Meet the Team: General Counsel Sean Greaney

Meet Sean Greaney, HyperDraft’s incoming General Counsel. He is a Big Law technology partner who decided to join HyperDraft full time after using our drafting software in his practice and serving as our outside counsel. Sean is on a mission to help attorneys and firms of all sizes modernize their practice so they can be even better attorneys and maximize their team’s potential.

What did you like about being an attorney?

Sometimes being a junior associate is rough (I didn’t have HyperDraft way back then), clueless on anything substantive and learning on the fly. It wasn’t until I was a 4th or 5th year associate focused on doing startup work that things started to get fun. Then I finally knew what I was doing, which is always helpful. Plus I could finally add value. When you’re doing M&A for a big company, the company does so many deals and is so savvy that they’re never looking to attorneys for answers. Not the case in startups. The founder may be a beast of an engineer and know all the ins and outs for creating an app, but usually have zero experience setting up and running a company, so you get to be a true partner with the client.

What piece of advice has helped you the most throughout your journey so far?

What you do is never as important as who you are doing it with. That has guided me through most of my decisions in life. On the professional side, it doesn’t guarantee financial success or that you’ll end up at your forever job (I’ve kissed a couple frogs along the way for sure), but it does mean you’ll at least have some beautiful souls in the foxhole with you. You can never go wrong with that. Never.

What inspired you to join the HyperDraft team?

The team. HyperDraft personifies my “What you do is never as important as who you are doing it with” mantra. I’m on the ground floor of a company with a team full of smart, talented, fun and (most importantly) good human beings. That’s what I’m chasing at this point in my career. The product being awesome and best-in-class is pure icing on the cake. It’s like going in on a winning lotto ticket with your closest friends (while making the lives of my fellow lawyers still grinding in the law firm trenches easier).

How did you use HyperDraft in your practice? How did it help you?

I used HyperDraft many times for venture financings at Goodwin. Complete game-changer. The legal drafting process has pretty much remained the same for decades. Get a term sheet. Hunt for the last deal you did that was similar (why does that always take longer than it should?!). Go line-by-line to repurpose the old docs for the new deal. If you do it right, a set of venture financing docs takes about 8–10 hours.

With HyperDraft, I cut that time down to 30–45 minutes. You complete the questionnaire, push “generate” and bingo bango, you have a set of financing docs plus redlines against the NVCA forms. And that was just version 1.0 of the product (so many more bells, whistles and features now)! I got at least 7 hours of my life back plus I was able to easily hit any fee quote or flat fee arrangement I had with the client. Win-win … my favorite kind of winning.

What advice would you give an attorney who is just beginning their career?

I could fill a book with rules I’ve collected along my legal career. But let’s roll with:

• Actively work for only good partners/senior associates, avoid those who would use you as a foothold on their climb (every firm has them and everyone knows who they are) even if it means turning down work when you don’t have hours or making things uncomfortable by just flat out refusing to work for certain people. Spoiler alert, you wont get fired for turning down a deal (especially in this legal market) and this won’t be the last firm you work at (nobody goes summer associate to partner at the same firm anymore — it’s like marrying your junior-high sweetheart … good for you, but also kinda weird).
• Let your personality shine in your practice. Why do all lawyers feel the need to talk like robots? Pay attention on the next dial-in call you’re on. You can immediately tell the difference between the business folks and the sterile, awkward lawyers. The real world doesn’t talk like that. Clients don’t talk like that. There’s a time and place for software-manual length emails and CYA legal precision but it’s not as frequent as you think. Strive to be a lawyer clients want to talk to instead of having to talk to.

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