S1 E31: Contracts, Liability, and Earning Trust with Sharmin Chougule

The Future of Trust with Mat Yarger · Nov 6, 2026 · 1h 29m

In this episode, we sit down with Sharmin Chougule, a contract lawyer with a PhD in civil law whose research focuses on liability in automated contracting. Raised in Ratnagiri, a small coastal town on India’s west coast, Sharmin moved to Mumbai to study. She was working by 20 to pay for her degrees and help support her parents, at a time when inflation had cut the value of her father’s salary.

The conversation moves from her years of commuting more than two hours each way between internships and law school, to losing her father during the first weeks of COVID, to finishing a PhD at an Italian…