#018: Paul Grewal - Cryptocurrency Chief Legal Officer, Tech Lawyer, Former Magistrate Judge

In this episode I speak with Paul Grewal who currently serves as the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at Coinbase, the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the United States where he and his team were recently responsible for overseeing the company's massively successful IPO. Before joining Coinbase in September 2020, Paul spent four years as a Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Facebook. Before that, Paul was an accomplished intellectual property litigator, law firm partner, and federal Magistrate Judge in the Northern District of California. Early in Paul's legal career he served as a law clerk both in the Northern District of Ohio and on the Federal Circuit. Paul is a graduate of MIT and the University of Chicago Law School.  In our conversation we discuss what it is like to work as a lawyer for companies focused on emerging technologies such as Coinbase and Facebook, how to stand out as a junior lawyer even in these new industries, what he learned as a federal Magistrate Judge before moving in-house, the reasons that he thinks we are in a "golden age" for lawyers, and the future of "remote first" practice of law.  Sign up for alerts about future episodes at howilawyer.com or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts (pod.link/howilawyer).