“It’s not about what I want to build. I need to understand what the teams in Randstad need in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.”– Sarah Kate Lee, Head of Legal, DPO & Responsible AI Officer, Randstad
Watch Sam's chat with Randstad's Sarah Kate Lee.
For eight-plus years she’s built contract tools that ensure Legal empowers the business instead of blocking it. Sales contracts that once took a day “now take a minute.”
Josef Co-founder & COO Sam Flynn sat down with SK to talk about her approach to user-centricity, the importance of reliability and customizability when building business-facing tools, and her advice for in-house teams measuring impact and preparing for an AI future.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or read our recap below.
Every tool SK has built has been driven by the people using it: “their battles, their pain points,” whatever will “help them be better, faster, stronger, more efficient in their job.”
“It’s not about what I want to build,” she says. “I need to understand what the teams in Randstad need in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.”
“I’m not here to dump some technology on the sales team, and then be like, good luck, here’s the thing for you. I’m building something that’s very central to their day to day.”
That same instinct shows up in how she talks about problem solving: “We have a problem and I can build you a solution. It’s as simple as that.”
SK’s most prolific Josef tool has been a contract generator that helps sales teams safely amend commercial terms. Today, her Terms of Business tool generates 190+ contract variations, structured so a rep only needs a minute to get the contract they need.
It’s generated thousands of contracts over the years, is powered by conditional logic SK has set herself, and features timely guidance to help teams input the right information every time.
“It’s not about what I want to build. I need to understand what the teams in Randstad need in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.”– Sarah Kate Lee, Head of Legal, DPO & Responsible AI Officer, Randstad
An example contract tool on Josef
SK’s advice: don’t just report the hours you’ve saved, report what that time gets spent on instead.
“When I was looking at metrics, I didn’t just look at the ROI from cost to volume perspective. I looked at it in terms of how it gave our salespeople instant access, so what took a day now was done in a minute.”
“They could be speaking to a client and get them ready in real time. That adds value, right?”
“I also looked at the number of hours it saved the legal function, and where we put those hours into more high complex, high value things that help the business actually achieve their goals. That’s why people were interested. I had solid facts and numbers that showed how it was amazing for my team and for the business.”
What’s made it possible for SK to build according to business need? Customizability.
“[Josef is] a canvas for you to build anything that you want. Obviously you need to have some structure around it, but I really like how I can really mold it to meet where my business needs it to be.”
“I didn't just look at the ROI from cost to volume perspective. I looked at it in terms of how it gave our salespeople instant access, so what took a day now was done in a minute.”– Sarah Kate Lee, Head of Legal, DPO & Responsible AI Officer, Randstad
As Randstad’s Responsible AI Officer, SK’s candid about what happens when you don’t put the right guardrails up. It’s the unsupervised, unapproved use of AI tools, or what’s called shadow AI.
“If I don’t support the business to look at AI in a safe way, people are just going to find AI that’s out there.”
So when a new AI proposal comes through, SK’s team asks a different question: what’s your use case, and does it meet a checklist backed by her AI steering committee? Proposals that clear it are fast-tracked for review.
“What I really like about Josef is that it’s a reliable tool,” SK says. “It’s not going to hallucinate, it’s not going to make things up. It’s going to give the business what they need when they need it, in a way that I’m really comfortable with. It has some guardrails, but once you’re inside, knock yourself out, do whatever you want.”
Asked what she thinks General Counsels need to stay across going forward, SK explains, “It’s the ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable, to look ahead of time and start preparing your teams not just to be relevant, but to stay ahead of the game.”
“What we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. The landscape’s going to change exponentially every year, and I think it’s a really important skillset of the GC to forecast what the company is going to need from you five years from now, and start developing that skill today.”