The Conventional Paths We're Told to Follow

Get good grades. Go to university. Get a job at a respected company. Work your way up the corporate ladder. Check all the boxes of what society deems a successful life path. But what if that predetermined narrative doesn't align with your core values and vision for your career? Sinal Govender was headed down one of those conventional paths as a rising corporate lawyer. Yet the more she learned, the more she realised this tradition-steeped industry wasn't resonating with her personal beliefs about empathy, accessibility, and harnessing technology for innovating outmoded systems.

Sinal didn't set out to shake up the legal industry. As a young law student, she simply followed the conventional path - law school, big law firm job, specialising in intellectual property law. But something didn't feel quite right.

"I felt very frustrated about the innovation, or lack thereof, within this industry," Govender says. "Things like billing per hour, the egos, it didn't sit well with me even before I knew about startup methodologies focused on user needs."

So in 2017, Govender took a leap. She quit her corporate law job, started her own legal consultancy, and began exploring the intersection of law and technology. It was an unconventional move for a lawyer, but one that allowed her to pursue her passion for making legal services more accessible.

"The power dynamics in traditional law can be overwhelming for clients," Govender explains. Her freelance work led to opportunities in the legal tech startup world. Govender provided advice to founders, did product testing, and even dabbled in fundraising using her regulatory knowledge and personal network cultivated over years.

"My network is the amalgamation of genuine relationships and connections I've built throughout my life's journeys," she says. "It's about nurturing authentic bonds over time."

Eventually, Govender co-founded PopLaw, a legal tech platform aiming to simplify legalese and make legal services more accessible with user-friendly design and transparent pricing. The positive reception showed there was the demand for modernising this age-old industry.

Looking ahead, Govender is both excited and measured about emerging technologies like AI that could further transform legal practice. She urges balanced voices to discuss the ethical implications.

"I'm concerned about things like deepfakes and how technology could be misused," she says. "But I also see the potential for AI to enhance research, documentation, and more when applied thoughtfully and transparently."

For aspiring lawyers or anyone drawn to legal innovation, Govender's advice is to follow your passion while managing expectations around entrepreneurship's realities. Most of all, she emphasises bringing more empathy and human-centeredness to an industry that can often feel cold and intimidating.

"The law impacts everyone, but not everyone has access to understanding it," Govender says. "I'm grateful for opportunities to demystify it and meet people where they are. The path was unconventional, but it's where I'm meant to be."

Today, Govender provides entrepreneurs and businesses with innovative, accessible legal solutions that blend her expertise with a human-centred, tech-driven approach.

As our personal values and societal norms increasingly diverge in the era of ubiquitous tech disruption, we no longer have to shoehorn ourselves into prescribed career paths. We can forge our own trails that allow us to pursue our passions in authentic, values-aligned ways - even if it means taking some unconventional detours along the journey.