Julian Tsisin, vice president, legal markets, Seal Software.

 

As the market for artificial intelligence-powered contract analytics solutions garners more interest from investors, technology providers behind such products are looking to staff up with top legal talent. And in looking to keep up with the market, Seal Software has become the latest to add a former corporate legal professional to its ranks.

In late August, Seal announced the appointment of Julian Tsisin as vice president of legal markets. Tsisin was most recently senior program manager of legal technology at Google and before that served as manager of practice services, business technology at Disney.

Tsisin spoke with Legaltech News on why he moved from the corporate world to the legal technology sector, how he hopes to leverage his past legal tech experience at Seal and what it was like working in some of the largest and most innovative companies in the U.S. economy.

Legaltech News: What type of legal tech work did you oversee at Google?

Julian Tsisin: I was at Google for four years, and I was part of a legal technology team which grew when I was there. My responsibilities included running various technology initiatives and working with the larger corporate legal team at Google. I initially managed Google's patent and intellectual property technologies, then I moved to more legal department-wide initiatives like contract analytics and enterprise search.

Why leave Google for Seal?

I left Google for personal reasons, because I had been commuting from Los Angeles to Google for four years, and I just wanted to be closer to my family. But I've seen how legal technology has changed in the past few years, and contract analytics is a very hot topic in general. So I've been following Seal for quite some time, and I like what Seal has been doing.

One thing that was really interesting to me was that Seal acquired a company called Apogee Legal, and I knew Apogee a little bit. I've met them before. And the fact that Seal, a large legal AI company, decided to purchase Apogee Legal, which has a huge domain expertise in legal, specifically was just an amazing move.

I don't think the market understands how important this move is because, while a lot of legal AI companies have new technologies today in the market, not all legal problems can be addressed by technology alone. You need people with legal domain expertise. And now Seal has 30 lawyers on staff, training models and helping customers.

What types of legal technology did you implement at Disney?

I was at Disney for almost for 7½ years, also running legal technology projects. I managed various types of technology initiatives around patents, copyrights and trademarks. I also worked on a system for anti-privacy and infringement—basically it's a digital enterprise system to find infringing materials online. And I worked on litigation systems, e-billing systems, so basically everything a large legal department would use.

My background is in computer science, but while at Disney I also went to law school at night to become a lawyer.

Why become both a computer engineer and lawyer?

I've been in the legal field for a very long time on the technology side. The main reasons why I wanted to get a degree was to understand the legal side of things better and to become a partner to lawyers. I didn't even think about taking the bar at the time, but after I went to law school, I took it in California. I don't practice, but this gave me a better view of the legal space.

What do you hope to accomplish at Seal?

I want to learn as much as I can, because I've never been part of a technology startup. My overall role and responsibilities has two parts. Because of my dual background in technology and legal, I'm part of the office of the CTO, but I'm also working very closely with the CEO of Apogee, who is now a chief strategy officer [at Seal], too. Part of my role is to become a bridge between the strategy and the technology and to improve that part of the business. My other responsibility is to work on the legal strategy and expand Seal's presence in the legal market.