Christopher Winters

About Christopher Winters

In-house counsel with focus on serving the interests of internal clients and corporate shareholders through counseling, policy development, litigation management and decisive action. Creative legal mind with ability to understand and accommodate complex relationships between disparate legal and business issues. Strong communicator with tested ability to provide in-depth legal, policy and quantitative analyses. Team leader and player that has produced results for company and legal department. Career background in intellectual property law provides foundation for understanding and resolving business issues. Specialties: Intellectual property law, litigation management, contract negotiation, policy development.

Experience

1. General Counsel

   Appian

   Sep 2015 — Present · Reston, VA, US

   Appian is changing the way software is made. Appian Legal has tried to do the same with how the function of Legal is performed. Since 2015, the Legal team has grown from 5 people working on a mix of things (including admin functions) with two automations (a contract onboarding system and electronic signatures) to over 20 people supported by 17 different automations (15 built in Appian) that streamline and give transparency to our operations. In the same time, Appian has gone from $100 million in revenue to a $400 million run rate with a 30%+ software revenue CAGR.We\'ve also completed our IPO in 2017, raised capital four additional times (totaling over $500 million), completed two M&A transactions, moved our HQ, and Legal has introduced innovative new licensing and product packages.Some of the things we\'ve done:*We built a self-service NDA portal that provides visibility and auditability of our Non-Disclosure Agreements in a workflow that allows in-app redlining.*We built a Vendor Contract Management system to take control of the process of requesting, approving, negotiating, executing and renewing vendor contracts that allows the Legal team to show the value of our negotiation efforts.*We built an automation for employees on the pre-clear list for stock trading to make their requests, receive trading approval, and automatically change their clearance status in Appian\'s equity platform through use of Appian\'s Robotic Process Automation technology.*We built a robust Price Quote Application in Appian to create software order forms and to automate approval processes.*We built individual small automations that allow security reports to be distributed when an NDA is detected, background checks to be requested on contractors, vendors to be onboarded, partner due diligence to be performed, and our contract repository to be searched.We won the ACCA National Capital Region 2017 Law Department of the Year

Education

• Harvard Law School

  JD, Law

  1994 — 1997

• Northern Illinois University

  B.A., History

  1990 — 1994

Skills

• Legal Assistance
• Mergers
• Contract Negotiation
• Start-Ups
• Due Diligence
• Employment Law
• Copyright Law
• Patents
• Legal Compliance
• Legal Issues
• Legal Advice
• Mediation
• Intellectual Property
• Civil Litigation
• Competition Law
• Communications Law
• Corporate Law
• Patent Litigation
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Privacy Law
• Commercial Litigation
• Trademarks
• Arbitration
• Legal Writing
• Litigation
• Cyberlaw
• Trade Secrets
• Litigation Management
• Joint Ventures
• Securities Regulation
• Litigation Support
• Licensing
• Legal Research
• Corporate Governance