Newly named Ironclad legal chief Jasmine Singh nearly abandoned her legal career to become an exercise instructor a decade ago, when she was an overworked young associate.
Singh entered Big Law as a litigation associate after school. But six years into stints at firms including Arnold & Porter and Kirkland & Ellis, Singh said, the long hours were wearing her down and the work didn’t feel meaningful. By 2015, she was burned out and “defeated,” wondering if this was the right profession for her.
“I had this moment where I was like, ‘What am I going to do? And what brings me joy? ’” she said. She left her firm, moved to Las Vegas, and started teaching spin classes. She spent nearly a year on the bike before finding her way back to the law—this time in-house, as corporate counsel at 24 Hour Fitness.
“I think there is a dynamic in-house that adopts the ethos of the company”—including taking days off when the rest of the company is on vacation, she said.
Ironclad announced Singh’s appointment Friday, a month into her tenure in the role. The previous general counsel, Chris Young, left the company earlier this year.
Ironclad makes AI-powered contract management tools. In its last round of funding, in early 2022, the company raised $150 million in series E funding for a $3.2 billion valuation.
Before joining Ironclad, Singh was the chief legal and people officer at Binti, a software company that focuses on the foster care and adoption process. She also previously served as deputy GC at Patreon and assistant GC at
Bloomberg Law competes with Ironclad to provide contract software.
Singh said much of her time is spent making sure the legal department keeps up with a growing business.
For one, the legal department helps the company in the role of guinea pig. The six-person team often serves as “beta users” for the company’s products.
Singh’s team also analyzes legal data—such as information about the company’s many contracts—to generate strategic advice for the wider business. That also helps justify the department’s spend when legal is often seen as a cost center.
“You’re driving value by way of identifying trends, successes and places where there’s room for improvement, and the data is going to show that,” Singh said. “To report that back to the business, I think, is highly valuable.”
For example, in a previous in-house role , Singh had her legal team mark which of the company’s contracts didn’t have demonstrable return-on-investment and then reported the results to the business.
“And once we could report like that, it was a game changer,” she said. “It was less this narrative story of, ‘Oh my gosh. We do so much work on these contracts to make them clearer,’ and instead, actually, we are the ones that drove the return on the investment in an amount of X millions of dollars.”
Some lawyers complain that quantifying the profession reduces their complex jobs to numbers. But, Singh said, smart in-house counsel will use data to their advantage.
“I think people honestly are going to be more bought into my story if they understand the impact of the numbers—because that’s the language they’re speaking, and I have to speak their language,” she said.
