Adam Nguyen has some good advice for lawyers thinking about leaving the law and starting a business. First, do a structured self-evaluation and understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and what is important to you. What are your goals and your interests? Are you a big-picture thinker or are you meticulous? Are you a problem solver? Do you thrive on uncertainty? Nguyen asked himself these questions as he transitioned from a career as an M&A and private equity attorney on Wall Street to become the founder and CEO of Ivy Link, a profit-for-purpose education company that specializes in one-on-one school admissions guidance, standardized test preparation, and academic coaching, as well as a co-founder and COO of eBrevia, a software company that provides technology solutions to enhance the productivity of legal and business professionals.
Nguyen’s second piece of career advice is this: “The seas are rough out there—be nimble.” Through a series of adverse financial and political events—the stock market crash of 2002, the defeat of the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 2004, and the financial crisis heralded by the collapse of the Bear Stearns hedge funds in 2007—he managed to ride out one downsizing after another with Candide-like optimism, always gaining additional insights into how to cultivate his own garden to yield personal growth, professional satisfaction, and civic good.
Nguyen graduated magna cum laude with a BA in economics and political science from Columbia University and earned a JD from Harvard Law School. A frequent speaker and media commentator on admissions, standardized testing, and career guidance, he has addressed such groups as The Parents League of New York, Columbia University, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. He belongs to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, the State Bar of California, and the New York State Bar Association.
Clare Cosslett: Tell me about growing up in Texas.
Adam Nguyen: My parents, younger brother, and I immigrated to the US from Vietnam as political refugees in 1985, when I was ten. We settled in Houston, Texas, and I grew up in a typical suburban immigrant family: structured, sheltered, shuttling between church, school, and afterschool activities. That was my world. But I knew even then that I would leave Texas someday—and that the world was bigger than Houston.
Cosslett: How did you end up going to Columbia University for undergrad?
Nguyen: My high school did not have a very good counseling program, so I didn’t go through the thoughtful process that many kids today, especially in the New York area, benefit from. A classmate had an extra application for Columbia, and he gave it to me. This was before the days of the common app and the internet, so we were still doing things by paper. The application was a light-blue book. I remember it very clearly. And I remember thinking that maybe I hadn’t applied to enough schools and that I should add another one to the list. As I said, the process was not thoughtful—I considered whatever applications were coming in the mail from school recruiters after I took my SATs.
I had applied to schools like Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Chicago, and Penn—all over the place. When I looked up these schools, I realized that they were highly selective, and I thought, “Well, I better apply to a few more!” I got the application for Columbia the week before it was due, and I sent it in about ten minutes before the midnight deadline. A friend drove me to the only post office that was still open at that late hour—at the airport. On April Fools’ Day, I received a call from Columbia saying, “Congratulations. You got in. Would you like to see the school?” I thought it was a joke. Columbia flew me up to see the campus and New York. I fell in love with everything I saw. When I came back home, I immediately sent in the acceptance card without even looking at the other schools.
Cosslett: How did your parents take the news that you were heading off to New York?
Nguyen: Well, I had kept them in the dark about the college process. As first generation immigrants, my parents didn’t understand when students applied to college. They thought you applied or found out sometime in the summer after high school graduation. So when I told them I would be going to a college up in New York, their reaction was: “We didn’t know you had applied, and why are you going so far away?” But I said, “It’s a really good school.” And, of course, they had never heard of Columbia. Many people in Texas hadn’t heard of the highly selective schools. When I told some of my friends in high school about Columbia, they asked, “Why are you going to South America for college?”
I took charge of my education even at that age. I was the firstborn, so I had to deal with many things on my own. I knew that I wanted to go to college and that I wanted to get into a top school. I wanted to leave Texas and explore the world. I told my parents, “It’s okay. Columbia is a top school.” New York in the early nineties—this was pre-Giuliani—was a little edgy. I reassured my parents, “It’s perfectly safe. New York is glamorous just like what you see in the movies.” I sold my parents a fanciful version of New York. And that’s how I ended up at Columbia.
Cosslett: And what was your major?
Nguyen: I took a double major in economics and political science . I also completed the premed program. I had a predisposition towards the sciences and math, so I started taking premed classes and performed very well in them. Before I knew it, I was taking the MCAT and thinking about going to med school.
Cosslett: What happened?
Nguyen: I took a year abroad and studied at University College London. It was the first time in my life that I was not taking any science classes. Instead, I explored subjects like political philosophy and economic philosophy . I said to myself, “Maybe this medical school thing is not the best option for me.” Frankly, I hadn’t considered other options besides medicine. Taking a year abroad opened up my perspective to other possibilities. In the back of my mind, however, medical school was still in the cards, so I took another year off between college and grad school to just explore options.
I ended up in DC in the honors paralegal program at the Department of Justice. I was in the mergers task force of the DOJ’s antitrust division. During the late 1990s, the Microsoft antitrust case was at its height. Clinton and Congress were having a budget showdown. The Monica Lewinsky story was unfolding, and the capital was abuzz with the scandal. I remember attending the Clinton impeachment trial in the Senate. Chief Justice Rehnquist was presiding with his signature robe and its golden stripes. All of the senators were in attendance. The government basically shut down.
It was very exciting to be a twenty-two-year-old paralegal in DC during that time. Working at the DOJ with the idea of maybe medical school or maybe not, having my background in economics and political science, and being in the middle of all the historic events that were unfolding in ’98 and ’99 in DC made me rethink what I wanted to do. Before my time in DC, I hadn’t thought about law school.
The DOJ attorneys gave paralegals a lot of responsibilities: we were doing PIs—preliminary investigations—and sending out second requests. I was traveling to Idaho and Colorado to obtain affidavits from government witnesses, declarations, and other things—work that I found out later even junior associates at law firms typically don’t do. The DOJ was very leanly staffed, and the lawyers gave paralegals a lot of responsibility. I began to think that law seemed really interesting. You could do so many things and have so much influence as a lawyer.
At that time, Joel Klein , who later became the education chancellor of New York City, was the head of the Antitrust Department. He reported to Janet Reno. I learned from their biographies that they both had graduated from Harvard Law School. I looked up to them as extremely intelligent and highly successful people, and I wanted to emulate them and the path they took to become successful. And so, on a lark, I took the LSAT and applied to law school, again very late.
Cosslett: I’m noticing a pattern here.
Nguyen: I rushed in my application to four schools: Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Stanford.
Cosslett: As an admissions counselor now, would you advise that people apply to only four highly selective schools?
Nguyen: No. I use myself as a case study for what not to do. As it turned out, I was accepted at Columbia and Harvard. The dean of admissions from Harvard called to tell me I had been admitted, and I accepted on the telephone. I had really wanted to go to Harvard. That is not to say that the other schools were backup choices, but . . .
Cosslett: It’s hard to say no to Harvard.
Nguyen: Right.
Cosslett: And so once you were there, was it like The Paper Chase with a John Houseman–like figure in the lecture hall terrifying first-years? Was it daunting?
Nguyen: Yes, it was extremely daunting. But perhaps a more accurate movie analogy is Legally Blonde . There is a scene during orientation in which the students are sitting in their advisory group, and everyone is taking turns talking about what they have accomplished. My experience with my advisory group was scarily similar. One kid in my group had started a nonprofit. Another had managed a billion-dollar portfolio at an investment firm. Another had climbed Kilimanjaro. This was in addition to the usual PhDs and people who had published books and so forth. One student in my section even had published a couple of articles in the Penn Law Review.
My classmates were a very, very accomplished group of people, but in hindsight, I think that underneath all the accomplishments and posturing, everybody was a bit insecure. I also think insecurity was what motivated many people to work really hard. That means you had about five hundred and fifty insecure over-achievers in each class. So, yes, there was an element of Paper Chase, but a lot of the pressure came from the students. Most of us had watched the movie and also read Scott Turow’s One L. I think in our minds the school was like the one in the movie or the book, and to some extent, we made the fictional Harvard Law into a reality.
Cosslett: Did you work over the first and second summers?
Nguyen: For the first summer—shortly after the peak of the dot-com bubble in May 2000—I was lucky enough to get a job at Latham & Watkins in Washington, DC. Since I had worked in antitrust on the government side at the Justice Department, I wanted to go back to DC and experience the law-firm side of antitrust and administrative law. Of course, the compensation was a nice factor.
For the second summer, because I had worked in DC during the first summer, I wanted to check out New York and London. I had studied in London and wanted to see what it was like to work there. Shearman & Sterling, Cleary , and a few other firms that I was considering at the time had a strong international focus and offered associates opportunities to do cross-border work in M&A and project finance. Shearman & Sterling, in particular, was very serious about giving associates the opportunity to start out abroad: I could start my first year as an associate in London. They have a sizable office in London—around a hundred attorneys at the time. So my first summer was at Latham & Watkins in DC. My second summer was split between New York and London at Shearman & Sterling. Shearman also recruited very heavily at the beginning of my third year at Harvard, in fall 2001.
Cosslett: So you accepted Shearman. You’d clearly had a good summer experience there.
Nguyen: Yes. But, as you will remember, the stock market crash hit bottom in October 2002. And so the Shearman—and the legal market—that I came back to after graduation in 2002 was very different from the one I had witnessed as a summer associate in 2001. The legal environment had changed completely. Deals had dried up. As a summer associate in 2001, I was participating in capital market and M&A deals at Shearman in New York and London, but when I returned in the fall of 2002, there was very little deal work.
Firms were laying off associates left and right, and the few deals that we got to do were stop-and-go. We would spend an entire weekend, pulling all-nighters to conduct diligence for our client, and then . . . pencils down. A lot of deals just didn’t happen, and it was very frustrating. Few deals got signed, and even after signing, many deals would fall apart before they got to closing.
In my first year at Shearman, I managed to work on just one deal that went through the whole process to closing. Other than that one deal, just a ton of due diligence, as well as a lot of document review to help out in the litigation department. Honestly, the experience made me question why I had pursued my law degree.
Cosslett: It’s instructive to remember that there was a recession before this one. Not a lot of work at the firms, lots of lawyers being let go, and lots of unhappy legal recruiters. Looks like what’s going on now.
Nguyen: Definitely. I had come to the law firm with a very open mind. I had performed my own diligence on law firm careers and knew what it took to make partner—you have to slog through and you really have to want it. The path to partnership is long, and every year the path seems to become longer. When I was starting out, it took seven or eight years to make partner. But now it seems more like nine or ten years, and increasingly there are two tiers of partners. One of the reasons I went to Shearman was that its partnership was lockstep and followed a very traditional model. After about a year of essentially just conducting due diligence, I decided that I should explore another area of law.
Litigation was an area that I had not seriously considered. I had always been a transactional-oriented lawyer . But an opportunity opened up for a federal clerkship with Judge Faith Hochberg of the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. Judge Hochberg was a Harvard alumna and the former US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. I was very lucky to get the clerkship. Very few transactional attorneys make the transition to litigation, and I was extremely fortunate to receive Judge Hochberg’s offer. I jumped at it. When a federal judge makes you an offer, you don’t refuse. I also thought, “M&A will still be there—or what is left of it.” So I started a federal clerkship without a background in litigation.
I believe Judge Hochberg hired me with the expectation that I was smart enough to figure things out. In my first week, I had to draft an opinion for a case that was before the court. When I began to review the litigants’ submissions, I had a “freak-out” moment—or rather, a series of moments. You see, the law firm environment—especially at large firms—is often very hierarchical: work product would percolate up from junior associate through senior associate and junior partner to senior partner. But in chambers, it’s just the judge and me. In my first instance reporting to the judge, she asked me, “So, how should I rule?” There I was still in the frame of mind of a law firm’s junior associate who expected some guidance and even micromanaging: “This is how you should write. This is what you should look at.” I promptly said to my judge, “I will have to get back to you!”
Cosslett: And suddenly did you feel as though you were practicing law ?
Nguyen: I felt I was doing more than practicing law. I was helping the judge to decide real cases and was being treated as an adult. Ultimately, the judge was the decider, but I certainly felt the weight of responsibilities. It was at once terrifying and very gratifying. I was thinking, “This is why I went to law school, to study these cutting-edge, leading issues that come before the court and help to decide them.”
The experience offered a wonderful combination of theory and practice. Law school was mostly about spotting the issues and looking at them from different angles without having to come to a conclusion on anything because you didn’t have to. In legal academia, you could explore controversial or ambiguous issues all day without having to decide. But in any court—federal court, state court—you have to make a decision at the end of the day. My judge used to say, “That’s what taxpayers are paying us to do: to decide.”
Cosslett: And that decision actually affects real people immediately.
Nguyen: Yes, certainly. Beyond the litigants, the cases we worked on had implications for our district or even the circuit, and we knew that they could become precedents that would be relied upon in other districts and circuits. And, of course, our work could get reviewed by the circuit court, and that added pressure to the work that I did. So I took my work very seriously.
Cosslett: Were you sad at the end of a year that you had to go?
Nguyen: I was. After about six months, that’s when you really start to get the hang of it. During my orientation, another judge gave a talk to the incoming clerks, and she said—I still remember it to this day: “Judging or writing opinions is like Chinese cooking. There are four or five major ingredients, and once you know them, you can make a thousand dishes.”
In my case, it turned out to be true. Once I got the hang of it, I started seeing the rhyme and reason of the process—whether it’s a patent case, a habeas case, antitrust, or whatever. But at first, the experience was overwhelming.
Cosslett: After you finished your one-year clerkship, you went into politics. You didn’t let any grass grow.
Nguyen: I’ve come to believe that you have to seize an opportunity when it presents itself. I joined the opposition research team for the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign for three-and-a-half months. Initially, I worked in DC and then transferred to Ohio to help with voter protection. The campaign thought Ohio could be a battleground state like Florida in 2000 with Bush v. Gore. Personally, I picked Ohio because it was closer to New York. As you may recall, things did come down to Ohio.
As a head of voter protection, I was in charge of out-of-state lawyers, bringing them into Ohio to ensure that the protocols were followed at the voting booths on the day of the election. And we know what happened to Kerry/Edwards …
I returned to New York and joined Paul Weiss. The reason I went into private equity and to Paul Weiss was that I had attended a continuing legal education luncheon at Shearman, where they covered private equities and hedge funds. It was the first time I learned about carried interest and the business model of private equity, and I thought, “That’s what I want to do. What a great way to deploy capital and generate huge returns!” In particular, I learned that private equity is about deal structuring and forming funds to invest in deals.
Fund formation is great if you’re someone who likes playing with puzzles and charts, juggling multiple pieces, and putting the pieces together. It’s a fascinating area to be in because of the way these funds are structured both onshore and offshore for international clients as well as domestic clients. Things could be very complex, especially when you add in tax issues and employment issues. So I decided that this would be a very cutting-edge area to go into. And private equity, at that time, was experiencing a resurgence in the marketplace.
Cosslett: Who were you representing?
Nguyen: We were representing general partners, the guys who put together the fund . We would negotiate with very sophisticated investors, such as pension funds, endowments, and foundations, who invested in our clients’ funds. Paul Weiss was one of the few firms that had, and still has, a very robust private equity fund formation practice. When I made the decision to do private equity at Paul Weiss after the clerkship and after the campaign, I had a much better sense of corporate practice than when I had joined Shearman fresh out of law school. I now had a better grasp of the roles of lawyers in M&A, finance, capital markets, etc.
And I discovered this other area that few young associates knew about—that was the opposite of public capital markets: private equity and hedge funds. These funds are also selling securities, but they are in private, not public, markets, and they’re not required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission . To that end, creating them is mostly about finding safe harbors: if you qualify for the safe harbors, then you’re not required to register or file certain things with the SEC. Essentially, from a regulatory standpoint, private equity funds, or more generally, private investment funds, are about staying outside of the filing requirements of the 1933 and 1934 Acts.
Traditionally, private equity firms do not market to the general public—they deal with sophisticated investors, or accredited and qualified investors. However, with the recent regulations, more and more investment funds are required to register, so the market is changing in that respect. I say “investment funds” because that includes both private equity and hedge funds, and given the way the market is headed, you have so-called hybrid funds, which combine features of hedge funds and private equity funds. There’s a blurring of the lines between those two worlds. But at the end of the day, both hedge funds and private equity funds are supposed to be targeting the private market as opposed to the public market.
So, 2007 was the height of the private equity and hedge-fund world, and I was offered an associate general counsel position at a hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut. People were doing deals left and right. Private equity and hedge funds were going public. Blackstone and Fortress had gone public, and KKR was about to. The hedge fund that recruited me was ready to go public, as well. As a result, they expanded their legal team in anticipation of additional legal and compliance issues. Many private equity and hedge funds were looking to hire lawyers just like myself. The investment fund recruiting market was in a frenzy.
Cosslett: Was it a difficult decision to leave Paul Weiss?
Nguyen: Yes. I liked the firm and many aspects of the work that I was doing. I had a lot of responsibilities—working directly with clients, running my own deals, mentoring younger associates. But I felt that it was time to graduate, so to speak. I had learned enough as an associate. Could I have learned more? Definitely. But I had learned enough of the law firm practice side of private equity/hedge fund, and any additional time would have resulted in diminishing returns. It was time to see how the work was done from an in-house perspective.
So I went in-house, and that summer—the summer of 2007, a couple of months after my transition—the first two Bear hedge funds imploded. I don’t think the market or the Fed realized the full implications of what had occurred and was about to occur. Bear bailed out their funds and said that the mess was totally contained. Ben Bernanke reassured the market that everything was okay. After all, it was only two hedge funds within a huge and profitable institution. Looking back, though, I think that the collapse of the Bear funds signaled the beginning of the economic crisis.
Not surprisingly, many IPOs, including that of my hedge fund, were delayed and eventually abandoned altogether. My fund very nicely said, “Oops.” I had been there for about ten weeks, but they provided a very generous severance package.
Cosslett: Were you able to be calm about it? Did you call Paul Weiss right away?
Nguyen: I was a little shocked, but I quickly recovered. I thought it was just a little hiccup: “This particular hedge fund is not going public and that’s fine. I’ll just explore opportunities for the next four weeks and see what’s out there before deciding to go back to a firm.” Although I mentioned my situation to a partner at Paul Weiss, I didn’t say that I wanted to go back. Like many at the time, I thought the market was still very strong, and going back to a firm was not something I really wanted to do. I had been talking to other private equity funds and hedge funds in New York before I took the job in Connecticut, and those options were still open at the time. I saw this as an opportunity to explore other things, and real estate had always been one of the asset classes that I was interested in.
I talked with several contacts in the real estate business and eventually met the CEO of a real estate company here in New York. It so happened that they were looking to raise a fund to invest in New York real estate. It was a perfect fit with my background. We would be seeking capital from institutions, endowments, and foundations, and buying multifamily properties in New York. They were looking for someone with my skill set, and I managed to negotiate an arrangement that was attractive, allowing me to do both the business side and the law side. I didn’t want to be identified simply as a lawyer, and I saw this as a great opportunity to transition to the business side.
I found that many people have a tendency to pigeonhole others by their professions. The better lawyer you are, the more pigeonholed you become, and it’s hard to shake off that label and go into the business side within a company. Many young attorneys think, “Oh, I can go in-house and then go on to the business side.” Often, it’s hard to do, and it’s especially hard at a very large company where there is an emphasis on specialization.
Cosslett: You can be more valuable as a lawyer than as a businessman to a company. There are a lot of good businessmen around, but not that many great in-house lawyers.
Nguyen: Exactly—the larger companies tend to hire lawyers to specifically practice law and fill a particular niche. At the Connecticut hedge fund, there was very little chance that I could have transitioned into the business side. So, with the benefit of hindsight, the sequence of events during the summer of 2007 and the fact that I didn’t remain at the hedge fund were a blessing.
The real estate company was a relatively small place with maybe a billion dollars of assets under management at the time I joined, but the AUM grew quickly in the coming months. It was an exciting place where I could use my experience to help with the fund formation and corporate legal matters, and at the same time, roll up my sleeves to do all sorts of things, big and small, related to business development, corporate development, and operations. I got to see all aspects of real estate acquisition, management, operations, leasing, and construction. I was involved, to some extent, in almost everything. Over the course of two years, I became VP of corporate development, then the chief of staff / corporate legal officer of the company.
We didn’t have a COO, so my responsibilities were very similar to those of a COO and I really enjoyed it. The opportunity to do different things, attend meetings in different departments, work with people with different job responsibilities, and learn how a whole company operated really fit with my personality. I get bored sitting at my desk all day and doing one thing repeatedly.
Then, the real estate market crashed, Lehman collapsed, and everything went down the toilet with one firm after another falling like dominos.
Cosslett: Not again! This is so sad!
Nguyen: Perhaps, but very educational! One thing that attorneys looking to leave law firms should know is that the seas out there are rough. You have to be nimble and you have to roll with the punches. And the same goes for attorneys who are looking to make partner. Ultimately, a law firm is a business, and many have gone bust because they weren’t nimble and didn’t adjust to changing market conditions. That’s something that I appreciate more and more as I become older. You have to be in tune with what’s going on in the market, whether you’re a partner in a law firm or a businessperson in the private equity world.
Cosslett: So you had to take a deep breath and say, “Okay, where do I want to take this?” Tell me about how you left the legal profession—how you segued from the chief of staff and corporate legal officer of a real estate investment fund to running an education consulting company.
Nguyen: I gained a lot of operational experience at the real estate company, so the transition was about leveraging my experience to the next level. As the market was going through choppy waters, I had been taking time to volunteer by tutoring and mentoring kids through New York Cares. I worked with many kids who wanted to do well, but didn’t have the tools to succeed. The motivated kids were often placed with kids who didn’t want to work hard and didn’t have ambition. My instinct was to separate the hard-working, highly motivated kids and work with them. I thought, “Well, maybe I could start a nonprofit that focuses on high-achieving and highly motivated kids to really help them succeed.”
With that in mind, I started Ivy Link. Soon people both inside and outside of the teaching profession contacted me to tell me that there was a huge demand in the New York area for private educational services, and they offered to help build the business. As I said before, be nimble. You follow what the market wants, what people are looking for. I discovered that in New York City, Westchester, and the Hamptons, there’s an emphasis on education and achievement, as well as testing and admissions to highly selective colleges and private schools. So that’s how Ivy Link was formed—to fill a major need in the marketplace—and the company quickly took off. It provided a great exit opportunity from real estate.
Cosslett: Tell me about Ivy Link’s business .
Nguyen: We started out tutoring kids, and quickly expanded into test preparation, admissions advising, and mentoring students. Currently, we have about twenty tutors and advisors, all of whom are Ivy League graduates. For younger students, we provide enrichment tutoring in subjects ranging from math to reading and writing, as well as organization, executive function, and analytical thinking skills. Additionally, many younger students work with us to prepare for entrance exams like the ISEE and SSAT for admission to private and boarding schools.
For the older, college-bound students, we provide intensive SAT or ACT prep, as well as academic tutoring and admissions advisory services. Many of these students are already high-achieving, A-range students who are super-motivated and aiming for the best colleges, and wanting to maximize their admission chances. We act as their academic coaches—designing tutoring and test-prep programs suited to our students’ abilities and goals, and guiding them through the process of selecting colleges and completing the applications.
Not all of our students are aiming for the Ivy League schools. And, as you know, not everyone should be because it’s not the right fit for everyone. Of course, many of our students aim for the highly selective colleges, as well as the super-competitive private schools in New York and the boarding schools up and down the East Coast, but we always emphasize school fit, academic and life goals, and many other factors that students and parents may not think of. I always remind them that it’s not simply about getting in—it’s equally, if not more important, to flourish and succeed at the school where you end up. The name “Ivy Link” came about because the people that I initially recruited from my network—namely, Columbia, Harvard, and similar schools—were all from the Ivy League. When students and parents work with us, they are being linked to Ivy League graduates for purposes of test prep, tutoring, and counseling.
Cosslett: You describe your company as a profit-for-purpose company . What does that mean?
Nguyen: After I pivoted the company toward a for-profit route, I still wanted to focus on helping underprivileged students who are high-achieving and highly motivated. The ethos of profit-for-purpose companies is that you can make a profit while still making a social impact in a positive way. To that end, we partner with private schools, public schools, and charter schools, as well as nonprofit organizations, to provide services to their constituents, living up to the nonprofit purpose that I had envisioned when starting Ivy Link, while at the same time paying bills and keeping the lights on.
Cosslett: You said earlier that you don’t like to do one thing repetitively. That’s reflected in the nature of your business. It’s not just churning out SAT scores, it’s full service.
Nguyen: Exactly. And it’s a high-quality, high-end service. So our market, by its nature, is smaller. We’re not Kaplan or Princeton Review. I’m looking to maintain really high-quality services and expand the company carefully. I’m not looking for massive scalability and a quick exit, although there is room to scale.
Cosslett: What are you enjoying most about the business?
Nguyen: The fun part is counseling families and figuring out how to navigate the surprisingly complex process of testing and admissions, whether it’s for elementary and middle school, upper school, or college. Then we also work with students applying to graduate programs , including law school, business school, and medical school.
I’ve always liked advising people, and that’s the aspect that I really liked the most about law. When I was practicing law, I enjoyed advising clients—solving their problems—and that’s what we’re doing now at Ivy Link. But I have more control over what I’m doing. I get to set the agenda and goals for the organization, and that process of figuring out how to grow the business and how to improve upon the offerings that we provide is what really gets me up in the morning. There’s a constant drive to improve upon what we’re doing.
Cosslett: Other than the counseling role, how do you think your background as a lawyer and your legal training have helped you to build your business?
Nguyen: I would say that the two key skills I’ve imported from my legal training to my business career are my ability to spot and fix weaknesses and my ability to put together complex deals.
In my business, the central challenge is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular candidate or a particular plan. Before executing a plan, you have to figure out what problems might arise. There’s no point in executing a bad plan well. And that’s what good lawyers do, whether in a transaction or litigation: they hone right in on the weak points and figure out the steps necessary to solve them. That’s a critical skill in my business, and one that we look for when we hire people.
The other skill I apply from my legal training is how to manage a lot of pieces, package them in a sound plan, and successfully execute that plan. When a student or family comes to us, they usually have a goal in mind: getting into a highly selective school. The goal is simple, but the pieces that have to be shaped and assembled to affect that goal are complex—from figuring which tests to take and when to take them, to tutoring for different subjects, to helping with the application itself.
I’m reminded of my early experience as a junior associate doing an M&A deal . I had to pull together all the pieces of information from litigation, employment and benefits, intellectual property, tax, and so on. As an M&A associate, you’re the focal point of the deal and you’re the one organizing everyone else. A partner used to tell me that it’s like herding cats. I think cats are less challenging than your clients and other lawyers! That’s a very useful skill that many lawyers have—organizing the deal or the case and pulling together all the different pieces.
Cosslett: Now that Ivy Link is up and running, I understand that you have recently launched an entirely new and different business, eBrevia.
Nguyen: eBrevia is a start-up that a law school classmate and I founded in 2011. Using artificial intelligence [AI] technology developed at Columbia University, our software has the ability to read contracts and other legal documents to extract and summarize important provisions. For instance, if you are conducting legal due diligence and looking to understand whether a contract—actually, a data room full of contracts—contains indemnification obligations and what those obligations entail, our software would quickly and accurately provide you with an abstract of the indemnity provisions.
Many technologies are available to help litigators in the e-discovery space , but there isn’t anything on the transactional side. Moreover, our AI technology—specifically, natural language processing—is different from the e-discovery technologies that rely on word searches. Our software takes searching to another level because it is able to learn to recognize legal concepts like indemnification, change of control, etc., extract them, and summarize them for the users, such as lawyers, in-house counsels, or business professionals.
Cosslett: How did you procure this technology from Columbia University ?
Nguyen: Columbia University is the developer and owner of numerous NLP technologies that underlie eBrevia’s products. I say “products” because while our initial software focuses on legal due diligence, there are other potential applications, such as contract management and compliance. We have been working with Columbia’s Technology Transfer Office, as well as its computer science department, through a sponsored research arrangement to adapt the NLP technologies to the legal space. eBrevia is the exclusive licensee of Columbia’s NLP technologies as they pertain to the legal space.
Cosslett: What are the potential applications of the software?
Nguyen: Initially, I could see the software used by law firms and in-house legal departments to increase the speed of legal due diligence. I remember when I was an M&A associate conducting due diligence. It was hugely time-consuming, and I would work all-nighters to go through hundreds of legal documents. Our clients always wanted things done as quickly as possible. If I had eBrevia’s software back then, my work could have been done a lot more efficiently, not to mention more accurately. I’m pretty sure that during those all-nighters, we missed something important. If you’re on the buy side, you could quickly review a target’s legal documents to assess its legal obligations in order to decide if you want pursue the deal.
Further along, the software could be used to help with knowledge management and document drafting. For instance, in-house attorneys have mentioned to me that they could see the software helping with their CMS, or contract management system. Further along still, there could be applications in the retail space to help individuals quickly understand material contract terms. The potential is enormous, and I’m beginning to see it as I demo our prototype to lawyers—both at law firms and in-house—and to business professionals.
Cosslett: What are the steps necessary to build a business based on this technology? What is the role of angel investors ?
Nguyen: After the sponsored research and product development, a number of things have to happen: we have to get users and get funding. We have to get companies and law firms to use our product and provide us their feedback: Is the product useful? What features should be added? How would it be integrated with existing technology platforms? At the same time, we have to obtain funding to further develop and market the product, as well build the business by hiring staff, etc.
Angels are often individual investors or groups of investors who are willing to take a risk on early stage start-ups that many venture capital funds may pass on. Angels could be friends and families, or individuals who are interested in the particular space—legal technology—and are attracted to the enormous upside, and who have the means to make a calculated risk. Without angels, most start-ups would not take flight. Large venture and private equity funds’ investment mandates typically do not allow investments in early-stage start-ups.
Cosslett: How do you see the current wave of new technologies that are in development transforming the practice of law over time?
Nguyen: The legal industry is undergoing seismic transformations. Clients are demanding more value and efficiency from their lawyers. Meanwhile, corporate transactions and lawsuits are becoming increasingly complex. I don’t think the work is going away, but the nature of the work is certainly changing. The question that many are asking is, “How can we do more in less time and for less money?” We have witnessed a reliance on staff attorneys to cut costs on less complex tasks. Many law firms have outsourced document review to workers in developing countries—or in some cases, states with lower wages. And others are relying on technology like e-discovery tools. Even CLEs are offered virtually.
To remain competitive, lawyers must be innovative and deliver their expert knowledge in a cost- and time-efficient manner. The key word is innovative. Lawyers tend to get a bad reputation for not being innovative, given how established the legal profession is, but one could argue that good lawyers are actually very innovative if you look at how they structure complex deals or formulate novel legal arguments. I’m sure that innovative thinking could be applied to finding ways to better deliver legal services to clients. And technology is a huge part of the solution.
If you think about it, technology integration has always been a part of law practice. From the typewriter, to Microsoft Word, to black-lining software, to virtual data rooms, lawyers have been adopting new technologies along the way. That is not to say there hasn’t been resistance. When I started practicing law, there were partners at my firm who refused to use the computer or e-mail! For a while, I opted not to have a Blackberry because I didn’t think it was necessary. That would be unthinkable today. I believe that new technologies will make better lawyers out of good ones. They will be able to perform their tasks more efficiently and compete more effectively. As a result, you will see a consolidation at the top with good lawyers getting the lion’s share of the work—and the fees.
Cosslett: Have you faced particular challenges by not having taken a more traditional path into business? By getting a JD in lieu of an MBA?
Nguyen: I think some of the things that MBA students learn can be useful in running a business, such as management skills, HR issues, accounting, and financial modeling. But now that I know what the MBA curricula are like, I think that it’s more important to learn those things on the job. You could learn them in the classroom, but many, many MBA graduates don’t have the necessary skills to be an entrepreneur and run a business. Many business school students tend to look down on the “soft” classes that are concerned with people and management skills—as opposed to what they call the “hard” classes that focus on finance and accounting.
But the best CEOs that I’ve seen are the ones who are good at the soft skills. So when we counsel our business school students or MBA applicants, we emphasize the importance of acquiring those soft skills from both the classroom and their jobs. Increasingly, I’ve noticed that top business schools are looking for students with those soft skills, which are deemed essential to good management and leadership.
So, going back to your question, I think that I missed out on some of the hard-skill classes like finance, accounting, and valuation, but I’ve picked up many of the essentials in the course of my career. You just need to take time out and learn them. I’d like to point out that often it’s not about knowing something, but recognizing what you don’t know and figuring out what to do about it.
A key to success at the top of an organization is to find people to support you who are more knowledgeable and talented than you are—who are good at things that you’re not good at—and that’s a huge thing that I’ve learned. Many lawyers are good at many things and will try to do everything by themselves. Not delegating is just a recipe for disaster. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything by yourself no matter how good you are, and you simply must rely on the experts and people who have the skill set that you don’t have to help you out. That’s what building an organization and a business is about.
Cosslett: Are there other traits characteristic of a lawyer that might hinder a successful entrepreneur? It is often said of lawyers that they are risk-averse.
Nguyen: It’s not just risk aversion, but also what I’d call the “corollary” traits of risk aversion—like the tendency to be too meticulous. That’s a very good trait to have in certain situations requiring perfection, but in many business situations, perfection is not necessary for success and in fact could hinder success. Lawyers like to be erudite and circumspect, dwell on an issue, and chew on it. That’s a good trait in some cases, but it could be a sign of indecisiveness or the fear of making a decision. Often in the business world, you don’t have the luxury of time—you just need to get things done. Others rely on you to quickly calculate risks and make decisions. Meticulousness and attention to detail are lawyerly virtues that are appropriate to some business situations, but they could be indications of risk aversion, and need to be used sparingly.
There’s a business virtue that lawyers would do well to learn: understanding goals. A lot of lawyers are very good at completing complex, focused tasks, but perhaps because of the nature of legal education or legal practice, they tend not to think about the bigger picture or goal. They work very hard to complete a task, whether it’s a legal brief or a due diligence memo, but few stop to ask: “Why am I doing this? Why is this important? Why am I billing the client for this? Does the client really need this for his or her business?”
I’ve been on the client’s end, where I look at the bill and I think, “Why did the lawyer do this and charge our company for all this work when it’s not really necessary or important to our business?” So, the “big picture” approach that focuses on goals is a business virtue that lawyers would benefit from adopting—for the sake of serving their clients, and operating their own firms or practices.
Cosslett: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Nguyen: To be honest, it’s hard to think beyond the next couple of years. As I’ve said earlier, things are always changing, and you have to be nimble. We’ve gotten into the habit of setting goals and planning month by month and quarter by quarter . . . but in ten years?
With respect to my businesses, I’d obviously like to see Ivy Link grow and become more innovative. I’d like to expand into the online and social media space, offering long-distance learning and bridging the geographical gap. Currently, some of our clients are in London and other locations outside of New York, and one trend is to provide educational services via online and long-distance platforms. We’ve started to do that by using video conferencing and online whiteboards with our students in far-flung places like the UK, Greece, India, and elsewhere. The world of education seems to be trending toward the virtual, online space. The physical space is still important, but it’s just not accessible to everyone. And whether we’re talking about the high-end services that Ivy Link is providing or the more mass-market services, we have to think about the role of technology, how to educate students who are more comfortable in online environments, and how to expand our reach to students who typically may not be able to afford our services.
For eBrevia, things are moving very quickly. We are developing our software, adding users, building our team, raising funds from angels and VCs. With so much happening, it’s hard to see ten years out, but in four to five years, I’d like to see eBrevia’s products become as prevalent as other tools, like LexisNexis or IntraLink. At the end of the day, we’re offering lawyers and other professionals the technologies to do their jobs more quickly and accurately. Our company is focused on synthesizing and managing the ever-increasing amount of information that we are bombarded with in our daily jobs. And I think in the coming years, you will see a tremendous demand for so-called productivity-enhancing technologies. I expect eBrevia to occupy a major place in that market by offering really useful, innovative tools to help people perform their jobs more efficiently.
With respect to personal goals, despite my hectic work schedule, I still find time to pursue other entrepreneurial interests. In the next ten years—or even the coming year or two—I expect to have other ventures lined up. So keep an eye out for other things that are in the works. I certainly do not see myself slowing down or cashing out and retiring in ten years. I can’t imagine not working to build something. While it can be frustrating at times, I really do enjoy the process of creating.
Cosslett: Do you have any career advice to give to students who aspire to be lawyers, to practicing lawyers, and to lawyers who are contemplating leaving law for business?
Nguyen: For the aspiring law student, the thing to remember is—and I learned this later on and certainly hadn’t realized this when I was applying—that law school is a professional school. It’s not like graduate school for English or political science. Many English majors and poli-sci/econ majors—and I include myself in that group—go to law school expecting the same sort of academic, intellectual experience they had as an undergrad, but their expectation is far from reality. Law schools train lawyers to practice law, by and large, in law firms, corporations, government, or public legal services. Lawyers in legal academia are a minority. Students need to remember that, at the end of the day, law school is a professional school.
For practicing lawyers, I’ve learned that you need to be honest with yourself about what you want. If you work with a career coach, a good one will advise you to take inventory of your interests, goals, and personality type. What do you care about? What do you hope to accomplish? What type of person are you? Are you an introspective person? Are you a people person? These insights will guide your decision as to what type of practice or career you want to go into. For example, an M&A attorney has a very different personality from a tax attorney. And a public interest lawyer has a very different set of goals and interests from that of a private practice lawyer.
For those who are deciding whether to leave the law or not, you should conduct the same self-assessment that someone exploring different careers within law would. For instance, are you someone who thrives on uncertainty? Then entrepreneurship might be something for you. But if you like stability, constancy, and financial security, then entrepreneurship would likely make you miserable. While entrepreneurship has a lot of pluses, it’s not right for everyone. The key is to be honest with yourself. A lot of people avoid the rigorous self-assessment that is so essential to their career, so they don’t know what really matters to them.
When I was figuring out whether to leave law, I went back to Columbia and talked with a career counselor there. That’s a good starting point for lawyers who are thinking about what to do next. Go back to your law school or undergraduate college and take advantage of their career counseling office. When I visited Columbia, I learned about myself through a battery of tests and a series of one-on-one discussions with my career counselor. I learned what my personality is like, what makes me tick, what my strengths and weaknesses are. It was a process that took time, and it set me on the path that I am on today.
Cosslett: So, look at what you are good at and what gives you pleasure?
Nguyen: Yes. At Ivy Link, we also provide career counseling , and I have moderated discussions and workshops on career transition. For instance, we did a couple of webinars for Columbia that are on their career office’s web site. One of the things I talked about was the need to conduct a self-inventory to take into account the different aspects of your personality, like priorities, aptitudes, tastes, interests, goals, and hobbies. Some people want time for hobbies. For some, money is important, or perhaps a challenging job is a must-have. For others, leisure is a high priority, even if it means having a career in a low-paying or unchallenging field. Perhaps taking care of children or loved ones trumps any traditional office job. Be honest about who you are and what you want. I know of many lawyers for whom financial security is very important. And some of those left law firms to pursue public interest work but have been miserable in their jobs, probably because they failed to appreciate the major role a high salary played in their overall job satisfaction.
Cosslett: If you could start over again, would you still go to law school?
Nguyen: I’ve thought about it a lot, and this is something that I think all lawyers ask themselves at some point. For me, the answer is yes, I would still go to law school, but I would do things differently. I would take different courses. I would check out the other grad schools throughout the university. At Harvard, you could cross-register at MIT, Harvard Business School , the Kennedy School, etc. I would take advantage of the resources throughout the university, not just in law school.
Importantly, I’d also start networking with alumni long before I graduated. Starting right away in my first year, I would talk to alumni with both legal and nonlegal careers and see what advice they might give. During the first year of law school, you’re consumed with navigating your classes and understanding civil procedure, contracts, and so forth. The experience is overwhelming and leaves little time to reflect on the bigger picture, like why you are in law school and how to shape your legal education to realize your longer-term goals. If I could do it over again, I would start looking outside the traditional practices of law earlier, exploring what opportunities are out there, and engaging with alumni from my law school.
Overall, I think that law school was a great opportunity. I learned a lot. I met a lot of interesting, talented people. The second point may be even more important than the first. Many law students focus so much on doing well in their classes that they fail to cultivate relationships with classmates who, in the long run, would likely be lifelong resources more valuable than what you learned from your casebooks. Even though I’m no longer practicing law, my business ventures involve partnering with my law school classmates. We’re helping each other, and the relationships all started thirteen years ago when we were one-Ls.
Cosslett: The lesson again is to start managing your career when in law school. Don’t wait until you graduate, right?
Nguyen: Exactly. I would say also that you should at least think about your career even before going to law school. And remember to be honest with yourself.