Jordan Coleman is currently the General Counsel and Vice President of Policy at Kodiak Robotics, a leading self-driving trucking company headquartered in Mountain View, California. He was a corporate associate in Wilson Sonsini’s Palo Alto office from February 2012 until November 2018, when he left to join Kodiak. Jordan earned his J.D. from UC Hastings College of the Law and a B.S. in international business from Georgetown University.
We recently spoke with Jordan about his career path, his time at Wilson Sonsini, lessons learned and advice for others, and his outside interests, among other topics.
How did you come to pursue a career in the law?
I was one of those people who was a lawyer well before I ever went to law school. My family would say they knew I was going to be a lawyer when I was young, mostly because of our robust and enthusiastic discussions and arguments (in the best possible way) at our dinner table. Unlike most, we were essentially only allowed to talk about politics, religion, and controversial topics at our dinner table, and that always fostered a very open environment to question things and advocate for your positions. So, in a lot of ways I think I was always destined for that career. I will say that it came as a disappointment to my father, who was a doctor. During my career in law school, he always told his friends I was in “graduate school” and never law school.
Unlike some, I loved law school. I’d wake up every morning, throw on a pair of jeans, and go sit in classrooms to talk about interesting things with a lot of really smart people. Frankly, I was enthralled by it and I found it energizing. A lot of people don’t have that experience, that passion for the law coming out of law school, and I was very much the opposite.
As for how I came to be a corporate and securities attorney, before law school I worked as a paralegal at a couple of large law firms. I was primarily doing litigation paralegal work, and then I started doing some corporate paralegal work toward the end. One day, I asked one of the partners why he did corporate law. Everyone’s first introduction to the law is Law & Order this or fill-in-the-blank-movie that, where it’s all courtroom scenes. Corporate law is not romanticized in the same way. He said to me, “Listen, I could spend my career arguing about things and helping to tear things down, or I could spend my career helping to build things and helping people achieve their dreams.” That sentence really struck me; it convinced me to be a corporate lawyer. I wanted to help people build things, and what better place to do that than in Silicon Valley—and what better place to do that than at Wilson Sonsini.
Could you tell us a bit more about your career trajectory, including your time at Wilson Sonsini?
Coming out of law school, I knew I wanted to do corporate law, and I’d spent my undergrad studying international business, which seemed like a fascinating way to practice law—cross-border transactions and the like. I ended up joining DLA Piper for two reasons: 1) because it combined those two potential interests and 2) the partner who convinced me to focus on corporate law had moved to DLA Piper. I spent two years there, and I feel very lucky I started there because I was able to do an IPO at the beginning of my career, in 2010, when IPOs were not getting done, and ultimately I had the opportunity to do both company-side and underwriter-side deals. Those deals gave me a real passion for capital markets work—helping exciting companies tell their story at an inflection point in their history. I really fell in love with that, as well as some of the tech company clients I worked with.
While cross-border M&A can be very interesting, as lawyers we already work a lot, and at one point I was doing an M&A deal based in Korea and another M&A deal based in France, along with day-to-day work for my U.S. clients, which effectively meant I was working 24 hours a day. Though I’d like to think the law has given me an incredible work ethic, that was a bridge too far, and in the end it wasn’t what really sparked my interest. I decided that I wanted to work only with tech companies, I wanted to work with companies doing interesting things, and I wanted to do capital markets work. So, in looking around Silicon Valley, I identified a couple law firms that fit the bill, and Wilson Sonsini was at the top of that list. I went and interviewed, had a great experience, saw a lot of the things I mentioned—working with the best companies on the most interesting deals, and doing a lot of capital markets and late-stage private company work—and decided it was the right firm for me. I joined Wilson when I was a third-year associate and proceeded to spend nearly seven years at the firm.
How did you find the experience of moving in-house?
I was both really lucky and really unlucky. One day, I was in my office working on something when Jeff Saper knocked on my door and said, “Hey Jordan, I’m meeting some really interesting founders and I think you’d find what they are working on interesting, so why don’t you come join us in the conference room?” It ended up being the founders of Kodiak Robotics, the company I’m at now. We had a great rapport immediately. I was able to form the company and complete a Series Seed round and a Series A round for them in a very short period. I spent a lot of time with the founders, and we built a strong relationship very quickly. Then, my wife and I had our second daughter, so I took six weeks of paternity leave and really focused on my family. When I came back, I called the Kodiak founders to catch up on what I’d missed. Five minutes into that call, they said, “And that’s why we think we need a general counsel and we think you should be that person.” It was truly something that came out of left field. Luckily, I was able to give the right answer to get off the phone quickly, which was, “I’m so honored, but I need to talk to my wife.” I spent a lot of time talking to my wife and really agonized over the decision.
The unlucky side was that I was in the partnership process for the second year and was confident in my prospects—I’d been told as much by a few people at the firm. I’d spent my entire career focused on making partner, and thus during that time, I never looked around for any in-house opportunities. The next time I talked to the founders, I said, “I’m really flattered, this could be really exciting, but come on guys, this is the worst timing ever. Where were you two years ago, before I bought my house and had a San Francisco-sized mortgage? Or a year from now, after I’d made partner and could check it off the list and think about other opportunities?” They said, “We hear you, we understand the timing is not convenient, but we need you and we want you to join.” That led to a series of conversations with my family, as well as some soul searching about what I wanted to do.
I’d come out to Silicon Valley to work with fascinating companies and good founders doing interesting work that could have a positive impact on the world. Kodiak Robotics is a self-driving trucking company, so that definitely checks the “interesting” box; heck, it was like working on a sci-fi novel in real time. Additionally, I understood the panoply of benefits that its technology could provide to the world: making roads safer and saving lives, reducing carbon emissions, reducing the price of a gallon of milk for every consumer out there, and making the supply chain that much more efficient. Over the last 18 months of COVID, when we’ve gone to the grocery store and there’s no toilet paper or aluminum foil or chicken, it’s really hits home how vital the supply chain is to all of our day-to-day lives. In the end, I saw joining Kodiak as an opportunity to do something I’d find interesting and fun, and I’d also get to work for a company that would have a real impact.
In other ways, I was really lucky. I was roughly the 20themployee at Kodiak, and being able to come in that early as a GC is a rarity. To be able to build the right foundation on the legal front from day one was an opportunity that I really relished. In the end, I told myself that I came out to Silicon Valley to do interesting things and it’s only going to get harder to make the leap as my children get older, so if I’m going to take the chance, I should take it now and see how it goes. I decided to dive in with both feet, and I haven’t looked back since. It’s been an amazing experience.
Do you have any advice for attorneys looking to move in-house?
Always keep your head on a swivel. You don’t know what’s going to come, and when opportunities come, they may not come at the most convenient time. But life doesn’t come at the most convenient times; it comes when it comes, and you have to be prepared to make tough decisions and maybe be a bit uncomfortable. Also—and this is true whether you’re looking to go in-house or stay at a firm—you should take an active role in driving your career. When opportunities come, make an active decision; decide yes or no. Don’t just let time pass and not do it. If you know you want to work at a firm or in a particular industry, grab that career by the horns and make it happen. Work is always going to find you, but it may not be what you’re really passionate about or what you want to do. By being proactive, by finding out what you want and really striving for it, you’ll find yourself much happier and much more successful in your career.
How have you been able to achieve work-life balance and what do you do to unwind, given the current environment?
Work-life balance is something we all strive for and maybe never 100 percent reach. I have three kids five and under, so what I like to say is that I have two pretty-exhausting, full-time jobs that I’m deeply passionate about: being a GC of an exciting and interesting start-up and being a dad of three daughters. Both are very demanding jobs with very demanding constituencies. For me, it’s all about finding the time to ensure that I’m doing a great job at both. In the end, if I’m not being a good dad, nothing else in my life can justify that. So, it’s about finding opportunities to prioritize my kids. Do I have to do a lot of work? Sure. Do I have a lot of demands as a dad? Sure. But when I’m at work, I’m going to focus on work. And when I’m with my kids, I’m not going to be looking at my phone every 10 minutes. I’ll get home and put my phone in a drawer until dinner’s done and the kids are in bed, and then if I have to log back on (OK, when I have to log back on…), I’ll log back on. I think being present is the most critical thing.
If you’re looking for work-life balance in the sense of every day being evenly split into this many hours of work and this many hours of life, that’s not possible. Things come in fits and starts. When things are slow, those are the times to really invest in your life—to go on vacation, to spend more time with your kids, to get off the clock earlier in the day. If I’m not busy at work, I’m not just going to sit there and stare at Slack and my email; I’m going to take my kids to the playground or I’m going to go make dinner for my family. By investing in our life that way, when work gets really busy, your family understands. They say, “Hey, when he was less busy, he was really committed to his family, and when it’s really busy at work, it is what it is.” It’s more about finding macrobalance than finding microbalance.
What did you learn from your time at Wilson Sonsini? How did the firm prepare you for the challenges you face today as general counsel?
There are two things. The first is hard work. That’s not to say that law firm life is a meat grinder, it’s not that, but work ethic is not something that inherently comes natural to most people. It’s a muscle that needs to be exercised; it needs to be learned. Obviously, I just made the point about work-life balance, so I’m not saying to work endlessly. But it’s about finding pride in your work and wanting to do it right. Sometimes that means going above and beyond, and knowing when to go above and beyond. I think that’s one really critical element that Wilson taught me, and taught me well.
The other thing is teamwork. Nothing gets done at a law firm by a single person. We all work with an amazing set of people—for me as an associate, that was my fellow associates, either senior or junior, the partners, the paralegals, and the support staff. It’s a cheesy line, but it takes a village. In the end, you’re better when you’re able to rely on others, when you’re able to ask questions of people. One of the things I miss the most is when I have a thorny issue I’m trying to figure out, I can’t just walk down the hallway and ask my colleagues if they have any creative solutions. There’s an amazing community within Wilson, and learning how to leverage that community, build relationships, and invest in those relationships is so valuable. It’s very true that the total is greater than the sum of its parts. There is no skill more important in the start-up environment than building great relationships with your colleagues and relying on them, and letting them know they can rely on you. Wilson taught me that in spades.
One more thing I’d add is there’s an oversimplified point of view that when you’re at a law firm, you need to be an inch wide and a mile deep, and when you’re a GC, you need to be an inch deep and a mile wide. There’s definitely some truth to that, but I think it’s also about knowing what you know and what you don’t know, and relying on your colleagues or your outside counsel. Are there things I do now that have nothing to do with my corporate and securities law background? Absolutely. I’m a one-man legal shop, so I review and negotiate our contracts, I work on our privacy issues, and I run our policy and regulatory efforts. But what I learned very well at Wilson is that it’s OK to not know everything. When you don’t know everything, you pick up the phone and call people who do. Again, it goes back to building and fostering those relationships. That way, when I call someone, they don’t say they’re too busy. They say, “Sure, I can talk for five minutes.” That goes back to having a great network of lawyers—in-house counsel, lawyers I work with at Wilson Sonsini and sometimes other firms—who I can call and ask for advice. Wilson definitely taught me how important is to foster those relationships.
What’s something interesting that people would be surprised to learn about you?
Currently, the toes on my left foot are all painted different colors—which is a statement that if there’s anything I love more than the company I work with, it’s being a husband and father. It’s being a #girldad. I definitely get some funny looks at the beach or when I’m wearing sandals, but in the end, it’s about my commitment to loving my daughters and creating deep and meaningful relationship with them. To me, there’s nothing more important in the world.
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