Sam Kidd

Sam Kidd came to in-house legal as an outsider. However, over time, found a way to earn his way into the sector. With a background in SaaS rather than law, he spent years listening to legal teams around the world and watching how they worked, not just what they said they needed. He found highly skilled professionals managing complex, high-value work through emails, spreadsheets and disconnected systems, and became convinced that the answer was not another tool but a different way of operating.

That conviction required personal risk. Founded in Tauranga in 2015, LawVu was built as an integrated operating system for in-house legal teams, bringing contracts, matters, documents, spend management and AI into one platform. Sam backed the idea long before the market was ready, going without a salary for five years while he and his co-founders refined the product, educated customers and built belief in a category that was still being defined.

His leadership has been shaped by that same patience and discomfort. Sam has built LawVu around trust, ownership and constructive challenge, encouraging people to question assumptions rather than protect old ways of working. That culture has helped the business grow from Tauranga into a global company of more than 150 employees, trusted by organisations including Expedia, Estée Lauder, Etsy, Arsenal FC and Discord.

The work now sits at the intersection of product, culture and category creation. Sam is still asking legal teams to change how they work, while asking his own people to keep challenging how LawVu builds, learns and leads.