Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
The Role of Legal in Fintech: Insights from Revolut
Summary
In this episode, Matt interviews Philippa Poole and Daniel Geller from Revolut, Europe's largest fintech company. They discuss their backgrounds and how they ended up working in the legal department at Revolut. They also talk about the differences between working in a law firm versus a fintech company, the challenges of scaling a legal team in a rapidly growing company, and the importance of automation and AI in their work. They emphasise the need for curiosity, embracing technology, and taking risks in one's career.
Takeaways
- There are many job roles in fintech beyond coding and development, including legal roles.
- Working in-house at a fintech company allows for a closer relationship with the business and a more strategic approach to legal advice.
- As a fintech company grows, the legal team must focus on scalability and automation to keep up with the demands of the business.
- Embracing technology, such as AI, can save time and improve efficiency in legal processes.
- Being curious, staying up to date with new developments, and taking risks are important for career growth in the fintech industry.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Revolut and the Legal Department
07:45 Comparison of Working in a Law Firm vs. Fintech
12:37 Scaling Challenges and the Importance of Automation
16:41 The Role of the Legal Department in Keeping Revolut Running
21:56 The Culture at Revolut and Working in a Fast-Growing Company
25:56 Hiring and Skills in the Legal Department
30:50 The Impact of Automation and AI in the Legal Department
36:13 Advice for Young Professionals and Embracing Technology
Philippa Poole - Head of Legal, Commercial
Daniel Geller - Deputy General Counsel
Matt Cheung - Founder Work in Fintech, CEO ipushpull
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Matt (00:01.628)
This is Matt from Work in Fintech and we have a special episode today ahead of the Work in Fintech Summit. We've got two guests.
and who are working in fintech in actually Europe's largest fintech is Revolut and they are coming from the legal area and from legal backgrounds which we're going to hear about today because don't forget in fintech there's many many types of job roles across a company not just coders and developers and here is an important part of an organization we're going to hear a lot about and particularly as Revolut just won its UK banking license it'd be great to understand
how our two guests have helped in that journey. So I'm delighted to introduce Philippa Poole who's head of legal and commercial director and also Daniel Geller who's the deputy general counsel. So welcome both.
Daniel Geller (00:53.979)
Hi, good to be here.
Pip (00:54.307)
Thanks, Matt.
Matt (00:57.34)
So I guess starting with Philippa, can you just give a quick introduction on your background, how you came through different educational learnings, backgrounds, experience in other firms, and how did you get to Revolut?
Pip (01:13.388)
Yeah, sure thing. yeah, I started, I'm from New Zealand originally, hence the very strong accent. But I studied in New Zealand, graduated, joined private practice law firm, doing corporate and commercial work there. I did a couple of years and went out on secondment and...
I was kind of loaned out on secondment from the law firm to a large renewable energy company in New Zealand. And that was kind of my first taste of working in -house, inside the business, rather than as an external advisor to the business. Absolutely loved it, didn't look back, didn't go back actually. So I joined that renewable energy company and worked there as a commercial lawyer for a number of years. Before I decided there was a bit more to see.
then just New Zealand, so I packed up my bags, went traveling and landed in London. When I got to London, I was looking for, I was wanting to stay in -house and to stay within the business, but was looking for more of a fast -paced, high -growth, exciting new company and new industry, and that's how I landed on Revolut.
I joined Revolut 2019, so I've been with the company for just over five years.
Matt (02:40.947)
Thank you. And Daniel?
Daniel Geller (02:43.269)
Yeah, so I suppose my route to Revolut is a little bit long -winded, but I even into law because I did history and politics at university, so I really actually didn't know what I wanted to do, but I got some advice from a family member to say, don't you do something that you think that you are good at and that you would excel at? So I think with history and politics, it lends itself to law quite well because you have to analyse and digest a lot of information and be able to
to relay it back in a kind of easily understandable format. So that's essentially what we as lawyers do a lot of the time. Got my first role at a large international city firm called Ashurst, which was a great opportunity and had lots of brilliant experiences. But the type of client that I was working with just didn't quite ring true with me. I've always enjoyed the startup scene and the tech scene. And so left that to join like a more boutique.
practice where there was Fox Williams where there was a partner who was basically setting up a fintech practice and needed an associate to help him build that practice up. that really sounded interesting to me and a lot of the role was kind of going out to lots of different tech meetups and trying to source new business and just kind of getting a better handle and understanding of what the fintech scene in the UK and in Europe was looking like.
As part of my time at Fox Williams, two things happened. One, when I was going to all of these meetups, this was in kind of 2015, 2016, there were two names that were kind of being muttered constantly, which were Monzone Revolut, Monzone Revolut. And people said those were the two companies to watch, even them. And secondly, I did a one day a week secondment at a fintech called Neighbour. And very quickly that...
role that one day a week became my favourite day of the week and that was just because the type of work and the atmosphere and the buzz around the place was really intoxicating and also because I like
Daniel Geller (04:52.635)
being a legal advisor, but I'm also quite nosy and I like being interested in larger commercial strategic style decisions as well. And people would come to me with questions and in my head I was thinking, well, that's not really a legal question, but I'm happy to give my two pence worth anyway. And so, yeah, and then all of that clicked together. I was refreshing the page at Revolut, saw it.
come up in 2017 applied for it and three weeks later got it and the rest as they say is history.
Matt (05:26.582)
So guess question for both of you, how does it compare then? Now you've been in a fintech company for a number of years compared to what it would have been like if you were working in a law firm. What's the work dynamic like kind of inside a law firm versus inside a fintech?
Daniel Geller (05:44.551)
Sure, so I think when you're in private practice, I think one of the benefits is that you get exposure to a large array of different clients. So you could be working for 10, 15 different companies on various different matters.
And what I think the difference was for me is, that if I would be working with an interesting company on a kind of discrete matter, you might advise them and then not hear from them again for another year or nine months or what have you, but you'd be quite interested in how that business is getting on. And I think the difference between being in house and at a FinTech to being in private practice is that you are just fully ingrained in that business. You're part of it and you're helping it to grow every day. You're not just kind of dipping in and out every six to nine months as they come.
with a new legal request. And also the lines, as I mentioned earlier, a bit more blurred. So when you are advising from a law firm perspective, although, you know, commercial acumen is important, you're predominantly advising from a legal perspective, you know, what can you or can't you do? Whereas when you're in -house, the lines are a bit more blurred. You're looking at things more strategically. You're saying, okay, well, look, this is the legal parameters within which we're able to do something, but does it work from a business perspective? And I think that that part of the role, yeah, is like,
is really interesting as well for people that move in house. I don't know what you think Pip.
Pip (07:08.162)
I think that's completely right and I think the only building on that the only thing that's different as well is the way in which you advise the company. It always feels in private practice you're a little bit one step removed I feel in terms of the instruction often comes from the business to a partner in the law firm filters down the firm and you'll provide that advice back as Dan say you may or may not hear whether or not they've taken that advice on board or what the impact's been of that advice. Whereas
When you're working in -house, you are sitting right alongside that business stakeholder who you're advising. It's natural then that you have a much closer relationship and deeper understanding of all the factors at play rather than, as Dan said, of purely advising on the pure legal element. So it can feel a little different the way in which you're giving that advice.
Matt (08:02.206)
So when you both started a number of years ago, presumably the number of employees and probably number of end users and number of countries that you cover was orders of magnitude less than what it is now. How have you tackled those challenges as you've grown very rapidly?
Daniel Geller (08:23.566)
Good question. So so when.
We joined and it would be very similar for PIP. We were 50 people in London, I think 300 people, including customer support worldwide. We're now over 10 ,000 people globally. So it's probably felt like working for two different companies or three even during that time. And I think it's interesting as you mature and grow, you've obviously, it's a very different structure.
in place when you've got one or two or five, six lawyers in place to when you've got a function, it's not all lawyers, but of 120 people. You really need to add in like processes and frameworks that make everything scalable. Because what happens is, that when you've got new people joining all the time, they need to be able to pick up that information really quickly, hit the ground running and be advising in line with, you know, what we would say, you know, Revolut legal standards. And so I think we've spent a lot of time trying to
make the legal function in particular, because obviously that's where we're closest to, as scalable as possible from a global perspective. Because otherwise, we would spend basically all of our time trying to onboard and ensure that lots of different lawyers are doing the right thing. So yeah, think basically it's been able to try and...
dissect what we do and then ensure that we can roll that out as easily and as efficiently as possible to the other lawyers across the team.
Pip (09:57.678)
It is really fun looking back at where it's come from and where it is now. Because I remember when I first joined, there used to be a fun bot that would notify us every time the customer base of Revolut surpassed the population of certain cities or certain countries. I remember getting to one million customers was a massive milestone, getting to two million customers was a massive milestone, and now we're up at 45 million.
and I think we add roughly another million customers almost every month. So that's quite amazing to step back and see just, we know it's been a high growth, rapidly scaling ride, but to remind ourselves kind of of where we've come from, like Dan said, a small team of a handful of lawyers to now a function over 120 has been really, really fun. The point around
setting up to scale from the start I think is key and I think that's something that Tom, our GC, cottoned onto early and really instilled in the function from the get -go. And I think when you're working in tech companies that can be very fast -paced, know, very high growth, very... move very quickly, it's really important as a function to be thinking about that right from day one and getting ahead of that right.
from the outset because if you spend too much time, you know, you're always gonna have the day -to -day fires that you need to deal with and you need to spend time working on. But if you are distracted and only working on what's in front of you over here and now and you're not thinking about how you can scale your function and grow your function, then what will happen is the company will take off and you will be left behind and you will be playing catch up. So for us in legal, that's been really important to try keep pace with the company.
and also be looking at like, okay, great, this is the challenge we've got now as a team of X, but in a year's time, what is this company gonna look like? What challenges are we gonna need to be solving then and what do we need to be doing now to plan for that?
Daniel Geller (12:05.499)
And just to give you like a tangible example of us, it's quite simple, it's almost, you know, it's something that we can't really live without now is, know, when Pip and I kind of first joined, because you've only got a handful of lawyers, we would get all of our requests either because we're in a shared workspace. And when we just come and sit next to you or tap you on the shoulder and be like, can you, could you do this or what do you think about that? Or you'd get it on Slack or email or what have you. You can't do that with, you know, an employee.
a headcount of 10 ,000 people. So we had to, know, everyone at Revolut who's a service department really, has to build in like their own service desk. And then what's happened is over time, we've added sophistication to that. So like whenever a legal request comes in, we can automate as to like which type of lawyer it goes to, what level of priority it is, how that feeds into our KPIs, how that feeds into our capacity metrics and things like that. So to go from someone just tapping you on the shoulder to all of that has, you know, it's been quite a journey.
Matt (13:07.77)
The scalability and thinking ahead about how you can cope with more and more users, more more requests, more staff, that's a very software technology centric perspective of looking at stuff. So it's great to see how that's, and again, I think people thinking about FinTech, they think about the right at the end of it that you can see, like an application or something you can touch and feel, whereas something like what you're doing is very much behind the scenes.
having your perspective about how it scales is super interesting. I guess two questions on that is one, when I came into Revolut and I met you a few years ago, lots of the other areas and departments were talking about how everything was, you kind of touched on it Daniel, about service requests coming in. I remember a few years ago, someone was saying everything's like in Jira, everything's fed through, there's dashboards and KPIs to look at. Be interesting to just talk about that a little bit more and also how...
a traditional law firm, would they embrace similar types of ways of handling requests coming in? And what differentiates how you're doing it versus a traditional law firm?
Daniel Geller (14:19.415)
So I think with law firms the key way that they measure performance is through billable time and I think you know so every kind of six minute unit is charged out at a certain rate and that's how they you know essentially will and that's how they generate their income stream right so every hour or minute that they're working is is is essentially like money on the on the clock and that
puts a certain amount of emphasis on those working in the law firms to essentially be ensuring that the clock is on when they're working, off when they're not, and then managing with clients when that's gone over under the amount that had been agreed in the first place. I think when lawyers move in -house, they're quite keen to move away from that style. I think one of the advantages is being able to work more fluidly, not always having clock on, clock off. And I think if we added that in as a performance metric or even as a capacity metric,
I'm not sure it would go down particularly well. Revolut is a very KPI oriented company, as you'd mentioned before. The way that we measure our performance, because I think as a legal function, it's always a challenge to be able to demonstrate that we like to think that we add value, but sometimes it's not the easiest thing to demonstrate because...
I like to think of legal as like a little bit like a goalkeeper in football, right? You might remember the odd save or what have you, but you'll definitely remember when it's, you know, gone through someone's legs and gone into the goal. So the way that we do it or the way that we look at value and quality is through kind of three main metrics. So one is through response time. So when, as I mentioned through our service desk, when a matter comes in, that will, depending on which kind of product or area it relates to, will have like a certain
level of response time. And then we measured based on like the efficiency of that response. At the end of a request, it might say like, Matt, how did you feel that Daniel's, you know, responded to that matter that you worked on? And you can, you know, rate that out of five. We have an MPS score that every service team in Revolut has the same. It sounds more onerous than it is, but you know, it's a KPI that we've pretty much always, always hit. And it's good for us because it keeps us honest to make sure that we're giving good quality, you know, client service.
Daniel Geller (16:39.101)
And the final one is through roadmaps. So we do that through these are kind of discrete quarterly projects that might be a bit larger, that might relate to, for example, a license application to make sure that, you know, we know what our key priorities are in terms of larger strategic projects on a quarter by quarter basis. So those three together, again, like give us like really good valuable data to be able to say, here's what we've produced, here's what we've delivered, here's how the business have reacted to that. And then it allows us to be able, you know, to
have lawyers to be able to progress and climb the ranks pretty quickly as well if they hit and meet those KPIs.
Matt (17:18.078)
So how would you describe on any given day, week, month, how your legal team of 120 people is helping to keep the engine room running hot and helping everything across Revolut? How would you describe your function and how does it assist other business areas?
Pip (17:42.189)
At a really high level, we're helping the company grow and scale and the way that we help them is by managing their legal risk. And if you think about what that looks like for Revolut is...
Imagine a product owner investing a whole lot of time and resources in building a product that then ultimately is found to not comply with the regulations that it needs to. They then would have to pull that product and almost take it back to the drawing board and redesign and rebuild it from scratch. So we're there to help at the outset, make sure that that's designed the right way, that they're considering the right things. We're in there with them helping with that.
And you can kind of extrapolate that across all of our teams. So we have specialist legal teams. One of them is the regulatory team that I just talked about. for example, at a...
higher level imagine RevLoot as a company uncovering a massive liability it wasn't aware of and then having to pay that out could have a massive impact on our balance sheet and our cash flow. a number of teams, that could be any one of our teams looking out for that kind of risk and managing, helping the company spot that early and take the right steps to avoid risks like that crystallizing so that the business isn't bogged down by that and can keep kind of chasing its growth.
So that's like a really, really high level. Dan, I don't know if you want to now like get into more. Matt, do you want us to go more into kind of like what each team does or?
Matt (19:16.778)
Well I think it's interesting to hear that you're involved at the outset when you're looking at new products or new opportunities, whereas it might be a bit more conventional where you might come in at the end to kind of sanity check stuff.
Pip (19:31.596)
Yeah, I think that's a really key cultural point for how your company uses its legal function. And I think companies that have it right...
is where the legal team is able to work really closely alongside the product team in a way that helps the product team at the outset, exactly for that reason, it's just more efficient and gets to the right result quicker than using kind of legal as your, I don't know, tick box at the end of the process, I'm gonna go and get this blessed by legal and then suddenly uncover a huge, giant problem that you hadn't realized and then having to unwind and go backwards. So yeah, I think that would.
works really well within our legal function here at Revload. It's definitely...
how our lawyers like to work with the business. It's so exciting to be able to be involved at the outset of the project and to see it go from inception through to launch and then the growth and watch the success of that product. That's definitely something that a lot of our lawyers touch on when they say, you know, what's the coolest stuff you work on? It's like, loved those projects where I was there in the room where we were kicking the can around and talking about this idea and I've seen it right through to being launched.
Matt (20:52.486)
I guess that's very different from what Daniel you said earlier about you might have been previously when you were working in a law firm, you might have spoken to a client and yet it was a really interesting topic you were covering but they're not here from them again in a year's time. I guess just being much more hands -on must be much more exhilarating and rewarding for what doing.
Daniel Geller (21:14.171)
Yeah, exactly. And I think with legal, you know, we like to think of ourselves again, not to overstate our own role, but at times we can play a part of being the glue or the cement that holds it all together because as legal, we are privy to interactions with other teams that maybe people in product aren't. So someone in product might be building something and we'll say, well, hey, hang on. Why don't you speak to finance about this? Cause we know that they are changing something around this process here. Why don't you speak to operations about that? Did you know that actually that this impacts this other product that
we're working on here. And actually what we find is that we're kind of, you know, de facto helping indirectly like trying to like bring other teams together to make sure that there's no like conflicts between products or that when they are scoping a product from the outset, it's going as smoothly as possible. using that role as our, you know, we're kind of fully ingrained with all departments in the business and then using that to our advantage to help the products get across the line as easy as possible.
Again, it would be very difficult in private practice to do that.
Matt (22:18.09)
So Pip, you mentioned culture and the of the culture of legal. But can you talk or can both of you kind of talk about the culture of Revolut more broadly? Because as someone on the outside looking in, like Revolut's like the darling of FinTech in the world and particularly in Europe and very much in the UK, what's it like to work in a company that's grown very rapidly and everyone's got a Revolut app?
their phone there's always new things coming out and so on it's got a very cool kind of feel to it what's it actually like on the inside
Pip (22:54.722)
Yeah, it's exciting. It's really, really exciting to be working at a company where I do really like the product. So I think that's a key thing for everyone working here. It's like they really believe in the product. They're very engaged with the product. And it's exciting to work for a company where you love the product that much, the product is that good, and also...
you know, we're very quick to market with our products, so it's not, it's very fast -paced environment to be working on. You're always onto the next thing, which is really rewarding, I think, and builds a really fun environment to be working in. It's a very high -performance culture, so, and doesn't shy away from that, so it's, like, we have really, really high ambitions of where we wanna get to. We've had, you know, we've done great so far, and it...
ticked a lot of boxes and achieved a lot of things, but we really don't want to slow down. So it's a very high expectation, high performance culture. And what I love about that is it breeds a culture in the company of people really care about the work that they're doing and they're really invested in the work that they're doing. And that means that when you're working alongside them in a project, you learn so much because they are really invested and involved in what...
they're working on, let's say a product owner that you might be helping support, they're really invested in that product being a success and they will work with you to help explain everything about that product and you'll go on that journey with them and that's I think a really cool element of the culture in Revolut is everyone's very smart and very willing to share their knowledge across the organization because they want to be the best and they want this product and they want this company to be the best.
Yeah, it's, I would say, like very challenging, very fast -paced. It hasn't slowed down once in the five years that I've been here, but it's been very rewarding and exciting as well.
Daniel Geller (24:56.795)
Yeah, I would echo all of that. Very unique place to work. And I think one of the, you know, achievements of Nick and Vlad, our co -founders, is that the culture feels...
very similar from how it was in 2017 with 50 employees to how it is now with over 10 ,000 employees. And that comes from the top down. It still feels, although the company is, has matured and scaled up and, you know, has a lot of frameworks and processes in place now that maybe weren't there, you know, in the earlier days. And that kind of startup hungry mentality is still there. The ambition is infectious in terms of where Nick, the CEO,
the thinks we can be, he really does think the sky's the limit. When he doesn't just say it for fun that he thinks we can be the Amazon of banking, he truly believes it. And that belief really does trickle down through the organization. And everyone who joins really feels like they've got a bit of skin in the game. They really feel like they've got a vested interest in the success of the company. And from only what I hear anecdotally, I think people that have been at Revolut
and then leave, they do notice a slight...
It's almost like a bit of a shock in terms of different companies' expectations. And we're actually finding now as well a growing number of boomerangs. So we call it boomerangs, so people that leave and come back. So we've had a couple recently in the legal team as well. So that's been quite good to hear about. Because as Pip says, look, it's not to get to where we've got to in the valuation we have and the number of customers. And it does mean that we've got some challenging deadlines and some
Daniel Geller (26:43.907)
ambitious targets to me. But as I say, I think a lot of people enjoy that and have that the mindset that they want to try and make that happen and achieve it. So yeah, very unique place to work.
Matt (26:56.418)
So in terms of when you're hiring people to work in your team, what type of experience or attributes or mindset are you looking for? Because it sounds like it's very much that technology, fast growth kind of culture, which may or may not be, I you're the expert, you tell us, may or may not be kind of how it is in a traditional law firm. So what type of people you then look
looking forward to join your team. Who sinks or swims?
Daniel Geller (27:28.465)
So I think.
Yes, well, so firstly, you know, we wouldn't, I wouldn't want us to limit ourselves to only hiring people from like a certain cohort of companies. So like just from private practice law firms, I think we're a big believers in diversity of thought and background because then we get diversity of ideas. So for example, know, Pip came from an energy company we've hired, you know, one of our senior lawyers that's been with us for a long time came from a diplomacy background. And we've had some people from private practice, some people
from in -house, some people from big banks, some people from smaller fintechs, you know, and I think together that melting pot has helped us to like, you know, create the culture that we have now. I think first and foremost, as you say, you know, you need people that have bought into the way of working in the expectation and like what Revolut is trying to achieve. I think we take it as a given that whoever we'll hire, you know, will be smart and capable, but it's going that extra step of saying, okay, I'm going to be here. I'm going to embrace it.
motivated by the challenge and I really want to succeed.
Pip (28:35.288)
And I think the other thing is, agree, we don't look for too much specific experience a lot of the time. It's more about attributes that that lawyer can bring. And a really key attribute that we want all our lawyers to have is the concept of grip. So we really want lawyers who own those problems and help solve them for their stakeholders in the business. So...
We're looking for that kind of lawyer who, yeah, as Dan says, believes in the product, believes in the company, is fired up to help us get to the next level, and then also wants to step up and take, roll up their sleeves and take on that responsibility to solve those challenges.
Matt (29:19.216)
I've got a dumb question. Do you have to be trained in law and qualified in law to work in law?
Daniel Geller (29:27.269)
I...
Pip (29:27.278)
That's a really good question.
Daniel Geller (29:28.325)
Yeah, it's a good question. So it depends. To work in the legal function, no. To be a lawyer, yes. You don't have to be qualified in the UK. You can be qualified in another jurisdiction. So we have lots of global lawyers that work in London. But what if you wanted to, for example, a good entry level position for people coming and actually we're opening this out for the first time next year as part of the Revolut grad
So we're adding the paralegal role to that next year, so that should be quite exciting. But you don't necessarily even need a law degree to do that. It's obviously a nice to have.
But the idea is that you can be working on various legal matters, upskilling yourself, and trying to learn from experienced lawyers in the team. And then if you decide, you know, actually, I'd like to do a legal conversion course. And then if you hadn't done a law degree, you'd also need to do your GDL as well. And to become a lawyer, then that's something that we've helped people in the team to facilitate to do, even if they want to do it part -time while still working here as well. So, yeah, you don't always need to be
have like a be a qualified one to have a role within Revolut.
Pip (30:47.31)
And I think that's developing a lot with a lot of companies, like legal functions within companies used to just be the general counsel and a bunch of lawyers, and it's now a much more diverse set of roles. So yeah, we've got governance specialists and complaint specialists, and we've got a really strong ops team who are helping us build our own legal products internally. So it's much wider skill set and role base than it used to be.
Daniel Geller (31:16.295)
And that's a really good point, Pip, actually, because we do have a legal ops team of about four or five people. And just to that point, so they don't have any legal background whatsoever. And we really like that because they can tackle legal related issues, almost as our COO function of the legal team, from the outside looking in with really new and interesting ideas. So our head of legal ops, actually comes from an F1 background and used to work for companies like McLaren.
very like logistics in terms of like how he's looking at issues and the person before him was in chemicals and at GSK so you know we like really encourage and appreciate new ideas and you know new people coming in in different ways of thinking.
Matt (32:03.986)
How has automation and AI affected what you're doing and made it easier or not? How are you embracing those type of tools at the moment and where do you see that helping in the longer term?
Pip (32:24.61)
Yeah, think we've been focused on this, like I said, that point of scaling with the company and not getting left behind, that's been a focus of ours from the outset. Standardizing our processes and automating them as much as possible has been a real key focus of the function since day one. What that looks like has changed over time. But that core thing of, what can we standardize? What can we...
automate, what can we enable the business to self -serve rather than needing to rely on a legal function has been a really key focus for us. That started off looking very simple, with a basic service desk that made sure that requests were triaged across the team correctly. Nowadays, it's looking a lot more around building
know, chat bots and building dedicated products to help us. For example, I work on a contract risk product which helps us better serve the business using less of our time and able to deliver the business what they need. So I think it's been a key focus from day one, what it's looked like has changed over time. I think like all companies and probably like most functions,
we're looking at what AI can offer us in terms of the next stage of that. And so we're starting to explore a couple of options of how we might implement AI within our legal processes and workflows, which is exciting. But yeah, I think there's no kind of like one thing that we do that's the magic sauce, but it's all about embedding that within the function and then also empowering all of our teams to figure out themselves. What do you need?
what do you need to be automating, what do you need to be standardizing, what tools do you need or what do need to be putting in place to lift that workload so that you can, again, enable the business to scale and you can stay freed up to advise on kind of the most strategic or the most impactful problems of the day.
Matt (34:43.58)
And would you advise people who are either still studying or early in their career to very much embrace technology? And if so, is there particular types or areas which is useful to look at now, knowing that they're coming further down the line?
Daniel Geller (35:03.707)
I mean, yes, I wish I was more technical. I had embraced certain elements of becoming more technical at an earlier stage. think, you know, we're seeing our lawyers now taking a real interest in making the best uses of AI. So, you know, doing like basic prompting courses and trying to...
upskill as much as they can in that area because, you know, even for lawyers, especially for lawyers, there's lots of use cases where you will be able to save yourself a lot of time. And if you are, you know, particularly O with that technology. So, you know, as an example, you know, and again, like there's no substitute for actual legal advice and you, you know, looking and reviewing guidelines or legislation yourself, but being able to put large amounts of documents.
into an open AI or another provider.
Daniel Geller (36:10.631)
and then have that, you know, that information to be able to be like readily available to you super quickly on a few prompts and things like that could save you, you know, like genuinely hours. So we've got some of our lawyers already trying to make better use of that. And I think that they are already kind of stealing a march in terms of like how they're able to make the best use of their time. So yeah, I mean, that wasn't available to me 10 years ago. And that's something I'm trying to upscale myself on as well.
and like to be able to use that to create, know, even if it's, you know, some of the basic other stuff that we're doing in terms of memos, summaries, like internal related documents, presentations, job descriptions, et cetera, that really, really useful. So I think the more proficient you are in that area, I think the more time you'll have saved and then yeah, the more efficient you'll be really.
Pip (37:04.45)
And I think there's no one thing that you should be upskilling on. It's more about staying really curious and staying up the curve on what's out there. Be interested in what other people are using, how they're using it, how it's solving their problems. to, and this is really cool for us at Revolut, talking to a lot of the other product teams around what they use, tools they use, how they use them, and then thinking about
how we can then use that in a legal context. So I think taking that approach of just being really, really curious, staying up to date with kind of what's coming online, what people are using, how they're using it, is really important and will hold you in really good stead regardless of what role, whether you're a lawyer or wherever you're working.
Matt (37:58.378)
I guess being curious and always networking is something you can start at a very young age, which I guess Daniel is how you actually got your job, right? So just to wrap up, I suppose, let's...
Pip (38:04.792)
Thanks.
Matt (38:14.654)
Let's rewind again and if you imagine you were 18 years old and you were starting your career again, what would you tell yourself? We've touched on quite a few different points which I think we may come back to again, but is there any kind of good advice or insight you would give to yourself or someone of that age who's starting their career? Being curious, always learning about new things is always super important, but is there anything else you'd want to add to that?
Daniel Geller (38:45.743)
Sure, I think for me, the biggest lesson I learned was try and find out what you're good at and then try and get part of your career or your career towards that because there's a difference between...
working in something that you can excel in and working in something that you're passionate about. And it might be that the area that you're passionate about doesn't necessarily have this, like the same follow through to also having a role that you can excel in. I'm not, the two might come together and that's obviously the best case scenario, but.
For me, if you can find something that you're good at, you will invariably enjoy it because you'll be good at it and you'll see that you will progress quickly and obtain more responsibility, autonomy, and all of the benefits that come with being good at your job. So I think it's not easy to work that out, but if you can work out what can you do better than most people and then look to double down on that and have that kind of be the anchor of your career, that's the best advice that I would hold.
Pip (39:55.854)
I think for me it would be, that staying curious thing is always good advice, right, but I think it's taking it a bit further than that, which is then, you know, actioning off that, which is, you know, I would have given advice to my 18 -year -old self to get more involved in opportunities to, you know, explore different companies, meet more people, look at internships, you know, and get involved in more fields.
Because that will give you a wider view and that will help you then exactly to Dan's point narrow down on like where you might be well suited, where you might have an advantage over others, where you might excel. And I think people who are probably listening to this podcast are probably already interested in taking those steps and being curious, but now it's like into action and about it. And I think the only other thing would be be brave with your career choices.
it's take a risk and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work out. You you're young, you can pivot, there's plenty of time to move on to the next thing if it doesn't work out. And I think, yeah, think people generally are a lot better at doing that now than maybe I was when I was 18, but that would be a number one bit of advice as well is just, yeah, be bold and be brave and take the risk.
Matt (41:16.178)
It reminds me of something Michael Johnson said in the Olympics yesterday about it's good to focus on your weaknesses, but it's even better to focus on your strengths because that's what's going to set you apart from everyone else. So, Daniel Pip, how can people kind of follow you or stay in contact with you?
Pip (41:26.572)
Mm.
Daniel Geller (41:38.737)
So yeah, I mean, we're both on LinkedIn. So yeah, feel free to drop us a message there or add and connect us on LinkedIn. If there's any roles that are of interest to you on the Revolut website, feel free to let us know, particularly on the legal side. And we are hiring paralegals and junior roles as well. So again, like, you know, if you need a sense check on a CV or past experience or anything like that, you know, we can help point you in the right direction. But I think that's
probably the best way to get a hold of us.
Pip (42:12.502)
And I'd also just add a plug for our grad program, which Dan mentioned earlier. So that's something that company's been working on, developing and growing a lot. And we're really excited and legal to be kind of jumping on board with that. So I think from next year as well, we'll be a part of the Revolut grad program and looking to get involved with people who are interested, perhaps, in a career in legal and fintech.
Matt (42:37.686)
Philip, Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.
Pip (42:42.264)
Cheers, mate.
Daniel Geller (42:43.099)
Thanks, real pleasure.