Anyone who hangs a poster on their office wall featuring a kitten hanging onto a low branch by two claws, emblazoned with the phrase “A GOAL WITHOUT A PLAN IS JUST A WISH,” likely does so ironically.
Or so I assume.
Nevertheless, some business proverbs really do lend good little bits of advice.
Take this one: “you should never be the smartest person in a room.”
Many of us in legal tech and Legal Data Intelligence know that feeling. We get to sit in rooms—physical and digital—full of brilliant people. My colleagues at Relativity are brimming with knowledge that I can’t pretend to match, on topics ranging from the intricacies of case law to artificial intelligence to engineering.
It’s a privilege, and an exceptional opportunity for growth, to be surrounded by such intelligent people and to learn from them every day.
Unfortunately, it can be intimidating, too. Sometimes it can take a notch out of your confidence. It’s uncomfortable to find yourself underequipped with the technical know-how required to join a discussion about agentic and constitutional AI, or transformers (they’re not referring to the robot aliens, believe me), or adversarial neural networks.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Whatever your skills and background, you do have a place at this table. Those brilliant people see brilliance in you, too; that’s why they’ve pulled up a seat for you.
So next time you find yourself to be the least technical person in a room, put the following habits into practice. They’ll help you contribute in a big way, protect your confidence, and learn something you can take with you into the next conversation.
#1: Own It, But Don’t Undersell Yourself
Here’s another fun business proverb: “fake it ’til you make it.” This one, too, has a place in your professional life. Occasionally, you must simply trust your own skills and theoretical knowledge enough to just do the work. Just get started. Often, things come together more beautifully than you’d expect.
However, this just isn’t so when it comes to technical conversations. If I don’t know the difference between diffusion models and autoregressive models, I can’t just pretend that I do. I may be a writer, but I don’t have the words to tell that story.
So own up to your qualifications. You’re an important part of your team for what you, uniquely, can do; focus on that. Speak up at the start of a meeting to establish your role, acknowledge your limited technical knowledge, and let your peers know how you plan to be helpful. When a conversation starts veering in an abstruse direction, raise your hand and ask for clarification or level-setting so that you can participate more meaningfully.
Keep in mind that, in addition to knowing what you’re capable of, your colleagues need to know what you don’t know—lest their own knowledge biases get in the way of good collaboration.
#2: Ask Great Questions
Curiosity is an essential professional skill. It’s particularly crucial in a space like legal tech, which is built upon somewhat unpredictable foundations: the tools are always evolving, laws and regulations are always shifting, and client expectations may change much faster than either.
Of course, you already know this. It’s a large part of what’s gotten you so far already.
This is where not being the smartest, or most technically proficient, person in a room can present a tremendous learning opportunity. Your colleagues are ready to share this knowledge with you; they simply need an invitation.
Bring your own skills and expertise to the table by asking timely, thoughtful questions. In doing so, you can illustrate your perspective while gathering a deeper understanding of the technological concepts under discussion.
For example:
Ask about the similarities and differences between a concept being discussed and one you already understand.
If you pick up on familiar threads as your colleagues discuss something new to you, pull on them:
How is natural language understanding different from the natural language processing I’ve already heard about?
Ask your colleagues to translate something they’ve just explained into laymen’s terms.
Remind them that you need to build this understanding for yourself, but also, you’ll all need to fine-tune your definitions for delivery to everyday clients and users:
What’s the ELI5 version of that? How would our clients want to understand it?
Check in on fit for purpose and your AI principles.
It’s everyone’s job—including the layperson’s—to ensure AI is built, licensed, and used responsibly.
What’s unique about this technology’s ability to address our clients’ specific challenges? What gives you confidence that it’s the right solution for us? Are we using it the way it was designed to be used?
Build understanding of how your team and tech stack have gotten to this moment.
Uncovering the pain points that have motivated a technology purchase, project, or other initiative and will help you create a three-dimensional understanding of why it matters. For me, at least, framing technical concepts with this kind of context helps make the information stick.
What led us in this direction in terms of technology investments? What was lacking in our approach before? How will this help fill those gaps? How do we see it scaling in the future?
Ask for learning recommendations.
Your colleagues should know both that you want to learn more about these concepts, and that you don’t intend to dump that educational burden onto their shoulders.
Where can I do some more research on this subject? Do you have any recommended thought leaders, newsletters, podcasts, or other sources I should follow?
Take note, too, when others around you ask insightful questions. Write them down. They may come in handy in the future.
#3: Learn Just Enough, Fast
Once you have those recommended resources in hand, use them. Don’t just bookmark a page and never come back to it; don’t subscribe to newsletters but then reflexively delete them when they appear in your inbox.
To fully participate in any ongoing projects or conversations with your technically proficient colleagues, you will need to educate yourself on the tools you’re all discussing, building, and/or using. Yes, sorry: this means more work, and setting aside some time in your busy schedule. But it’ll be worth it, and it doesn’t mean creating a whole new job for yourself.
Your goal should be to learn what you need to know—not all there is to know. Use what you learned by asking good questions, what you know based on your own role, and what’s important to your team and your clients to figure out what that balance looks like.
Pursue the occasional stretch learning opportunity, like digging deep into the techy sessions at Relativity Fest or picking up a book that might be just a little bit over your head. Immersion is the fastest way to learn a new language.
When you have a timely project or concept to tackle, do your homework. Pull up those resources, absorb what you can quickly, and, again, ask plenty of questions.
In between all that, simply pay attention. Read up on what’s happening in legal tech, catch the occasional webinar, follow smart people on LinkedIn or Substack. You need to keep engaging to keep those AI muscles strong, but you don’t need to pursue a PhD.
And here’s a pro tip: ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and other popular chatbots can be an excellent resource for learning these topics at a high level. Simply explain, in your prompt, that you are a layperson trying to understand a technical concept—say, different tactics for training a large language model and their respective pros and cons—so that you can participate more fully in professional conversations with data-science-educated colleagues. You’re sure to learn some useful information and you’ll get some hands-on experience with AI in the process. Win-win.
#4: Play the Translator Role
Whatever you’re working on with this group of technical experts will eventually need to be presented, or at least explained, to a layperson. Keep that in mind as you work together.
As the legal, creative, sales, or otherwise non-technical person in the room, you can be the perfect proxy for the future audience or client who will need to hear about and understand your team’s outcomes. All the skills you’ve already put into practice—level-setting, asking good questions, some light research—should come back into play here.
Your tech-savvy colleagues will have brilliant ideas and skills to offer as you evolve your team, tech stack, and strategies, but how those are executed on should always be rooted in the needs of your client (internal or external). Give voice to these needs consistently, and make sure any technical conversations and efforts can always be tied back to them.
As you learn along the way, you’ll be able to synthesize the information you’re gathering from the experts with the realities and challenges of your clients. Ultimately, this will ensure you are well equipped to distill all the technological complexity into a straightforward, digestible, and helpful solution that’s purpose-built to make those clients’ lives a little easier. Keep this story in mind. Use it to illustrate and celebrate the amazing things your team has accomplished (with your help! go you!) when all is said and done.
No matter your role, remember that effective client service, marketing, sales, and even thought leadership, aren’t just about having a library of complex, useful information in your head. Most importantly, you need to know how to apply your knowledge to real-world situations, bring in the right experts to help at the right times, and advise others on how to do the same. You don’t need to be an engineer or data scientist to be good at that.
Graphics for this article were created by Natalie Andrews.
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