Welcome to Everlaw! Q&A with Everlaw CLO Gloria Lee
The legal tech industry is buzzing, and so are we, with the news that Gloria Lee is Everlaw’s new Chief Legal Officer. Welcome, Gloria! We are delighted that our newest Everlawyer is a former top-notch litigator, with expertise in every corner of the legal world.
We recently had a chance to sit down with Gloria to find out more about her experience, why she chose Everlaw, and—intriguingly—how she achieved case law infamy with lyrics written by the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
You’ve brought a wealth of experience to Everlaw––everything from leading various legal functions at multiple blue-chip tech companies, two software unicorns, and a healthcare giant to being a trial lawyer for the City of Oakland, an Am Law 50 attorney, and a judicial law clerk in a U.S. District Court. That’s a lot! Why did you choose Everlaw?
I feel really lucky and a bit like a unicorn, myself, in that I am a lawyer who has loved all of my jobs. I've had the opportunity to work on a lot of interesting, meaningful, impactful things for my clients.
And yes, I’m very glad to now be at Everlaw, which I believe to be one of the most well-loved legal tech companies. We have the credibility and the user love to translate what we've done in litigation into a much broader area of impact. I see opportunities for growth across many different areas of law—and I think we're the company that is best positioned to successfully expand into them. I am excited about Everlaw’s future!
How will your broad experience help you in guiding Everlaw’s growth?
Everlaw is for the legal industry. Its DNA is for litigators. In my “heart of lawyer hearts,” I'm still a trial lawyer and have a lot of understanding of the challenges litigators face. In bringing that perspective to the company, I believe I can help bring Everlaw to the legal industry at large—especially since my career has crossed a wide spectrum of big firms, government, large corporations, and startups.
I have a lot of empathy for lawyers in all those types of roles. There's some commonality, but there are also distinct needs and challenges in different types of organizations, across different industries. In my role as CLO of Everlaw, I look forward to providing not just insight into how to develop new markets, but into how the product can be developed, as well. That is another reason why Everlaw appealed to me.
In my “heart of lawyer hearts,” I'm still a trial lawyer and have a lot of understanding of the challenges litigators face.
If you had to choose, which professional experience would you say is your most memorable? The best learning experience?
That’s a tough question but OK, if I've got to pick one, it would be the litigation experience I had when I was at Fitbit. A competitor called Jawbone had sued Fitbit, and within the realm of fitness trackers and hardware, the Fitbit-Jawbone saga was a very big deal. That was the reason why I was brought on at Fitbit, and the litigation spanned my entire five years at the company.
Jawbone initially sued Fitbit in a trade secret theft case. Five Jawbone employees had come over to Fitbit, who Jawbone alleged had brought with them confidential and proprietary information. That alone was a New York Times-front-page type of case. But it was only the beginning! The trade secret case then spawned major warfare between the two companies. There were something like seven patent cases going back and forth!
Things really got wild as Fitbit was going on its IPO roadshow. Jawbone had made material allegations that were very harmful. The financial risk exposure was extremely high, because, in addition to the patent lawsuits, Jawbone filed IP infringement cases at the ITC [U.S. International Trade Commission], which can stop the importation of your products. The ITC litigation was obviously very impactful because it meant Fitbit might not have products to sell. On top of the civil litigation, the DOJ ended up getting involved and initiated investigations, ultimately filing criminal charges for theft of trade secrets against the former Jawbone employees. Defending against baseless claims by the government was both incredibly frustrating and emotional for those employees, who feared receiving a prison sentence.
That alone was a New York Times-front-page type of case. But it was only the beginning!
So I was brought into this legal drama to basically handle it and figure it out. That’s why the Fitbit-Jawbone litigation was so memorable, and such a big learning experience for me. I’d been a litigator for over 15 years but had never litigated a patent case before. It is like another language! Luckily, I had great outside counsel; I told my team, “Treat me like your most remedial client. Teach me what I need to know.” And they did. They really did.
In addition to winning epic litigation at Fitbit, you’ve conquered a range of complex and novel legal issues, including antitrust review in the acquisition of Fitbit by Google, and copyright issues for the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. What was it like to be on the front lines of groundbreaking, precedent-setting law?
You make it all seem so exciting! Years later, one of my most favorite news headlines about the Fitbit-Jawbone saga is that it was “the Apple-Samsung war no one cares about.” But everyone cares about Prince, so I’ll quickly tell you about my work on a case that involved the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
It was an opinion I drafted when I was a law clerk for a Federal District Judge in Chicago, in a case that had been brought by another musician. At that time the defendant was not using Prince as his name, he was using the unpronounceable symbol. In court documents, he was the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, which resonates to this day.
To make a long story short, the decision came down to a niche part of copyright law called derivative copyright law. But the more interesting part was my awesome judge, who gave me the flexibility to draft the opinion the way I wanted—so I wove lyrics from Prince's songs throughout. Even better, this was in 1999. We were granting summary judgment in favor of the Artist, and I got to use the line at the very end that he could “go crazy” and “party like it's 1999.”
I don’t know how groundbreaking it was, but the opinion is definitely fun because of the lyrics and stuff. And it does live on, like Prince’s music, because the opinion is often in law school copyright casebooks.
Last question. Like all of us at Everlaw, you’re a big fan of the East Bay. Tell us what you like most about working in downtown Oakland.
First of all, it’s great to be back! Earlier in my career, when I served in the Oakland City Attorney's Office, I lived in the city and worked downtown.
Now, driving into the city to be in the office is a bit of a homecoming. There is so much more happening in Downtown Oakland now in terms of restaurants, public spaces, and entertainment. All of these things, and our amazing offices—shoutout to whoever curated the snack selection—make me so glad to be at Everlaw!
If you’d like to learn more about Gloria, keep your eyes on the Everlaw blog. She’ll be sharing in depth the five reasons why she chose Everlaw, her outlook on Everlaw’s future growth, and more.
