The Final AMA - Entertainment/Video Games Law, Law to Business Transitions and Startups. Forum

[PwnLaw]

Hey Everyone -

Been doing periodic AMAs here over the years. I think I'm at the point where my knowledge of the state of the legal industry isn't super relevant. I've talked to a bunch of TLSers in IRL over the years and helped some land jobs in startup land. I've answered a number of questions before (check my history, which is normally how people find me). Someone recently asked me to do an AMA, so here I am. Last one.

Credentials:
- T50 College to T14 Law School
- Vault Firm (though it wasn't vault when I joined)
- Started an industry team and built a decent book of business as a junior associate.
- Left for mixed bizdev/legal role in a video game startup.
- Joined another startup, same role. Then became a game designer. Then the head of product. Then the CEO. Sold it as the CEO.
- Left the acquirer after a period and then started a company of my own. Raised millions in VC and sold that company recently.
- Working at the new BigCo and generally enjoying myself.

I'll check in through the weekend to answer questions. If there are none, then I wish everyone the best with their careers. I'll still be reachable by PM.

[mbstuff]

Thanks for doing this again. I appreciated your previous posts here than most others, maybe more than any other. A few questions in regard to your early-career book-building since this may be the last opportunity to connect (though I hope you will continue to provide insights in this format):

1. How many years did you practice before you began to bring in clients? From prior posts, you said that you spent a great deal of time developing industry knowledge and general networking (LinkedIn and lunches) before actually pitching yourself, but did you develop a network from the group up, or did you have prior industry or family/friends contacts?

2. Do you think you had more support from your firm than you would have had from another firm? I imagine your book lined up with the firm's core client base industries, but are there any cultural characteristics about your firm that you think aided you in business development (e.g., small size for a biglaw firm; firm leadership and culture; office/practice leadership)?

3. Any insights in regard to your progression from game designer to CEO in what looks to be fairly quick progression? Did having a biglaw practice aid you in this, as well as raising VC capital?

To provide a bit of background to these questions, I am a mid-level corporate associate in a good situation. But now that I am doing some long-rang planning, I am considering seeking out a firm opportunity more in line with industry work that would bring more personal satisfaction, and your work history would be one path for me (and many others, I am sure). I would love to make a similar transition, but because of the initial risk (i.e., low start-up pay and potential difficulty to come back to biglaw if things to not work out), I am more interested in your book-building during your associate years, which suggests that you have the one requisite skill to make biglaw partner (or raise capital). If I knew I could do this, I would have much more flexibility with respect to being able to transition to other types of work, with the confidence in knowing that I could transition back, just because of the value anyone has to any firm in being able to generate business. It would be helpful to know that there are firm situations out there that facilitate professional growth in this area, and how to look for one.

[PwnLaw]

1) No prior contacts inside the industry. I started from zero. I brought my first client in about five months after I started doing ~20 hrs of business development related activities a week (reading articles, sending LinkedIn messages, researching contracts, etc.). Some of the best clients came from introductions from people that were not well placed in the industry. For example, I went from unemployed game designer (who was pitching me on a product) to BD guy at a game developer to the lawyer for a major studio that happened to be mentoring the BD guy. Lawyer and I began hanging out and eventually he came on as a client.

2) I was lucky in that a senior member of my firm made the mistake of saying "we invest in the careers of our associates" and I took it seriously. I reached out after that all-hands meeting and asked him what it would take to form a new industry group. He said to write a business plan, which I spent all night doing and then sent it to him the next day. Ultimately it wasn't always smooth sailing. Sometimes there were politics that were tricky to navigate, particularly once the group started growing. At the end of the day, I was building it out, trying to collaborate and showing success so eventually the firm just got behind me (though a few partners continued to make things more complicated than they had to be). It's hard to say whether my firm was atypical, but I do have some evidence that it was different. There was a girl trying to do the same thing at a larger, more prestigious firm across town (and I thought she was super super strong at it) and she ended up getting laid off in the recession. I always felt like I had the support of the firm.

All of that said, I think if you generate business firms are willing to overlook a lot. There just aren't that many people that end up doing that and it's the lifeblood of the firm. Moreover, having a portable book gives you far more options than just being a billing machine, regardless of what partners tell you.

3) That's the nice thing about startups, if you are smart, hard working and a bit lucky, you can massively increase your career momentum. Whereas if you're in biglaw you pretty much gotta grind the same path everyone is, there aren't a lot of shortcuts. I always hated that about BigLaw, the sameness of everything.

As for how things went down after biglaw, all I can really say is that network is everything. I am, by nature, very introverted (hence wanting to be in video games) so networking isn't something I have much affection for. I hate going to events. However, I saw how important it was for creating opportunities, so I forced myself to do it. When I found someone I admired, I often put extra emphasis on building a relationship with them. I found senior statesmen that had retired and served as advisors were great. They loved to share war stories and I loved to listen to them.

I'm not going to pretend I didn't get opportunities (I founded a game team right when mobile and social gaming were starting), but I worked really hard to maximize the number of opportunities and maximize my upside from them. Right now, there are a number of industries I can think of that I would target if I was a young associate today looking to distinguish myself (crypto, blockchain, eSports, self-driving, renewables). Any industry that's relatively new and likely to spawn their own set of rules, regulations and contractual frameworks are worth considering.

[mbstuff]

Thanks for the detailed responses. They are very helpful (as usual).

I am very impressed by your efforts as a junior associate to prepare a business plan and execute it, even bringing in other attorneys. After you left the firm, do you know if that group was able to continue grow what you started?

Also, how did you find the time to do this? Were your billable hours slower during your first year or two as an associate? By your statement that you prepared the business plan overnight after a firm meeting, I am guessing that you were busy with billable work and forfeit sleep for the 1,000 hours you put into business development in your first year. Would that be accurate?

Finally, having found a great deal of success (moderate book with room to grow apparently), which I would view as giving you an inside track to partnership at a wide range of firms, why did you decide to leave? You seemed to have had a great situation, but left fairly early to go in house. Was the in-house position compelling or did you burn out? Any other reason?

Thanks in advance for answering. Sorry for all the questions, but I am trying to get these in before you sign off forever . . .

[PwnLaw]

The group is still going and growing.

I sort of just leaned in to what Biglaw was. I expected it to consume almost all of my free time so I figured I might as well double down in that direction and make the most of it. I don't fatigue easily and I strongly believed that careers are about momentum. I hoped that if I distinguished myself early it would give me more options. It wasn't much fun, but I felt like I had already invested so much into the career by going to law school it made sense to go all in. I think I averaged something like 80 hours a week for the first two years. Billed ~2k, did biz dev for another ~1k on top of that.

When the firm saw me getting restless they took me aside and let me know how much they wanted me to stay and that partnership was very likely if I continued. I think my book would have been about $1m a year by my 5th year and the industry has grown considerably since then. So maybe $2-4m by my 8th year? Hard to say. My network was well positioned to make something like that happen I think. I also liked the practice of law and my clients, but here's the problem with me: I love volatility. I considered starting my own firm, but it seemed like more of the same.

So, more than anything, I left law because I was bored. I sort of felt like the law game was going to proceed along a linear path without a lot of deviation. I had hoped that law would retain my interest, but I always felt like the interesting decisions were being made by the deal stakeholders rather than the lawyers. I figured that if I liked law, I could probably love business. So I made the jump. I'm not risk averse, I'm not particularly motivated by money and I don't really optimize for stability, so it makes it easy to mix things up every so often. I just want to spend my time doing something I want to do.

I expect a lot of this makes me unusual, but there are definitely other folks in law right now that share these traits. I've mostly posted on here over the years so those people could reach out and I could assist them in making the transition. It's been about a dozen so far.

[mbstuff]

I think a lot of associates share that restlessness once they have put in a few years and have some confidence that they are marketable professionals. Thanks for sharing a success story for the rest of us over the years. I hope you will check your PM when I reach out to you in a year or two after breaking down my risk aversion.

[MaxMcMann]

The group is still going and growing.

I sort of just leaned in to what Biglaw was. I expected it to consume almost all of my free time so I figured I might as well double down in that direction and make the most of it. I don't fatigue easily and I strongly believed that careers are about momentum. I hoped that if I distinguished myself early it would give me more options. It wasn't much fun, but I felt like I had already invested so much into the career by going to law school it made sense to go all in. I think I averaged something like 80 hours a week for the first two years. Billed ~2k, did biz dev for another ~1k on top of that.

When the firm saw me getting restless they took me aside and let me know how much they wanted me to stay and that partnership was very likely if I continued. I think my book would have been about $1m a year by my 5th year and the industry has grown considerably since then. So maybe $2-4m by my 8th year? Hard to say. My network was well positioned to make something like that happen I think. I also liked the practice of law and my clients, but here's the problem with me: I love volatility. I considered starting my own firm, but it seemed like more of the same.

So, more than anything, I left law because I was bored. I sort of felt like the law game was going to proceed along a linear path without a lot of deviation. I had hoped that law would retain my interest, but I always felt like the interesting decisions were being made by the deal stakeholders rather than the lawyers. I figured that if I liked law, I could probably love business. So I made the jump. I'm not risk averse, I'm not particularly motivated by money and I don't really optimize for stability, so it makes it easy to mix things up every so often. I just want to spend my time doing something I want to do.

I expect a lot of this makes me unusual, but there are definitely other folks in law right now that share these traits. I've mostly posted on here over the years so those people could reach out and I could assist them in making the transition. It's been about a dozen so far.

Why do you say that starting a firm is more of the same? At least in litigation, starting a plaintiff's firm offers the sort of volatility you seem to be missing (and I know I would).

[Anonymous User]

What does it take to transition into entertainment/video games law from a securities and corporate background? I'm a junior in biglaw in CA, and I often dream about doing something related to industries and companies that I'm personally interested in.

[PwnLaw]

More of the same in the sense that I would be on the same treadmill of practicing law and building a book. It just felt less interesting than making a seismic change by moving into business. Starting a firm was definitely more intriguing than staying in biglaw though.

[PwnLaw]

What does it take to transition into entertainment/video games law from a securities and corporate background? I'm a junior in biglaw in CA, and I often dream about doing something related to industries and companies that I'm personally interested in.

It helps a lot if your firm already does some work in that industry or adjacent industries. Try befriending the partners that work in that area. I’ve found a lot of partners are willing to carve off time for a lunch to talk with someone interested in what they do and talk about war stories.