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< | A Start-Up Law Practice Manifesto | >
> | Three Lessons from my Summer Sales Internship | | | | |
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< | -- By ElizabethBrandt - 30 Mar 2016 | >
> | -- By ElizabethBrandt - 13 June 2016 | | | | |
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< | Assuming that I want to practice start-up law, the path forward seems to include the development of the skills that are particular to start-ups or small businesses; a network that can connect me with the start-up ecosystem; mentors that have experience managing clients, with the practice of start-up law, and the business experience to develop and run a practice dedicated to companies that may not survive the next week. Before coming to law school, I told several lawyers, mentors, and friends that my ultimate goal was to start my own practice in order to choose my own clients, hours, and workload. With a lonely exception (from someone outside of the practice of law), each person told me that my plan was impossible for various reasons. In this essay, I’d like to begin to develop a plan for each aspect of the needed resources to develop a law practice in the area of start-up law and to address some of the individual hurdles that others addressed to me before law school. | >
> | So far, my summer internship is not at all what I expected. I chose a tiny start-up that’s trying to reduce litigation costs by using Artificial Intelligence in privilege review. They offered less than Columbia’s guaranteed summer funding, but it seemed like the perfect intersection of law and business for me, with the added benefit of taking me back to San Francisco for the summer. The co-founder was in the midst of raising a seed round and I couldn’t wait to review term sheets, enterprise contracts, and meet with angels and VCs in the Bay, whom I find more tolerable than their NY counterparts. If I’m being completely honest, I think I was mostly excited to have a fun, carefree summer in the Bay with my old (and some new) friends. | | | | |
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> | Most of my expectations were shattered on my first day in the “office” – the Microsoft Reactor office, which houses the highly technical Alchemist accelerator, of which we are a member. My boss sat me down and told me to expect 60+ hour weeks and had me run a cold e-mail campaign trying to sell our sort of ready product to each of the AmLaw? 100. I wasn’t thrilled to say the least; this was not my idea of my last summer of “freedom.” However, during that conversation I realized how much I’ve changed over the past year when I noticeably flinched as he described the company’s ultimate goal of selling the product to governments around the world for use as a counter-terrorism tool and again when he compared the company to Palantir. I wondered if I should say anything about it, but reasoned that my first conversation with the co-founder on the first day was neither the time nor the place. A year ago I probably would have only thought that this was a good strategy and an interesting case study – if I thought about it at all. | | | | |
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> | Lesson One: I Hate Sales. | | | | |
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< | Skills | >
> | Those first couple of days, I thought that if nothing else, this project would give me exposure to firms of which I had never heard. By the end of the week, as I started a cold e-mail campaign for enterprise companies, I realized that I was the summer inside salesperson and I was not pleased. I am not particularly suited to a sales function. I can usually fake the small talk (often with liquid aid), but I find it exhausting and, typically, deflating. This was probably my first grand lesson this summer as someone who claims she wants to eventually open her own practice – sales is always the name of the game, and I’m not particularly fond of the game. While garnering clients is admittedly very different from selling enterprise software, my first big lesson was that I much prefer sitting at my desk with contracts than to go out into the world and try to drum up business. | | | | |
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< | There are several skills that are relatively unique to start-up law that must be developed prior to beginning a start-up practice as opposed to general corporate work. These skills include the actual legal research skills to accomplish things like incorporating a business, but also the ability to counsel and calm a founder, business acumen when a founder is trying to develop strategy, and the ability to convince a client of the worth of the legal services through articulation of an understanding of their business. While I’ve developed some of these skills through my previous work experience, I believe I can also reach this goal through participation in opportunities like the Community Enterprise Clinic and InSITE? . | | | | |
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> | Lesson Two: Sales is actually fun. Not really – but it’s important to feel tangible progress at work. | | | | |
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< | Networking | >
> | My second lesson of the summer was that getting out of your comfort zone and actually selling is incredibly rewarding. The enterprise sales cycle typically lasts 6 – 18 months, with the average sale taking over 12 months. The first step is just getting someone to take your call or respond to your e-mail. After our first cold e-mail campaign to law firm CIOs, I expected a hit rate of exactly 0. Much to my surprise, the next day we had a response from someone asking for more information. Though we piqued his interest mostly through click bait by comparing our product to ROSS Intelligence’s use of IBM Watson in legal research (not at all related to our product), he was still open to a conversation and seemed interested to learn about the technology behind our company. | | | | |
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< | Developing a strong network is important for any lawyer, but perhaps particularly for a start-up lawyer as those communities tend to be tight-knit and insular. This is a particular area of concern for me as start-up communities are predominantly male and tend to operate as old boys’ clubs. Further, I don’t particularly care for networking and usually must force myself to participate in such activities. Finally, I frequently find it difficult to interact at these events with the appropriate body language, articulation, and attitude. Despite our conversations in class, I’m still not sure of the best way to move forward regarding networking. While student organizations like InSITE? are helpful to meet people interested in start-up communities, it’s not clear that it is the most effective way to network. In some ways, the easiest way to find like-minded people may be to join a firm that specializes in start-up law. This could be an opportunity to develop relationships with potential clients, meet a potential partner, and build skills while being immersed in start-up communities. However, each of these goals requires additional attention beyond an associate’s workload and access to the community may prove limited for a new associate depending on the firm. | >
> | Getting a response from a cold e-mail and listening in on a sales pitch describing the product gave me such a sense of elation. There was a tangible result from the work, and it was such a clear sign of progress, something I’ve never felt about my work before despite hour after mind-numbing hour of half-hearted “goal setting.” It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll see any of my leads close in a deal this summer, but that sales call was an excellent reminder to celebrate the small victories whenever possible and to set goals that have a tangible and meaningful impact. Additionally, it was an important reminder of why people love sales – the thrill of a response, a “yes,” a deal. | | | | |
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< | Mentors | | | | |
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< | Developing mentors is another area in which I feel that I need improvement. While I know several people working in start-up law and have several lawyer mentors, none of them have gone through the experience of creating their own practice in this area. Mentor relationships seem to directly flow from networking. In the past, I’ve simply stumbled upon my mentors. I had the good fortune of being seated with members of my college’s Board of Trustees during events in college, many of whom were lawyers and with whom I immediately connected. Since I have no intention of involving myself in the same types of activities in law school, I do not believe that the same opportunities will present themselves. Rather, seeking out a mentor will now need to be targeted and planned rather than serendipitous. Potential mentors may present themselves through Columbia opportunities like class or clinics dedicated to start-up concerns. However, I should conduct research about start-up lawyers in private practice in New York and reach out to them to discuss their practice and background. | >
> | Lesson Three: I should be a lawyer. | | | | |
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< | Additional Hurdles
Cited reasons for the impossibility of my plans included the perceived “sleaziness” of taking equity in exchange for legal services, a lack of demand for non-big law legal work, and the issues related to transitioning from a firm to private practice. Start-up firms typically defer payment from start-up clients until their first round of funding. Some private practitioners take equity in start-ups in exchange for legal work. However, this can create a conflict of interest and is supposedly regarded as a “sleazy” practice. It’s unclear if a new private practice would have the type of capital required to accept deferred payments that may never materialize. I am not sure how to further explore this particular issue. A lack of demand for work seems simply incorrect. There are several very successful online marketplaces for legal services that include small business and start-up specific issues that have raised considerable funding (UpCounsel? recently raised $71MM) to do just this. This is fairly strong evidence that the company is currying high demand for their legal services that are roughly equivalent to a start-up using a small practice. While a private practice may not initially be able to secure unicorn clients, I’m not sure that unicorn clients are required for on-going sustainability of a practice. This seems like a non-issue. The last hurdle of transitioning from a firm to private practice is a concern of mine. The logistics of potentially poaching clients from a firm and maintaining relationships with all parties seems to be a challenging and potentially impossible task. Answers to this issue may arise if I find particular mentors who have achieved this transition smoothly.
In summary, the issues related to a private practice seem less daunting once written and contemplated. While this list is anything but exhaustive, the initial challenges seem less onerous than I originally thought. However, I still need to work on my networking skills, seek out potential mentors, and continue to develop relevant skills at every opportunity.
I said in my comments on your first essay revision that I thought
you could be more general in your approach. This draft shows why
that might be helpful. What imagining a balanced practice with a mix of
businesses in it would contribute to your analysis is a clearer
sense of both the results you need to be able to get, and the kind
of network that would help you deliver them and find the people to
deliver them to. The focus on a solo business, involving only
startups, imposes psychological, economic and intellectual obstacles
that a change in practice focus and a willingness to join someone
else's small practice as a junior would change or lift entirely. An
effort to understand historically or sociologically how people not
inheriting practices built practices before the large law firm (a
phenomenon only three generations deep even now, and always
involving an infinitestimal fraction of the overall population of
lawyers in society) might help: you don't even mention the
possibility of learning more about practices from various academic
points of view before proceeding out to make one.
A manifesto is designed to persuade someone, perhaps you? But an
essay that had a more traditional objective closer to the name, to
try something out, might be an improved direction of travel. The
important question is, what to try out? Perhaps something not so
narrowly limited to a particular type of business, and not so
narrowly compelled to earn its living the way someone working
(riskily, in every sense) alone and acquiring all her experience
first hand would have to work. Perhaps instead of casting this as a
competition between those who said it was impossible and the plucky
loner who sets out to prove them wrong (a very Silicon Valley story,
I must say, and like so many stories from there, less credible the
more you know) you should be asking questions about how to reduce
the perceived impossibility by balancing more forces and trying a
less pure strategy of imposing self on soon-to-be-changed world in
favor of a more impure strategy of going out into the world and
adapting yourself to what you find there.
Oh, and for Heaven's sake, do read some Evgeny Morozov this summer.
Fortunately for you, you're not in Mountain View anymore.
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> | The most important lesson that I have learned so far this summer is that I want to be a lawyer. While I was elated to land a sales call during my first e-mail campaign, I was far more excited when my boss “rewarded” me by letting me review and annotate our form Proof of Concept contract and MNDA. While I’m sure this thrill will quickly wear off, I learned that I genuinely find the law to be an interesting subject. I honestly miss discussing cases, I relish our sales visits to law firms because the lawyers give us insight into their processes on everything from document review to billing a client, and I can’t wait for the next round of contract negotiations with our potential first client because I know I’ll get the opportunity to work with our MSA and Statement of Work documents. | | | | |
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> | Since I worked for several years before law school, I was fairly certain that I was making the right decision when I first applied. However, this summer has confirmed for me in so many ways that I am on the right path. When I look back on 1L year, I feel that same sense of elation I felt when we got our first cold e-mail response. This thing we’re doing is big, important, and life changing. And we’re making real progress. | | |
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