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Take 5 with James Honsa, Head of Legal Engineering

December 10, 2018 2 min read

Tell us about yourself.

I graduated from Stanford with a Political Science degree and joined Dropbox’s commercial legal team as a new grad “Legal Analyst”. I worked there for three years, doing everything from negotiating NDAs to being on-call for company-wide incident response.

Why Ironclad?

As cliche as it sounds, the team. I met Jason and Cai early on when they were in YC and got to watch the company grow as a customer. To a person, I was impressed with and admired everyone I met, from Design to Sales.

Interested in life at Ironclad? Get to know our Cladiators through our weekly employee spotlight, Take 5.

What’s your favorite win so far?

Supporting a global cosmetics leader has been my favorite win at Ironclad. It has been rewarding (and challenging!) to deploy our product to our first Fortune 500 client globally.

Who inspires you?

I’m inspired by anyone who has the passion to pursue their life’s work, regardless of the domain. I deeply admire Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, and Jimmy Chin, a professional photographer and outdoor athlete.

What career advice do you have for your younger self?

Work in a role where the thing you do is one of the core competencies of the organization. Early in your career, you can learn a ton being at the nucleus of the organization, instead of in a support function. In a startup, this is probably either building, selling, or deploying a product.

What’s the last book you’ve read?

“Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami

What’s something that most people would be surprised to know about you?

I used to work as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). I loved the high-intensity and being able to help people during a crisis. I didn’t like getting puked on.

When you’re not at work, you’re where?

In the mountains! I love getting out to ski in Tahoe or hiking and climbing in the high Sierra.


Want to work with James? We’re hiring! For more perspectives on life at Ironclad, check out our previous interviews with Antonio Perez (Legal Engineer), Stacey Wang (Product Marketer) and Natalie Stam (Engineer).

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