GC AI’s product is a cutting-edge platform designed to make legal teams more efficient, and it has generated significant buzz in the legal and AI communities.
Scope of the Search
The demand was unique. GC AI sought lawyers with strong academic credentials and experience, and a genuine aptitude in customer-facing and technical roles. Many candidates were drawn to the mission and the product itself, but few had the blended background to be truly effective in a startup environment.
Kerwin had known the founder for years and was brought in to shape and lead the talent strategy. The company had already made a few hires independently but needed extra resources and a partner who could deeply assess candidates, spot potential, and serve as a strategic advisor throughout a complex and evolving hiring process.
Challenges
As a Series A company, GC AI needed to build its team from the ground up. The challenge was not just finding lawyers but finding hybrid professionals who could work across functions like sales, customer success, and engineering. These were not traditional legal roles. They required what the founder called “legal engineers,” professionals who could adapt legal frameworks to product features, help clients tailor the platform, and contribute directly to user adoption and satisfaction.
Our Approach
GC AI’s hiring roadmap was fluid. That meant reaching out to more than 300 potential candidates, a mix of legal technologists, legal ops professionals, and former attorneys now working in product or go-to-market roles. Kerwin’s team had to vet for legal knowledge, technical fluency, and startup readiness, all while selling the vision of a company where compensation couldn’t match that of more prominent players.
Kerwin didn’t just execute a search. They acted as a strategic advisor, helping the client define the roles in real time, adjust criteria when needed, and market the company to passive candidates who were intrigued by the product but unsure whether a startup was the right move. They were hands-on in assessing talent, filtering out candidates excited by the idea of GC AI but lacking the skills to deliver in a customer success or engineering-aligned role. They tapped into diverse legal verticals, reaching people in AI-focused firms, legal tech innovators, and attorneys who had transitioned into adjacent fields. The approach was methodical, creative, and tuned to the nuances of the legal tech market.
Results
Kerwin Associates helped GC AI hire a high-impact legal professional who could span legal, technical, and business functions. It was about having the wisdom to see who would thrive, and the credibility to guide the client through the process. The result is a team that fits, performs, and is ready to help take GC AI to the next level. Kerwin brought a combination of deep search tactics, market intuition, and candidate advocacy that helped the company hire faster, smarter, and with more certainty.
It took Kerwin just 14 days to identify the candidate that was eventually hired by the client.