Kunoor Chopra, vice president of legal services, Elevate.

Name: Kunoor Chopra

Category: In-House: Women's Legal Awards

Firm/Company: Elevate

Title: Vice President, Legal Services

Time in Position: Since 2012

What was your route to the top?

My career path has been one filled with accidents, adventure and ultimately effecting change in the legal industry. I went to law school because my parents gave me three options—becoming a doctor, engineer or lawyer. I then went to Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. During the first five years of my career, I was a general litigator at Nossaman and then Fulbright & Jaworski. As I was practicing, I saw firsthand the inefficiencies in how law firms operated and serviced their corporate customers. I thought there must be a better way to operate. In 2004, I started one of the pioneering law companies called LawScribe, providing legal support services to U.S. law firms and legal departments through attorneys in India. I had built a solid network of contacts, but was unable to scale LawScribe on my own to what my contact base needed. At that point, decided to sell my company in 2010 to UnitedLex. At UnitedLex it became clear that there was still a lot more to accomplish in the solutions we were bringing to customers. I knew of Liam Brown who had built Integreon, so I reached out to him and we had lunch in January 2012. We discussed a lot of things including what we would do if we could do it all over again. We were completely aligned on the fact that our customers' needs were evolving and there was almost a blank slate to help them with new solutions. So, I signed up to help build Elevate almost eight years ago, and I haven't looked back.

What is the best leadership advice you've given or received, and why do you think it was effective?

A piece of advice I incorporate every single day is that I should not stress over or worry about things I can't change and are out of my control. There are so many things that may happen personally or professionally which you cannot do anything about. Being able to let go, embrace and accept the state of things will make your life so much better. It is amazing how much stress we all carry due to things beyond our control. Let go and move forward.

Looking back, what do you wish you had known when you started out in the legal profession?

I wish I had known and been reflective about developing my T-shaped skills. A T-shaped professional has deep knowledge/skills in one area and a broad base of general supporting knowledge. This diverse set of skills is critical where the opportunities that exist are not just about practicing law in house or at a law firm. Personally, I was good at being a lawyer, but to truly be successful today, you need to be good at a range of interpersonal and business skills.

What is the most valuable career advice anyone has ever given you?

The best advice I was given but didn't take was to make sure that whatever job I took after law school, that it was something I wanted to do. I took the first paying job because I didn't think there would be a lot of options for me (yup, ignorant young college kid!). I wish I had taken more time to determine what I wanted to do. I ended up in the right place for me, but it is so important to find out what you love doing and spend your time doing that. Don't sell yourself short.