Reimagining the Legal Function with AI: A Conversation with Cecilia Ziniti

Host: Jenny Hamilton

Guest: Cecilia Ziniti, CEO & Founder of GC AI

As AI reshapes the corporate landscape, legal teams face a pivotal choice: adapt—or risk being sidelined. In this episode of Data Xposure, host Jenny Hamilton sits down with Cecilia Ziniti—former General Counsel turned AI founder—for a candid, strategic conversation on how legal professionals can lead through disruption.

Together, they unpack what AI can really do for legal today, the pitfalls to avoid, and how to design tools that actually work at scale. Cecilia shares lessons from her time in big tech and startups and practical takeaways for the AI-integrated legal team of the future.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What AI can realistically do for legal teams today—and the common adoption mistakes to avoid
• How to design legal tools that scale while staying compliant and defensible
• Why leading innovation in legal requires a shift in mindset, not just tech

If you're navigating the future of legal in an AI-driven enterprise, this episode is your strategic head start.

Episode Transcript

Jenny Hamilton (00:08)

It's 2025. Generative AI is no longer a buzzword. It's in our email, it's in our contracts, and our compliance logs. And it's not just in it. It is drafting email, drafting our contracts, and performing compliance work. It has a seat at the leadership table driving decisions. 

And for legal teams inside global organizations, that means one thing. The clock's already ticking. Because if legal doesn't learn to understand this technology and lead this transformation somebody else well. 

I'm Jenny Hamilton and welcome to Data Xposure, the podcast for data risk leaders. And today we're tackling one of the most urgent questions facing our audience. What does a truly AI and integrated legal function look like? And how do we build it before it's too late? Joining me is someone who's not just watching the shift from the sidelines, she's helping to lead it.

Cecilia Ziniti is the CEO and co-founder of GC AI. She's a three-time former general counsel turned startup founder who has helped scale legal operations at big tech firms like Amazon, Cruise and Cloudflare. Now she's building AI tools for lawyers by somebody who's been in her shoes.

In this episode, we'll talk about how we got here with AI, what is happening behind the scenes, and how to adapt AI to enable teams of the future from an insider who is shaping the industry. If you want to be proactive and you're wondering how AI fits into that strategy, this conversation is your head start. Let's get into it.

Jenny Hamilton (01:47)

Hi, Cecilia how are you?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (01:49)

I'm great.

Jenny Hamilton (01:51)

Cecilia, your career has taken you from IP litigator to tech executive to founding an AI company. What has sparked your interest in AI and what point did you realize that was going to become central to your journey?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (02:06)

I was a lawyer at Morrison & Forster, a litigator, and I spent a lot of time on the Apple Samsung case. And it was a huge jury verdict, big thing. And so I got a call to join Amazon Lab 126. And at the time I thought, know, surely they like my mobile phone experience. I had represented Apple. It was rumored they were coming out with a phone. And it turns out… that what they needed me for was in new devices. 

So I get there and they're like, hey, you the more senior attorneys are working on the phone, super important to Jeff Bezos, you get to work on this device. It doesn't really work. It's code named Doppler. And it turned out that it was Alexa. 

And so that exposure to, you know, I'd always been interested in new tech, lived in Silicon Valley, you know, had worked at Yahoo. But seeing the idea that AI could be everywhere, that it could help you, that it could really be this person-like thing, that was, I would say, the moment that I'm like, this is something that I want to be involved in.

Jenny Hamilton (03:16)

Absolutely, that's, you know, to think about that now, back then, it probably wasn't a certainty that that was going to be successful. Was it?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (03:22)

Yeah, that was 2013. Now you think, okay, there were other counsel on the team, but nobody fought me for it. People were like, sure, take the crappy device, it doesn't work. It turned out to be this career move of a lifetime. The privacy issues, the IP issues, very much a preview of what we see today. And there was a particular moment, I think Jeff Bezos spoke at a Recode conference or something, and he said something like, this is not just the first inning for AI, but the first pitch.

And that was 2013, and he's absolutely correct, right? And so what happened since is like AI got better and better, but then, know, LLMs came out and particularly the release of ChatGPT, I had access to AI before that, used it for some legal work and had this like jaw dropping moment of like, wow, you know, my work as a lawyer on AI can be made better by AI. 

So it was this like incredible moment and became pretty obsessed with it after that. But it was always this idea of knowledge. And I think that's a fun thing for us lawyers and lawyer types is we're all kind of nerdy, knowledge-seeking kids, right? And so this is the epitome of that.

Jenny Hamilton (04:31)

I think you're answering my next question, which is all about the transferable skills from seemingly different roles. I think people have a conception of what a general counsel does. And I don't think that whatever mine was, was correct until it was in the role. So I'm really curious. You've done GC three times. You've also more recently gone into business development, go to market and now founding an AI company. What are the transferable skills between these different roles? Or did you feel like you were starting over?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (05:05)

The transferable skills, I would say the core lawyer skills are helpful across really anything. So, you see a lot of high performing GCs become COOs because it's like you can handle complexity, can communicate well, you can get to the heart of an issue. So those I would say have been extremely helpful. Research skills. 

Client empathy is the other big one. That was always one that I super indexed on was figuring out, and I think people do this in M &A, litigators do this, where you've got a big litigation, suddenly you're an expert in pharmaceutical patents. 

I still remember my first patent case was about ASP9, which is some protein variant that happened to be involved in the drug litigation that I was on. And so it's similar that knowledge seeking, I think it's very helpful. And you get a lot of Silicon Valley CEOs and thinkers, know, Reid Hoffman says he's a, you know, an autodidact and he's a lifelong learner. And I think that's probably one of the biggest, I would say, lawyer skills that cuts across. 

And I think the other one for me was just always wanting to be close to the business. So I saw a general counsel as like, as a GC, you are more than a lawyer. And there's a lot of things around that, ⁓ being a partner to the business, being a guide, force multiplier, all these things.

I did have the opportunity, I considered other roles that were not GC. I considered number two lawyer or number three lawyer or really fascinating things at fascinating companies, but ultimately concluded for me that that business aspect was so important and had that entrepreneurial spirit. And so that's what led me to the role at Replit was I talked to the CEO at the time or still the CEO and founder and said, I'm a good lawyer and I'll do a great job on that for you, but I can also do these other areas. 

And so that's where I started to pick up some of additional skills. And I see it now. I think the advice I give to more junior attorneys is like the legal skills are kind of table skates. They should be good. You should be better at them. And if you want to take the IAPP or you want to pick up eDiscovery, like whatever your kind of mandala of skills is, you can do that. But if you really want to reach the apex and see your career just soar.

I think it's pick up other skills besides the legal ones.

Jenny Hamilton (07:32)

You make it sound seamless? Were there any transitions that were challenging than others?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (07:40)

I would say now, the CEO and founder job, I absolutely love it. It's like my favorite job I've ever had by a long mile. But some of the, I'm definitely seeing what got you here won't get you there. So the same, know, precision, the same, you know, writing copy, I would say is a little bit of an Achilles heel for me.

I'm a good copywriter. I love it. It's fun. You know, the lawyer skill of every comma in the right place. You can tell if there's a bolded comma, know, italic apostrophe, whatever, the sort of law review type skills. Those are not serving me well right now. I mean, they are. And, you know, part of me is like, founder mode is something that people in Silicon Valley talk about. And Steve Jobs with the Not Blue Enough, not saying I'm Steve Jobs, but that struggle of being able to sort of manage and make the velocity of decisions that are required, I would say that's the biggest skill that I think I need to work on.

Jenny Hamilton (08:46)

Okay, so speaking of GC AI, tell us the origin story.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (08:50)

Yeah, so I was at Replit, it’s basically AI for software engineers. It's a software development platform and very strong founder CEO with a vision around using AI and using the cloud and all this technology to basically make everyone a software developer. So it's incredibly energizing place to work as a general counsel, fascinating issues. 

I actually did a deal with Google to get what is now Gemini into Replit and to get Replit essentially software results into Gemini. So that deal was a big project, big revenue, et cetera. Now you can look it up. But through that, I had access to essentially pre-ChatGPT versions of LLMs. 

And the jaw-dropping moment of like, my God, you can write a basic demand letter, you can review an agreement, you can create a training on fair use, whatever it is. I had those experiences prior to Chat GPT, and I got honestly obsessed with it. And it was appropriate to my role because we were doing more AI initiatives there and now Replit has had some serious success in it. ⁓ But I got so obsessed with it that essentially the CEO is like, hey, know, Chachilio, you're a good GC and all, but like, is your head in it? And he sent me a link, I won't forget, he sent me a link to a legal AI meetup.

He's like, this isn't exactly relevant, but I think you'll like it. And in that moment, I'm like, you know what? He's right. What am I doing? This is my chance. I'd always wanted to be a founder and to start something. My dad's an entrepreneur. Turns out my co-founder's dad is an entrepreneur and ⁓ basically had this moment. And so I started sending a newsletter on AI, which I think you received through the Women's General Counsel Network. I started teaching classes on AI.

Also quirk of history, my mom was a teacher, my grandma was a teacher. And I knew that there was a company here because in using generalized tools like ChatGPT, they just weren't good enough for lawyers. And I'm like, okay, I could make this good. And my co-founder and I got to talking. And so my last day at Replit was November 1st of 23 and we incorporated general counsel AI Inc a week later on November 8th of 23.

Jenny Hamilton (11:08)

If the CEO had not sent you that link, do you think he still would have gotten here?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (11:14)

I ask myself that all the time and I don't know. I think I would have and when you think about as doing this, I've gotten a little bit more almost philosophical and reflective. Like, okay, what are the ingredients in my life that led to this point? And I had done some angel investing, so super involved with VCs. have...

been really big about networking with other lawyers. I love other lawyers. I love GCs. Like you and I met. I go to events all the time, ACC, WGC, and Tech GC. I owe a huge debt to Tech GC for that as well. So I probably wouldn't have ended up there, but I don't think it would have been that moment. And know, and things happen where I think this is something where one lawyer skill that I will, that I'd love to let go.

That is the kind of thinking out the scenarios, right? I like almost like, I mean, it's not really regret, but it's like FOMO. And I think a lot of high achieving people, I had an offer to join basically an ed tech company that was very high valued back in 21. And I didn't sleep for three days. And then I ultimately turned it down. And I always was like, oh God, that would have been it. You know, it the one that got away.

But because of that, I got the job at Breplet and then this happened, right? And so it definitely is like that lawyer and I guess stereotypically is probably also like some people say it's a woman thing. I'm not necessarily gonna agree with that, but it's a me thing for sure to play out all these different things. And there's versions of this. There's like people I went to law school now, I'm pretty experienced attorney are federal judges. People are...

You know, we have a state senator for my class. We have a New York Times bestselling author. It's just incredible to see. And so I think I probably would have ended up there if I was listening to myself of like, are the things that compel you? And in this case, AI was really compelling to me, even prior to him setting that link.

Jenny Hamilton (13:18)

Let's talk about the AI tech a little bit and in the context of legal and the regulations that we're seeing come out, would you consider AI to be a regulated technology today?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (13:34)

I would–very similar to privacy. So there's a guy Bill Way at Amazon who we worked together there on privacy for Alexa and other things. And he said that one of the harder realizations for your thing type companies ⁓ to absorb is that when you're dealing in very large amounts of data as they are, you really are regulated. It's like being a regulated industry, right? know, tobacco, medical, health, whatever. 

Now I think there has been the infrastructure built up around that on privacy, on AI, not so much yet. But the way I think about it and what I think would be a good result is, you know, I wrote my case note in law school on Section 230 in the internet. And I do think the head start that the internet got from Section 230 and from, you know, sales tax free, right? I worked at Amazon and there was not sales tax on online purchases ⁓ out of state for a long time.

And I think that made a big difference. And so I think AI is in that kind of like regulatory subsidized moment now. ⁓ I think that that will, that will ⁓ lessen, but certainly the Trump administration has said that they don't intend to lessen it. They intend to increase it. And so I think in the U S you'll probably get some reprieve. Obviously the States have done some actions. We've got Colorado and Texas, but ⁓

But I think it's unlikely that we're going to see widespread federal action. Now, abroad, what Europe does, I think it's a little bit of toss up. There's calls to delay. There's calls on other things. But certainly at the model level, I would act accordingly that it's going to be regulated.

Jenny Hamilton (15:22)

And the EU AI Act is when I read through it, people can disagree with this, but I see the elegance in how they legislate there versus here. I also wrote my note on the e-sign act ⁓ and, you know, really had a lot of opinions on how that was drafted and what that could lead to. And so I, I've found the EU AI Act–

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (15:38)

Yeah.

Jenny Hamilton (15:52)

Kind of a helpful framework that seems more approachable than if we wrote legislation here too prematurely, but that's just kind of my observation of it.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (16:04)

I mean, I think that the EU takes pride in what you describe of like being very thoughtful regulators. guess I do think, you know, obviously it's more elegant than like the CCPA, which had like, you know, paragraph misnumerings and whatever, which have been corrected. But the initial CCPA had that in California. 

But the EU sort of really jumping on the opportunity to regulate before the products are even out. I wouldn't say I'm full on your Marc Andreessen's and your techno optimists on Twitter, but I can certainly empathize from the standpoint of you've got Terry, I forget the guy's name, but anyways, the EU commissioner taking selfies and gloating about how the EU is regulating. And that as a technologist, I would definitely say that rubbed me wrong. Now, from a compliance standpoint,

Jenny Hamilton (16:36)

Mm. Yeah.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (17:03)

Clear rules are better than no rules, fine. But the idea that Europe's triumph came in being a regulator, I was kind of like, I don't know, I'm gonna be a little spicy and say, get a life, or get some like AI companies that can do this. I also am like, I think this is a very much an entrepreneurial spirit. And in fact, my dad immigrated from Italy and I was born there. And so I would call myself an immigrant, but.

Jenny Hamilton (17:14)

Yeah. I follow.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (17:31)

I think the American ideal of building, you there's a reason that the most valuable companies in the world are here.

Jenny Hamilton (17:40)

Okay, so you mentioned regulators. So I have to ask, what's been your experience, your approach in building productive relationships with them?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (17:52)

Yes, I'm heavily influenced from my experience at Amazon. And Amazon for a lot of years had articles written about how they're like the huge company that everybody somehow loves. And a big piece of that was very intentional. They call it customer obsession, but it's one of the company values. But essentially it's hard to bring an antitrust case against Amazon when everybody loves it.

Do you like getting your packages next day and filtering and getting recommendations and, know, pre-order Harry Potter? Of course you do. And this idea that Amazon oriented everyone, including legal on that, that it's like, Hey, you know, a lot of the law is gray. Does it pass the smell test? Is it customer obsessed? Is this good for customers? That was a lot of the analysis we went through with Alexa. And eventually, you know, on some technical points in this public.

Alexa did have some COPPA or Amazon did have an action related to COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. And I can say, it's been 10 years since I was there. Of course, the legal team knew that that would be the case. But it's like, OK, when are we going to build the whole COPPA mechanic, which they now have? Or COPPA has loop tro—

I'm not saying Amazon took this, but think other companies do, has a loophole that you can drive a Mac truck through, which is like, the kids can just lie about their age. Like literally, that's all you gotta do. And you know, as a parent now with kids on Snapchat and the other services, I do see a different approach with regulators with the absolute customer obsession that I saw from Amazon. So I think that inoculates a bunch of those kinds of things, one. And I think Uber saw this advantage as well, that everybody loved taking rides that they could order through their phone.

Jenny Hamilton (19:24)

Yeah.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (19:44)

And so then it's a matter of like, how do we make the law catch up? So I would say that's one. Another is like, I don't subscribe to the Silicon Valley belief that regulators are somehow stupid. Like they're not. These are smart, thoughtful people. If you're, you know, creating a tax software that everyone in America needs to use, you're talking about an insane variety of use cases in the parlance, right? You've got people in rural areas, people who can't read, people who speak other languages, people who don't have phones. 

So this idea that that government is doing a bad job, which I think was very popularized in COVID, I think doesn't serve a company well, if you're trying to get a product out or get things done. So I would say, like starting with basically a baseline of respect. Now I've seen the other way, right? So I was at Lambda school now Bloom Tech, and they had a CC, an action from the–what's the agency, the CFPB–that I managed. 

And it has since become quite clear that it was politically motivated and that was not good. And so I wouldn't say that I started with sort of utmost respect there, but I think you have to assess the situation and the more you can ensure that you're doing the right thing, it's better. Maybe that's a naive view, but I would say that's oriented me in a lot of contexts.

Jenny Hamilton (21:15)

And I can tell from the conversation already that you're an experience, your experience of being interviewed. ⁓ In fact, I believe you've been interviewed by large news networks to comment on IP litigation, giving your background. As these cases have progressed now compared to where they started, is there something you think that the AI companies wish they knew when they started, that they know now about how these cases have played out?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (21:49)

I'll pick on OpenAI because they've made the fastest transition both from research lab to 5 billion revenue, annual revenue company, and because their legal team, I think, caught up to that. their former general counsel, now chief strategy officer came from Amazon. The idea of, name is Chae. Hi, Chae. And he basically [came up with] the concept that legal can be kind of embedded and part of the development. 

So one of the things I did at Amazon, I supported the computer vision team and those are very, you know, as with large language models, computer vision models are also very data hungry. So the more pictures they see of somebody, you know, a particular pair of jeans or what have you, the better they're going to be recognizing jeans in the future. And, you know,

The legal team at the time, we were part of the team that helped secure that data and looked at licensing rights, looked at click-throughs, looked at partnerships, looked at collaborations with universities, many of which are public. And the idea that the legal skill set can be product counsel, that's what I would say that OpenAI clearly knows that now. I believe they've known that throughout, but they hired someone from MOFO, woman named Heather, who was in the tech transactions group that I was part of, and this realization that legal really can unlock and open doors, and doing it thoughtfully. when you've got a squishy task, like fair use is the ultimate squishy task. You've got four factors, you weigh them, you can weigh them however you want. That kind of doing it ⁓ thoughtfully and in a way that you feel good about is gonna make things go faster.

That's definitely the advice that I would have given and it seems to be what they've done. I also have talked to enough people, even your staunchest copyright defenders would say that like the AI genie is out of the bottle in the sense that, you if you've got LLMs or this technology can cure cancer, you know, are we going to be like, no, but it copies Mickey Mouse? Like that's not going to be the result. So really gaming that out and the chess game around that. It's fascinating and I love it.

Jenny Hamilton (24:18)

You've referenced legal unlocking and opening doors, and I love that, and I'm going to totally steal that. ⁓ It's so critical to the business strategy anymore because companies who didn't think they're regulated that you're in data, right? And we see this a lot with our customer base. 

We still make that distinction between the ones that are highly regulated, but now I'm starting to say, well, there's ones that are just not yet regulated or recognizing how regulated they are. Marketing is an example. 

I came back from IAPP with the chart, it had all the different things that marketers need to know about all the regulations. And I'm like, now they're like little, know, many law departments and we spend a lot of time together. And so, you know, with all that comes the anxiety that legal is gonna run the business and the anxiety that lawyers just naturally have that try to manage.

Being strategic and unlocking the door rather than closing it. And I'm curious, when you decided to go for this GC AI company, what was the reception? Was it anxiety? Were people discouraging? Were they telling you that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze? Or were people generally encouraging?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (25:45)

I I think the best quote I have on this woman, April Underwood, who was the head of product at, I think Slack or Twitter. She's great. She's been around the Valley a long time. She's like, what if anxiety is a feature? Basically it was like world anxiety day or something, but basically something effective. You know, it actually makes you have a diligence and a preparation and a rigor that a lack of anxiety does not. And so for me,

Jenny Hamilton (26:04)

Thank you.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (26:15)

I think about it from a team building standpoint of, you always want a little bit of healthy, the disagreeable chair at the table. Now, legal, I've had a lot of success in my career being part of the team, right? Where it's like, we not they is the advice I give all the time, right? So you think about Alexa, it's a hot mic in your house basically. And so there's a lot of privacy attorneys at the time that would have been like, hell to the no.

But the higher level legal work, the one that is lauded and gets the thing done, is like, actually, no, we can do this. It's yes and. So it's all these kind of like improv skills. But the yes and there was make a great UI, have the light ring, have the deleteable chats, give the user control, all these things that people are talking about at IAPP. But in terms of like, this takes a lot of work.

So I have my own podcast and I was talking with a guy, David Morris of Sneak, and he basically was like, this is something that you gotta build as a culture, as a GC, and even as a line lawyer, really train yourself to not lead with anxiety because then you'll just get disinvited and they'll do the thing anyway.

Jenny Hamilton (27:32)

Yeah, 100%. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about how your experiences, maybe as a lawyer or in business development, go to market, have informed your team's approach in building compliance into the tools such that you could facilitate market adoption.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (28:00)

This has been a big advantage for GC AI for my company is that we have to be good at legal, our customers are lawyers. And that's something that I thought very early on about around our terms of use need to be well written, we need to have FAQs, we need to have tools in product around security, we got SOC 2 compliance very early on. 

I think it's what's been nice about it now, or a nice thing is, now I'm the CEO, so I can be the one to whom legal presents. And you want legal to be sort of conservative, right? So like on data retention, on security, we had a, I I wouldn't call it, it was definitely not a breach, but we had a situation where there was a possibility of one company's data being exposed to another. It turned out that it affected over 650 customers that affected like two. 

So the situation was we had to notify those two customers that for a period of, think it was eight hours overnight, we needed, it was possible that this happened. Now we didn't have a verification yet that it had happened. It was each company had, I think, let's say 10 users on the platform. So it was 20 people total of which let's say there was a, so that was the situation, but

That's a very clean, simple way to explain it. It took us some time to get there. And I am so proud of the team. Like our legal counsel was like, I don't want to communicate this yet. We need to figure out exactly what happened. Don't freak out. Like was very just like that calm, know, cool and handled it so well that like, I mean, I'm the, you I was a CEO. also am sort of functioning head of sales at the time. ⁓ we've since hired, but at the time.

And I'm like, what about our customers? What are our customers? And kind of like wanted to buy us on that speed. But in this case, you know, we did the notification and it was incredible because. Okay. The customers who were unaffected were like, great. Thanks for letting me know next. Like didn't even respond to our email. The two who were affected were like, okay. Let's you know, tell us more. And then no issue. And so having the ability to have that great counsel on speed dial, is.

I appreciate it even more than when I was that person. At least I aspire to be that person.

Jenny Hamilton (30:30)

Well, and the vulnerability that I think we forget as attorneys that our clients have, whether they show it or don't, like you were describing, the anxiety about the customer and getting information to them so quickly that you had to factor in to being that trusted advisor, being empathetic where we started this conversation.

That's something that you're now experiencing on the other side. The need for your attorney to recognize that. This isn't push the button, make it happen for you. This is now your whole company. It's not just a job.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (31:14)

Yeah, and I mean, that's that is something that I think distinguishes in-house counsel from law firms. I love law firms. I work with a lot of them. I was there for a number of years. I'm excited we engaged, you know, big firm for corporate work. But, you know, make this happen is definitely, you know, I think an asset for them. 

And, you know, whether it's I talked with one user, I was asking him, you know, what kind of work he used to do in his former life that AI would have helped. He told me a story about he had a client where, it was basically like going to the printers for corporate matters, but essentially he needed to like right click print on like hundred files. And he's like, and I built for that, for full amount. And you're like, okay, were you incented to be like, no, actually, like let's have a software for that or let's do something else. And no, he wasn't, obviously.

And so this difference in incentives and difference in you want that pushback, I appreciate it more now. Now it has to be from the spirit of I wanna win and that trust with your legal counsel, with anybody on the team has to be there. The minute that you have a team member that doesn't believe that you can win, ⁓ we end up not working with those folks because...

Jenny Hamilton (32:34)

Mm-hmm.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (32:40)

It's really you have to, it's kind of, I guess it's like, you know, work 101, but you have to kind of be on board. You can push back while still being on board. And that's, think, that's, think the pinnacle. Exactly. That's exactly right. Exactly.

Jenny Hamilton (32:54)

Yeah, it's like an art. Yeah, the art of lawyering, especially the art of in-house lawyering.

Let's talk about another art form, which is education. And it doesn't surprise me that you have a family member as a teacher, because I think one thing that you've become known for, like well recognized as like a premier AI educator. And I'm curious, you've been teaching a lot of different legal teams. Is there something that customers have been teaching you?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (33:29)

Every day, every week. So we've taught 75 cohorts of, almost 75 cohorts of AI for lawyers and legal teams. And the use cases just literally every time I'm like shocked. So we had one in class a couple of weeks ago where, so circling back to privacy. So Illinois, the BIPA, Biometric Information Privacy Act, basically is that there's certain protections that you have to have around biometric information in Illinois.

And I don't know the full detail of it, but essentially it has a carve out for banks. So it's like Gramm-Leach-Blyley already applies. It has some form of a preemption there. And I guess there's a circuit split on that question. So the third circuit says one thing, the seventh says another. I don't remember exactly the situation, but there's a circuit split. 

And we had a customer in the class say that this was very sophisticated, almost, you work that she was doing for her company, which was a fintech, and that she knew her arguments very well. So let's say they were the Seventh Circuit, but she didn't know the Third Circuit arguments very well. And what she did, this was just an amazing use case, she uploads essentially her analysis memo of the Seventh Circuit position and what was going on.

Jenny Hamilton (34:39)

Mm.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (34:52)

And then the lower court's opinion, basically information on the case in the Seventh Circuit, information on not her case in the Third Circuit. And then came up with this very sophisticated analysis with AI of the differences, the likely result, and a briefing for her company. And she's like, the Seventh Circuit case, I knew like the back of my hand, because I've been litigating it for two years, but I didn't know that about the Third Circuit case. 

And this was in like literally a 101 class, where she had first used AI, let's say, less than a month prior. So getting to that level of sophistication on our product, but also just at large, the creativity to think of something like that was amazing. Then we have other ones, like this morning, we had a, I worked with a SaaS company this morning where they were doing a rev of their privacy policy and they gave a link to one of their benchmark company's privacy policies, and it's a competitor, and said, what's in their policy that I should consider importing to mine. 

And I had taught in that class, I had taught comparing versions of your own privacy policy. And then we went to a break and they just did that on their own. I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

And so when people talk about use cases, I would say that the use cases really are much more infinite than I personally can think of. And that comes back to the strategy of doing education, which is like, I as a teacher,

Jenny Hamilton (35:51)

Hmm. Right.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (36:17)

The biggest win is when the teacher becomes the master, or the student becomes the master. And so I've seen that many times. I would say our most sophisticated users are far more sophisticated than I am, and it's incredibly rewarding.

Jenny Hamilton (36:32)

I have a daughter right now. So I want to transition and talk about education in a way with kids, but every night she's asking me when the robots are going to take over because people aren't being nice to AI. And so this is like top of mind and you're also a mother of four. And I know so thoughtful about where we are in society and kids and screens. So I have to ask you, what do you think the future is for kids and screen time and AI? And is it going to increase? Are you seeing this anxiety increase or maybe it's both?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (37:23)

It's both. It's also–my kids joke with me. They're like, mom, when the robots come, she'll be like, here, here I am. Just do that, but welcome them. I would say it's like anything else, right? So people have the same concerns about radio, about TV, about everything. And it's just kind of life right now. 

I will say, we're here, we went on a vacation recently and I look around the couch and you got the teenagers kind of plopped over. on their individual phones. So that's probably like not ideal, but that day we had gone to the beach all day and I had cooked a nice meal and you it's just like life. 

And through the internet they can keep in touch. We send videos of our nephews, very active extended family group chat, and this like human connection isn't isn't going to go away. We also increasingly have had with AI for Lawyers specifically, I was literally talking with them, I'm a marketing advisor.

He's like, you keep having these stories of people using AI and then having time to be with their kids. He's like, should we lean into that? And it was a substantive question that I considered around like, okay, am I going to look weak or whatever, talking about kids, you know, but all of us, you know, even the high powerest, high power lawyer, you know, have a physical life that we've got to live. And so we had one the other day, I got to read this because it was just so incredible, but listen to.

Listen to this one. And I don't mean this in marketing. I just literally like this gave me tears. All right. Last night at 7:06, I got a DM from, in this case, the CEO that he needed something. I was leaving the building and I got on the N train. I vibe drafted the agreement on GC AI on my phone on the end. I sent it out. A docu-sign when I got home with a couple of tweaks using GC AI for word, it was signed at 8:12.

But the most important thing is that I got to put my daughter to bed yesterday instead of having to skip that time to work. 

Like it's like tears, right? Like this came into like our feedback channel and I'm like, this is incredible. So I think AI will increase leisure in the short term. Long term, I think we're all gonna just lawyer harder. So I don't know that it's gonna necessarily increase the amount of work, but things like that. I'm excited about that kind of future.

Jenny Hamilton (39:44)

Yeah, and the lawyer harder comment. I mean, that's our personality, right? That's how we were raised, trained. That's the expectation. So that's another thing I'm going to steal from you. Yeah. Well, let's get to some of the kind of peak questions here as we wrap up. I'm deeply curious about whether you have a vision you can paint for us–

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (39:52)

Exactly, this is the whole like more pie, right? The prize is more pie. Yeah.

Jenny Hamilton (40:13)

–of the future of a totally, truly AI enabled legal team.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (40:25)

I do think it'll probably be smaller and it'll be more in-house. basically you're going to have a situation where you can have an AI employment council and AI IP council that you sort of call as needed. everyone will be, people like to use the terminology mini GC, but I think in this case, it really will be true where you'll have individuals in legal department that will stay very close to the business and that will really be for that judgment, for that ability to make connections, the ability to make these harder calls. 

In terms of, on a very long horizon, I do see in particular, GC AI, similar to like a Quicken, right? So QuickBooks software, everybody uses it, I use it, my dad's company uses it, you know, you're...

You know, your $20,000 revenue jewelry maker friend probably uses it. And the CPA is all due to. So if you could see AI being sort of like quick and we're like everybody kind of uses it, it's the interface to legal. And then you call in your CPA or you've got a bigger matter, an audit, what have you. You call in your lawyers and your bigger companies have full time lawyers like like we do now. That being said, I think the public policy piece that we spoke about will continue to be important.

There'll be lots of interesting after effects, Excel increased, the software Excel increased the amount of accounting that we do, it didn't lessen it. So I think it's gonna be very similar to that.

Jenny Hamilton (42:00)

Are there any attorney skills that you see evolving that people need to be like adopting?

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (42:11)

Prompting is the new drafting. So you gotta know how to direct AI and people are like, I'm gonna wait for agents to do it for me. But what those folks don't realize is that directing an AI in words is like a baby step to directing an agent. Right now, we try to simulate this within GC AI where we show you what it's thinking, what it plans to do, its research plan. And so you have to be able to get in there and adjust its research plan, just like if you were a partner.

Jenny Hamilton (42:25)

Mm.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (42:38)

So the ability to wield AI and point it at different levels of analysis, like my friend with the seventh circuit case, that's the skill that, and then all the in real life stuff, right? So we're a remote company generally, but we do it in real life activities. We went and calculated the number of deals that we had closed where I physically flown there, you know, Atlanta, Seattle, whatever. And the close rate was like 98%. And so versus, you know, our close rate on zoom is high, but it's not 98%.

And so that ability to make human connections, I talked again with a conversation with David yesterday. You know, I was in patent litigation early in my career and there was this concept of like, you know, what state, happens in Tyler, Texas stays in Tyler, Texas, where it's like, you've got this bond of friendship of having been in the Eastern district of Texas and you'll forever fight harder for that client and forever know that client better from having shared that experience. So, the ability to have client empathy, do things in real life, make connections, prompt. I think those are going to be really important. you know, there is a grind aspect. And I do worry about that with junior folks where reviewing lots and lots of documents manually, you know, was a part of my coming up as a lawyer. That being said, the biggest win I had to, know, to Xtero's business is like I did some searches because once I got to know the personalities of the discovery I was working on,

I'm like, bet, you know, Sally sent an email about this. You do a search for Sally and that, and you get, you know, the smoking gun document. And I still remember that case. It was a software company and I still, it's like one of the people asked me, you know, my favorite, it's maybe not my favorite case, not the Samsung is probably my favorite, but my favorite individual win by me was finding that document and avoiding litigation entirely.

And I had been told by the client, just do a quick peek. You can't do a big doc review. And we didn't. I did a quick peek and then I did that search and we got it. And then the case was over.

Jenny Hamilton (44:37)

That's incredible strategy, right? But it's that human connection and that awareness. It wasn't just strict lawyering. So yeah, so those skills, it's not going to be, you have to be an even better lawyer necessarily. You might have to be a better people person. Oddly.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (44:43)

Exactly. Yes.

No question the soft skills. I've been beating that drum for a long time and I think a lot of schools are starting to realize that but it's not soft skills instead of hard skills. It's both.

Jenny Hamilton (45:07)

Yeah. Okay, so here we go. The final question. It's probably an easy one, I hope. How are you staying current on this volume of developments in AI? Like we need some practical advice.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (45:25)

Yeah. So, at this point, I mean, this one isn't going to be practical for everyone, but I definitely keep in touch with AI through our customers. So we work with companies of all kinds, manufacturing, you know, retail, tech. So just the stuff that they tell me, I would say is the single best way that I personally do it. But beyond that, I would say AI Twitter is very good. There's-- Ethan Malik is a great one. He's a researcher out of Pennsylvania that writes a lot about the future of AI. So he's, he's very helpful.

I think, you know, find a newsletter that you like would be my advice. I do want to. I do want to. Thank you. GC AI's Newsletter, although we don't send it as often as I'd like, it's going to give you the basics on the legal side. You know, I don't want to, I think IAPP has the governance one. I've heard it's pretty good, you know, so try that. But I would say the single biggest thing is going to be using it because if you're not using AI, will have–

Jenny Hamilton (46:01)

That is yours. You can plug yours.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (46:24)

–the discussion will be theoretical to you and you won't internalize it the way you would if you are.

Jenny Hamilton (46:30)

This has been incredibly valuable and fun. And I can't thank you enough for being part of our inaugural podcast for data risk leaders and for AI leaders like you, Cecilia. Thank you so much.

Cecilia Ziniti (GC AI) (46:44)

I love it. Thank you, Jenny. This was really fun. It really was like chatting with a friend. I'm excited to keep in touch with you and your listeners.

Jenny Hamilton (46:53)

That's it for this episode of Data Xposure. Thanks to Cecilia for the great insights and thank you for listening. Data Xposure is brought to you by Exterro, the only platform helping legal privacy, security and compliance leaders stay ahead when data risk hits home. 

If you found this valuable, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back soon with another story on how to look at what you can do to help your organization manage data risk effectively.