Meet the Pride: Matt Dineen

In this installation of our Meet the Pride Series, travel to New Jersey to meet Matt D., Lionbridge’s Enterprise Sales Director for the Legal division. When he's not working on business development or customer relationship-building, Matt enjoys playing the drums, spending time with his family, and exploring New York City.

Tell us about your role at Lionbridge.

I’m an Enterprise Sales Director for the legal division at Lionbridge, where our team works exclusively with law firms and corporate legal departments. My role consists of two main duties, the first being relationship building.

I believe I’ve had success in this area over the years by just being myself. I care deeply about the customer experience, so whenever I receive a new inquiry, I respond quickly and do my best to ask the right questions, understand clients’ needs and challenges, collaborate with our operations team to find the most effective solutions, and present options to the customer in a consultative way — all while simplifying the process to make it as easy as possible for anyone to do business with us. There is obviously a lot more that goes into it, but when clients have consistently positive experiences, trust develops and relationships flourish.

The second category is business development, which includes research, proposal writing, client meetings, and extensive outreach through LinkedIn, email, live events, and good old-fashioned phone calls. Essentially, it’s all about connecting with new people and sharing our story.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I would have to say I most enjoy the fast-paced nature of the work. A significant portion of our projects are done under intense time pressure. We frequently receive urgent requests that require immediate attention, which can sometimes be stressful, but also exhilarating. It's quite satisfying when we’re able to work out a solution that meets the client’s needs and “saves the day,” as it were.

We also work on very interesting cases and investigations with high stakes. Some of these cases are known as “bet-the-company litigations,” where the future of a company is at stake. We’ve also worked on lots of international disputes and humanitarian issues resulting from diplomatic crises and major geopolitical shifts.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

This is a fun one. I’ll start my morning with a clear idea of the tasks I want to tackle that day, and everything is blown up in an instant with an emergency request from a client who is asking for something that many others in the localization industry would consider to be impossible.

However, a typical day usually involves a mixed bag of activities: following up on existing leads, developing new ones, putting together quotes and proposals for new projects, and collaborating with our team to strategize and develop solutions that address a client’s unique needs.

How long have you been at Lionbridge? How have you seen the company evolve over that period of time?

I’ve now been in this business with Lionbridge (and formerly Geotext Translations, which was acquired by Lionbridge in 2015) for over 20 years, so I’ve witnessed an incredible amount of change. So much so that I feel like this is a completely different business now compared to when I started. For my first big project, the client sent over hard copies of all the documents to be translated in a banker’s box. We had hardly any technology at all back then, and now I’m part of an organization performing sophisticated AI training services for some of the largest and most iconic tech companies in the world. So, yes… things have changed a bit!

What is the most exciting opportunity on the horizon for your team this year?

With the incoming administration here in the U.S., we’re expecting to see an increase in M&A activity in 2025, which can involve lots of translation work, whether it be related to due diligence or antitrust issues involving second requests. This is where our tech solutions, Neural Machine Translation, and AI really come into play in the legal space.

What excites you the most about the industry you work in?

I'm excited by not just the advancements in AI, but specifically how our leadership has leaned into this new technology to vastly enhance our service offerings, along with our entire corporate culture at Lionbridge. The support, encouragement, and training of all our employees around AI have been nothing short of amazing.

Where do you live, and what do you enjoy most about it?

I live in Summit, New Jersey, which is a suburb about 20 miles west of Manhattan. What I used to enjoy most about it was the easy commute to work, because I could get an express train to Penn Station which is right across the street from our office. However, I’ve been working remotely ever since COVID, which I have come to enjoy just as much.

Now that I’ve been here for over 17 years, I’ve really come to appreciate the quality of people and the sense of community in Summit. As the name implies, we’re situated on high ground, so we also have some pretty cool views of the NYC skyline.