In her early school days, Jamie wanted to be a doctor. When she headed off to her first classes at DePaul University in Chicago, she was dismayed by just how long science lab classes were, so her childhood career choice was dashed shortly thereafter. She decided to stick to the core classes until she was forced at the end of her sophomore year to declare a major. She decided to go with business. While taking a variety of business related classes her last two undergrad years, she encountered business law. Finally, she had found a discipline that truly interested her.
Since De Paul has a community service component to its curriculum, Jamie chose to mentor group home boys who were wards of the state. She enjoyed this work and thought as she went off to law school, she would explore child advocacy law. She enrolled at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, which offered a concentration of courses on children and the law.
Midway through law school it occurred to her that she was amassing a lot of student loan debt. She began to think about how she would eventually repay it and she came upon an idea she thought would help her. It happened that Hamline offered a dual degree program with the nearby University of St. Thomas where she could earn an MBA to accompany her JD. When she finished these two degrees, she felt she would be better prepared to land a good first position and relieve some of her debt.
Jamie’s first job out of law school was as a business litigator. She did this for 2 years and got her feet wet, and as she did, she was able to define her career direction further. She felt she wanted to be an integral part of building a business and creating new systems. She left this initial job then and hired on at US Bank where she might find more opportunity to grow.
At U.S. Bank she was brought in to support the IT department. In that role she did everything from litigation to software licensing to contract negotiations. Each of these areas offered her more experience to help her continue to define and develop her career path. When she had finished at US Bank, she felt better prepared to step up to the role of an in-house counsel.
Jamie’s next move was to Kroll Ontrack as a contract negotiator and then associate legal counsel. Besides contract negotiations she did compliance and document discovery. After a 3 year stint, she moved on as counsel at St. Jude Medical where she continued to do contract law.
In 2017, she was hired as the first in-house attorney at Gitlab.This was her first remote job. During her time there, the company enjoyed tremendous growth. They went from 150 to 1200 employees. Jamie built the legal team from just herself to 7 others. It was exciting and a lot of work, she tells us. She felt an integral part of the team, and this was the type of work she had been building towards.
When the pandemic hit, Jamie took a sabbatical. During her time off, an opportunity came to join Mattermost, an open source collaboration platform for developers. The entire company works remotely. Jamie took the position and has found remote work affords her the flexibility she needs. With four children and her academic responsibilities at Georgetown University where she is a candidate for an Executive LLM in Securities and Financial Regulations, flexibility is essential. As the first in-house attorney at Mattermost, Jamie is busy setting up the requisite legal systems for the company. Her responsibilities often include reworking contracts, document discovery and compliance issues too.
Jamie discusses with Amy some of the work she does to promote rising people in technology fields and other areas. For example, she works as a mentor with TechStars, an incubator program with United Health Care. Recently she’s developed a list serve for attorneys who work for remote businesses, many being technology startups. (You can find the link below). The list has grown to 60 or 70 lawyers so far.
So at this stage of her ever-evolving career, she wears many hats. She’s happy with her current work and lifestyle and shares some advice about what she’s learned as an attorney at several startups. She says networking is vital. She tells the listener exactly how she networked to make her way into the startup world. She has pivoted successfully because she has acquired an impressive array of transferable skills, learning and adapting as she moves forward. During a time of rapidly changing technology, her ability to stay current makes her highly valuable to every organization she chooses to be involved with.
Takeaways:
Network and develop relationships of trust
Keep learning
Lawyers working with startups experience a unique set of challenge
Not everyone follows a career path plotted early on
Links:
linkedin.com/in/jamiehurewitz
www.allremotelegal.com
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