From Big Law Associate to In-House Counsel to Legal Entrepreneur Reenvisioning ADR

John Reed: [00:00:08] If you've tuned into the podcast before, you know that we've talked a lot about alternative dispute resolution. We've heard from Sticky Lawyers who started as litigators and became neutrals. Those are the people that conduct arbitrations and mediations. We've heard from people about the benefits of ADR, how it often saves litigants time and money, and given that fewer than two or even 1% of cases go to trial, it can be a very attractive alternative to resolving disputes.

But we haven't really talked about the process. What is ADR? How does it work? What works about it, what doesn't work, and how can it be improved? Today's guest, although never really a litigator per se, managed litigation as in-house counsel, and like every successful entrepreneur, he saw a problem and an opportunity in the marketplace for an innovative approach to ADR.

Shane Mulrooney is the founder, general counsel, and head of customer experience for New Era ADR. We'll learn about what he does and how he got there, and it's not the typical career path you'd expect. That's probably what makes him a Sticky Lawyer.

Hi Shane. Welcome to the podcast.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:01:18] Thank you. Happy to be here.

John Reed: [00:01:20] Certainly. I'd like to jump right into a conversation about ADR. We'll talk about your journey to founding New Era in a moment, but I'd like to lay some foundation for our lay and lawyer listeners.

Let's kind of break down the ADR continuum. First off, who is bringing the idea of ADR to the parties? The lawyers? A judge, perhaps, that's encouraging a resolution? Where is the idea of a dispute resolution process first being introduced to the parties of a lawsuit?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:01:55] So, it can come from a number of different sources. ADR provisions are written into contracts, and they have historically been kept in older versions of contracts that continue to get reprinted and reused, and this is part of an issue we have with the industry. People do not pay close attention to what's in their contracts and what's in their dispute resolution clause. And so, a lot of times, parties, whether it's two companies or a consumer in a company or an employee of a company, end up going to ADR because they have a dispute. And then they look at their contract and they say, okay, this is what it says, the dispute resolution clause, this forum selection clause says where we go, and it says an arbitration forum or some sort of ADR mutually acceptable to the parties, or what have you.

That's how it happens a lot of times. Other times when people are more thoughtful about it, and they're drafting contracts, they may reach out to their attorneys and ask if they have a recommendation for any alternative to having to go to courts.

And then, as you mentioned too, many times the courts -- they promote ADR because of how backed up and backlogged the U.S. courts are. And so, they might send the parties to mediation, less commonly to arbitration, if they feel like that's the type of dispute that can be resolved in that manner.

John Reed: [00:03:20] Let's talk about that for a minute. Formal and less formal arbitration and mediation. Notwithstanding a provision in a contract that compels the parties to submit to arbitration. How is that process, that forum being determined amongst the counsel and the parties?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:03:38] Traditionally, there has been one, maybe two institutions that have dominated the ADR space. When the parties or their counsel don't provide a ton of analysis on the issue, they will default to, Hey, there's this one institution. They do the arbitrations. And so, if you want to do arbitration, it's with them. Or maybe this one, other one that's been around for nearly as long. It's binary generally. Do you want to go to court or do you want to go to arbitration when you're drafting this contract, or as a dispute arises? And if it's arbitration, then we know of this one, maybe two forums.

That is something that we're trying to change at New Era ADR to show that it's actually not a binary decision, but you have multiple different options, some better for others depending on the dispute at issue, the parties involved, the amount at stake, etc. So, it depends a lot on how much thought and analysis goes into the decision.

John Reed: [00:04:38] Arbitration, for the most part, is binding. The decision of the arbitration panel will, like a judge's ruling, a court decision, will govern the outcome. Whereas mediation generally is non-binding. Is that fair?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:04:55] Yeah, hopefully mediation can be binding if the parties come to an agreement. So, I think a successful mediation, the result of a successful mediation will be to say the parties have entered into a settlement agreement, which then could be binding. What makes mediation less binding than arbitration is that you don't have to settle.

You could walk into a mediation and turn around after 30 minutes and say, this is going nowhere, and then you're not bound to do anything. Whereas with an arbitration, once the process kicks off, like court, it's going to end in a binding decision.

John Reed: [00:05:31] Let's also talk about the process of selecting neutrals. So, you talked about two major organizations in the arbitration space. Often, and you can tell me how often, the parties are trying to determine who that single neutral may be for a mediation or who is going to be on the panel for an arbitration.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:05:52] Typically, yeah. If open-ended, which a lot of contracts say, they'll say, an arbitration forum or an arbitrator mutually agreed to by the parties. You've just created, including that clause, an entirely-- an entire new dispute, right? How are we going to go ahead and agree on somebody, and how long is that going to take? And how much, as a party member, pay my attorney to fight about the neutral, whether it be a mediator or an arbitrator, to help us with this dispute?

And so, the more formal arbitration forums sometimes just say, Hey, if you've agreed to use us as a forum, then you've agreed to our process, and we maybe are going to assign a neutral, or we're going to give you a list and then you fight it out and come back to us when you've agreed on one. But at least we've narrowed the universe down some.

What we do is we do a rank and strike process. So, we provide a list of maybe five to ten neutrals, and then each side strikes one or two and then ranks the remaining ones. So that, in a short amount of time, we're always going to come to one at least that is the top, one that they can agree, that the parties can agree on.

Otherwise, there are, if you don't go to kind of a formal forum or institution, there are a lot of individual neutrals, arbitrators and mediators that kind of run their own business. Maybe they do work for some of the forums and maybe they just do work off on their own.

There are also groups of neutrals who have gotten together and pooled back office and administrative resources, kind of like a small firm of lawyers, and they get, appointments based on relationships. So, a lot of this industry is based on locality and relationships. Hey, if you're a law firm in Chicago and you're looking for a mediator to help with X dispute, you send out a request to your firm and say, Hey, does anybody know any good mediators in the area? And several people will give you names, and then you propose them to the other side. And maybe they worked with them, maybe not.

But that is going away with virtual arbitration and a larger marketplace and reach of neutrals, where you can have the parties, two different sides of the country, and a neutral in the middle of the country, and nobody has to be in the same place.

John Reed: [00:08:05] And is it a foregone conclusion that subject matter expertise is the price of admission for a neutral? Let's face it, there are judges on the bench that only practiced in a certain area or may not have a great depth of practice experience, and yet they are responsible for adjudicating, deciding a large variety of cases that they may not ever have touched before in private practice. So, I'm wondering, again, if subject matter expertise is that one thing that you do have control over, and you absolutely want when looking for your neutral.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:08:39] Definitely, and that is definitely table stakes. Diversity in our panels is paramount for us. The one thing that won't be diverse, though, is everybody's level of expertise with respect to, or at least a minimum level of expertise with respect to, the subject matter of the type of dispute that is table stakes to get on there. And then we provide diversity based on location, experience, age, race, gender, ethnicity, all of that stuff. But subject matter expertise is required.

And that is actually something, to your point, that could be an advantage over litigation, especially in new and upcoming industries. We use crypto as an example all the time. We have several neutrals that have expertise in that industry. It's going to be tough to find a judge who has that level of experience, as maybe an attorney who's been representing crypto platforms and token issuers for the last 10 years. So, it gives you that flexibility for sure.

John Reed: [00:09:36] So now let's get to your special area. What did you see, and we're going to get to where you saw it, what did you see about traditional ADR, or in its historical form, whatever, that was broken or at least not optimal that you wanted to address?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:09:55] I didn't even really know at the time that I saw it. I didn't know the details. So, I do not come from a litigation background, but when I was tasked in-house with dealing with litigation, I was actually shocked and surprised when advised by my outside counsel that you have arbitration in this contract, but it's not going to really save you any money or probably time either. And so, think about whether or not you want it in there. And I would say, well, think about what? Like what am I doing here with this if not to make things more efficient and save money? And over and over, I was just advised that, well, it's private, so there's an advantage, but that's it.

And then after going through the process, finding out that that was in fact the case, I felt like it was inordinately expensive and very process and procedural-driven, when for at least the cases that I was handling, if we could just get to the point and make our arguments and move on, I felt very confident in our ability to win. But there was so much to deal with leading up to that point, and so much money to spend on outside counsel in order to get to that point.

I felt like I might as well have been in court, and at least that way I wouldn't have to pay the arbitrator. And so, in my experience, in the traditional process, I felt like it was not a true alternative. And that's what led me and my co-founders to say, enough is enough. We need to actually create an alternative for that process.

John Reed: [00:11:32] All right, so here I'm going to give you the elevator to make your pitch. Talk to us about New Era's cloud-based platform and the advantages that it offers.

[00:11:43] Shane Mulrooney: Sure.  Not being so subtle, we created New Era ADR in order to actually provide for a streamlined, cost-effective, and efficient manner in resolving— and were particular about this—but in resolving most of the disputes that many companies and individuals face. And I say most because we have created this streamlined process, we recognize that large, high stakes, extremely complex company-type disputes are better, not off, not on our platform. But there are tons of other, and in fact, 90% of disputes fall within the cost of doing business and run of the mill and not document-heavy and not discovery-heavy, where both parties just need to be able to make their case, get a decision from a neutral, intelligent, and subject matter expert party, and then move on. And how we accomplished the ability to do that we was created a cloud-based, digitally native platform that allows parties to access the arbitration or mediation from anywhere in the world, really, although we mostly operate domestically in the U.S. And that is a user-friendly platform that leads the parties and their attorneys and the neutral through the entire dispute resolution process, start to finish, from intake to document submission, scheduling hearings, scheduling mediations, final arguments, any sort of motions or communication throughout, up to decision. It's all in one secure location that everybody can download and use immediately after to enforce in court or do whatever that they please. 

Really, the whole point is to remove any sort of ability for any side to exercise gamesmanship on a procedural level, and to really just focus everybody on what the merits of the case are, anything probative, so that we can just get a decision and move on.

John Reed: [00:13:42] You talked about the range of cases that work with New Era, and you talked about in terms of the size of the litigation—bet-the-farm, too big to fail, whatever it may be— that may not be appropriate for your platform. What other types of matters don't work? We talked a lot about commercial, contract, business. What about injury cases or probate litigation or things that are more people law as opposed to commercial?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:14:12] We don't see any family law on our platform. I mean, technically, if there was a divorce mediation that wanted to take place, there's no reason why that wouldn't be able to work. But we haven't really marketed in that area, and so we haven't really seen anything come.

What works mostly is where there is a contractual agreement on the front end. So personal injury is pretty tough, because you don't know who you're going to run into and potentially get hurt by. So, slip and fall cases, that kind of stuff generally does not. It's rare that after a dispute has occurred, the parties are willing to then agree on a forum if they're not compelled to do so by contract, which is why that is the case.

So, look, we have a dream where in the future, maybe not too distant future, there'll be a New ERA app. And when you get into a dispute with your neighbor about their tree hanging over your fence, and you just need somebody to quickly make a call, you can both log into your phone application and get on New Era. And that's just a faraway dream someday to try and do that. For now, we're focused on where the contracts are written.

John Reed: [00:15:22] Let's talk about your target user or consumer. I know so much is driven by what's in the contract, but is it in-house counsel? Is it the litigation manager, either within the law department or the firm, that's managing all outside litigation? Is it the CFO? I'm kind of curious as to who you're marketing to to make that initial entree.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:15:47] Yeah, great question. Everybody you just listed should be a part of that, or should be interested. There's a lot of nuance, though, with respect to finding the right person. So, we talk to a lot of in-house counsel because they're the ones paying the bill. They're the ones that have the budget. And they're generally the ones writing the contracts. And depending on the size of the company, they may be the ones handling the litigation, or they may be outsourcing that. Many times, we get introduced to outside counsel via in-house, or we'll go directly to the law firm attorney, to the litigator, and talk to them.

The CFO should be very interested in the cost savings. One thing we didn't go over about New Era is we do only flat fees. A CFO should love that. That's one area where legal departments have just been on an island with respect to all other departments in-house, is predictability and forecasting. And so, when we talk to CFOs, they say, “Yeah, this sounds great, but I'm not a lawyer. I don't know how this stuff works. You gotta talk to the lawyers.”

A lot of times, we might talk to a transactional attorney who writes the contracts, and they say, “Hey, I don't know how it works when it hits litigation; you gotta talk to my attorney. I don't really know what to do with that. I do what's in the contract now, and I don't like to mess with it.” And then we go and we talk to the litigator, and they say, “Yeah, that sounds great, but look, I'm not writing the contracts. I don't know how to do that. I don't know what language I need to put in there. You need to go talk to the people that write this contract.” So we really do need to have conversations with everybody before, ultimately, we are able to kind of make that final conversion into a new user or customer.

John Reed: [00:17:24] And where are the objections? Sounds great. It's innovative. Cloud-based. I can be anywhere in the world. Thank you, Pandemic, we've made that commonplace. What is the pushback you're getting from the non-adopters or the late adopters?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:17:39] I think a lot of people are skeptical that our process is going to work. I mean, the U.S. legal system is extremely combative and adversarial, and that's all anybody knows, and that's all anybody is trained to do. In particular, when you're talking about real hard-nosed, big-firm litigators, they're paid to go the distance. Our point is always, those disputes that you pay them for do not belong on our platform. But I think even then, when you're talking about your kind of run-of-the-mill stuff and cost-of-doing-business stuff, there's a lot of, well, “I love it. I love it as a concept, but I'm a lawyer, and so my job is to be risk averse,” which I disagree with, but this is what goes through their heads.

We get less and less of this now that we've been around for five years, but at the beginning, it was very much, I don't want to be the first to adopt. I need to see it actually work in action first, and then come talk to me. And so, we're at a stage now where we actually have been going back to a lot of people and saying, “Hey, look, it's actually working as we said it would, we've made updates and tweaks, and we're constantly improving the actual product platform experience for everybody to be more intuitive.”

So, we're at least at a place now where we feel confident that we can rebut those objections. But I think it mostly comes from this being a bit of a paradigm shift for people who, when they think of a dispute, it's an immediate, “we are not going to give a centimeter to the other side or anybody until we know we have fully locked in our position.”

John Reed: [00:19:20] It doesn't fit into a scorched earth strategy.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:19:23] Not at all. Exactly.

John Reed: [00:19:25] We've talked about how parties, whoever they may be, select New Era. What is New Era's process for selecting, vetting, screening, neutrals?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:19:38] We have a neutral kind of application process that we have minimum requirements for. Generally, 15 to 20 years, I believe, of legal experience, or subject matter expert experience if you're not a lawyer, although most of our neutrals are. And our ex-judges. We like people to have experience in, maybe, nuanced areas of law, complex commercial litigation, those types of things. But we're willing to take a look at everything.

We then interview everybody, sometimes multiple times, to make sure that they have what they say they do in terms of subject matter expertise, that they align with the New Era mission on being comfortable, confident, and assertive in leading these arbitrations, as opposed to just sitting back and letting the parties fight. And they understand what we're trying to do in terms of promoting an efficient and fair and streamlined process.

We have the benefit of our rank and strike process and letting the parties really decide. On each of those panels, we might have an ex-judge who's been doing this for 30 years. We might have another neutral, maybe not an ex-judge, but who's been an arbitrator for decades. Then next to them we have your young partner at a law firm who's been practicing for 15, 20 years, is interested in getting ADR, still practices, but maybe has only done a couple arbitrations or mediations, but really bright and really focused on the subject matter. We include all of that on there and let the parties pick.

John Reed: [00:21:13] I talk to a lot of litigators who, at some point in their careers, say, “Gee, I'd like to become a neutral.” And they think I'm going to go sit for my 40-hour class, I'm going to get my certificate, and it's all going to come to me. They realize how difficult it is to market, particularly if they're known for being on a particular side of an issue for most of their practice.

It's given me the idea that this would be a great, I'm not going to call it training space, but at least a place for somebody to have another opportunity to gain that arbitration experience as a neutral, and then be able to promote it elsewhere.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:21:54] 100%. I mean, and that's exactly it. And you know, even though we say we have kind of, the bottom 90% of the disputes, not the super high-stakes stuff, there's still a range even within that of how much is at stake, how serious and complex these disputes are. And so, we have some really straightforward, simple stuff. There's not much at stake, but the parties have agreed to arbitrate and just need a decision to be made.

That kind of stuff is great for anybody who's new to the ADR practice, again, been practicing law, litigating for 20 years, but wants to start to move in that direction in their career, and they can start getting real arbitration experience that would be tough to come by elsewhere. We actually see a lot of that on our platform, and we're proud to offer that as a, kind of career development opportunity for a lot of aspiring neutrals.

John Reed: [00:22:50] So, back to you. You majored in communications in undergrad. Was law school always in the picture?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:22:57] Yeah. Not to knock on communications, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I wanted to go to law school. And so, I said to myself, and I think this was my sophomore year at college, I said, well, whatever. It doesn't matter what I major in.

I said, I'm going to law school anyway. What does it matter? So yeah, that was kind of always in the cards. And I think actually switching to communications really cemented it. Like, because I didn't really have a plan other than the law school with that major. If I could have done it all again, honestly, I was most interested in when I was in high school was in math and physics. And if I could do it all again, I would probably have majored in one of those or some sort of engineering route, but I did not know at the time. I don't have any attorneys in my family. I didn't realize at the time that those would actually be good for law school as well, just how difficult they are in critical thinking.  But I did get a lot of skills, you know, that was helpful otherwise. 

John Reed: [00:23:56] You had to have crushed it in law school because you went to then join one of the most elite, respected, largest firms in the country, Kirkland Ellis. What was the nature of your work, your practice there?

[00:24:08] Shane Mulrooney: Yeah, I joined the tax group, which again, no accounting or financial background

John Reed: [00:24:15] I didn't hear you mention that in your undergrad experience. 

[00:24:17] Shane Mulrooney: In everything I named, yeah, that wasn't one of those things. What happened was, during on-campus interviews my 2L year, I interviewed with Kirkland, got a call back, and they had said they were interested in recruiting from Illinois, a list of practice groups, and tax was one of them. And I thought to myself, I bet nobody's thinking about tax, wanting to go into tax, so I'm going to do that because I think it'll give me a better chance of getting in. I think I said corporate, too. So, I interviewed with both. I hit it off, actually, really well with the tax group. And so, I did my 2L summer mostly with tax, a little bit of corporate. And so, by the time I joined, I was in the tax group.

I ended up really enjoying the challenge, the puzzle around the questions, and the research that we had to do. It was just a big, difficult puzzle, really in piecing together different regulations and extremely esoteric guidance and other things. And the nature of the work was really, we were structuring private equity deals. Either structuring or negotiating contracts. We did lots. We were the tax group that helped. We were a support group for all of the work that came through Kirkland. So, we did a lot of real estate, fund formation, even some tax controversy here and there with the IRS or others. Some international, some public company, mostly those around private equity M&A.

John Reed: [00:25:41] Knowing this was happening after 2L for your third year of law school, did you just bone up on every class they offered?

[00:25:48] Shane Mulrooney: I did all the tax, and I was so glad I did partnership tax because that ended up being one of the most difficult, conceptually, classes in law school. But I went into my job at Kirkland having an understanding that if I hadn't taken that class, it would've been way more difficult because we dealt with a lot of partnership and pass-through entities when you're structuring these complex deals and funds. So, it was extremely helpful.

John Reed: [00:26:13] You did what a lot of lawyers would like to do. You went to the greener grass that's known as in-house. How did that happen?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:26:21] About my third or fourth year at Kirkland, I started to realize that probably a long career there wasn't in the cards for me. I mean, it gave me the best training that I ever could have asked for as a young attorney, and I would never do anything otherwise. And I tell every young lawyer that if you can get into one of the top large law firms, do it. You don't have to be there forever, but you will get amazing training.

Kirkland actually had a career counselor in-house that helped people like me in recognizing not everybody there is going to make partner. They offered resources. And so, speaking to him, he helped me realize that not only was it not Kirkland, but what I valued and what I wanted to do probably would lead me to seeking something smaller and more entrepreneurial as opposed to going to another cog in the wheel type, massive organization like Kirkland.

And so, I just started putting my name out there and getting to know people and networking a little bit more and seeing what was available. And I ended up meeting and having lunch with the seed investor for a local Chicago startup that was having enormous success called Home Chef. And he introduced me to the CEO and founder, and then the rest of the executive team. They had an opening for a general counsel position, the first and only attorney hire on the team. And they offered it to me, and I jumped on it.

John Reed: [00:27:42] And Home Chef's business is what?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:27:44] It was a meal kit delivery company. So, if you've heard of Blue Apron or HelloFresh. We were in Chicago, and it was a really exciting time. I joined in 2016. That whole direct-to-consumer industry was growing rapidly. It was a massive land grab and race to the bottom in terms of all these companies just blowing up, and there being massive competition. And Home Chef was right in the running. We were not the biggest when I joined, but we ended up overtaking Blue Apron and being second only to HelloFresh by the time we were acquired by Kroger a few years later, and had really dominated the space.

John Reed: [00:28:20] How was the transition? You were indoctrinated in the large law way, and now you are a business person. You are now a manager. You are now a consumer of legal services by a law firm. What did you have to learn to be a good general counsel for Home Chef?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:28:42] Well, I had to unlearn a lot, and definitely learn a whole new understanding of how the world and business works. What I had to unlearn was, or I guess I shouldn't say unlearn. What I had to learn was the balance between the legal advice or the legal answer and the business course of action, and the level of risk tolerance.

When you're at Kirkland, you are trying to go down to the nth degree on everything and beat everything to death down to the just minutiae. And that was because the clients were paying for that, and that's what they wanted, and they came to Kirkland for that. When you're at a fast-growing startup, you don't have time to do that, A, and B, nobody wants that or needs it because the risk tolerance is so much higher. And the question isn't in every given scenario that you could possibly imagine, what's the potential result going to be? It's in the most likely and maybe the next most likely scenarios, what's the result going to be, and what is the likelihood of those scenarios happening, and does it outweigh the benefit that we gain from taking X course of action? And if not, we're going to go ahead and take that course of action and do what remedial steps we can.

It was much more of a practical approach. At the same time, the Kirkland experience gave me the tools in terms of the analysis, attention to level of detail that I think also made me successful, and it continues to make me successful today. Without that, I would've been missing something big in my role as general counsel, then and now.

John Reed: [00:30:26] All of your M&A and tax experience, never did you think you'd use it again until Home Chef gets acquired. Did you lead that?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:30:35] From the legal side. So, it was myself, my CEO, and my CFO who were the deal team. Yeah, I was part of the negotiations from the beginning, from the term sheet, to and through execution of the purchase agreement, and everything in between. And managing outside counsel, due diligence, on the inside, negotiating the contracts. I probably played the biggest solo role, going from signing to close. Signing, everybody's, “Hey, we're getting sold,” popping bottles and all of that. And so was I; it was great because it was a ton of work up to that point. But then it was only, I think, three weeks in between. And that's all I did. 

Good thing I had a team underneath me at the time. There were two attorneys that worked underneath me. They took everything else because there was so much to close up, so much loose ends to tie up. But that was an amazing experience on the inside. So, being on the outside is one thing when I was at Kirkland. Getting to be on the inside, understanding what it takes to help lead a company through an acquisition, doing the planning and the organization and process building for the years beforehand in anticipation of that, learning what works and what doesn't. I really thought I was going to, after that, have a career bouncing around startups and helping them reach exit opportunities. I didn't really intend on starting a startup of my own, but here we are.

John Reed: [00:32:00] So what came first? The idea for New Era or the desire to be an entrepreneur? You thought you might bounce around helping other entrepreneurs, but when did the idea of, oh no, I could be the entrepreneur? When did that come into play?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:32:16] Yeah. So, I think I always wanted to be in that industry and to be a part of the entrepreneurial process, and growth and exiting, and all the excitement and building and having your hands in the thickest of the weeds tactically, and at the same time thinking strategically. Like, I loved all of that, but I didn't really, to your point, I didn't really have all these ideas on companies that I could begin. And I didn't fancy myself as the entrepreneur, but more of the assistant to.

it was really when my friend and co-founder called me and said, “Let's do this.” Because I was hesitant, you know? I was, like, hey, this is a big risk, and this is, you know—there were four co-founders, so it wasn't me out on my own by any means, fortunately. But still, it was being one of the founding team and needing to fundraise and needing to grow the business, and not just be the legal and administrative and other things. It was scary and I was hesitant, but boy am I glad we did it, because we've made it this far, continuing to grow.

I've learned a ton on what it's like to run a business and grow a business, in addition to, frankly, the legal space and — in particular — ADR that I didn't know before. And so, I feel like a much more well-rounded lawyer and individual as a result of this process.

John Reed: [00:33:39] What were the things that you had to unlearn and learn to become a founder? 

Shane Mulrooney: [00:33:45] That's a good question and something, you know, I've reflected a lot on the transition from outside counsel to in-house. I haven't reflected a ton on going from kind of in-house attorney to a startup, to startup co-founder and entrepreneur. And I think part of that is because I really had no idea what I was doing at the beginning, even more so than being an in-house attorney. At least when I was an in-house attorney, it was within my realm of being an attorney. On this front, it was so much learning from scratch, and how to use a CRM, and how are we doing prospect interviews, and talking to people, and learning how to sell, and all of that stuff.

I definitely don't think I unlearned anything. I did take a lot from my experience at Home Chef, not in the legal realm, but what I learned from my CEO, from my CFO, from my COO, there on how to run a business. These people were all extremely intelligent and effective business leaders. Learning from them, that helped me definitely understand the give and take that you need to make as an early startup founder or business leader and how to manage people, and what to look for, and how to prioritize, that being a major thing, and how to focus the team. All of that stuff came from my experience at Home Chef. I think the big difference was putting it into practice as a leader in an organization, as opposed to watching others do it.

John Reed: [00:35:13] I want to go back to—I'm going to call them the epiphanies— the revelations that you had as in-house counsel about ADR. You can tell me whether you agree or not that the fact that you hadn't done litigation at Kirkland made you a better impartial observer, impartial consumer of ADR services, so that you could more readily identify what the gaps, deficiencies, cons were that weren't working for you.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:35:40] I feel like had I been a litigator, and I'll caveat that with one thing in a second, but had I been a litigator beforehand and I was completely familiar with the ADR and litigation process. When I saw arbitration in my contracts, I would've said, “Oh, okay. I know what that is.” And that's it, and left it alone, and not been so appalled to learn that it was actually not providing any sort of benefit to me short of privacy. I say I caveat that because my co-founder, one of them, he was a litigator for 10 years, and before he went in-house. There was that process going through arbitration and litigation, while he was in the firm, that he started developing the ideas for something like New Era, where he said, “This is load of BS. We don't have to be doing this.” But I think he had that rare kind of ability to think outside the box, to like take a step back. Whereas most attorneys, they're really good at playing within the rules that are provided and focusing and winning in that arena. And he said, “Well, hold on. This arena doesn't make any sense.” So, I could have ended up like him, or I could have ended up like most, and not really seeing the forest for the trees.

John Reed: [00:36:53] We've talked about embedding an arbitration organization in a contract. Is New Era trying to embed itself in contracts now, so it is the go-to forum for dispute resolution?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:37:06] That's right. Yeah. That is one of our, if not primary, acquisition strategies. We talk to companies. We talk to lawyers. We talk to a lot of plaintiff's firms as well, who are the ones that are agreeing to—you know, many times, the contract comes to them, and New Era is written in there. They might decide whether to fight the arbitration in general or not, but they might reach out and say, “Hey, who are you guys? This is new to us.” And we feel like it's a beneficial platform for their clients as well, given the efficiencies and the speed and all of that.

And so, yeah, the point is to end up in those contracts and talk to whoever it is that has the control over the language, at which sometimes it's really hard to find who makes that decision. Sometimes it's a committee. Many times, it is actually in the larger companies. But finding those folks and convincing them that New Era is the right choice is what we do for sales, pretty much.

John Reed: [00:38:06] You also serve on the board of directors of a nonprofit. So, tell us what the Ability Experience is and how you came to be involved.

[00:38:15] Shane Mulrooney: Yeah, thanks. So, the Ability Experience is a great organization that raises funds and awareness and serves people with disabilities across the United States. They are the sister organization to my undergraduate fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi. And so, I came in contact with the Ability Experience when I was an undergrad by nature of me joining the fraternity. It was actually a big selling point for me to join in the first place. It was like, wow, these people actually care about their philanthropy. It's not just “a raise some money and donate it and forget about it,” like I saw with other fraternities.

So, we would participate every year in their programs that they offered. Every spring break in college, I would road-trip it with several of my fraternity brothers to a camp for people with disabilities. We would be there in the spring, and we would help them with a renovation project, building retaining walls, or decks, or other things, or painting cabins or those types of things to try to beautify and make the place a little bit nicer for the campers when they come in the summer. And we built ramps for locals around our community that needed wheelchair ramps up to their homes, and whatnot, that didn't have accessible homes. And so, things like that.

But what really connected me to the organization was the summer between my undergraduate and law school year. I participated in their biggest event called The Journey of Hope, which was a cross-country cycling event. 4,000 miles cycling across the country. I had to raise over $5,000 to participate. All of that money went directly to the organizations that we stopped at along the way, along that ride. And would have friendship visits, hang out with their residents or their participants or their campers. Do dances. Play basketball. Have lunch. You name it. And then present them with a grant check that came from our fundraising efforts. And that Journey of Hope really changed my life, as you might imagine. Two months of cycling every day and having a clear, direct impact on the lives of people with disabilities along the way.  

And so, I stayed relatively involved, tangentially donating here and there, participating here and there, in some alumni events over the years. And then about four, five years ago, I was contacted by some members of one of whom I had gotten to know in Chicago, who kind of groomed me to be eventually a part of the board. Been on it, ever asked me to join. I've been on it ever since. I'm part of the leadership, the executive committee of the board now. I really think it's a wonderful organization that does great things, and I'm proud to be a part of it, trying to do all I can to get it to grow and to be more impactful. Fortunately, PI Kappa Phi, the fraternity we're associated with, is growing like crazy, and so we have a lot of opportunity to continue to make a larger impact.

John Reed: [00:41:02] You probably got some great calves over those two months.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:41:06] Oh yeah. Legs were never, never more fit. I was in great shape after that. Obviously lost it all when I went to law school and did nothing but study in the library. But, I was in great shape for that summer, that's for sure. 

John Reed: [00:41:18] So, to wrap things up, Shane, I would ask you what advice would you give to lawyers who are considering in-house roles or those who might have that entrepreneurial itch?

Shane Mulrooney: [00:41:29] For those who are considering in-house roles, my advice would be to talk to as many in-house attorneys as you can, and don't think about all in-house roles being the same. I'm a member of the ACC, the Association of Corporate Counsel. It's the largest trade organization for in-house attorneys. And I go to some of their conferences and I'm having conversations with people that, frankly, we have nothing in common with respect to the work that we do, even though we're both in-house. And so, if you want to be in-house, I would think more about what type of company do you want to work for. Kind of like my career counselor at Kirkland had forced me to think about. From there, I would then talk to as many in-house counsel as you can within that realm and see if it matches your expectations. I mean, people do think that, oh, in-house is kind of like the grass is greener over there because life is easier. And that is not always the case. When I went to Home Chef, for at least the first six to eight months before I was able to hire a team, I worked as much, if not more, than when I was at Kirkland. I mean, it was a slog. There was so much to do. It didn't matter that I was in-house, but I was at a fast-growing startup. I didn't go to Boeing, you know, or whatever, where, you know, it might be a different lifestyle. So that's what I would say to folks going in-house.

Legal entrepreneurs. Once again, I would say something similar. Talk to me, talk to other lawyers that have made that jump, because I can probably assure you your expectations about what your lifestyle will be like, what it's like to start a business, and the difficulty going from zero to one and then one to three, and then, you know, we're working on the rest. How difficult that really is, and what the lifestyle that comes with that is. Make sure you're prepared for that. I think a lot of people are, and a lot of people would be, but they should go in with their eyes open, and the only way they can really do that is have the conversations. And there's a lot, you know, you can find on LinkedIn people that have made this transition, I'm sure would be happy to talk to other people who are well.

John Reed: [00:43:44] Shane. I appreciate you sharing not only your experiences and your story, but also your insights. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Shane Mulrooney: [00:43:52] Thank you for having me. This has been great. I really appreciate it.

John Reed: [00:43:56] Hey listeners, can I tell you something? This podcast hosting thing can get kind of lonely. I mean, we put out these episodes and we know that you're listening, but we don't often hear what you think. So, whether you're a first-time listener or a devoted Sticky Lawyers fan, let me know how we're doing.

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Until next time, I'm John Reed, and you've been listening to Sticky Lawyers.