Creating a community in the legal tech industry - Alex Su

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00Welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, the show where our guests, and sometimes us, provide best practice recommendations on all things related to contract management. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, our guests are. Uh, today on the show we've got, a, a great one for you. Alex Suh from Ironclad, he's the head of community development over there, is joining us. Uh, we're gonna have a unique discussion today. Uh, but before we dive into that, and Pepe gives us, uh, an overview of what we're gonna be chatting about, I wanted to flip things over to Alex and, uh, get a better understanding, Alex, about what you've been working on, where you're coming from, and, uh, anything else you'd like to share. Great. Thanks for having me on the show, uh, Marc and Pepe. Really excited to be here. My name is Alex Suh, and, uh, I used to practice law. Uh, I was a litigator. I clerked for a judge.

1:04And about five years ago, I joined the legal tech space in the e-discovery, uh, market. I sold e-discovery software to law firms. And then a few years after that, shifted to the contract space. So I've had some experience selling legal technology. Uh, in my latest role, uh, at Ironclad, I am the head of community development, which means I'm responsible for engagement on our community around digital contracting. So, uh, I'm excited to share with you my career, the things I've seen, uh, and my views on technology and, and community. And just really excited to be here. Uh, so I appreciate y'all inviting me on the show. No, we're the ones that are, are excited, Alex. Uh, we are both really good fans of all of your, of your work. We follow you on all the social media, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. And, uh, and I think this will be, like, very special show because, I mean, although we're going to touch a little bit on the contract management, I think this is a very interesting, uh, interview because I would say that there's a lot of lawyers, and I think at the beginning of their careers, they think there are only two paths, right?

2:08Y- or three paths, I would say. Like, either you go a law firm, you go in-house, or maybe you go on academics, right? But Alex, you've been in different industries. You were, uh, in, working as a litigator, then you jumped to legal tech, and then you're, uh, the head of the community right now on Ironclad. But could you tell us a little bit more about how was this transition from private practice and, first of all, to CLM? Yeah, absolutely. I, I never imagined that I'd be doing legal tech or CLM or anything that I'm doing right now, really. I graduated from law school. I wanted to be a trial lawyer, so I, I told myself that I wanted to be a federal prosecutor in AUSA, because that was a very common path, a very popular path for people who wanted to be trial lawyers. So I took that path.

2:55I clerked for a judge who used to be a prosecutor, and I heard the way he talked about his job, how much he loved it, uh, the as- different aspects of the job, and I thought, "I'm not so sure I really want that." And so I... That was the first, probably first time I thought about it. Um, you know, I kind of really admired my judge and I wanted to love my career the way he did. And so when I went back to the firm, I was at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, I thought, "Well, I'll just put in some time here." But I realized that all of the things I was doing at that job I, I wasn't good at and I didn't really enjoy. Uh, that's detail-oriented work, um, always worrying about risk, not really getting to work with a ton of people, just kind of being by myself doing research. So I knew that I needed to make a change. And so my first step changing was I went to a smaller firm. Uh, that didn't work out. And then I even started my own practice, and that didn't work out either. So I had gone through all these setbacks and I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with my career.

3:50Um, and I was living in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, and I wanted to see, you know, what was available to me, what was around here, and it was tech. A lot of tech companies were coming up then. This is 2016. And so I thought, well, with my legal experience and, uh, my desire to work with people, I thought, "Well, legal tech sales sounds like it could be cool." So I applied to and got a job as an entry-level salesperson at an e-discovery startup, and did that for three years and, and I did well, uh, and I grew. And so right around 2019, that was three years in, I made the jump to, to contracts, to CLM, because I saw kind of where the puck was headed. I saw how the legal ecosystem was developing, and I thought contracts was a really exciting space full of promise and potential. And so I made that jump, uh, about two, you know, two and a half years ago. That's awesome. So, uh, and do, do you think, Alex, that...

4:43Well, we were talking about that once you were studying law school and then you were going to the private practice, and then you start, uh, looking into this, uh, sales position in the, uh, in the legal tech space in the Bay Area. But do you think something have changed since, since you were studying? Do you think some universities are still, uh, looking to implement some, uh, tech courses in their academics? And do you think that will be something that will be useful for students just to know that there are something different in the, in the industry? I think so. I, I think it's helpful for students to know all of the different options out there because when I was in law school, you know, I was there from 2007 to 2010, it was all law courses. I think there might have been one seminar on law and computer law, I think they called it, but there wasn't very many courses available on technology. But we did have Lexis and Westlaw reps come in to train you on that.

5:39So I think back then maybe that was the only legal tech around, but now there's so many more options. And, and one thing I think a lot of students don't realize is that you don't need to have an engineering background, a coding background to do legal tech. Right. Uh, there's a lot of companies that need people who can communicate the value of the products to the audience, who are lawyers. So, so I think there's so many, uh, potential paths, and I think law schools would do well to, to recognize that, to say- You know, "Hey, students," like, "There are these other options available to you other than the traditional paths." Yeah. Yeah, I, I think that's... There, there's a transition happening in, in, even in the sales industry. You know? It's not like you, you go to college to become a salesperson, and I think that that's, that's something that I think is gonna change, uh, o- over the next, you know, um, decade or so. It's, it's just so- It's a path that more people are interested in, and there's, there's more of a strategy on how to sell and, and understanding, you know, who you're selling to and things like that.

6:34So, you know, it's, it's interesting to see that other, uh, industries like, like the legal space are also maybe making that transition so, so that working your way into tech can be more of a career path and not just something that perhaps you stumble down, like most of the folks that we have on this show where, "Hey, you know, our, our first option didn't really work out, but maybe we'll check this out," and, and you end up loving it. So, um, you know, and, and on, on that note, let- let's talk about something else that you've kind of stumbled into and, and that's the, uh, the social media aspect o- of, you know, what you're doing and how you're incorporating that into not only your job, but, but developing a, a following on these, these, um, these networks to, to be able to, uh, communicate and, and get a laugh out of folks that are probably struggling with some of the things that, that we are struggling with and our customers struggle with. Yeah. Marc, and I love how you say stumbled into because that is how I found everything. Like, I could tell you right now, yeah, it was part of a grand plan. You know, it was strategic.

7:32But the truth is I went from setback to setback, failure to failure, and I tried a lot of different things, saw what worked, saw what didn't work, and that's how I found the various paths. Like for example, um, I didn't find legal tech and find my way into legal tech sales until I had tried a few other things and failed. The same is true with social media. In 2016, when I first got into, i- i- into that first sales position, uh, in legal tech, I was told and I was coached and trained to make cold calls and cold emails. That's kind of the bread and butter of sales. That's how you get in front of customers or potential buyers, and I did that. But I thought, "There's something a little bit, um, maybe inefficient and possibly annoying by doing it this way, so let me see if I can try to do something different." And at the time, you know, people had been talking about this concept of social selling. So again, this was very early for, especially for lawyers. Lawyers weren't, weren't doing this really.

8:26And in 2016, I decided I would start posting, uh, content on LinkedIn, and this is back when LinkedIn really was mainly used as just a, a resume repository. Yeah. People just put their resumes on there, right? To- We all remember... to look for jobs and that's it. Just to look for jobs. Just to say, "Hey, here's where I work." But I started posting content, and I found that, uh, the content that most resonated with people were stories from my career, especially how unhappy I was as a lawyer and how I found a way out. And I wasn't an expert at it, but I, I posted about some, some stories, and people loved it, and so I did that for a few years. And so I continued to do it for, for year over year, growing my very small following of just friends, but it slowly grew to my friends of friends because when people liked it, it would show up in everyone else's feed. And I realized that, that there was some potential here, and I wasn't sure what it was gonna, gonna happen with it.

9:18Um, and so I continued to do this a lot as I was selling, you know, soft- legal tech software, uh, growing in my career, and it wasn't until I would say 2019, like, so, so maybe a few months before the pandemic really started, I decided to really focus on it. And I just told myself I would post every day. I started talking to my audience. Like, I would have calls with them to understand, "Hey, w- why do you like my content? What do you like? What do you wanna see more of?" And I made a deliberate choice to focus on the legal vertical. And so I was so lucky because that's when the pandemic hit right after, and I know that that's a weird thing to say, because the pandemic was difficult in many ways for all of us, but I benefited from everybody moving online. And because I had kind of a critical mass of following, um, of an au- of an audience back in March 2020, um, my audience took off from there, and that's when I started experimenting with a lot of different things. Uh, one of those things was TikTok. Uh, and, and I never imagined I'd be on TikTok, but it was something that people had recommended to me based on the content that they saw.

10:22They said, "Hey, Alex, we think you would be good at this." And I hesitated, but then I eventually relented and, and gave in and got on TikTok, and, and, and the following and, and the, uh, the view counts kind of skyrocketed from there. That's very interesting because I would say that I remember the first time that I heard about TikTok. It was, um, Gary Vee conference. He was talking about when it was back there, uh, Musical.ly, and then it was acquired by, by TikTok. And back, well, still a lot of the biggest, uh, let's say, influencers were just doing d- just dancing choreographies and that's it. And I was like, "Well, maybe lawyers are looking for something similar." And they were dancing too, and they was like, no, that looks, that looks stupid, right? But then you, you put it in a different way b- right? Because you were like, uh, uh, it's like real communications, real stories of people working either inside the law firm, either, uh, working on a, on a company. But can you remember what, what was the very first video that you published, and was it hard at the beginning? I do remember. I remember very clearly.

11:27Um, it was at the time when I was trying a lot of different things, and I saw, um, you know, I, I, I, for some reason I s- I saw that maybe I could make a video skit of, like, 30 seconds making fun of some aspect of, of our, my, my legal career. And I think this is where you really get at the heart of the content because the medium and the content are, are, are separate things. Like, it could be a media, a video medium, like a TikTok. It could be a written LinkedIn post. It could be on Twitter, a short-form post. But the, the real heart of the content is making fun of some part of the legal profession or legal industry that we all accept, but if we really think about it, is very silly. So the one I focused on in the first video was, um, this idea that- In law school, they teach you about contracts. They teach you all of these things about contracts. And when you get into the real world, everything when you deal with contracts has nothing to do with what you learned in law school.

12:24Like for example, in law school, American law school for example, you learn about consideration. Uh, you learn about the elements of a contract. It's so theoretical. But when you get to like the real world, you get a contract and you, it, it says like indemnification, limitation of liability, and you never talk about that in law school. So I decided to make a video about that. Um, I recorded it on Zoom. I, I didn't have TikTok, so I used like l- like this Zoom, and I would hit record myself like acting this little skit out. And then I, um, I would edit it on iMovie. Right. And the skit was really just a student saying, being told they would learn everything about contracts in law school, and then when they get into the real world, uh, the partner gives them like a contract and say, "Hey, tell me what you think." And he, and he looks at it and he sees like indemnification, limitation of liability, and like it plays this like horror movie music. Like, "Oh, my God," like, "I'm screwed." So, so that was my first video, right? It was, it was low quality, it was kind of corny, it was kind of silly, but, but people loved it.

13:22Like, so, so I continued to make them, uh, again and again, maybe once a week. And then, um, from there a few weeks later, I, I got onto TikTok. That's, that's, uh, it's funny. I mean, it, it's again, you know, just I, I think with a lot of things that happen in, in people's lives and especially in my, in my own, you know, you, you just do, like I said, you just stumble across these things. And, and like with anything, you know, it like whether it's posting on LinkedIn, whether it's, you know, actually building, trying to build out a career with, with, uh, social media, anything like this, you know, you have to stay consistent, like you said. You have to be putting content out there because not everything's gonna land. So, you know, I, I think, uh, it's just interesting to hear how you come up with kind of this stuff and, and how relatable it is. I mean, it, you are in such a unique position because not only, you know, have you gone to law school, have you, you've been in-house, have you been on outside counsel, um, in, in selling in- into legal, the legal space as well. So you have all of these different experiences that I think just make your content so unique and relatable to so many different folks that, um, you know, we speak with on a, on a daily basis.

14:21So I, I think it's very cool. Yeah. Thank you. It's, I feel very lucky because when I was going through and getting those experiences, like it didn't feel like I was, these, these experiences would be useful. Because, you know, you go from this traditional legal background to set yourself up for this career and, and potential job down the road, and then when you make that pivot, you, you almost feel like you're losing everything, like you're throwing it all away. Yeah. And then when you go into, when I went into sales, I felt like I didn't need to go to law school to do all these things. Like I, I didn't need a legal training to do it. Like my colleagues were all like 22-year-old, uh, fresh out of college grads. And so, you know, one time some of them make, you know, occasionally some of them make fun of me like, "Hey, all your fancy training, we got the same job." And so that to me felt like I was, you know, behind. But, but when you look back at it and, and how I capitalize on, on these experiences, it makes so much sense when you look backwards.

15:15Like, "Oh, all of these experience all fit in into this very unique thing that I have." But when you're going through it, it's just so hard because you feel like you're, you're, you've fallen behind, you're messing up, you don't feel like you're successful. So absolutely. I, I feel like I've stumbled into this, but when I look backwards, it look, it all makes sense. Yeah. And, and again, with that said, how do you think that everything that you've, you've done previously has kind of brought you to where you are right now with Ironclad and, and being in that role that you are and leading that community? Yeah, absolutely. Like that was something that I never imagined. I thought I would just be a salesperson. Um, and so let me first talk about like the, the role, uh, and, and what we're doing with the community because it's all related to how this all fits in. All right. We're trying to really invest in the community here at Ironclad because we believe that when you put people together, um, there's a lot of value from peer-to-peer interactions. You know, traditional marketing methods, for example, are heavy on webinars, like one person speaking to many.

16:14But if you can tap the wisdom of the crowd, uh, of the different people who have experience with digital contracting, uh, they get a lot of value out of that. And Ironclad is kind of at the middle where we host the space for people to communicate with each other, share best practices. You know, tell people off the record, "Here are some things you should do with digital contracting. Here are some things you should avoid." And so we want to do that, and, and the reason why I think I'm uniquely situated for this or uniquely suited for this role is that I, I'm responsible for, for community engagement. And, and the reason why that I feel like everything I've done on social media has prepared me for this role is because when I started putting out content, at first it was about me sharing some story or video, but what I found is that in the comments you started to see people share their own experiences. It's almost as if I am a little bit extra, I, I open up a little bit more, it encourages people to open up, and then someone else sees it, and then they respond.

17:12And the conversations you have in the comments are so real. Like they're not... Like we all, when we were, you know, when we were in law school, we were brought, all these speakers were brought in and, and they told you the, the curated version of their career. You know, "Work hard, be smart. Do this, you'll be successful." In the comments in LinkedIn, they're a little bit different. They're, they're saying, "Hey, if you go through some setbacks, it's okay because I never imagined I would end up where I am, but here's how it happened." Like you can hear more real stories. And so I learned that the content is a jump-off point to encourage these conversations, and the value isn't me just telling people what the answer is, it's the, the community telling each other and teaching each other. It's a broader ecosystem. And I think Ironclad was wise to invest in this very early on in their, in their life cycle, and they've really continued to invest in it. So, so you've got me, uh, on the team. You also have Mary O'Carroll, who was the former president of CLOC. Right. She is probably the number one person who's uniquely situated to like, uniquely positioned to understand how to grow a community.

18:11I mean, look at CLOC, right? Um, the legal operation- the leading legal operations, uh, association. So, so I think Ironclad has really done a great job in focusing- Uh, on, on growing that community, uh, without being too salesy, without pitching people, making sure the community and the ecosystem get the value first. So I think that's why the unique- the community is unique, and that's how I've... I think that I bring unique value to it. Right. So you're, like, how, how I've, I've seen this is, is because I've been following all your videos, but you create a noise and then a lot of people will just feel like, "I've been exactly the same situation or maybe just a little bit different," and they will put you a, a lot of their comments. And, and, and I've seen comments of, like, three paragraphs, right? Even longer than, than the, than the real post. And I think that's like, people feel related to your content that, that you're doing, and they feel like you understand them. And by doing that, you're creating the communication.

19:10So these people are building community, and they can say, "Okay, I got this problem. We s- we, we solve it in that way." And, uh, and so that people can work with each other and bring some solutions that maybe others were not seeing when, even when they got all those tools, right? Um, so Alex, now shifting a little bit more into CLM and all the experience that you already acquired, uh, by building this community, what would you say that, uh, or what have you learned that organizations, any organization, can do differently with a CLM? Like, uh, how can best design, uh, process which with, with a contract, like an NDA process, for example? Yeah, that's a great point, and I, I think I have a, a story that relates to this, uh, what we were talking about before. You know, I, I first realized how challenging NDAs were because I was a salesperson, and I realized we were doing NDAs a lot and they were slowing down the deal. And I, I spoke with a lot of our, our, our general counsel and, and legal departments that I, you know, that we work with, and I was like, "Hey, what's your take on, what's your view on NDAs?"

20:16And what I heard was something very interesting, which is that NDAs are not always viewed as particularly valuable. Everyone's afraid that if you don't do an NDA, you can get in, in big trouble. But NDAs from a business standpoint, from a sales standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, it actually, um, it's just poorly designed. It takes up too much time to negotiate and doesn't create a lot of value. So I made a video. So here's an example of, of how TikTok relates to this. I made a video making fun of NDAs, saying that they're kind of useless, right? Now we know that NDAs are not completely useless. Right. They are useful in some instances. But how many cases have you seen with NDAs? How often are they litigated? Like, almost never. Mm-hmm. Of course. And again, this is not my personal experience. Exactly. It's, it's, it's what the, the GCs are telling me. Now, this is really interesting because when you put something like that out there, you're gonna have one group of people, often law firms, that say, "Hey, actually Alex, they are useful and here's why." But you have another side who are GCs who have seen how NDAs get in the way of a business, and they're like, "Yeah, this is right. We need to really reform this NDA thing." And, and so that's why I think there's a different view, and this is how the community grows. You make a controversial statement through a piece of content, through a, through a TikTok video, then people start talking about it.

21:32And how this relates to CLM is that, you know, there's a lot of companies that will do tweaks. Like, there's gonna be some types of ways to streamline CLM in a very basic way. But at Ironclad, we kind of wanna take a step back and think from first principles of, like, if you're looking at a contract, is there some way to keep the value of the contract without making it so custom every time? Because if you custom create an NDA every time, it just takes up so much time and it's not, it's not as valuable. But if you can templatize it, you know, or what we call containerization, like, to be able to swap in certain types of clauses for others that are pre-approved, you can really speed up the NDA process. And we've also seen these other efforts, and I know that you, you're all familiar with it, but, like, the one NDA pro- uh, uh, initiative where they're trying to- Right... create a universal NDA. You know, our customer, Ken Carter, general counsel at Bitmovin, he's got this initiative to standardize NDAs for his market.

22:29I feel like these things are all happening at, at, at the same time, and that's why the community is so exciting, 'cause we're bringing these voices together to really make a push to change how we think about NDAs. But, but to answer your question about how organizations should think about CLM, I think you've got to really figure out where the problem is and think from first principles. I'm not an expert at implementing CLM. I think there are some great services and people out there who, who are. But I think that generally speaking, what I've seen successful- when I've seen CLMs be implemented successfully, it's figuring out, okay, what are the objectives? What are the problems we're solving for? And then, like, getting rid of assumptions. Like, we always have to custom make an NDA. Like, you don't have to do that. I, I don't think you do. And so, um, you know, those are some examples of, of, of ways I think organizations can be successful with implementing CLM. Really figure out what the problem you're solving is and, and making sure that you're thinking from first principles and, and getting everyone else along and, and, and bought in, all the other stakeholders bought in.

23:27Because as we know, contracts influences not just legal, but, but other departments as well. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that's been a common theme with, with folks that we have on the show is, uh, you know, in- instead of looking at something from, um, a, a phase one approach, maybe look at a phase zero first and make sure you truly understand, you know, the problems that you're trying to solve, the, the, the way that the processes are currently laid out. You know, do you wanna change that? Are you looking for something that, that can adapt to those? Or, or are you looking to reevaluate everything inside of your organization, you know, before you go out there and, and look at a piece of technology to, um, to, to help with your processes? Um, and, and Alex, you know, with, with, um, with that said, I think the next question here is, is something that you're uniquely, um, along with Pepe, I guess, 'cause he's, he's a lawyer and sells to lawyers. But, but, um, you know, when it comes to selling to, to I guess these in-house teams, and they are growing and there's many different roles inside of them now, but what, what takeaways do you have for, for selling into these departments as a lawyer? I think your credibility is probably more important than it would be for other markets.

24:34And, and what I mean by that is, you know, when I first got into sales, I was told to, to whitewash any, any problems with the product. You know what I mean? Like, um, every product has its pros and cons, and I was told, "Hey, here's how you talk about the cons. Here are the downsides, but, you know, say it in a nice way. Kind of brush over it." And I think that may work for certain markets. Like, if you're selling to sales or marketing, I think they expect that. They, they get it. But when you're talking about lawyers, uh, and, and those of us who are in law, like, we realize, like we are trained to be critical and skeptical of every claim we hear. Instead of trying to make a bad thing seem good, you should be upfront with it, you know? I, I found a lot of success just by saying, "Hey, listen, we've got these pros and these cons, but these weaknesses aren't as important, and here's why. Here's why I think these, these benefits are more important." Like, that gains you more credibility than if you try to make your product seem like it's, it's perfect.

25:29And, and there's a lot of ways to, to tactically execute this, but I think as a general principle, maintain your credibility, be upfront about the weaknesses, and you will really win and earn that trust. And I think that's why the community is so valuable at Ironclad because unlike traditional sales and marketing, the community is not relying on, on, for example, Ironclad pushing, uh, messaging onto people. We believe that if we treat our current customers right, our customers will tell other people, almost like customer, uh, referral and customer marketing. And we believe that they're not gonna say, you know, "Ironclad is 100% perfect," but they will say, um, "Here's where we're, where they're good. Here's where they might need some improvement." But that has so much credibility and power to it, um, and that's what I've learned as, as, as a lawyer selling to other lawyers. I think you've got to maintain your credibility and be upfront about the pros and cons. And it's okay if people, um, say that they don't wanna buy because, you know, maybe their priorities are not aligned with where your strengths are. Um, maybe someday that'll change.

26:31So you wanna maintain that, uh, that relationship. So, so that's what I think a lot of people miss, especially people who are from outside the legal industry miss. Um, you don't have to say that your, the service or product you're selling is perfect. Um, you just wanna maintain your credibility and earn that trust. Yeah. I, I would, I definitely agree, and I think other industries, you know, are starting to take that approach as well. Um, there's a book out there called The Transparency Sale, which I think speaks a lot about this. Um, so if you haven't read that, go check that out. I think it's a great place to start. But I agree. I... You know, you need to be upfront with people and, and especially like you said. I, I mean, lawyers are, they're, they're trained to be skeptics and, and to find out the, the pros and cons of anything that they're looking at, even more so than maybe some of the other, the folks that are out there. So, you know, be upfront with them and, and not only are you, are you gonna not waste their time, but you're not gonna waste your own time because if a solution's not a good fit, at the end of the day, you know, whether they, they, you trick them into buying it or the im- implementation fails, I mean, you're gonna run into issues down the road. So you're better off being upfront, and there's a lot of people out there looking for this technology, and there's a lot of pieces of technology out there, and not everybody is, is gonna be a fit for, you know, what you're trying to sell.

27:39So yeah, Alex, I think that, uh- That's- I, I completely agree... that's so true, Marc. And I, I think one more thing I'll add is that we are seeing software being sold from an on-premise way to, to SaaS. And if it's, a- as you know, in SaaS, it's recurring revenue, so you've got to earn that business every year. That's why overselling doesn't work quite as well as it used to because if you oversell or promise features that aren't there or promise solutions that aren't there, you're gonna pay for it in churn down the road, which wasn't the case before, before, uh, you know, recurring, uh, SaaS products. So I think this is probably, you're right, that this is probably a broader trend within, within SaaS and within recur- you know, within, uh, software companies that have recurring revenue. And, and I think that, um, yeah, I just, I totally agree with what you said. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so, uh, you know, we're, we're coming up on time here, Alex, so I wanted to, to give you an option for this last question. You, you can kind of pick which way, uh, which way you wanna take this.

28:35But, um, let's say there's some folks out there, maybe, maybe they're looking to either, um, transition into in-house counsel or, or maybe completely change their career path, you know, that, that they're, they're out of law school and what they're practicing really isn't what they thought it was gonna be and they, they wanna maybe take more of an approach that you have, uh, and go a completely different direction. What, what suggestions would you, you give to folks that are in, in those shoes? I would say take it one step at a time and learn about yourself. So for example, when I decided and when I was at, in big law that I wasn't sure if I wanted to, to stay in law, I switched firms first because I wasn't sure if it was the firm that was the challenge or if it was the work or the profession. And so I think a lot of lawyers wanna research the perfect answer, but I think if you take a jump to another job, you'll learn more about yourself. You'll realize, uh, a few things about yourself, um, and then that may equip you to make the real jump down the road. But you've got to act.

29:33You've got to at least try to move in the right direction, and I think, um, that is better than, you know, staying at this, your current role or your cur- current position and trying to research your way into a solution. So I would say have a bias for, for action and, and just take a step forward closer to your goal. Awesome. All right, Alex, so it was great talking to you. Thanks a lot for all your recommendation and your tips. And if folks would like to connect with you, where, where would be the best place to find you? I'd say LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Um, also on Twitter, on Instagram, and on TikTok, but I think LinkedIn is where, it's my main platform, and I've got links to other places. So, so find me on LinkedIn. Awesome. And for the lawyers, uh, just look at your, uh, at, at Alex's videos. Don't, don't take things personally. It's just fun. You're gonna love it. And Alex, uh, hope to have you again on the show soon. All right. Thanks, Alex. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.