Nadine Ezzie, Esq.
About Nadine Ezzie, Esq.
I am a startup executive and attorney with more than 15 years of unique legal experience working in, building, and then leading legal departments, together with working in a proptech startup as an early employee, helping build the company from the ground up. The importance of intelligent legal operations was instilled in me while serving as the Deputy General Counsel of Broadvox, a VoIP provider (nka Inteliquent). Being a telecommunications organization, Broadvox was highly regulated and the department ensured that the right policies and procedures were initiated and regularly reviewed and updated. I was originally bit by the proptech bug while working as General Counsel at Weston, a large-scale commercial real estate developer in Cleveland, Ohio. I was recruited by Weston to help scale its internal legal function in preparation for its execution of a long-term strategy to quadruple Weston's operating portfolio within 15 years. While at Weston, I streamlined legal operations resulting in legal cost savings of a quarter of a million dollars in my first 2 years in the role, as well as $100MM in closed acquisitions and $150MM in financings. However, the time spent on achieving such results made it apparent to me that there must be a better way of doing things. It was then that I made the pivot to the proptech world, serving as the VP of Customer Success at LeasePilot, a commercial leasing platform created and led by real estate attorneys. I worked closely with each CRE landlord customer to collaboratively create and then implement a customized roadmap to their organizational success. This began with customers’ implementation of LeasePilot and extended all the way through post go-live, including workflow redesign, training, KPI tracking, and consideration of change management initiatives. It was here that I gained a deep understanding and appreciation of the role of user-centric design principles in legal transformation together with agile methodologies. Today, I am passionate about legal design to guide legal departments and firms on their own journeys to legal transformation. My innate ability to empathize with legal users of all roles together with my experience in the proptech world enables me to strategize on a large scale and then successfully execute to a number of different roles and users. When I'm not working in legal transformation, I'm a fan of hiking, rowing, golfing, spending time with my rescue dog, Leo, Cleveland sports, and working on my stand-up comedy routine.