Technically Legal - A Legal Technology and Innovation Podcast

From 'No' to 'Go': How AI Guardrails Drive Trust, Enabling Legal to be a Business Accelerant, Not Blocker (Sabastian Niles, Salesforce President & CLO)

Nov 6, 2025

Sabastian Niles, President and Chief Legal Officer at Salesforce, shares insights from his impressive journey transitioning from a prestigious law firm to a leadership role in corporate legal strategy. He discusses the importance of self-awareness for aspiring in-house counsel and highlights how Salesforce Legal acts as 'customer zero' by utilizing its own technology. Sabastian also explains the pivotal role of AI guardrails in fostering trust and innovation, ensuring legal becomes an accelerant for business growth rather than a blocker.

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ANECDOTE

From Wachtell To Salesforce

Sabastian Niles spent nearly 20 years at Wachtell Lipton before joining Salesforce and focused on law plus business and strategy.
He maintained long-term client relationships and advised end-to-end across deals, governance, and integrations.

ADVICE

Find Your Why Before Going In-House

Develop strong self-awareness and ask several "why" questions to find your true motivation for going in-house.
Approach chosen roles with dedication, discipline, and an authentic seriousness of purpose.

INSIGHT

Legal As Customer Zero

Salesforce uses its own platform as customer zero, building outside counsel management and internal agents in Slack for self-serve legal interactions.
This integration frees legal teams from routine work so they can focus on high-impact and strategic matters.

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In this episode, Sabastian Niles, President and Chief Legal Officer at Salesforce, takes a deep dive into the intersection of corporate strategy, in-house legal careers, and the transformative power of Agentic AI.

Sabastian shares his unique career path from a near two-decade tenure at a prestigious law firm before joining Salesforce. This conversation is essential for anyone interested in the evolving role of the Chief Legal Officer and the practical application of cutting-edge technology in legal operations.

Things We Talk About in this Episode

The In-House Career Journey: Sabastian's path highlights an early interest in the law and business connection and the role of the lawyer as a trusted advisor looking at the full lifecycle of a client's needs.

Advice for Aspiring In-House Counsel: The importance of self-awareness, understanding your "why," and approaching your work with dedication and authenticity.

Salesforce Legal as Customer Zero: How the Salesforce legal department uses the company's own technology, including building their outside counsel management platform on Salesforce and using internal AI agents in Slack channels for sales self-service.

Understanding Agentic AI & Agentforce: An explanation of AI agents—systems that can reason and take actions on behalf of human direction—and Salesforce's focus on trusted agentics through the Agentforce Command Center.

The Power of AI Guardrails: Sabastian explains that trust is an accelerant for innovation, not an obstacle. Guardrails define what an AI agent shouldn't do, ensuring responsible and ethical deployment, particularly around data access and defined roles.

Legal Departments as an Accelerant, Not a Blocker: The vision for the optimized global legal department is one that is deeply embedded in product design, mitigating risk, and serving as a super connector across the entire organization.
Regulation and Responsible Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A discussion on the fast pace of tech innovation versus the speed of regulation, and why major tech companies must uphold high standards and embrace risk-based, interoperable approaches to drive responsible AI adoption.