I'll listen to him in this case.

Cecilia Ziniti: 6:25

I love that. Of everything you did at Vanguard, what are you most proud of?

Peter Katz: 6:29

I worked into my first people management role ever at Vanguard. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to grow in that role because we ultimately made a life decision to move. But it was the first time that like hard work in the legal sphere then led to me having opportunities that weren't necessarily more pie or more legal work. It was, hey, would you like a chance to manage some people? And I what I will say about Vanguard, way before it's time, way before it's time, people management was valued as a skill as much as substantive expertise. And so, like the CEO of Vanguard right now once was ran all of IT. And he's and people would move, like lawyers would move out of the departments and go run business units because they were really well respected in their people management skills. So I could really see like how working there for your whole life is possible because so many people at Vanguard stayed forever. And it's because they gave you opportunities all throughout the business based on what your what your strengths were, regardless of what your subject subject matter expertise was.

Cecilia Ziniti: 7:27

So controversial question. Are lawyers naturally not good managers? What is the skill? How did you what what is that skill gap that that you saw? And then maybe either from that job or since, what what do lawyers, in-house lawyers in particular, need to know about people management?

Peter Katz: 7:42

It's a learned skill. You're not just good at it because you're good with people. And so just like anything that you learned in law school or anything you learned in biology, you need to learn about it. And so at Vanguard, there was a Vanguard university, and they put me through classes and I got all of these materials. And then on my own, I went and read different philosophies of people leadership and the ways in which folks like to be led and how I like to be led. And so if you realize it's a learned skill and it's not just throw your hands up, oh, lawyers are bad at this or these people are good at this. It's just about prioritization. And if you make it important and you and you put the work into it, then then uh even lawyers can be good managers.

Cecilia Ziniti: 8:19

Aaron Powell Is there any moment that stands out of like, you know, I I think we've all had these moments of like, oh, I'm a real lawyer now, and you, you know, ship s send your first red line or you have a deposition or whatever it is. Anything, any equivalent on the people management side?

Peter Katz: 8:32

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know if I had like well, I would say somebody who was my peer becoming my direct report was like, okay, now I am the relationships are evolving, right? This is uh somebody who's a peer and you know, we're friends at this point, I would say. And then having to like evolve the relationship to like, okay, I need to wear different hats. I need to wear a different hat as an in-in-house legal, I need to wear a different hat as people manager, I need to wear a different hat when I go home. Like, so just like not defining yourself as like I'm this and it's this all of the time. You have to be able to um flex, and and that part of in-house practice is probably the biggest takeaway from from time at Vanguard.

Cecilia Ziniti: 9:12

I love that. I had did an event through I think Tech GC with Danielle Shearer from Comvault, and she now is chief trust officer and has taken on sort of responsibilities beyond legal. And she makes a very similar point of like, if you as an in-house lawyer, if we go through our lives and careers of like I am a lawyer, you know, it it it kind of affects this sort of like worldview of who you are. It affects how you come into the business, how you interact, how you manage. Um, so it sounds like you've learned that lesson early.

Peter Katz: 9:43

Yeah, I think so. I mean, and and if you think about applying that across, like CFOs don't say I'm an accountant, right?

Cecilia Ziniti: 9:49

That's exactly that's a great point. I had never thought of it that way. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Even if they are, or a CPA or whatever. It's like the CPA is kind of like maybe it's at the bottom of the LinkedIn, but it did it definitely don't leave with that. That's a that's a great, that's a great parallel. All right, so let's just get so your current company Expel. What does Expel sell?

Peter Katz: 10:07

Well, we sell managed detection and response, and then someone will ask, well, what is that? And I think what I've learned in my time at Expel is that it's it's different comp depending on where you're getting it from and what it's it's it's really buying into a theory of managed detection and response that each company is selling. So it's some combination of productized services or service products. And but but at the, you know, the gist of it is what we're doing is we're taking a lot of the security tools that other other companies already have. They're kind of overwhelmed with the inputs that come in from those tools and they don't really know what to do with them, how to prioritize them, how to remediate from them. So manage detection and response at its core is we're taking all of that information in. We're using people, bots, tools, and things to make sure that we can quickly prioritize and push back out to the customers and the clients those things that are most crucial, and that then ultimately either they can remediate it or in some cases we can even remediate the issue for them.

Cecilia Ziniti: 11:06

What does legal support look like for a business like that in security?

Peter Katz: 11:10

Yeah, I mean, it started a lot like like my time at Duo and a lot like other startups too, which was the fundamental need at the beginning wasn't so much to be like, I need a cybersecurity expert to help me with my cybersecurity company. It's gosh, I have a growing startup that went from beyond me and my founders in a room to now maybe a few dozen employees and maybe a million or two or three or five of revenue. And we are all behaving like lawyers on a daily basis to the point where it's taking up way too much of our time. And we're outsourcing way too much of this to law firms at a cost that's not um that that's not scalable. And so for me, the in the most fun part in each of these last two experiences, Expel and Duo included, being the first lawyer hired in, being able to kind of assess the situation, see what great foundation work had already been done by two companies that clearly valued the role of what a lawyer could do. So I wasn't facing a huge uphill battle, but being able to take all of those things, give people their time back so they can do what they're good at, and then I can go do what I'm good at and help teams uh scale more quickly and then build that into the processes as we go, mostly starting with starting with sales folks typically and then having away around the company.

Cecilia Ziniti: 12:23

So you said what you're building, what you're good at. So so what are you good at in startups and what does it take?

Peter Katz: 12:27

I'm good at accepting that I I don't know the capital L legal answer to every legal question. And I've gotten enough experience and confidence and perspective over the years to realize that most of the time I don't need to know the exact legal answer to a legal question because we're dealing with business decisions and the ability for us to decide how much risk we're comfortable taking on. And that risk is not typically something of it's never are we going to do something illegal or legal. The answer there is fairly obvious. We're going to only do legal things, but it's what can we do that's for the best, that that sweet spot for like the best for the customer, best for us in the short term, and in the midterm, in the long term, we're not, we're not sacrificing more than we've um that we have appreciated. So as long as those decisions are well informed and we're kind of making them collaboratively and knowing what the trade-offs are, that that's the part that I enjoy. It's being kind of sitting down with my, my, the executive colleagues, with the other members of other teams, and just making sure that we understand what we're deciding together to help the company move forward. Interesting.

Cecilia Ziniti: 13:33

So I'm compelled that in cybersecurity, the threat actor thing, right? So like in security, it's like, you know, now, for example, with AI, spam has gotten way more sophisticated. You can't, you heard about this, you know, the AI voice impersonation of a of a CFO leading to a wire transfer. Does that, how does the fact that kind of the threat, the threats are constantly evolving, does that, does that come back to legal in some way or affect just the culture of the of working in a cybersecurity company?

Peter Katz: 14:03

I think more so the culture of working in a cybersecurity company. We have to be diligent all of the time. And most companies would say that, of course, but the ramifications beyond just the normal thoughts of what happens if a company gets breached, if a top cybersecurity gets breached, it can really be game over from a from a reputational standpoint. We have to be able to build trust with our clients and with the community. And the only way to really continue to grow that trust is to show that we are evolving and a step ahead of the threats and that we're actually practicing what we what we sell. So Expel is a probably the most forward-thinking customer of Expel, right? Our internal security team uses Expel to help inform all of our models, to help, you know, our stock analysts, the people that actually are looking at at glass and and looking at complex issues. And so we we consume our own product and services, we then push out what we learn to our customers, and we're extremely transparent with what we've learned and what we provide to the customers, which helps to build that trust as well. From a purely legal standpoint, I think the areas that that we that I think about the most as it relates to the cybersecurity and the relationship is it's more so it's actually the privacy connection to all of those things, because I feel like at least where we're going to be able to add value, right? We have cybersecurity experts, we have product experts, all based on knowledge around cybersecurity frameworks and and best practices and coding and all that. But but the intersection of where cybersecurity um and privacy interact is the area where I think an internal legal team within a cybersecurity company has probably more of the a more challenging responsibility than maybe a retail company or somebody where they're not selling security.

Cecilia Ziniti: 15:54

What um are privacy and security in conflict?

Peter Katz: 15:57

Are privacy and security in conflict? I think in lay terms, there are conflicts. I think the the notion of privacy and the notion of security can be in conflict. But I think using cybersecurity as a as the tools to enhance privacy regulation compliance, I think, go hand in hand. I don't think you can have a good privacy compliant program without using sophisticated cybersecurity tools to help enable that program. So you can write all the policies you want, you can self-certify to everything under the sun. But if you actually want to be able to live up to the responsibilities and the obligations that you're making in those assertions and and and by uh complying with those regulations, you need top cybersecurity folks to to help you do that.

Cecilia Ziniti: 16:44

I remember when um when I was a general counsel and I had the opportunity to hire another person on my team in the privacy program, and it was effectively a trade-off between a a head on my team and a head in the security team. And I I made the decision. I said, you know what, hire the security person because, you know, obviously as as much work as I thought there was in legal at the time, this pretty GPR, I had exactly the same point you just made, which is like, you know, having beautiful policies that are easy to breach, that's not actually compliant, nor is it actually protecting the data that it, you know, is is you're purporting to protect. So yeah, I I've seen that from from both angles. I think that that resonates a lot.

Peter Katz: 17:24

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly something we and that's part of building those cross-functional relationships and trust. And so like these are dialogues and conversations that we have with our peers in, you know, the compliance team, the security team, the IT team, the HR teams. Like we're all responsible for this at the end of the day. And so we can't do this in silos.

Cecilia Ziniti: 17:42

Peter, we'd be remiss not to talk about your time at Duo. So just a little bit of background for listeners. I um know John Oberhyde, who was the CTO of Duo, and we were introduced in part because basically Duo had this moniker of being the most loved company in security. So it's a very usable product. You've probably seen Duo Mobile, it's a two-factor authentication app. Prior to that, you know, at least when I was at the law firm, we had the RSA security dongle, which was like kind of weird, like it could basically be an ugly keychain. Mobile comes along, duo does this online combined with a bunch of very sophisticated authentication controls. So I think it's a fun story. So John said, you've got to meet Peter. He was our first GC, you know, we love him, you'll love him. So we're here. That's why we're here. Thanks, John. But in terms of that role, how did you come into that company and then tell us about the journey? Because that company was just a rocket ship.

Peter Katz: 18:32

Yeah, yeah. It's one of these like things where, you know, your life can go different parts of the dis, you know, the branches of the decision tree and things that you do. And I we'd moved to Michigan to be closer to my wife's family. We had a toddler and we had twins on the way, but I I was just not, I was back to not feeling really satisfied with what I was doing for a living. And it had nothing to do with Alex Partners. I had great years there. I had so much responsibility and great relationships, but I just wasn't connected to the work like I wanted to be. And I really had to just make a decision of am I gonna suck it up for my family because this is what you do, and and or am I gonna try and invoke some real change? Like I tell people, I really wish I could have been the person who moved to the beach and, you know, ran a tiki bar or a coffee shop or something. That would have been the most extreme. But within staying in the world of being a lawyer, you know, we moved to Michigan at sort of rock bottom time of the economy in 2000. I mean, we moved to Michigan in 2000.

Cecilia Ziniti: 19:34

That's when I graduated law school. And yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna co-sign that that it w it was bad. That was when the firms were rescinding offers, there was a global financial crisis. It was, it was definitely the the nadir of legal, legal jobs at the time.

Peter Katz: 19:47

And I was at Vanguard and everyone was afraid of the mutual, you know, the the money market funds were gonna bust the dollar, you know, break the buck and like the whole world economy was kind of crumbling. And I saw it start while I was at Vanguard with all of the bailouts and things like that. And then when I got to Alex Partners, which was this really sophisticated boutique consulting firm in Michigan, the only reason that we were really thriving at this time when everything else was failing was that Alex Partners had this amazing restructuring practice and had actually been named the lead consultant on the General Motors restructuring.

Cecilia Ziniti: 20:18

Wow, I remember that with the bailout and everything and getting delisted and everything. That was that was big. And it affected the whole state and the economy and the I mean the country. I I remember very clearly. Wow. Okay. And so you worked on the gym, you worked on the jam restructuring there. That's fascinating.

Peter Katz: 20:35

I can't say that I was like hands-on on it, but like it was the biggest thing that was. But I think with a lot of things, when you know we kind of hit rock bottom in a region and an economy, you know, the the stuff that starts growing from the ashes is, you know, the innovators, the restaurants, the tech founders, all of the stuff that was happening in Detroit was really kind of like from those ashes of big companies were kind of crumbling, but it made a lot of opportunity for people that wanted to do really interesting and um connected work to uh local community. And so I realized that Michigan was getting this kind of budding startup scene that probably wasn't known very well. And I started just doing online research of like, okay, I need to learn these companies because there aren't, it's not the bay, it's not the Bay Area. I'm not a tech GC. And I just started doing research. And like I said in my first interview at at duo, I had a I had a sticky note with three companies' names that were written on it that I was following. Two of at that point, two of them I'd already crossed out because I didn't think they existed anymore. And then there was this duo opportunity. And and fortunate for me, because it was local and there wasn't this huge list of tech GCs with all of this kind of cool experiences and such, they really were open to just interviewing like a normal job. Like it was posted. It wasn't through the VC network of who you knew. It was posted, and I went to an interview just like any other interview and got to sit down with Doug and and and John to some degree. Uh, I I remember the first time I interviewed John said he didn't need to interview me because he I think he said he didn't know what we needed a lawyer for yet. Something like that. Something like that. But I got to see the environment and kind of get the feel for like, okay, this is this is what I'm talking about. They are building something from the ground up and they want somebody else to help build. Um, and that's how I kind of I I really embraced that journey of building the legal startup within the startup. Um and being empowered by Doug and John and others to to do that. And then through this crazy timeline of I joined in January of 2015. Um, and by October of 2018, we'd closed a deal with Cisco for almost two and a half billion dollars and did it with a bunch of folks who at the time being in person and being in Ann Arbor. We had offices all over at that point, but really there was a core of us who lived and worked in Ann Arbor, which is a town of 100,000 people, right? It's not like being in a big city. So our families knew each other, our kids knew each other, people were going through the life evolutions of finding significant others, having kids, doing all of the life things and doing it kind of on this journey together, and then seeing the outcome and and how that helped to to change the trajectory of a lot of people's financial lives and and give them space to do what they love. It uh it was, yeah, it was it was really special.

Cecilia Ziniti: 23:23

I love that. Did you know when you interviewed in 2015, you know, you had your sticking out, so you knew Duo was a startup, but was there anything that gave you a sense that Duo was on a path to something big?

Peter Katz: 23:33

I think the main thing I'd seen at that point was that Doug was named, Doug Song, our other co-founder, was named like Crane's Business Journal, which is the big Detroit kind of business magazine. It does their annual like 40 under 40 issue. And I got to see kind of the the main piece about Doug and his view of cybersecurity. And it wasn't like a very threat-focused article. It was really about building a company with people and the value that was on people to do this and doing it locally in Ann Arbor, rejecting certain VC money who would have insisted on them moving to the Bay Area. There was a lot of that back then, which is funny now as we all work remotely. And nothing was ever more absurd to me that when tech industry required things to happen in person, when what they were selling had not, you know, was all about enabling people to do things wherever they were. They were really focused on where you lived and where you sat. And so the intentionality about doing it in Michigan, doing it in Ann Arbor, where they'd both gone to school, involving the local folks in the journey was probably the most attractive part to it. I felt like I kind of knew who they were and where they were coming from before I really stepped in the door.

Cecilia Ziniti: 24:36

Love that. All right. So big acquisition, big number. Tell us about the project. You know, was it fun for legal? Was it all hands on deck? Give it, give, give us a give us a window on that.

Peter Katz: 24:47

Well, it was all hands on deck because at that time, like a lot of companies, we were doing something called dual pathing, which means essentially you were running a pre-IPO process while also looking at these transaction opportunities that were coming inward. So to me, it was probably the most exhilarating part of my legal career and also the most exhausted I've ever been, because we were doing both for a period of time. We were um, we were, we were working on an IPO path, and we were also having conversations with Cisco and some others. Um, and so the legal team was all hands on deck. Outside advisors were a really important part of that, working with Gunderson on the transaction part and uh, you know, working with others on the on the potential IPO path. Like we just we were all in it all of the time. Um, and it was a great bonding experience, a great legal experience. Um, and ultimately seeing it actually come through to fruition was amazing too, because we had even a lot of people don't know, we had we had run a process the summer before with another potential transaction that just never really it didn't make it. And so we really ran like two transactions, an almost IPO and the day job over the course of 13 months, you know. It was it was wow.

Cecilia Ziniti: 26:00

It's it's funny because there was a while when IPO windows were open where in getting GC jobs, it was like, have you done an a strategic transaction? Have you done an IPO? Have you this? And it was a qualifier. Uh it looks like you've done, you know, at least large parts of both. What would you say to that though? So when you experience the IPO, or in this case the big transaction, you hadn't done it before, how did you do it not having done it before? And do you think it is a requirement?

Peter Katz: 26:25

I do not think it's a requirement, but I give a ton of ton of I have a ton of gratitude for our board because the more important part of whether or not I think it's a requirement is whether or not they think it's a requirement. And they were willing to listen. They'd worked with me for a few years. I think I had their confidence in doing the transaction work, rightfully so. I think they were a bit more skeptical about my lack of IPO experience in an in-house role. I'd worked on IPOs in a law firm a hundred years before that. But I as I was able to kind of research and put it all out there and work with our outside counsel on, you know, really this is just a financing transaction with ongoing compliance obligations and being able to structure the conversation as to what we need to do to be ready and why I'm capable of doing that and getting their trust was was a huge part of it. And I think the number one thing I take from all of that, which is what I tell every lawyer I work with now and forever, is the biggest mistake that we can make as lawyers is pretending to know something that we don't know. I see it all of the time that people just are through fear, through, you know, self-doubt, whatever it is, they will pretend to know something or be an expert on something or whatever. And as a lawyer, where your advice is like you have this fiduciary responsibility and a code of ethics in your bar and all this kind of stuff, people are relying on what you say as truth. And so I've always been very comfortable with saying when I don't know something, and I will go find out and figure it out, as opposed to just pretending. And if ultimately the board had decided that it that I wasn't the right person for the job, then they would have made a change. But at least I I feel like I gave it my my best effort.

Cecilia Ziniti: 27:57

I love that. Congratulations. All right, let's shift gears a little bit. Let's talk about AI. So at GCAI, we work with teams adopting AI uh, you know, across the country, more than 500 now. And I know, you know, at Expel and probably Duo prior to that, AI is a tool and it, you know, keeping up the with the threat actors requires it. What's your view on AI at large? You know, you obviously had this, I mean, I don't want to say crystal ball, but you you had the foresight to go to into cybersecurity at the time you did. How are you feeling about AI?

Peter Katz: 28:26

You know, I feel a lot better about it now than I did probably when, you know, say a year ago, when the term was just really being thrown out everywhere without a lot of like substance to the terminology. I I think now that I've been able to see how AI has been able to be used in practice for really helpful challenges. So, like at Expel, you know, the way that our security analysts use AI to help our customers and be able to train models to be able to really understand repeatable things more quickly and then be able to get outcomes more quickly to customers. I think seeing how potentially we're able to use AI within the legal department to help with, and I say potentially because I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend that we're full users yet, but to be able to see how AI can be used to help with commercial contracts and regular ordinary course of things. And to me, the tool part of it is important because I don't view it as a replacement for people or anything that people can do. Similar to when a lawyer is hired and joins a company for the first time, I think the bat the benefit of the AI tools that are out there for lawyers is that it can give them the time back to do the things that necessitate having real lawyers work on them, as opposed to if you looked at your pie chart of a day and you say how much of my time was spent actually doing human lawyering work that needed me to do it. I would guess for most in-house lawyers, there's a good chunk of that day where they could say that in confidence that some some sophisticated software or AI AI tool could could likely do it as well as them and faster.

Cecilia Ziniti: 29:55

I had a uh we did a panel on AI and careers and Uh Doug Mandel, who's the first GC of LinkedIn, put it very similarly. He said, you know, look, AI is the gift of time. And if you look at what what it is that you do, um, you know, commercial contracts, regulatory, pick your topic, you know, how can you take that time and do that judgment layer, that human thing that you mentioned? So does any particular project stick out? It probably is the, you know, the dual track transaction that you mentioned, but does anything, project stick out for you as like this was like a GC moment or like a time when, you know, either a board member or somebody was like, you came in clutch because you were able to do that kind of human GC level work?

Peter Katz: 30:38

Certainly, certainly the large strategic transaction work more than more than the day-to-day. I think from my point of view, I think the most satisfying thing to be able to see is when you can kind of step away from it and it all still goes, right? So the day-to-day engine building with a team around you of people who are really, really good and really smart and empowered to go work and do what they do. That to me is probably the GC moment of like, you know, at duo, I four people that reported to me became C-level executives at other companies. And that's four out of seven, right? So, like that to me is that's the people management part of it. And when when it what was it like to be a real GC? It was doing the big transactions and helping people step up in their career to take to take my job, essentially, at other places.

Cecilia Ziniti: 31:24

I love that. One of my mentors, Reggie Davis, he was the uh general counsel of DocuSign for a while. Now I think he's a prop tech, but he's amazing. And he talks about his number of GCs. I think it's like seven seven people that reported to him, self-included, um went on to be GCs. And it's incredibly rewarding. So how did how do you do how do you physically do that? Like what's your one what's your one tip on kind of like if you want to leave a legacy or help your people perform in that way? What do you do?

Peter Katz: 31:53

What do you do? I think it starts like with the the profile of people that you're interviewing. It's not about like, what did I do when they came? It was more so being able to hire people who I felt like had the highest ceiling and potential and not viewing anybody as a threat, or I didn't feel like I needed to hire for the level that the role was. The level was where the person started, and that's the money that I could get in the budget to go hire. But somebody who could buy into the purpose of like, what are we doing here at Duo or at Expel? And why does my work matter? And how much autonomy am I going to have? And what's our interaction going to be like? And so, like the people that really wanted and um embraced the being able to go lead their own things while working closely with others in the company and doing it with a customer focus first. That's kind of those are the traits that you're you know, looking at when interviewing. And I think not surprisingly, a lot of those folks then became great candidates for GC roles. And in fact, I'll say even one of the one of the folks who worked for me also became a chief people officer. Um, too. Actually, one was running legal and people at the same time. So these were really high EQ lawyers who I always, as I've said in every interview since the beginning of doing this, I always assume that if the resume gets to me, that the person has the ability to do the job. So it's not about how many contracts have you negotiated and all of these kinds of things. It's it's all of the other stuff that I'm it's important for for GCs to be looking for when when interviewing.

Cecilia Ziniti: 33:20

Yeah. So we're circling back to that kind of judgment human layer, you know, like how do you get there? And that makes me excited about AI because I I I I've seen the same thing you have. So at Amazon, it was drilled into us and even in legal to be customer obsessed and unlocking what that meant and and how it shows up in reviewing a contract, in doing a transaction, in launching a product, whatever it is, like that for me was the biggest career unlock that I that I ever had and it led eventually to to this role. Yeah, that's amazing. Congratulations, Peter. And I'm sure, you know, if if if if any of Peter's um kind of mentees or or folks that have worked with him want to be on the pod, open invite. Um and we can we can we can get the other side of it. That's awesome. All right, good. So I love it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Um, so lightning round, uh, let's do three quick takes. What's a book or a concept that's shaped you?

Peter Katz: 34:13

I like to read the first 90 days book every time I start a new role or anytime I change a role within the same or you know, it's a very I'm not a somebody who can like cite a bunch of different theory, you know, academic theories and things on on management, all that stuff, but it's a very practical application, applicative book of really what should you do during your first 90 days of starting a new position. And ultimately what it comes down to, not surprisingly, is listening and taking notes before you come in kind of you know fully charged with all of the answers of what you think somebody needs to do in order to fix blah, blah, blah. So it's a good reminder for what those first 90 days are as you transition into something.

Cecilia Ziniti: 34:52

It's a piece of advice you give early career lawyers. So we talked about customer obsession, we talked about some other stuff, but any any pithy advice we can we can we can snapshot here.

Peter Katz: 35:01

I said it before, I'll say it again. Don't pretend to know something that you don't know.

Cecilia Ziniti: 35:04

I love that. Good stuff. All right. And if somebody, Peter, um this has been so much fun. If someone listening to this just this conversation wanted to understand how you operate, um any kind of mindset you take with them, maybe we'll say it a third time.

Peter Katz: 35:18

You know, I would say it's like the focus on the relationships first. That's what I try to do. So let's try to get let's try to build a foundation of a relationship that then work can kind of be layered on top as opposed to transactional relationships of I need this thing by this time and therefore I'm gonna go find you and try to take up the least amount of it. I think early, the early time is is well worth it for for future, for future wins.

Cecilia Ziniti: 35:41

One of the leadership people that I follow, Molly Graham, talks about that there's like a relationship bank and you have to kind of invest in it and then you can withdraw from it. So yeah, that resonates a lot. Um, where can people reach out if they want to learn more? Are you on LinkedIn or hiring and anything that we're should we can follow you?

Peter Katz: 35:59

Yeah, I'm definitely on LinkedIn. I'm not an avid poster, but I'm I'm happy to connect there. And uh I'm always happy to, you know, I do tons of one-on-one things and such, so I'm always happy to give out my uh my personal email address.

Cecilia Ziniti: 36:13

Amazing. Thanks again. That was my conversation with Peter Katz. He's the general counsel at Expel. He also teaches, he's an operator and he's a trusted voice in cybersecurity law and also leadership. If you're thinking about how to evolve your legal function with AI, collaboration, or showing up as a business partner, hopefully this episode gave you something to bring back to your own team. Follow Suzy and Friends wherever you get your podcasts. You can subscribe to our newsletter at gc.ai slash newsletter for more. Find me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening.