Wendy Kearns began her career as a programmer in Silicon Valley. The nascent tech industry of the late 1980s and early 1990s was an ideal setting for a self-described “computer goober” who had programming in her DNA.
But as the industry evolved over the next decade, so did her ambitions. Having worked in tech since she was a teenager, Kearns decided to go back to school. Thanks to a “second job” dealing with contracts at one of the tech startups she was working at, she worked alongside a lawyer who would help her into Santa Clara University Law School.
“I wanted to stay in tech, as an executive or something, but then I joined Venture Law Group as a summer associate during the first dot-com boom, and I rode the fits and starts of that industry until I joined Microsoft as a business development person,” she said in a recent interview with the Business Journal. “But then I missed being a lawyer, so I switched over to their legal department, and I’ve been one ever since.”
Kearns, 52 and now partner-in-charge of Davis Wright Tremaine’s Seattle office, spoke about how her early tech career still influences her today.
Anthony Bolante | PSBJ
About Wendy
How did you break into the Silicon Valley scene without a bachelor’s degree?
Back then, it was not that uncommon for people who were programmers not to have college degrees. There are a lot of computer goobers like me who learned in their middle schools or high schools. My father happened to be a mainframe programmer and I was always really into computers.
What could you see yourself doing if you didn’t go to law school?
I would have gotten a bachelor’s degree in software development, maybe with a business crossover. I probably would have been like a business development executive. That’s my guess.
Did you ever face resistance from traditional law firms because of your background when you were applying for jobs?
When Venture Law Group offered me a job, I had applied to other traditional law firms and they wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole. Having no degree, and I didn’t have any lawyers in my family, I came from nothing. It was almost like my choices were the moon or nothing. I think my secret weapon for many years, and still to this day, was I was going to work harder than everybody else. I just poured myself in it.
You haven’t worked for a tech company since 2005. How does your tech background help your work in 2024?
Even though I’ve been out for a while, I still have that experience of having been in-house and I know how businesses and corporations think. Lawyers can sometimes take themselves too seriously. We’re very risk averse, and we’re a regulated profession. We can get caught up in our law school training and don’t stop to think of how it solves a business need. That’s an industry problem. Being with Microsoft, with other businesses, and then having run my own small firm, I have a very business-focused way of looking at things. So my goal ... is to bring us into the future. Law firms, whether they like it or not, have got to be moving into AI and in tech-forward and tech-assisted businesses. And we have to apply that to our practice of law. And DWT is punching way above our weight already. My role is just to keep getting people comfortable with that technology.
We’ve been seeing some turnover in management and firm expansion since the pandemic. Is there anything behind the movement?
DWT has a very stable partnership. We generally don’t have equity partners leave outside of a couple of retirements over the past few years. And we’ve heard of some law firms coming to set up shop, but we have deep roots so we’re not worried. I think in Seattle, because the Great Recession didn’t come to pass and tech is coming back from a contraction with the AI boom, lawyers were quite busy in a year you think we’d be slow. Law firms seeing this are almost kind of late to the Seattle party.
So Seattle is having another moment?
Yeah, I think Seattle is going through an expansion and will continue to be that secondary legal West Coast market for tech behind Silicon Valley. These firms are eyeing the Seattle area. Have you ever seen one of those family tree graphs that show companies spun out of Amazon or Microsoft? That same thing happens with lawyers. They were at Microsoft, they leave, they go to other companies like Morgan Lewis, which opened a Seattle office. ... We also have a high number of cloud and AI attorneys, so Seattle is just becoming a much hotter legal market.
Aside from tech, you’ve devoted a lot of time toward diversity, equity and inclusion work. What kindled that passion?
I know what it feels like not to have the same background as everybody else does. I can’t step in everybody’s shoes, but I do know what it was like to not have money growing up, and I know what it was like to struggle. And personally, I have a gay son, I have an adopted Black child and I have a daughter. Three children whose identities are historically underrepresented in the legal profession. I want my children to never think I didn’t do everything that I could to make things better for people like them. I also never want to think of myself as the smartest person in the room, because the younger lawyers, the diverse lawyers, the older lawyers and those who are a different gender than me will always see something else that I don’t. We need all of that to look at a problem, especially when we’re representing companies with diverse workforces and customer bases.
What’s one thing about you that would surprise your employees?
Before I moved to Leschi, I had a farm on Vashon Island with 30 dairy goats. I even had to pause a conference call once to help a sheep give birth.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
