How Cockroach Labs uses Responsiv to support the legal needs of an expanding business
Responsiv is definitely streamlining our research.
Ruchi Shah, Senior AGC
“Responsiv is definitely streamlining our research.”
Ruchi Shah, Senior AGC
How Cockroach Labs uses Responsiv to support the legal needs of an expanding business
Cockroach Labs is a cloud-native, distributed SQL database built for mission-critical workloads powering global applications that demand the highest availability, horizontal scale, performance, and data consistency across any infrastructure. Their legal team, comprising four attorneys, one paralegal and a director of legal operations supports a global team and global customer base.
The Legal Challenge around Geographic Expansion
As Cockroach Labs grows, so do its legal and regulatory complexities. Today, the company has employees in the U.S., Canada, India, the UK, and several countries in Europe. Senior Associate General Counsel Ruchi Shah oversees the legal portion of the company’s expansion, which involves navigating employment, corporate, and customer considerations across various jurisdictions.
“Having Responsiv as a baseline of what are we getting ourselves into in a geographic expansion allows us to quickly pull up the most impactful issues to worry about alongside the regulatory and privacy frameworks that will matter most to us in that jurisdiction”
Getting up to speed on a new jurisdiction creates a lot of work for the legal team and often significant outside counsel costs. Ruchi uses Responsiv, alongside outside counsel, to get a handle on the legal and compliance requirements of the new jurisdiction.
Really easy to get started
Ruchi’s first experience with Responsiv involved a niche question on equity. It’s something that she would usually, by default, go to outside counsel for and often to a very expensive partner at that firm. Responsiv was able to grasp the complexity of the issue and reference relevant statutes and regulations alongside analysis from credible law firms on the topic.
Versatile Legal Support
As a general corporate lawyer at Cockroach Labs, Ruchi is responsible for navigating issues that pop up all the time that require some research. One day she’s doing corporate work, another day it’s marketing and advertising. She works on real estate when the business needs it. She supports people and employment work.
Ruchi has leveraged Responsiv to navigate complex issues like multi-state cookie consent requirements. She recently used it to draft a starting point for their recent Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Policy and Data Retention Policy.
“I use Responsiv for almost every part of my job and I’m using it even more than I expected when we first got the license”
Finding reference materials for a new issue takes a lot of time, so having a platform like Responsiv as a starting point is impactful. Ruchi tells us that “Responsiv is easy to use”. She finds the interface simple and self-explanatory, which is important when you are using it on a wide range of topics.
Responsiv gives you even more confidence in your work product
Often as an in-house attorney, you are fairly confident in an answer but you still might conduct some research for confirmation. With Responsiv, Ruchi can validate her answers directly through the platform and the referenced sources saving both time and money. Responsiv also provides a well-structured summary of topics of initial exploration, eliminating the need to consult many different sources.
Ruchi shares that Cockroach Labs is eager to integrate AI across the company to drive efficiency. She believes that AI will enhance, not replace, the work of legal professionals – sentiment we wholeheartedly share.