In this GC Sidebar Season 2 episode, Paragon Legal CEO Trista Engel speaks with Jenn Wall, General Counsel at Intrinsic, about leadership and the future of legal teams in an AI-driven world.
Jenn shares how artificial intelligence is reshaping legal workflows and why developing strong judgment in the next generation of lawyers is more important than ever. She discusses the importance of building legal teams that are trusted business partners and how intentional talent development strengthens both teams and organizations.
Jenn also explores when AI is the right resourcing tool, how it’s becoming embedded in daily legal practice, and what it takes for legal leaders to guide their teams through rapid technological change.
Watch the full episode now.
Prefer reading over watching? Below is the complete transcript from our GC Sidebar interview with Jenn Wall, General Counsel at Intrinsic.
Trista Engel:
Welcome to GC Sidebar, a short and sharp conversation series with leading general counsel about the decisions, reflections, and people behind the title.
I’m Trista Engel, CEO of Paragon Legal, and today I’m joined by Jenn Wall, General Counsel at Intrinsic, a software and AI robotics company at Alphabet.
Jenn has led legal at Intrinsic for four years, while also serving on her town council, including a term as mayor, all while raising three kids. Jenn, I’m so thrilled you’re here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Jenn Wall:
Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here.
Trista Engel:
All right, let’s dive in. What’s one issue facing legal teams right now that isn’t getting enough attention?
Jenn Wall:
I was thinking a lot about this question as I prepared for this conversation, and I think the obvious answer is AI, except that AI is actually getting a ton of attention. Every conference I’ve attended over the last couple of years has featured sessions on AI. Our legal team talks about it in almost every meeting: what AI tools should we be using, how can we drive efficiency, and what new capabilities should we be exploring?
What I don’t think is getting enough attention is what we may be missing as we transition more and more to AI tools, especially when it comes to junior lawyer training.
I recently hired a more junior attorney who is amazing, and it’s made me reflect on my own experience as a junior lawyer. I took a traditional path after law school, starting at a large law firm as a litigation associate, where I did a lot of unglamorous grunt work. I sat in rooms with boxes of old documents, spent hours reviewing transcripts line by line, and worked through contract after contract, trying to spot nuance and identify what was normal and what wasn’t.
That kind of tedious review work builds muscle memory. You begin to develop instincts for where risk might be hiding, even when it isn’t immediately obvious.
As AI tools take on more of that work, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, the question becomes: how do we still prepare junior lawyers to build that same muscle memory? How do we make sure they develop the judgment they’ll need later in their careers to identify risk, tease out edge cases, and make strong legal arguments in ways AI may not be able to?
That’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot. My junior commercial attorney is excellent at using AI tools, but I’m still trying to figure out how we make sure she develops the experience to look at a contract or deposition testimony and find those less obvious moments of risk. It’s not an easy problem to solve, because you can’t just recreate the old model of sitting in a room with boxes of documents.
I’ve been looking for opportunities for her to shadow me so I can demonstrate how I use the muscle memory I developed earlier in my career. I’ve also heard of ways AI could potentially simulate some of those learning experiences by surfacing risk or edge cases in a more structured way. I’m curious to see whether this topic gets more attention, because I think we need to find new ways to help junior lawyers build the foundation they would have developed in years past.
Trista Engel:
I think this is such an important point, and I’m glad you brought it up. AI is getting so much attention, and we are so focused on how to leverage it, but it really is taking on a lot of the work junior lawyers traditionally used to do.
We can’t skip over the question of how to train the lawyers of the future. That training may look different. It may happen more in law school, or more in-house, than it traditionally has at a law firm. Some of that old work was necessary because there was no one else to do it, but some of it also served an important training purpose.
If we skip over that entirely, where are the next generation of senior in-house leaders or law firm partners going to come from?
Jenn Wall:
Exactly. It would be a real loss if junior lawyers became excellent at using AI but didn’t build the foundational legal reasoning skills that make the law interesting and meaningful. Being able to apply different legal theories and craft strong legal arguments is what makes this work fun. If we rely entirely on AI for that, I think that’s a real loss.
Trista Engel:
Yeah, the expectation of AI is one thing, and that means the expectation of a junior lawyer has to change too.
Jenn Wall:
That’s exactly right.
Trista Engel:
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a GC?
Jenn Wall:
I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons as a GC. I’m still in my first GC role, but I’ve been at Intrinsic for four and a half years, and it’s been a fantastic experience. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that my success as a GC really depends on my team, and my team’s success depends on me. It’s very symbiotic.
I think about that all the time. It shapes how I hire, the kinds of roles I create, how I manage the team, and how I think about professional development. You have to see yourself as an architect. You’re building something, and you have to think about the structure, the flow, and whether the team is set up to work well together.
To me, that’s the key to success. As a GC, you have to move from being the person who does the work to the person who manages the work. You can’t be everywhere at once. You have to trust that the product counsel on your team knows what they’re doing, is building trust with clients, and is representing the legal team in a way that makes the business want legal in the room.
A really good problem for a legal team to have is being asked questions that aren’t strictly legal. If people come to you for guidance, perspective, and business advice, that’s a sign that they trust you and value your input.
That’s part of how I think about architecting the team. We talk a lot about how to build trust and how to make sure legal is enthusiastically invited into conversations, not just brought in because people feel they have to.
On the flip side, the team’s success depends on me making sure they’re properly resourced, that they know their priorities, and that they’re getting the right professional development. I meet individually with everyone on my team once a week, and I’m always thinking about whether they have what they need, whether that means tools, support, or clarity.
And when it comes to headcount, those conversations need to start early. It takes time to build a case internally. You can’t wait until the need is urgent. You have to lay the groundwork, demonstrate the value of the legal team, and make the case well in advance so it doesn’t come as a surprise. That’s how you keep a team resourced in a healthy way. Sprints happen, but late nights and weekends should not be the rule.
Trista Engel:
This is such a great point, because everything you just described is so different from what probably got you into the GC seat in the first place.
As you think about trust-building, do you have any tips for how you talk to your team about building trust with the business?
Jenn Wall:
I think it has very little to do with being a lawyer. It’s really about emotional intelligence. You want to be approachable. You want to be someone people want to talk to. That means being friendly, listening well, and setting the tone so people feel comfortable coming back to you with questions over and over again.
Relationship-building in a business context is so important, especially for lawyers, because some people are naturally nervous about talking to legal. That can be especially true for more junior people in the company who may not have much experience interacting with lawyers.
You have to be aware of how the other person is feeling. If someone seems nervous, help put them at ease. If someone is dealing with a contentious issue that requires legal involvement, try to lower the temperature. A lot of it is just basic relationship-building and being the kind of person people want to come talk to repeatedly.
Trista Engel:
Those are great tips. Thanks. What’s one career moment that changed your trajectory?
Jenn Wall:
I’ve had a lot of career moments, but one that really laid the groundwork for becoming a GC happened more than a decade ago. I started my legal career as a litigator at Morgan Lewis, and at the time I was pretty sure litigation wasn’t what I wanted to do long-term. I saw it as a place to get training and learn valuable skills before eventually moving into something else. I just didn’t know what that “something else” was going to be.
This was around 2010, and the in-house market was tough. But because I had a strong network in the Bay Area, I was able to land an in-house role at Hewlett-Packard in a supply chain legal position, which was very different from litigation.
I updated my LinkedIn, and about two years later I got a call from a recruiter about a role on the Google X legal team. At the time, Google X was still very secretive, which made it especially intriguing. I joined to do supply chain deals for Google Glass, which at the time we thought would be a major consumer product.
Then Google Glass was shut down. That could have been a setback, but in retrospect it was the moment that really allowed me to become a generalist, which is so critical for a general counsel role. My narrow supply chain role went away, and I made a decision to raise my hand and volunteer for whatever legal work was needed.
I started doing product counseling, expanded into broader commercial work, eventually took on litigation because of my litigation background, and even got into IP. I basically said yes to anything. That gave me the generalist skill set that later allowed me to confidently pursue a GC role and say, I can handle anything and issue-spot across a wide range of legal areas. That’s served me incredibly well.
Trista Engel:
That’s such a great reflection. It can be hard to put yourself in positions where you’re doing something you don’t feel completely comfortable with, but in your case it clearly led to the next stage of your career.
You touched on this earlier, but general counsel today have a wide range of resourcing options beyond FTEs and outside counsel. What’s your approach to resourcing your legal team?
Jenn Wall:
We still use the traditional levers. When there’s enough sustained work to support an FTE, I still prefer to hire. I love building the team thoughtfully and bringing on people who will add long-term value.
But special projects and short-term work still come up, and increasingly AI has become an important resourcing tool. Over the last two years, and especially in the last six months, that has accelerated.
Where in the past we might have said, we have a short-term need so let’s bring in a flexible resource, now our first question is often whether we can use tools like GCAI, Spellbook, or others to help us manage that work. It’s just one more tool in the toolbox, and having more options is always helpful.
Trista Engel:
That makes a lot of sense, and it will continue to evolve as we learn which tools are right for which types of work, and where you still need humans in the loop.
Jenn Wall:
Exactly. What’s been incredible is how quickly AI has become integrated into daily work. I use AI every day for drafting emails, reviewing contracts, building slides, and getting advice. The pace of adoption has been surprisingly fast.
Trista Engel:
What’s your most-used tool?
Jenn Wall:
Because I’m at Intrinsic and we’re an Alphabet company, I’m a big fan of the Gemini suite of tools. I even use Gemini in my personal life for things like recipes or product advice.
At work, one of the biggest benefits has been help with presentations. I’m not naturally great at slide design, and Gemini has been a huge time-saver in helping me put together polished decks much more quickly than I could on my own.
Trista Engel:
Amazing. You don’t have to worry about getting the box in exactly the right place anymore.
Jenn Wall:
Exactly.
Trista Engel:
If you weren’t an attorney, what would you be?
Jenn Wall:
There are a lot of possibilities, but I landed on historian. I’ve always loved history, especially U.S. history. I still remember winning the History Award in eighth grade, and I still have the book my teacher gave me about prominent first women.
I love stories, which is probably also why I love country music. The best country songs are always telling a story. I love digging into stories from the past.
About a year ago, I decided I wanted to better understand what’s happening in our country now by learning more about U.S. history. So I started a project to read a biography of every U.S. president. It’s slow going, but it’s been fascinating. Right now I’m on Martin Van Buren, who most people understandably don’t remember very well, but it turns out he was pretty interesting. At this pace I’ll be on this journey for a while, but it’s been really eye-opening and interesting.
Trista Engel:
Amazing. I love that. I’m a lover of history too, and I may need to borrow that idea and tackle at least some presidential biographies myself.
Jenn Wall:
I’ll share my recommendation list.
Trista Engel:
Okay, bonus question. Paragon turns 20 this year. What’s one memory from 20 years ago that still stands out to you?
Jenn Wall:
When I was preparing for this conversation, I went back through old photos to try to remember that time, and I realized 2006 was the year before I graduated from law school. It was two years before I got married and four years before I had my first child. It was also the summer I was a summer associate at Morgan Lewis.
There were lots of pictures of me out in San Francisco, carefree and enjoying time with old friends. It was a really nice trip down memory lane and brought me back to that period of law school, which I genuinely loved. I had taken a few years off between undergrad and law school, so I really appreciated being a student. It was a really fun and memorable time.
Trista Engel:
I’m so glad. It’s always fun to look back and realize how much was still ahead of you.
Jenn Wall:
Exactly.
Trista Engel:
Awesome. Well, that was so fun, Jenn. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and your journey with us.
Jenn Wall:
Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Trista Engel:
All right, that’s a wrap on today’s episode of GC Sidebar. Catch more great conversations on our website at paragonlegal.com. Thanks for tuning in.
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