Chris Young, the first general counsel at legal tech firm Ironclad Inc., believes lawyers need to understand the value of taking calculated risks, as he has done much of his career.

When Young is not talking to legal ops groups about how to use metadata to boost a company's revenue, he said he is building Ironclad's legal department from scratch and meeting with other general counsel across the country to "evangelize" about how legal tech can help them.

Young spoke with Corporate Counsel recently in a wide-ranging interview about his career. Here are excerpts from that discussion, edited for clarity and brevity.