The power of personal relationships has been transformative at every stage of Jamie Welborn Knauer’s career – from law school student, to global commercial disputes litigator at Reed Smith, to his current role as senior counsel, Product & Regulatory at DoorDash. Jamie discusses how people’s investments in his career and in him, as a person, have been invaluable. Whether it was the gift of feedback as a means to improve his core legal skills or informational interviews as a catalyst to explore new career opportunities, Jamie explains how this people-first mindset translates to aligning himself with the mission of his DoorDash colleagues and customers and how the power of personal relationships influences how he hires and works with outside counsel. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from the careers of these inspiring professionals that will help you find professional success, however you define that. Lauren: Greetings, and welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's alumni Career Footprints podcast. This is your host, Lauren Hakala, and I'm Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Reed Smith alum, Jamie Welborn Knauer. Jamie currently serves as senior counsel, Product and Regulatory at DoorDash, based in San Francisco. Jamie joined DoorDash from Reed Smith's San Francisco office, where he practiced for about four years as an associate in our Global Commercial Disputes group. Jamie, welcome. How are you today? Jamie: Doing great. How are you? Lauren: Awesome. Excited for this conversation. So let's jump in because there's a lot to cover. So I'd like to just start by asking you a little bit about what you currently do at DoorDash. Jamie: Yeah, so I'm what's called a product counsel. It is a role that is very specific to tech companies. Essentially, what it is, is I work with product teams. So with the business, with software engineers, with product managers, it's a highly cross-functional role. And I get to have the fun of building the products that you interact with and millions of people interact with on a daily basis. Ensuring regulatory compliance, making sure everything is crystal clear to the consumer, marketing, you know, the Dasher side as well, ensuring that the delivery is safe and compliant and the best possible product we can provide. So it's a lot of fun. Lauren: That sounds fun. And a product that pretty much all of our listeners will be familiar with. But what's the best part of it, like being in-house at a company like that? Jamie: I would say no two days are the same. I really like being in a dynamic role. I will never be bored in this job, which is probably one of the best things about it. I get to cover a pretty wide swath of areas too. So I cover, I'm on the new verticals team, which is essentially fancy tech jargon for all of our newer business lines that are non-restaurant. So grocery delivery, pharmacy, alcohol, all of those are new verticals. And I specifically get to cover retail, so everything from Sephora to Best Buy to Home Depot to PetSmart. I cover our whole convenience business, so that's pharmacies and convenience stores, as well as everything health-related, including prescription delivery. And I also get to cover SNAP, which is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It's a government benefit, food benefit for low-income individuals and families. And it's a way that folks can order groceries on our platform using their benefits. So you can tell even from just my description of my job, all of those things are very different, which makes it a lot of fun. So that's one. And then I think the second thing is I like that I get to build. You know, I feel like I am aligned with the mission of the company in the sense that I'm working to help it succeed as opposed to more of the litigation past I was in where I'm trying to resolve disputes. You know, it's a lot more proactive rather than reactive, which is exciting. And yeah, I like contributing to the success of the company. That really is invigorating. Lauren: Yeah, that sounds really rewarding to be building new product lines with the business people. Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. Lauren: Okay, so I want to rewind and just figure out how you've gotten to such an engaging role. So let's go all the way back to college and you're deciding to go to law school. So I see that you majored in poli-sci undergrad at USC. And I'm wondering, did you always know that you wanted to be a lawyer? Was that the plan or did that kind of come in time? Jamie: Yeah. So no is the short answer. I always had an inkling that law might be for me, but I wasn't sure. So when I went to college, I was actually in journalism and communication school at first because I figured being a good writer would help me no matter what field I chose. Those courses did not appeal to me. And I ended up taking a constitutional law class in undergrad that was actually taught by a law school professor in the style of a law school class. So we actually read court opinions. Our tests were just like law school, issue spotting. And it was all the like sexy con law stuff that, you know, is in the news. Freedom of speech issues and equal protection. And I was totally drawn to it. I had a great professor too, but that really solidified for me that this was something I was passionate about. And I switched my major to poli-sci, loved those classes. I got to take everything from the more political side to legal classes to also philosophy, which was really kind of neat to think about how societies are built and our norms and. It just really aligned with, I think, my natural way of thinking. I think I am a critical thinker by nature. And so I think I realized there was alignment in the legal field and how lawyers have to work with kind of my natural way of looking at the world and approaching problems. Lauren: That's really interesting because I feel like I talked to so many people who, when they got to law school, the way law school is taught was so alienating to them. And they really felt almost kind of traumatized by it. But it sounds like I felt the same way I loved law school and that, you know, the approach to problem solving really kind of drew you in. Jamie: Yeah, I loved law school. And I, you know, it was like, it felt like a lot of work at the time. But now when you're in a 40 plus hour a week job, it seems like a joke that we thought that was hard. But it was, I mean, I went to UC Davis also, which was a very collegial environment. I think not everybody has that in law school, but that was really a lovely place to be. And I actually miss, we had so many lunchtime talks with professors, like opining about things going on in the news and the Supreme Court and, It was cool to have that at my fingertips and people who are really engaged with, you know, significant happenings in the world and having a forum to just hear her perspectives and also have like, you know, brown bag discussions. I miss that. Like some of the things going on today, I wonder what some of my professors would say and would love to have those conversations. So, yeah, there was never a point where I questioned what I was doing. I think before I decided to go to law school, a lot of people tried to talk me out of it because of the debt, you know, possibilities. And I'm very glad I didn't listen to them. Lauren: Well, so it sounds like you had a great experience at Davis for law school. And then you came to Reed Smith. So can you talk about how you decided to go from law school? And it sounds like a very kind of like academic, calm, law-focused thing to being a big law litigator. Jamie: Yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I went to law school. And listeners will probably know this term, but we had something called OCI, which stands for on-campus interviewing, where law firms and regulatory agencies and other organizations, nonprofits to come to campus and actually interview Davis law students. And this is common at schools across the country. And I and a lot of big law firms come every year and I wasn't even going to put my hat in the ring I just had heard horror stories about like selling your soul and having no free time and it just being pretty miserable and I'm very grateful for a classmate who said don't limit yourself just throw your hat in the ring and you don't have to say yes and just see what you think. And that was a passing comment that changed my life because it was really good advice. And so I applied and you really get a sense interviewing of the personality of a law firm. I think if law firm, some of the law firms who I interviewed with, whoever decided to send those lawyers should be re-evaluated because they, as the face of the law firm, made me certain I didn't want to work there. And the reverse was true. I had interviews where I just got a really good feel. Reed Smith was one of those firms in fact I actually had a really positive impression of Reed Smith going in because Reed Smith had come to Davis and done a lunchtime talk and I’ll give a shout out to Jessica Sisco who's the recruiter and SF for a long time. She is one of a kind so charismatic and charming and she led like a myth busters panel with a few a current Reed Smith attorney is, and it was funny and relaxed, and everybody seemed to genuinely be happy. These things sound obvious, but they are appealing, especially for folks who've heard horror stories about big law. And so, yeah, I remember interviewing at Reed Smith. I loved the people I met, and I chose it because of the feel. Lauren: No, and you are so smart. I mean, I feel like a
