Team

Senior Team

Firoz Dattu – Founder & CEO

Prior to founding AdvanceLaw, Mr. Dattu oversaw (and helped launch) the General Counsel Roundtable, a consultancy serving more than 600 general counsel around the world. While at the Roundtable, Mr. Dattu led and presented studies to hundreds of chief legal officers of major companies (such as NIKE, McDonald’s, Apple, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, and Nestle) on law firm management, business partnering, people management, law department technology, compliance, and preventive lawyering.

As the lead faculty member of the Legal Leadership Academy, Mr. Dattu taught business and leadership skills to senior in-house counsel. Mr. Dattu has also served as the general manager of the Audit Committee Leadership Forum, which served the Boards of more than sixty companies, including H.J. Heinz, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, State Farm, and Coca Cola Enterprises. In this capacity, Mr. Dattu personally delivered accredited director education to dozens of Fortune 500 Boards on the topics of strategy, legal, compliance, IT, and financial risk.

Mr. Dattu was a litigation associate at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. While there, he worked on a variety of legal matters including trademark, antitrust, securities, criminal, and employment. Mr. Dattu received his J.D. (with honors) from Harvard Law School. He also served as a teaching fellow in the economics department of Harvard University and received the Derek Bok Award for Teaching Excellence. Mr. Dattu graduated first in his class at the University of Toronto (University College) with a B.A. in Economics.

Mr. Dattu and his wife, Crista, reside in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

Michael Williams – Senior Director

Mr. Williams joined AdvanceLaw after ten years of experience working with corporate legal departments at the Corporate Executive Board. For four of those years, Mr. Williams served as head of the Corporate Legal Exchange (CLEx), the business unit serving legal executives at mid-sized companies. Mr. Williams launched CLEx in 2007, and oversaw the growth of the business to more than 500 mid-sized company legal departments. While managing CLEx, Mr. Williams developed numerous tools to assist general counsel in their legal, compliance, management, and strategy roles.

Prior to this, Mr. Williams spent six years with the General Counsel Roundtable, where he held numerous product development and management roles, and served as an advisor to general counsel and key legal department personnel at the world’s largest companies. His project work included the Outside Counsel Management Toolkit Series, Complying with the FRCP Amendments Pertaining to E-Discovery, and Streamlining Contract Management. Mr. Williams holds a B.A., with high distinction, from the Pennsylvania State University.

Mr. Williams lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Julie, and their 2-year old daughter Maggie (who amuses her parents to no end).

Tamanna Choudhri – Senior Director

Ms. Choudhri joins AdvanceLaw after more than 11 years advising Fortune 500 general counsel on increasing efficiency and maximizing value from outside service providers. Most recently, Ms. Choudhri was at Axiom Legal, an organization that operates as an alternative to traditional law firms by providing corporations with on-site and virtual legal support on an as-needed basis. At Axiom Tamanna served both as Practice Manager for strategic clients in the bay area, and as Interim General Manager for Axiom Legal’s San Francisco office, working directly with prominent companies such as Agilent, Charles Schwab, eBay, Yahoo!, and Google.

Prior to working at Axiom, Ms. Choudhri spent 7 years at the General Counsel Roundtable, overseeing new client development. Ms. Choudhri led the Roundtable’s expansion to over 600 general counsel and CLOs worldwide, and built client service operations in the UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and South Africa. Ms. Choudri also helped launch the Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council, a global best practices community of over 300 Chief Compliance Officers.

Ms. Choudhri began her career as a securities associate in the Washington DC office of the law firm K&L Gates, focused on ’40 Act, securities regulation and litigation work. Ms. Choudhri received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, serving on the Moot Court Board, Admissions committee and as a class officer. Prior to that, Ms. Choudhri graduated from Queen’s University in Canada with a B.A. (Honors) in Political Science and Dramatic Arts.

Ms. Choudhri is happily married to her husband Kent, has an active 3-year old son named Kamran, and lives with her family in San Francisco.

Beth Florea – Project Manager

Ms. Florea recently joined AdvanceLaw and brings five years of experience working with corporate legal departments at the General Counsel Roundtable. She most recently served in an advisory capacity to in-house legal teams and provided support on a variety of projects including evaluating outside counsel, selecting and tracking KPIs, and implementing records management programs. While at the Roundtable, she also managed a diagnostic survey that corporate counsel use to receive feedback on their performance from key business clients.

Ms. Florea gained exposure to the challenges of a start-up company working in a similar role at Topspins, a medical equipment manufacturer. During her tenure there, she helped the company expand into the international market and led the development of a new product line. Ms. Florea holds a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Michigan.

Ms. Florea lives with her husband, Catalin, and their wonderful daughter, Camelia, in Washington, D.C.