Marshall Custer (CU Law '10)
General Counsel, Grooveshark
Originally drawn to law school because of his interest in working with startups, Marshall Custer is now General Counsel at Grooveshark, where he provides general legal and business advice to the Board of Directors and the leadership team, as well as managing outside counsel. “I'm drawn to the chaos, collaboration, creativity, and the big personalities that define almost every early stage business.”
Q. Why did you go to law school? I didn't see myself as the successful-22-year-old-CEO type, so I needed to boost my skill set to be valuable to a new company. Law school was the perfect fit for my personality and interests. I moved from Chicago to Boulder to attend CU Law because of the open and accessible entrepreneurial community.
Q. Tell us about your current work. It's cliché, but I love everything about my job. I love waking up in the middle of the night with a problem running through my mind, I love the fact that there aren't enough hours in the day to finish what I need to do, and I love that the people I work with all feel the same way. I'm fully engaged in this job because of the variety and the challenge.
Q. What about Colorado Law helped prepare you for the position? Aside from the basic legal toolkit that almost everyone acquires during law school, the most useful skill I attained was an ingrained process for solving problems. Somehow, after reading thousands of cases and writing more than a handful of papers in school, your thinking begins to shift so that problems and risks start to fall into familiar buckets that can be, for the most part, easily dealt with. The ELC, by far, was the best experience I had in school as it was able to put a fine point on this skill by melding real world practice with the class room - effectively giving me a one year head start.
Q. Tell us about your professional networking experiences? My most effective networking strategy grew out of the fact that I was really uncomfortable with traditional networking events. I like people, but I don't like feeling forced to meet them. Instead, I always approached "networking" from a more social angle. Don't make contacts, make friends… people do a lot of business with their friends.
Q. If you could go back and do something different in law school, what would it be? I would have been involved in the NVC [ed. New Venture Challenge – CU-Boulder’s cross-campus entrepreneurship competition] and other business plan competitions. I'm convinced the 20 hours I would have given up studying would have been nothing compared to the experiences I would have had.
Q. What final piece of advice do you have for current and prospective law students? Remember who you are and what you really want to do. If you haven't quite figured out what really drives you, make it a priority to find that out. Law school is a stressful place, if only because your fellow classmates tend to manufacture that stress, but don't let stress distract you from why you're there.
