Catherine Zhu
Founding Partner
Catherine is a leading business, commercial and privacy lawyer, and is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) for both US and EU. She has been quoted in prominent publications as an expert on data and emerging technology topics, including for Crunchbase News, Bloomberg Law, Rolling Stone Magazine, LegalTech News, Reuters, IAPP, Westlaw, and others. She has also presented on these topics at TechGC, Saastr Annual, and other programs.
BIO
Catherine is a Bay Area native, where as a child she was exposed to innovative technology companies through her parents, both Silicon Valley engineers. Catherine attended UC Berkeley for college, where she graduated with a B.A. in economics and cum laude with a B.S. from the Haas School of Business, followed by Harvard Law School. At both Berkeley and HLS, Catherine dedicated her extracurricular time to counseling social impact organizations on business expansion and other strategic matters.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Catherine started her career working at top BigLaw firms advising startups and technology companies. In 2018, Catherine left BigLaw to join Atrium, a legal technology startup seeking to disrupt the legal market with tech-enabled, productized legal services. Atrium raised $70M in venture capital funding and in 2019 was ranked a Y-Combinator top 100 startup. At Atrium, Catherine was part of the Commercial Transactions and Data Privacy team, which counseled the entire Atrium client base (totaling more than 500 tech companies) on data privacy and commercial contract matters. Catherine’s other experience at Atrium include working with engineers to productize legal services, implementing alternative pricing models, adopting legal tech and process innovation tools, and developing other creative approaches to legal service delivery.
After Atrium dissolved, Catherine founded her own law firm, initially to service legacy Atrium clients. The firm grew quickly, from 2 to 24 clients with a 400% increase in revenue in the first year, and Catherine was invited to join her practice with an Am50 BigLaw firm to help build out their emerging company presence in Northern California as a senior member of a team. As senior counsel, Catherine managed a team of junior lawyers and contract managers, published numerous publications as a subject matter expert, and expanded her book of business.
In 2022, Catherine returned to her own law firm, reinvented as W3 Counsel, PC, where she channels her extensive experience from HLS, Atrium, BigLaw, and legal innovation into building the destination law firm for go-to-market legal needs.